Durgama Takeover

Infinity

Spiraling In Control

300 POINTS
Nomads
borisgreymenace
VS Tohaa
invalideffort

>> Boris lingered in Orbit over Concilium Prima, where the glitter of debris twisting over Drugama caught edges of the sun and glinted like flies at twighlight. It was quiet. Yet among jagged pieces of Raveneye’s port battery and Módulo Satélite there was a battle raging. One that he was late to, underprepared, and skeptical of its outcomes.

>> “Attention all Nomad personnel, we have detected an incursion at the Port Fire Control Module. Requesting immediate deployment of the nearest response team.”

>> Some of the wreckage drifted too close to the atmosphere and kissed with a streak of flame. In the jungle below, it must seem as if it was raining fire. Another Emerald Hell, just like the last one.

>> “This is the NMF One Armed Scissor, responding. We copy the request and will deploy immediately to Port Fire Control.”

Overview

Mission: Capture and Protect
Forces: Jurisdictional Command of Tunguska versus Sprial Corps (300)
Deploy First: Tunguska
First Turn: Spiral Corps

It’s a bit of a happy accident that I got to play this mission. I had signed up or my first tournament at Maplewood before the Durgama campaign and was planning to play TJC to begin with and Capture and Protect just happened to be on the list. When the online campaign started, dexstarslab (our TO) shifted the mission order for Capture and Protect to be first so that everyone trying to participate in the campaign could knock out objectives in the first round. As it was my first tournament, I don’t think how much I appreciated at the time what this would mean for my head space. Coming into the game fresh, without any fatigue or lingering doubt from setbacks in previous rounds probably helped my play almost as much as pure luck.

A note here to thank dexstarlab for putting on the tournament, as well as the folks who came to play. It was a super welcoming environment for a new player to the state and the competitive scene and my games were highly enjoyable. Special thanks to my opponent invalideffort for being patient with me as we worked through lines of sight, order resolution, and all the Tohaa profiles I was relatively unfamiliar with. Though you’re often on the other side of the table in opposed play, it’s hard to understate how much of a collaborative game Infinity is.

As for the mission itself, Capture and Protect was the one of the three I prepped for the most. One of the few benefits of covid is all the various battle reports through TTS that have been posted. Watching more experienced players work through the same problems I was going to have helped me plan a pretty straight forward approach. The mission is essentially capture the flag with a scoring at end of round, which informed all my troop choices.

Basically, my idea is to go second and whether the storm, fly something up the table to grab the flag with as few orders as possible, and retreat if possible to my DZ. To this end, the free Motorized Bounty Hunter is my plan A based on movement. It’s also expendable which feels right for a plan A. Plan B is for the Puppet Bots to do their thing with their movement and two wound stats. Being S1 also helps obscure lines of sight whereas the MBH S4 is easy to catch out of position. And the unique haris they form just adds extra efficiency. Plan C is the Meteor Zond with its airborne deployment skills allowing me to place it anywhere to pick up a fallen flag or, if plans A or B are relevant, in the back of any piece that’s out of position. Plan Z is the Szally to run up and tank hits. It’s not really what I want from a 72pt model, but going second means that I just need to hold at the end of the round.

The other half of the mission is protecting your own flag. To this end, I have a Securitate core link to pick off pieces with the HMG, pick up pieces with the paramedic (lol), and to generate orders, especially veteran orders in case of loss of lieutenant. With no chain of command, this is my main crutch with Tunguska and our obvious lieutenants. A few line troops in the back who have seen it before make an irregular order turn a little less crushing. In addition, I have the minelayer Puppet Master, kind of an auto include as far as the profiles go unless your challenged for SWC, to put out an extra camo token. The two Hecklers are also there for a bit of a camo shell game. The BSG/E/Marat profile to cover the flag from all angles while the forward deployed KHD is for surprise Trinity and/or Plan Double Z when the Szalamandra goes down.

With no HVT I will be forced to do classifieds so I need a pretty diverse suite of specialists. Tunguska has easy access to hacking, with a capable engineer. I decide on the Securitate Paramedic as the weakest specialist. Between puppets and the Meteor Zond, forward observing should be pretty straight forward. The only classifieds I won’t be able to do are Predator, since nothing in my list is credible in CC and there are about as many PARA CCW as regular CCW. That’s fine by me since it leaves like 90ish percent of the classifieds achievable.

So with plans A through Z set, a sense of how I want to play the mission, and a list that I feel comfortable piloting the tools on hand, I feel fairly confident going into the mission.

That is until I see Spiral on the other side of the table. I do collect Tohaa for the models but haven’t really done anything with list building at all. I know about pheroware, but have no idea which stinky smell does what. Also, I know there will be a Jaan Staar. I just don’t know what or where will be a Jaan Staar. While a few camo tokens will help keep my opponent honest, as it were, infiltrators, like bears, are just one of the things I’ll have to suffer through. In addition, there’s a Brawler link with some Diggers on the other side of the table. Diggers are somewhat infamous in the internet meta for their cheap cost, durable stats, and booty. The courtesy list is one of those hilarious patchworks of blank spaces with a few Brawlers, Diggers, Aelis Keesan, a Diplomatic Delegate, and one free Motorized Bounty Hunter. The rest is something I get to experience the discovery of as I play.

>> “Spiral Corps? I thought they were on our side?”

>> Boris frowned. “Depends on who’s paying their contract, Lt. Krsnica. What they’re showing right now is just a feint. But we have our own tricks too.”

Deployment

Deployment of TJC models and Spiral Markers

I win the Lt roll and go second. There’s a lot I can’t control but having the last word is the best plan. Having picked turn order, I am forced to deploy first. This gives me my first challenge as I have to decide what my reserve trooper will be. I feel like conventional wisdom is the TAG which will effectively be an T1 ARO piece given its size. But TAGs also have a capacity to shape deployment because of their imposing stature. Given that I assume that any infiltrator that can get into CC with my TAG will wreck it, or at least lock it down, I am inclined to save it. But the Puppets have more defensive value with the mine and potentially overlapping firelanes, so I decide to hold them back. My TAG goes down on the right flank behind a standing flashpulse bot and a zondbot to fix things up. On the left, I tuck away the MBH with another Transductor Zond and zondbot. My core link takes the middle, mostly prone so I can save the HMG for active turn with one lone Securitate covering part of a long firelane that almost sees up to the enemy DZ. Not great for a mere combirifle but with big team BS bonuses it’s credible. The clockmaker goes prone next to the HMG because I run out of places to put her. Honestly, just fitting the big team in safe spaces crowded the DZ so I ran out of places to stick her. But if anything has blast mode, I’m down a hitting piece and a specialist valuable not just for classifieds, but for propping up TAGs, zonds, and Puppets. And if I had to D-Charge anything, she was in a poor position to get into the enemy half of the table.

As expected, the Spiral deployment is a core brawler link, impersonation tokens, and “do you mind turning around for a minute?” invalideffort counters my TAG with his Brawlers on his left flank and puts Aelis on his right along with his MBH to counter mine and the relatively weak ARO of the Securitate Combi. To protect his flag, a couple of Chaksa FTOs are in the center of his Deployment Zone. Otherwise, he’s breathing at the edge of my DZ with a lot of “Friendlies.” I decide to play the Puppets pretty conservatively, with my two BSG profiles on the right edge of my TAG with the Shock MMR stepped back behind them for a third overlap. The Puppet master is up next to my lieutenant and places his mine to support the TAG on it’s left. Anything that’s coming in for the TAG will face multiple chances to hold/discover and hopefully keep Szally alive long enough to be relevant.

Next up is booty rolls. My MBH ends up with an MSV1. His Diggers get an HMG and I think a multirifle. I believe his MBH rolls up a DA CCW. Both MBH forwent the impetuous for cover.

Top of Turn 1 – Spiral

The list invalideffort is playing has his available orders split evenly between two groups. I opt to dock the bigger-ish one since he won’t tell me which one has Jaan Staar. The first impersonation marker makes a move on my puppets, and I withhold two AROs and discover. The marker moves again and lucky for me I manage my discover, revealing the first Kiiutan Imposter. Unfortunately, I’m not really able to respond with anything else as it walks in an attempts to land an E/Mitter on Szally while getting engaged with a Puppet. Unfortunately, the Puppet whiffs as does every other ARO and Szally takes the E/Mitter hit only to tank the saves. WHEW. With the Imposter now locked down and with no good CC skills on either side, it’s time to move on.

Kiiutan imposter vs puppets and szally

>> Even with the blips unscrambled, the Kiiutan moved with otherworldly grace, weaving between the shots of the various remotes marionetted by Boris’ team. As it rounded the corner it raised the barrel of a small canon loaded with electromagnetic ammunition meant to scrabble the onboard electronics of the tag. With a sickening thud, the shot struck the TAG from behind, only to be neutralized by the armored gear’s onboard counter measures.

One the other side, the MBH revs up to make a play for my deployment zone. With my Securitate combi in overwatch, I put a couple of bad shots in the air. Two dice on 6s feels better than zero dice or a dodge. I think there’s a case here for having put my HMG at this position or having a second Securitate SWC weapon in the link to watch both the top and bottom approaches, but really I couldn’t afford it and I needed at least some kind of Lt. shell game. So, I have a suboptimal tool punching above it’s weight. Lucky for me, it does and I’m able to take down the MBH in the second order before it can get to my half of the table. Better luck than planning but that stalls the attack on my left.

Back to my right, the link team moves and the Brawler sniper one shots the Transductor zond and pulls a wound off Szally before beginning to boogie up the DZ into midfield and position for next turn. invalideffort notes his concern that he might be leaving himself open as he bunches up on the right side, but he leaves a Brawler HRL out to ARO. Aelis activates on my left and with her K1 combi is eventually able to win that dice off and eliminate the Securitate, putting the turn in my hands.

Bottom of Turn 1 – Tunguska

Actually just losing a seven point flash pulse bot and 13 point trooper is not bad for weathering the storm. This is probably where the lack of orders plus some unlucky dice put Spiral at a disadvantage, since they weren’t able to make a huge dent on my order pool and all my big pieces were still standing. With that in mind, first order of business was downing Aelis and my HMG was able to do the job. Then it was a matter of moving my bounty hunter up the very open left side and to the beacon. As it was a free bike, no points, no SWC, and just added to the order group, I was able to move it up pretty effectively, only having to burn a second half of a move order once for the left hand side infiltrator, which I covered on the other side with the remaining Transductor in Group 2. After my next activation, the bounty hunter basically rode up unopposed to the beacon and secured it since there is no skill checks required other than a short skill and the Chaksa all dodged. Then I drove it as far back as group one orders would support, getting me to the edge of Spiral’s deployment zone. This ended up being both a blessing and a curse as once I was there I knew I would have the scoring but had no idea where the counter strike would come from. I hemmed and hawed over positioning and invalideffort gave me a suggestion that he thought would afford me the best shot at cover. I can’t say I was exactly confident in the Bounty Hunter’s prospects, but I have watched a lot of games where turn one ends with no one holding a beacon, so I felt I had already executed pretty well on plan.

MBH secures beacon

For group two, I decided to move Szally up to cover the approach to my beacon and maybe handle the fireteam. Unfortunately, the Brawler HRL meant I couldn’t move-move and found myself out of position with the TAG as orders ran out and five dice failed to put it down. Covering the imposter with the flash pulse bot was a good idea, but it split my small order pool, even smaller because the Meteor was off board.

exposed szalamandra

In a sense, my best move here was what I didn’t do. I was tempted to drop that Meteor Zond on the fire team to create some chaos, kill the order pool, and generally wreak havoc. But I held off. I’ve often read that with AD and HD troops, it’s better to show some patience than to go through for the first opportunity, and given the weak position of my Bounty Hunter, having another 6-4 piece drop on table to grab the beacon is worth more to my mission success than the damage it could potentially do to the link team. Maybe I could have gotten lucky, but holding off for future points seemed like the right move. In any event, I now had two seriously exposed units and had to turn over the reins to Spiral to see what they could do with it.

>> Life is short in the Syndicate for those who take Zip jobs. Zuharra Vidal had learned the hard way that once the Black Hand knew you had taken a forbidden bounty, there was no way of getting out from under their thumb. There was money to be made in any war zone, but with Raveneye damaged and otherwise Morat infested, profit margins were looking slim. But the job here wasn’t to worry about the fate of the planet below. It was far simpler than that. All she had to do was ride. And if she did it well enough, living another day would be her reward.

Top of Turn 2 – Spiral

Well, I scored points. Success. I also left open two obvious and juicy targets. invalideffort set about to securing the low hanging fruit first by revealing a hidden deployed Greif to fight my Bounty Hunter. The good news is that with cover and mimetism, she was more durable than she might otherwise be. The bad news is that MSV1 does not negate surprise attack. The one comfort about impersonators, however, is that their stats aren’t too much better than a line troop–so I happened to weather the surprise shot. However, with enough orders and three dice to my one, it was inevitable for my Bounty Hunter to fail. And being unconscious at the edge of my opponent’s deployment zone meant she was not coming back. So what a relief I didn’t drop the Meteor Zond on the other side of the table in the middle of a link where it might hurt him but not help me.

Greif kills mbh

With the bounty hunter taken care of, the next plan was to deal with my HMG. There was another infiltrator (Clipsos I believe) that could do it but the size of my TAG basically meant there was no real line of fire to the Securitate that didn’t provoke an ARO from the TAG. Since he couldn’t slice the pie, he decided to use the Brawler HRL to finish off the Szalamandra. It took about two or three orders but eventually I lost another three dice to one fight. With the Szally down, the Clipsos was able to challenge the HMG but lacked the orders to kill it off. So with that the turn order went to me.

Bottom of Turn 2 – Tunguska

So I knew what my plan was but I needed to set myself up for success in Turn 3. My first order was to see if I could master the deadliest unit in the game, a line trooper paramedic, and get myself a full link team for turn 3. With the extra burst on the medikit, I was able to land one serum on the downed Securitate and definitively kill her. This won’t be reflected in the points, but but it was a successful kill for TJC.

With that line of approach down, I decided to use the HMG on slightly less good BS to deal with the Clipsos. It passed it’s dodge and moved out of the way. Not exactly what I wanted, but good enough. I then used the rest of group one’s orders to move zondbots around. On the left side, this was to stare down the final impersonator marker, while on the right I scooted behind Szally. Of course, I lacked the order to turn her on but would be able to bring her back on turn 3.

broken meteor zond applies bsg to greif

With the remaining group two orders, I was able to land the Meteor Zond outside of LoF and ZoC of the Greif and with the next order apply BSG to clear it. I then spent the final order securing the flag and ended the round with another two points.

>> From his vantage point on the command bridge, Boris watched as the operators’ life signs went from green to red. The TAG was down, a piece of lost materiel that his superiors were unlikely to let him forget. But there was still a chance to snatch something from the jaws of defeat.

>> “Gremlin,” he commanded his geist, “Cue up the Flight of the Valkyries.”

>> With that he deployed the Meteor Zond from the bay doors to drop a load of flechette spray on any alien that threatened the Nomad nation.

Top of Turn 3 – Spiral

Tell me if you ever had this experience before. You hear the TO walk by and say 90 minutes left. Then they come by and say 50 minutes left. Then they come by and say 15 minutes left and there’s still a whole turn to go. When we shook hands at the start of the game, invalideffort said that he was a veteran player and was looking to play fast and live with mistakes. I told him I was a new player who would play slow and live with mistakes. Now we had to play speed chess and mistakes would be the norm.

This is where I think the split of orders hurt Spiral the most. The fireteam was an order battery but on the other side of the table with no clear angles on anything. Spiral revealed another hidden deploy trooper, an Igao this time, who Mirrorballed its way up to my TAG and coup de graced it for a classified point. From there the split of the table meant no more big group trooped could affect my Meteor Zond, which left a lonely token to have to figure out what he could do with a handful of orders shifted by command token. Between my flashpulse bot at zondbot I was able to discover a Jaan Staar who had the unenviable choice of having to pick which way to go to pursue my Meteor Zond with not enough orders. If he went on the left board edge, he risked a flash pulse or reduced movement through dodge. With the zondbot in the pincer, he risked me dodging to engage and at least one flash pulse. So he settled for positioning that would allow him to take shots if I crossed the plane in an attempt to get to my deployment zone for another two points.

igao coup de grace of a szalamandra tag

Bottom of Turn 3 – Tunguska

So we have less than five minutes at this point so I have basically two things I try to accomplish. I stand up my Lt. and try to four burst combi Jaan Staar off the board. We miss the Igao ARO on the first one or two failed bursts, but Jaan dodges safely and on the second/third I split one and three and kill the Igao. I didn’t have enough time to do a full order count so after spending the Lt + four orders and not killing Jaan I decided to move the Meteor Zond just up to sight and leave it at that. Two points in hand seems better than four in the bush and trusting a dodge on PH 11 for a swing like that didn’t seem like the right move. With more time and a better sense of my order pool, I could have tried to move the HMG up or disconnected the puppets and moved with fewer or just about anything else, but with the clock ticking I made the best decision I could think of.

So we shook hands and called the game there. Mistakes were made. Opportunities lost. But in the end it was a 7-1 Tunguska victory.

>> “Our targeting beacon is secured. The enemy beacon is under control of a friendly remote. We will attempt to extract the data quantronically.”

>> “Very good, Lieutenant Krsnica. You and your troops are to be commended for a decisive victory in the field.”

>> “But the TAG, sir. We lost it. And the Bounty Hunter too. And Laia was taken out by the medikit–”

>> “Assign extra training to Paramedic Joshi. But otherwise, let’s not question a victory. The cost is something for me to bear. Greymenace out.”

Post Game Analysis

Well, for the first real competitive game I cut my teeth on, I’m happy it was a win and one that would contribute to Durgama. invalidefoort was a great opponent, as I said very patient and willing to help me work through my options. I think the things I did well were 1) get lucky and 2) deploy well enough to draw most of his attention to deal with my TAG. Though it died without really killing anything, Szally ate up so many orders that it ended up keeping him from really threatening my deployment zone. I was also hugely benefited by the side of the board I was on, where one wall obstructed the right hand side apporach to my beacon and it was otherwise behind a tower. That basically meant that once I cleared the left hand side not only could I move relatively freely to capture the beacon myself and keep the only approach secured through the HMG and a single heckler while a zondbot and Transductor kept eyes on Jaan.

In terms of mistakes, I do feel like I didn’t really use Szally to its potential. It affected the game state but wracked up zero kills and zero wounds. So from a meta standpoint, very effective. From a playing standpoint, ineffectual and really served to give a point away. The puppets were also not very impactful other than tying up the Kiiutan in CC. In a different game where the MBH hadn’t died where the Meteor Zond could easily swoop in, I would have had to choose between wasting orders to CC a slightly better soldier or just reducing to a duo and letting him whack away at the Puppet in ARO and then freeing the Kiiutan to have its way with my back line.

For Spiral, I really felt the stress of that link. The HRL was not meant to be the main hitting piece but at one point I just basically was stuck between accepting the wounds it inflicted trying to dodge or shooting back on a slightly better single die. It locked down the right side of my board and while I though I might drop that Meteor Zond on them, I don’t think I would have done anything but cost me the game winner.

In terms of mistakes, I didn’t see the full list but I felt like the order split actually worked in my favor in terms of there not being enough revealed orders to power the pool. With Jaan on my weak side too, I definitely think I would have really suffered a turn one alpha strike from him that I might not have recovered from. Conceding the right half of the board for me T1 to kill the Securitate link might have meant more options for Spiral in T2 and T3 as well as potentially no tools to drive up the “easy” side of the board. Even though he did have the tools to deal with my puppets and Szally, I think it was tough to concede the strong side of the board and let me potentially alpha strike his link, so I don’t know that invalideffort made a different decision that I might have in his place. It’s pretty well known that the scoring heavily favors going second and I had good movement on both sides of the board, so it’s not clear that it wouldn’t be a haris of two wound Puppet bots doing more durably what the Bounty Hunter was able to accomplish.

It was a good time all around and definitely built me up to get devastated my second game. Ever heard of this Lobo guy? He’s, uh, pretty good at this game. Getting to meet some of the local infinity players was great. Hopefully we can pick up a few more Durgama games next week and get patched.

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