The Nazca march to war

On Monday, I was able to get in another game versus Nabors. In order to try a abate his constant whining, I built a pink foam proxy Jaguar so that we could play a 1000pt game, and he could bring his Hades. We played Search with 32 possible objectives, of which 5 were real. I am pretty sure that we played 7 turns, but I didn't pull out my turn die for this game, so I relented to Nabors's judgement.

My list:
Shaltari Standard Roster [1000/1000 pts]
        Gate Group [180 pts]
            Eden Gates: Eden [45 pts]
            Eden Gates: Eden [45 pts]
            Haven: Haven [15 pts]
            Haven: Haven [15 pts]
            Haven: Haven [15 pts]
            Eden Gates: Eden [45 pts]
        Court of Elders [171 pts]
            Coyote: Coyote(Elder) [171 pts]
        Swordpoint [249 pts]
            Tomahawk Squad: 3x Tomahawk [114 pts]
            Kukri Squad: 3x Kukri [135 pts]
        Warrior Clan [128 pts]
            Braves: 2x Braves [64 pts]
            Braves: 2x Braves [64 pts]
        Warrior Clan [64 pts]
            Braves: 2x Braves [64 pts]
        Warfist [100 pts]
            Jaguar Squad: Jaguar [100 pts]
        Speartip [108 pts]
            Yari Squad: 2x Yari(+Light Ion Cannon) [54 pts]
            Yari Squad: 2x Yari(+Light Ion Cannon) [54 pts]

Going into this I decided at the last minute to split my four Yari into to squads. I couldn't find a down side to this. They are still in the same battle group, and so can activate as if they are one unit, but if I want to they can split into two groups to do whatever.

Nabors's List:

    PHR Standard Roster [995/1000 pts]
        Hand of the Sphere [207 pts]
            Command Squad: 2x Zeus, Neptune [207 pts]
        Battle Pantheon [171 pts]
            Battle Squad: 2x Phobos, Neptune [171 pts]
        Immortals [237 pts]
            Immortals: 2x Immortals, Neptune, 2x Juno A1 [165 pts]
            ^ Sharing ^ Immortals: 2x Immortals [72 pts]
        Heavy Pantheon [205 pts]
            Hades: Hades [205 pts]
        Heavy Pantheon [175 pts]
            Heavy Squad: 2x Enyo, Neptune [175 pts]


A couple things to note. First, he only had five battle groups. While I didn't notice it making a huge difference, it did allow me to go first and last, or have two spare activations after he was all done. Second, he has no command value. I think this was a oversight, but may have been intentional. I should point out that he forgot his Command Deck, so we fought with out using them. It basically put me 66 points down. Though, in honesty, I have nothing to fill the gap.



The early game was just both of us running over close objectives, trying to find the real ones, inching closer to each other. My Yari proved invaluable, being able to snag the objective and book it back to my table corner, without making a huge dent in my fire power. I don't believe I fired them a single time in the whole game, and since I didn't have any cards, I didn't use them for Command Radius either. And they were still fantastic. I am tempted to try and find room for them in my 600 point list. In this game I was able to find an objective with the Kukris on turn two, which I then handed to the Yari, who took it off on three. They returned on four and popped out of a gate to get more objectives in my far left corner, none of which were real. My other group went screaming down the closest board edge, heading to my right, checking objectives everywhere, though none were real. They even danced circles around the Hades, zipping back and forth across a road, moving for objectives, and even weathered a turn of fire, taking no damage. My Jaguar headed down the same side, looking to cover a courtyard with objectives in it. He beat on some buildings, whiffed on some enemy targets, and mostly was lack luster. The Coyote, heading down the left board edge, did similarly, also not doing a lot of damage. My Kukris went dropship hunting and took down a couple over the game, though I should have split fire on one, but forgot that his dropship behind the building next to the one I shot was actually 6" tall, and I could easily see it. As it was, I whiffed on it next turn, doing some, but not enough damage.

 I did manage to kill the Phoboses' dropship, killing on in the process, but the other was all cocky on the roof, doing some damage, including killing a Eden, which crashed into, and destroyed a Haven. A hell of a dirty shot. In the end we managed to search 28 objectives, doing a fairly equal job. However, I managed to find two objectives on the ground and send one off with my Yari, and the other in an Eden. I also managed to grab one in a building on the final turn. Nabors grabbed one at some point, but didn't realize it was a real one, and never tried to take it off the board. The other one was in a building I was happily failing to search properly.

It was a very fast game. We did four(I think five) turns in a little over an hour, but then it kinda bogged down, with bystanders and idle chatter. We played with 20 buildings this time, and it was hard for him to get the Hades into position. It only fired once, and healed one of his Neptunes once. He lost two drop ships and a Phobos, maybe more. I lost a Eden, a Haven, a Kukri or two, and maybe something else. One of my other Edens, the one that had taken the objective off the board, was down two damage as well. We did a bit of damage to buildings, but not terribly much, certainly not enough to drop any below half. Also, falling masonry was rather weak, I think only killing one or two of my Braves, including falling masonry for his squads. I am still not sure if shooting the building or the squad inside is better with my anti-air shots.

In the end it was a 5-1 win for me.

I made a bit of progress on my Nazca, paint wise, as well. Beyond the really awesome Jaguar proxy, I also painted on one squads infantry bases. I really like how it turned out. I plan to add a cross walk to one set, and possibly a bike lane to the other. I read some of the Scourge fluff, and it turns out they actually maintain the industrial areas of the planets they take over. This means that there are non-ruined cities under their control. However, entertainment sectors are completely ignored, so they fall into ruin. Intriguing, and it opens up some terrain opportunities. I plan on finishing the other bases tomorrow night, and hope to move onto my jungle board soon after that. I also managed to get some pictures of my other models on the better back drop, but some were corrupted and lost, so I will leave you with what I have.