Shooting Blanks

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. - Murphy's Law”

We had the opportunity to try out the V3 rules using the newly released cards. This time, the group agreed to hold a team vs. team format where each group will use 200 pts and each player in the 4 player team shall field 50 pts.

The objective of the game was simple. One objective was placed in the middle of the game table and the team which controls the objective at the end of 2 hrs shall be the winner. If no team controls the objective after reaching the time limit, then the team with the most AP destroyed shall be the winner.

On the one side, the Allies team prepared for this raid. I was part of this team and we fielded a Devastator, a Pershing phaser tank, a skysweeper, a Bulldog supported by A heavy rangers platoon and an assortment of other Allies infantry.

On the opposing side, we faced an Axis team with collaborating SSU elements! They fielded 2x Sturmkonigs, 2x Wotans, a piloted Blitz, 2x SSU Berias and a Grandma supported by Lara along with some more Axis infantry.

Our startegy for the game was simple, we were predicting that the Axis players will spread their heavy vehicles across the board so we decided to bundle our vehicle units in one part of the table and take out the enemy forces on that side through focused phaser fire. We have the Skysweeper to deal with the Blitz and the pair of Berias shall be low priority due to its single shot weapon.

Early Game:

The supposed targets of our combined Phaser fire.

Our prediction proved correct. The Axis and SSU players did spread their heavy hitters across the board, thus we took advantage. We then promptly positioned our vehicles and shot at enemy konig and Wotan on the left side of the table. The Pershing took a shot and missed, the Bulldog took a shot and missed, the Devastator took a shot and missed! 

The small building at the center was our objective. We placed our vehicles on one side.

The Blitz came swooping in and inflicted heavy damage on the Pershing but the Skyseeper retaliated and took out the flyer.

For this battle, the Allies team had two Ranger command squads, we used these to reactivate the Devastator but the we failed every time!

Midgame:

Dynamic Pose! Photo taken before the Axis Apes smashed the USMC Force Recon.

The Axis team began to return fire, one by one, the Allies vehicles began to fall. The Berias we were ignoring destroyed two vehicles! We tried to hit them, but our shots all failed to hit and our attempts to again reactivate our previous vehicles all proved in vain. Ugh!!

The only bright side from all this was when Rhino and a squad of Hammers were able to penetrate deep into enemy lines to take out a Konig. Our squad of Red Devils and came out to hit some Axis vehicles but it never hit anything.

Buzz Lightyear Hammers taking care of business!

Late Game:

I almost forgot, the Grim Reaper squad in this photo did attempt a reactive fire, but the attempt failed!

By this time, the Devastator was the only Allies vehicle remaining, while the Blitz and one Konig were the only casualties from the Axis side. Markus and his squad of monkey were already in charge range and came in hard to destroy the Huge Allies vehicle. The Red Devils came in to contest the objective against the incoming pair of Berias but it would not change the outcome of the game because the Allies team was almost wiped out. Axis wins!

I shit you not, this is what the final turn looked like before the game ended. That is one unlucky trooper!

Lessons learned:

1. Our strategy was sound but we obviously could not execute. Perhaps we could try this again some other time and see if the results would come out differently.

2. Rhino is still a monster against vehicles. Same is true with Markus and his monkeys.

3. Flyers are more viable now compared to the previous rules edition.

Epic game boys!