I managed to get in both round three and four for the Infinity league today. I bumped round four forward, since I may not be in for much next Saturday. As a spoiler, I did manage to win both games, both by more points than I should have considering how close they were. But more on that after the break. I will also do a combined breakdown on how they went, since they rolled through the same tactically.
Game one was versus Patrick. I changed my 225 list, testing out a dual Garuda, ten order list. I would have liked to play tested this against Nabors, but just wasn't going to have time, so I went in balls to the wall. The list was Marut(of course), two Garuda, three Dakini, three Netrods, and a Lamedh. The Lamedh gives my another order for 8 points, basically a double cost Netrod that deploys, can react(though no weapons), and move(though it never did). I had some crumby scatters, but generally came out okay. He took deployment and so I deployed fairly open, but in cover, giving the impression I was going to go first. He placed everything in a heavily defensive stance. I then gave him first turn, forcing him to waste a turn, or move out of defensive onto the attack. He chose attack, and wreckeded my face. He took out both of my high Dakini and a Netrod in LoF to the Civie, for his Double or Quit Intimidate. Down two victory points and three orders going in. I then dropped in a Garuda, which he hacked. But not really, because he couldn't. Either way, it scared me enough to drop in the second Garuda before he could actually set up the AD hack. Which scattered badly and got smoked, but not before snagging two more marks for Assess, my Double or Quits. My other Garuda managed to do a bit of damage, getting more Assess, and taking a couple models down before falling itself. On his turn two, he pushed forward more, managing to deal more damage, and I returned a little of my own, managing to thin his orders. It was enough to cause him to pull back into his right corner, turtling up. I took a second to look at the situation. I was down five models, he still had five or six. I had Assessed seven of the eight models I needed. I had pulled Intimidate. My last two missions were Mapping, make a Wip in his deployment zone, and Infiltrate, have a model in his deployment zone at end of the game. I had a Dakini that was on my far right, across the board from his whole force, that only had to weather one ARO to make it into his zone and do both. So, I took turn three, sent the Marut hard to my left, skirting some bunkers to gain LoF on one of his remaining non-Assessed guys, and subsequently killing him, give me my Assess. I then moved my Marut back, getting her well out of sight, hopefully protecting her from any return fire. Patrick repositioned a little, but held his castle, likely hoping to withstand any firepower I might bring for whatever aggressive schemes I had. My final, and the final turn, I ran the Dakini screaming up the right, managing to get the only ARO to have such a negative that it could actually hit me. The Dakini then moves into his corner, staying far enough back to not collect any more AROs and drops the marker. A gut wrenching game that went down 5-3 in my favor. I seriously thought I was screwed until turn three. Much like Malifaux, it isn't over until its over.
Quick reset, and its into game two. I switched back to my previous "standard" list. Marut, Garuda, Zaiyen, three Dakini, and three Netrods. With just under an hour to go, I say same table, have Nabors slap me some missions and run upstairs to buy my miniatures that had come in, while Nate finalizes a list, gets his missions, and his models out. He failed on the mission part. Okay, no worries, if he can tear through the selection, we are still good. Okay, no. Well, maybe deployment. I roll a screaming two, he gets a four, he chooses Initiative, I take Deployment, he takes forever. A full ten plus minutes to deploy. I turn around a slap down in three. I maybe should have taken my time, since I had some mishaps, but since they were Netrods, I don't think it was my speed that did it. My scatters were epic this game. One flew off the table backwards, the other shot WAY to my left. A full 15" scatter, ending way to my left, but fairly out of sight, if still in the pen. His AI Beacon scattered slightly forward onto a building, in plain LoF. He took first turn, and handed me some ouch. One of his first moves was to Plasma my Marut to the face. No worries, I have 8 Arm plus cover, I need a four to pass. I'm good. But then I have to take a BTS roll for the EM. No worries, my BTS is better than my Arm, I need a three. I think it was his second shot, I rolled a two. Crap. That completely shuts down my Marut. He thought I lost my EM Vulnerable weapons, but I had the pleasure of informing him it does TAGs as well. And Heavy Infantry and Remotes, but that didn't come into play. So, as immobilized, I still get her orders, and I'm not in Loss of Lieutenant or Full Retreat. He continues to fire, but the EM doesn't do wounds, and I can't fail an Arm now, my Marut makes good. I had put my Zaiyen up on a platform, and managed to get one ARO, before it went down hard to his sniper. My turn one. I move a Dakini around in my backfield, looking to move into a better position, as it is out of LoF of his everything, save his Beacon, which I fail to hit. I then bring in my Garuda in on his left, just out of his Deployment Zone. I had decided to walk on, for fear of Hackers, though I don't think he took any. It came in in a very small blind spot in his LoF net. I had issues telling what was looking where, but just because I was drawing lines from a different place than he was. I then moved it up, took a double blast at a model on the ground, laying the template over two more of his models. Remember this shot, it becomes important later. It was over a bunker, hitting the guy on the side, then one on top, and the guy along the back, by the far corner. I managed to kill the guy I was aiming for and the guy behind, but the one on top, who got an ARO, passes her Arm and kills the Garuta in return. I then do some more repositioning on the Dakini, now in my center, in front of my Marut. He takes some shots at the Beacon, and finally kills it. Then it peeks around the corner, at a bad range for the sniper, taking some shots, receiving some, but neither model doing anything. I then pull back, out of he LoF, just enough to get cover, should his Lieutenant stick his nose out to target the Marut. He close combats the Civie, giving him kill the Pigeon, which was his Double or Quits. We are getting close to seven, and there is no late night gaming, so I have about written off finishing this game, but I hope to get far enough to call it, with at least a few points, but I am thinking loss. Either through ARO or my shooting, I manage to wound his Lieutenant, who only has one wound, but No Wound Incapacitation, so he is still up. He kills my forward Dakini and takes some shots at my Marut, managing to do a single wound, but more back to were she gets cover, for fear of later fire. He is also down to three models, including his Lt. I take another look at the situation, and just like game one, decide I can death or glory it and possibly turn out a win. I take one of my two remaining Dakinis and push hard up the right, skidding past the sniper, getting into the zone to drop my triangulation beacon within 10" of his corner, but well out of LoF, and quite a ways from any of his models. Around about here I notice he doesn't actually have a flagged placed for me to remove for my mission. Great. I point out the fact, which he offers to place, but as I can't really say one way or the other if that would have been the correct place or not, I say forget it and move on. He says it would have been behind the bunker that had his sniper on it, but with no way of knowing, I drop it. You did remember the bunker, the one with the shotgun blast, didn't you? Yeah, would have needed a 12 or higher. 55% chance I get that point. Ah, well, won't ever know. Anyway, onto his turn three. We are now into the 7:30 range, employees are leaving, I am dreading the next footsteps being Dave and gong of doom ringing on this game. He still has three models, including his Lt, but the Lt is on No Wound. He makes a move with the Lt, I get an ARO with the last Dakini, who I had used my last orders to move to board center for this exact purpose. I am at +3 for range, -3 for Mimetism, -3 for cover, he rolls a hit, I roll a crit. Lt is down! I manage to score Kill the Leader. He then fires some other stuff at my Dakini, but it survives. As this is going down, Dave walks down the stairs and threatens my beautiful face with his ugly boot. I am on lightning speed overdrive. It is all on, right now. I grab my Dakini that dropped the beacon, and make him fat on orders. Order one, move towards center, line up behind a bunker, crate on the other side. I kick the jets, 6" move into base with the crate. A shot rings out. His jack makes the port of the data node. A whizzing through the air. Data is transferred, immediately uplinking to the locked down Marut and on to the Aleph central core. A crack as the shell collides with the Dakinis soft metal hide. As the Dakini falls, a lifeless shell, Aleph combs over the data, mission accomplished. Cries can be heard of Nate declaring this to be the only order that does not complete when a model gets shot on a non-Face to Face roll. I ask how you could shoot. It is the same as my Garuda's shot on the opposite side of the table, dieing, but still shooting the other models. I declare four points for my self, on the caveat that if he brings proof next week, I will drop it to three points. I discard my remaining four orders, they won't have any effect. I then ask if he can get any of his missions on the final turn, as, with the mishap on Kill the Flag, I am locked at four. He then totals his points, miscounting that his Lt is dead, nixing Forward Base, as he other models are to far away, and ignoring Loss of Lieutenant and possibly Full Retreat. He goes over what he has, and comes up with two points. So, even with a one point handicap, I manage to pull a 4-2 win out of a serious first turn beating.
Okay, now I want to do some tactical analyses on both games combined. First of, I got my lists wrong. My dual Garuda list would have been much better against Nate's force and my more standard list would have been better against Patrick. Is list tailoring away from your opponent a thing? Is it good? If so, that was my awesome plan. Beyond that, both players brought some serious hurt turn one. I basically began on the back foot in both games, and it was seriously hard to get righted again. It was two full hours before my nerves settled from this little escapade. A three round tournament, with a possibility of winning something... This is why I live in midtable obscurity. Both times I had to stop reeling, focus, and look hard at my mission cards. In hind sight, this may have been my biggest advantage. I must have looked at my missions more times each turn than I had orders to spend, but I don't really remember my opponents looking at them all that often. It may have just been I was focused elsewhere, and they did a better job of keeping track than my sleep deprived mind was able to. In the end, I basically got every mission I was capable of getting. Several by sheer luck of the roll, and taking a chance that I could get that luck. Which balances some of my other, less than spectacular, rolls. Going second both games helped me to get a better perspective on how much damage a force can receive on turn one. It is not unlike 40K with the old Leafblower or in Apocalypse. It is mind blowing. If I can keep my head, though, I can come out of it ahead. Come to think of it, my last four games have been really tough to get a hold of.
I think another part of the whole thing may be list creation. Both Patrick and Nate brought some heavy firepower, laying down a hail of make Allan cry death. My list has quite a bit less firepower. Sure, I have the Marut and the Zaiyen. I even have the Garuda for forward press and damage. But both games came down to the Dakini. One or two of them running some solo side action, while the big guns aimed up the center. If they could use Cautious Movement, I would have done some awesome things. In straight up Infinity, they don't do as well, but in the missions, they rock it old school. I think that is also how Michael S does so well with his Yu Jing. They are just so fast, that his opponents have trouble dealing with them. I happen to outclass him in ARO, so I manage to make him pay for the speed. Beyond Michael's thirst for motorcycles, everyone else's list aims for fitting in as much firepower as possible. As an off set, my list is focused on having some awesome firepower, but being able to turn around push those same orders into movement and objectives as it comes later in the game. Mind you, I have the Marut as a huge lynchpin in the whole works, but it is a tough pin.
What would I have done differently as my opponent's? This is usually a topic I push away from, not trying to second guess what they did, but I want to delve into it a little here. For Patrick, I can't remember his other missions, but I wouldn't have castled in the corner. It gave me a fair run of three quarters of the table. Also, his placement of guys opened it up for me to get my Assess, which was revealed. I'm not sure that is a real criticism, as I am not sure there was a setup that he could have used to not allow me to get that last guy. Hiding three of his remaining five or six guys would have made his castle an easy nut to crack. I also could have climbed my building and seem over, into his whole force. In hindsight, I maybe should have sacrificed the Lamedh. It even has Forward Observer and Sensor, I'm not sure it would have needed direct LoF. In the end, it allowed my Dakini to skirt the far side, getting two points and basically making a draw a win.
With Nate, I think he fairly tailored his list, setting it up well to kill my list. Its fair, I have made no secret of my list, and as kind of the guy to beat, I am openly okay with facing tailored lists, it makes me stronger. But, in making a force to kill mine, I'm not sure he had anything to do anything else. It was very good at what it was designed to do, killing almost everything I sent at it, but it failed to stop anything I sent at other things. Infinity, and specifically mission based Infinity, is more than killy mckillerson. His only way to stop me was to mow me down. He had a camo marker slightly forward, a sniper back on a bunker, two models flanking her, that died before I saw their purpose, besides one's plasma gun. I think the one unknown had an adhesive launcher, as I believe he had that model in his list. All great tools for stopping the Marut. He was prepared for the mission he set out to do. He didn't fully accomplish it, only immobilizing my TAG, but enough to take it out of threat. But it didn't really have anything to deal with range, when targeting sneakily moving Dakini. I believe the flash of the shiny Marut snared both opponent's.
What am I going to do in the future? Not sure, my list is fairly static. I would like to field the Rebots as a Daleth/Samek guided missile combo at the 300 point level, but other than that, my list is fairly locked. My tactics will need to adapt. Since I put all this in writing, my opponents know my force, my tactics, and my thoughts. Hopefully, they take their own lessons from each, as well as the game itself. "The only way to get better is to play better opponents." -Revolver, an excellent, mind blowing, Stathom movie. Both games were a challenge. I saw in them opportunities that hopefully I can take with me and react to better and faster next time. I don't think I will be shrugging off a first turn blasting as inconsequential anytime soon, those still hurt, but hopefully I can refocus faster. Even if I do take some hurt on turn one, I am still able to start whittling back, and hamper my opponent later in the game, when I make my moves and go for the win.
Well, I have been up way to long, and have to get up way to early, so I am off to bed. I do apologize for the rambling wall of text, especially if it comes out as sleep deprived gibberish.
No comments:
Post a Comment