Dropzone Commander tournament game 5, Shaltari vs PHR

Here are a small After action report from the fifth and final Dropzone Commander battle from the tournament we had.

My Shaltari would face of against Daniels PHR.

The scenario we played had three buildings at the middle line with one objective in each. I think they were indestructible in this scenario.
In each players edge a further noteworthy point was placed, I think it was a "Focal point" and as long as the your commander were close by it gave that player a +1 on the search table to find the objectives in the middle buildings.

I rushed my Thunderbird gunships behind a building early on.
I dropped all my warstrider in the centre on the focal points and started to spread out from there.
The smaller gates and infantry speeded to the middle buildings with the objectives, trying to find them before the PHR forces could stop them.
My Panther managed to find clear line of sight to a small enemy dropship when it walked in and downed it.
Unfortunately the enemy had some dirty tricks up his sleeve and played a card that gave him infinite range with his guns and his large HQ battlegroup took out the Panther in return. 
My infantry was super quick in. The Pungaris deployed on the right flank, Braves in the middle.

The Commander in his special Coyote Warstrider with two Tarantulas and a Dreamsnare. This would be my anchorage.

Withe the commander on the special point got a bonus to search for objectives, this combined with the Pungaris own bonus for searching made it no problem to find the objective in the building on the right flank.
The Braves in the middle building also had luck finding their objective really fast.

Two Jaguars are deployed from a large Gaia gate. I love the model for the Gaia, with its massive wingspan it looks like a big butterfly...

I used Eldritch Energies on the enemy in this building and then sent in the infantry to engage.

The firefight had taken its toll on the enemy and he was down to just two heavy walkers in his command squad.
The infantry in the middle had no problem to carry the objective to their Haven transport and tried to use the terrain and the warstriders as cover or protection as it was carried back to safety.

I had found the objective in the building with the Pungaris and a unit of Braves, but...
Enemy forces had stormed the building.

The Braves ordered the Pungari to hold off the enemy and engage them as the took the objective with them and left the poor slaves to their fate...

They fought the enemies of their masters but they were totally slaughtered by Medusa and the squad of Valkeries. They did manage to make some small damage on the Valkyries but thats hardly enough. What they did manage to do was uphold the enemy long enough for me to evacuate the objective.
Enemy dropships and Athena air superiority fighters harassed my two Haven gates and my Eden as they fall back with the objective. With multiple targets I thought at least one of them would survive the onslaught..

On my left flank things didnt look as good. I was heavily outnumbered and Daniel managed to use multiple command cards to boost his forces in close combat. My troops was getting slaughtered here to. In an attempt I tried out a rather different tactic... By deploying gates in his way, his dropships had to fly through the charged air from the gates and hopefully get downed...
Not the most solid plan but I was getting desperate and that was all I had to not let the enemy get that objective of the table...
My opponent would have nothing of this rouse and sent in the Athenas to deal with it...
Havens were seen crashing to the ground....

In the centre his commander had taken a beating... He had lost all his bodyguards and the AA walkers were backing him up as my Thunderbirds tried to snipe enemy walkers without return fire...

The warstriders of the Shaltari had really made a heavy anchorage and with the boosted shields from the Dreamsnare and fieldrepairs had managed to take a beating...

In the end it was a victory for the Shaltaris, I had secured two objectives and Daniel one.



And just some quick pictures from the other boards.

When I had won this battle and was ready to place a marker I noticed that my fellow Shaltari player Jens had already conquered all of the former PHR spacestation. Not surprisingly as it had come under invasion and was further reinforced with a new stronger commander and fresh troops...
I opted to instead fortify a ground area on the planet.



After the final battles this was the map for the campaign.

Yellow - Shaltari
Green - PHR
Red - Scourge
Blue - UCM/Resistance

All in all I think the map campaign really added another layer to the tournament. A fun little extra moment. More about the rules for the campaign in the previous post at http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2018/02/dropzone-commander-tournament-campaing.html


And the tournament worked great to. A nice mixture of different scenarios with different types of objectives. And I liked the terrain for the boards, always nice to play on a board you like.
A special thanks to Erik for organising this.

In the end I managed to take the second place, just one point after the winner. Linus, the Resistance commander.

Dropfleet Commander, work in progress. Late night painting Sanitago class Corvettes

Last night I started painting some UCM, Santiago class Corvettes from Dropfleet Commander.
Here are some work in progress pictures with bad light.
Its good ta have some really small brushes...

133 - No Guts No Glory, fighter nose art.

 131 - Greek "Trireme Eye"

That leaves 132 still undicided. Im thinking on giving it also som kind of ww2 nose art, maybe an Egyptian eye, a pinup girl like those ww2 American bombers?
If you get a nice idea Im open for it or for future ships. Thanks

Dropzone Commander tournament game 4, Shaltari vs Shaltari

The forth game of the tournament.

My unbeatable Shaltaris would meet their own kind... They would be facing another Shaltari tribe, under the command of Jens.
The mission we would play had a focal point in the middle of the board and lots and lots of potential objective scattered all over the board.
If I remembered correctly it was called "Swedish search", it is a tweeked "Seach" scenari with a focal point at the midle to push the armies to actually engage the enemy.

Using the protections of the trees in the park the Braves dares to leave to safety of the buildings.

My Pungaris had been pushed up but were assaulted by enemy elite Firstborn infantry... this will not be a beautiful carnage...

Using this gate, the enemy starts to deploy lighter flanking units. Besides being able to push at my flank it gave him the option to start collect possible objectives here. His small light skimmers were a particulary nice little addition, easy to hide, fast to move but still able to search for points in the scenario. I might have to consider to include a small unit if these in the future.

I tried to use my Jaguars for an push, but they could not bring their guns to damage the opponent.
But the dices was really not with me in this game. A lot more 1s then should be statistic to roll were found in my rolls...
The Jaguars AA fires also failed me.
The Thunderbirds failed misserable and where easily taken out, them self failed to hit their targets in the entire game.

Edit: My opponent pointed out that the bad dicerolls did not include my rolls for my shields. The Dreamsnare did his work and the dices behaved accordingly in its presence...

It ended in a loss, not a big one butt still.
The killpoints were equally tight, I think they ended in something like a 8pts favour to me.

Jens abuility to use his gates and spread out his force to seek out the objectives gave him the game.
I was really tired in this game and did a lot of mistakes.

Jens played really good, had I not loost focus on capturing objectives on the last couple of turns things could have looked different.

It was a fair win for the Shaltari, Jens played the objectives for the scenario and I did not.



During this game I only managed to take these pictures of the other players games.

This was the status of the campaign map at the end of game 4.
Jens used his victory to reinforce the hold on the space station.
Sacking the incompetant commander and reinforce with more Shaltari troops. The invasion foothold on the space station had been fortified.

Dropzone Commander tournament game 3, Shaltari vs PHR

Time for the third game from the tournament.
My Shaltari would be facing PHR forces under the command of Max.

Each force would be deployed at the corners. In each of the four corners and in the centre a focal point was placed.

I wanted to place my commander early on, on the table to get his command value to work.

I had held back the Panther, my heavy AA warstrider until the last during the first activation. And noticed that my opponent had made an mistake... His commander and his bodyguard hanging under their dropship was clearly seen between some houses all the way from my table corner...
The Panther had found its perfect target...
Targeting homing in on the dropship and a salvo was fired from the massive Particle Triad, resulting in a dropship going down in flames...
Only the bodyguard walker managed to survive this inferno.
The enemy commander was taken out and the PHR was left leaderless from turn one onwards.

I gathered almost all my forces on my right flank, from here I wanted to make the push.

Gathered Shaltari forces moves forward, in force...

My commander guarding a flank as other warstriders turns behind the building.

PHR forces scramble to meet the threat of the Shaltari formation.

PHR snipers enters one of the buildings as Shaltari anti tank gunships pas them close by.

A Dreamsnare and its two Tarantula bodyguards are seen at the back moving to the centre as well as gates moving around to let the Shaltari take control of the focal points.

After its initial volley the enemy had learned to use the cover of the large buildings and my Panther was forced to move forward in an attempt to get better firing positions later on.
 

 By this time my warstriders started to envelop the focalpoint at the centre buildings as the infantry had taken control on the focal point in my deployment quarter and those on each flank.

Enemy forces pushed in his quarter.

I used my Thunderbird gunship to close in on the enemy behind a building to get protection from his aa guns. The warwalkers of the Shaltari had used the centre building to hide its movement and I could move around the corners to my liking to get just enough enemy walkers in gunsight to not overstretch my push. Singling out enemy troops and minimise return fire.
With the gates I was able to move my infantry where they could hold its ground, I could but the Pungaris on focal points where enemy infantry was not expected and could but my Braves and the Firstborn elites where potential enemy infantry was tempted to try to engage.
I even managed to sneak up one gate along the edge of my left flank behind buildings to deploy some Braves in the last building with a focal point right back at the enemy quarter to contest it.
All while my warstriders tried to occupy and take out the enemy walkers.

It was a massive victory for the Shaltari.

I think the initial loss of his commander put the fear in my opponent, he did not want to run the gauntlet and risking another dropship loss from the Panther. This made his movements slow and I was able to use the speed and take control of the game. To take the combats where I wanted and where the odds where heavily in my favour.
Had the PHR had more spread out AA firepositions my movements would also have been much harder. I had used my Thunderbird gunships and even sacrificing a gate to get his AA to one flank and tried to keep them occupied and threatening them with warstriders so they would hide behind larger buildings that also resulted in a worse AA protection. As it turned out, almost all his AA where at the same place and if I just held the distance from them the rest of the table where open ground for my fragile gates...



Here are some of the other players games that I managed to take between rounds.

This was the map at the end of this third round of games.
With my win I was able to get a foothold on the PHR space station... Let the invasion begin...