Topic: The Gathering: The Fightening: 2009

Well, so far over the weekend we have tabled Legions of Steel, Space Thugs, The Black Watch (whose owner has declared Defiance is his new love and 40K can go and get stuffed), MORE Black Watch (originally an almost-completed custom list that just happened to work perfectly under the Black Watch OB) , Infranites, and the UNE.

We've had a total of 8 players involved on two tables in uh..... a lot of battles.

I plan to rework some aspects of the UNE list to improve weapon/troop combinations, indirect fire, and the range on the Carl-G. Also I'm going to improve movement rates slightly across most troop types. Between all this I expect to add a nice edge to the UNE's tactical options in some respects, drift a little from the source material in some respects, and move closer to it in others.

My as yet unpublished Legions of Steel Machines list seems to be very competent. The Dreadbots are a terror.

The Black Watch performed very well, but I can't claim credit for that since the elements fielded were largely from Demian's Star Marines list. It's likely that I will split the list into two divergent ones to suit two mates with rather different collections and concepts.

The Infranites put up a decent fight, winning one and losing two. I think I need to tune the list VERY slightly for efficiency and then change my approach to fielding a force.

Thoughts from the weekend:

*If you don't have a decent long-range Indirect Fire weapon on a suitable platform, you might as well shoot yourself in the head.
*Pay attention to actual tactical variety when generating a custom army.
*Every army needs a disruptive weapon on a suitable platform; something that can flush troops out of cover, mess up lanes of fire, or otherwise cause the enemy's best laid plans to gang agley. I suppose the disruption can be brute force superiority, but I rather think that my general neglect of grenades, smoke, cone weapons, and maybe phase, stun and force fields, has hampered gameplay a couple of times.

Re: The Gathering: The Fightening: 2009

Few picy's to go with Sams post, these were taken by Mark, The first was an actual battle, the other two pretty sure were mock ups wink.

<IMG src="http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming1_a.jpg">http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming1_a.jpg</IMG>
link to full picy - http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming1_a.jpg
The above was from one of the actual games, the DND mini's are proxy'd in as cyberdogs and you can see the runts of to the side, there facing of against Sam's elite warrior units (blue).


<IMG src="http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming2_a.jpg">http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming2_a.jpg</IMG>
link to full picy - http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming2_a.jpg
Shot of some of Sam's Robo Warriors they did get used a lot during the course of the weekend.


<IMG src="http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming3_a.jpg">http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming3_a.jpg</IMG>
link to full picy - http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming3_a.jpg
Marine (in a dress) slinking through the light woods.

Re: The Gathering: The Fightening: 2009

A marine in a FLORAL dress!

I am utterly perplexed with GW's marine-in-a-dress fetish by the way.

It bears pointing out though that Steave's Black Watch, a remixed Star Marine army, was brutality on a stick the whole weekend and didn't lose a battle. Devastating Marines, with Heavy Riveter as Primary and Laser Cannon as Support can really ruin anyone's day. Especially if like me, you were heavy on Standard Infantry and AME's when you faced them.

Also, Steave's scouts had a weapon of my design, the Smoothbore, based on an AAS12 with selectable buckshot or HE rounds.

Here's a link to the weapon that inspired it:

http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=741

The fear instilled by this shotgun of doom can be seen in the brutal and highly selective manner in which I exterminated everyone carrying one.[size=85] How dearly I paid![/size] I'd post the stats but the format gets changed between clicking "submit" and actual viewing, so get it from the Black Watch list, available here:

http://herosgames.homestead.com/DVG.html

Re: The Gathering: The Fightening: 2009

Those machine troops tore people a variety of novel new orifices, too. Chief amongst their weapons (apart from surprise and a near-fanatical loyalty to the Pope) was the Dreadbot, a 6J AR something-or-other 2 DC vehicle with an artillery rocket and a backup rack of RoF 4 AV missiles. Apart from that they had a nice range of simple but brutal weapons that really tended to f* people up.

Next time I think I'd like to see them and the Black Watch go toe-to-toe.

Re: The Gathering: The Fightening: 2009

Sounds like you had a time to die for then, doesn't it? And the piccies are nice too. Yoda says: "remember to crosspost to the TMP "SF Battle Reports" Section you will?"

RE: indirect fire -- it's indeed a serious handicap if your force has no such weapons or too few and of disbutable quality. It's fairly obvious tho if one looks at the rules so one can't really complain too loudly. OTOH the rules do make just storming a dug-in enemy a somewhat viable option, but for that you'll probably be wanting an APC to carry the shock troops. Grenades and cone weapons help a bit, but the former are hampered by the terrain cut-off distance and the grenades are rather short ranged so a bit of break in terrain placement is needed if you want to use them to put the hurt to some "(trigger) happy campers".

Re: The Gathering: The Fightening: 2009

Maximum terrain depth affects cone weapons? Who knew?

Anyway there was at least one occasion where a decent grenade would have made a difference. And yes, APCs are VERY useful, I wish I'd fielded more of them.