Durgama Takeover

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After the first encounter with Aleph on stayed on high alert. The Morat forces might still be nearby and we didn’t have the faintes clue on why the Aleph forces here in the first place. The command was clear: secure and hold the place until the forces arrive.
Keeping our eyes peeled saved a lot of lifes that day. We did expect trouble, but we were not prepared for what came next still.
The scouts have spotted a heavily armed Aleph force closing in on us with blinding speed. Knowing that our continget is a strike force I immediately knew we are in serious trouble. That’s when the first report of an Asura sighted besides the heavy guns came in…

I won the Lt roll so I decided to choose deployment as Ive seen a side (or at least thought so) which has better options to hide people in the middle. Aleph chose to go first.

The Aleph side deployed a dakini fireteam with sniper and missile bot on their right, supported by a HRL Proxy, then dropped an engineer+TR bot on the left, hiding a Shukra nearby. EVO went donw kinda middle of the DZ. Also he put a lone camo marker on the left console. I felt already pretty taken aback considering the pure firepower, but I suspected an Asura as the reserve.

And here is the part that I have to be honest about: I kinda botched my deployment a bit in retrospective. Nothing serious, but going second I should have been a bit more forward thinking. Whereas ai should have put my Epsilon in a place where it can take on the easier flank, the TR bot covered by smoke, I put him on top of a hill and hid the pieces around. The Betatroopers were placed on my right to go for the TR bot instead and to get point in the zone, which is a bit more risky playing against an Asura, that can outscore them with a little help. I placed my missile bot in hopes to deny some orders on my left with a lone Varangian and a flash bot. (I think the missile was my reserve.)

He dropped the Asura on his right (right where the missile went down to prevent it moving around too much too fast).

Aleph started by trying to remove the obvious ARO pieces. He overestimated the strength of the Proxy HRL though (wrong rangeband for him, good for the missile bot) and took a missile, but miraculously only took one wound and dropped back to cover. Of course my happiness didn’t last long, the buffed Dakini sniper took care of both of the bots (me not having the helper bot too close). Then his first turn basically went into coordinated moving the flashbots and the Asura forward, pushing buttons and hiding them. Got 2 consoles overall, Asura in one of the closest zones to me hidden on the elevated part of the building and the flashes in both of them. The Proxy hacker pushed the second console, and he retreated just as well a bit, while the engineer got forward into the zone with the warrior.

Varangian run forward on my right dropped a smoke but I realised I have only 2 orders on that so it couldn’t get to the TR bot and the Proxy. Instead I decided to drop repeaters near the Asura (I think it was in impersonation) and the falshbot cause I was afraid of the repeater net. Cyberghost flubbed the first roll, and then after on the second it went down I realised I don’t have the orders to do that and deal with the TR bot which kinda prevented me from climbing up to the Asura. Awkward. And I was behind on zones already. Soooo, I gave up on trying to go for the flashbot, tried to press a console with the beta team, they sneaked forward in the smoke and then the spitfire tried on the TR bot, unsuccessfully. I was thinking very hard on how to deal with that cause I was sure that if I could remove one of the Proxy in that zone and I have the spitfire guy in that I would be scoring that zone and the KHD one could hold the closer on my right. Instead of going in for the kill with the KHD (I needed them both at this point alive due to order pressure), I tried 2 more times with the spitfire, but I got unlucky and had to fall back.

Aleph Scored 2 points at this point. He was at a much better position. Asura also scored the classified previous turn hacking my HVT or something. So as he still locked down my left with the link team he had all the time to wipe up my Betatroopers. The Asura was in hacking range still and he forgot about that. When the Asura tried to sneak past she got discovered, and while good at hacking 3 hackers in ARO beyond firewalls was still a big challenge or her. Luckily for me she failed on the most crucial and got isolated. Not taken aback too much he killed them with the Dakinis and the Proxy and left the Asura to fend for herself.

I don’t know why but my Epsilon thought it would be best to take on the Dakini team, ate a missile to the face and got blown to smithereens. From here on it wasn’t that much of a fight but the Aleph side wiping up. I tried to drop the crusher behind the Asura somehow, but he failed the roll. The KHD Beta was still alive I think, but after hacking the Proxy hacker the Asura got out of isolation with Reset… I couldn’t move the crusher to the first combat group as I didn’t have any space for it. So I kinda wasted my second turn, only achieving a stalemate in zone scoring I think and no classifieds or new buttons. There was a heroic charge from the Varangian on my left, only to drop one Dakini and get stunned, by the flashbot.

I’m sure at this point he killed the remaining Betatroopers, and he tried to get rid of the crusher, but I got lucky with that. I think the missilebot needed repairing. The Asura run around the table to support the Dakini team and the Proxy engineer came forward to prevent my engineer from reviving the Betatroopers.

The Engineer tried its best but, only got the KHD up on the second try and got killed in the meantime by the Proxy engineer. Not having too many orders I tried the crusher as he could have done the double point classified (yeah I though I was lucky with that but got nowhere near being able to do it). So he went forward guns blazing and got blown up by the missile bot even though it didn’t have a big chance of hitting him considering it was now out of a fireteam, in bad range and the crusher had mimetism.

As a strike team we did our best to maintain positions but loosing that many troopers in such a short time weighed on me. With sunken heart I gave the order to fall back. We recovered the unconscious bodies of our teammates and left behind the carcasses of the remotes as we didn’t have much time before the Aleph force notices us falling back.

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