Sunday 25 February 2018

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.

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