Durgama Takeover

Cameliard Defense After Action Report
Command Officer: General Store

After our successful rescue of Commander Cho from the Zebu research facility, I was put in charge of a Staramada force preparing to strike a key Raveneye stronghold in order to gain a foothold back on the station. However, in order to support the International Concilium Assistance Force, my squad was redirected to Cameliard in order to help defend it from the onslaught of Yu Jing.

NOTE: My apologies for the lack of pictures for each phase of the battle. Our drones had a hard time getting pictures, perhaps due to some sort of Yu Jing interference.*

I was ordered to have my squad defend a key armory in a small city center. The Yu Jing forces had arrived shortly before ours, but we managed to make the first strike. Our Raptor dashed into the armory, only to avoid narrowly being E/Mittered by Krit Kokram. Our Varangians covered the Raptor’s securing of the armory by smoking the entrance Kokram could see through. The Raptor was then able to loot the nearby panoply and hunker in a corner with an IMP disguise from his Cybermask. In hindsight, those past few maneuvers were likely a mistake, but that will be discussed later. The only other items of note were our Cyberghost planted a repeater outside of the armory, and our Epsilon managed to down the Kuang Shi controller off in the distance.

The Yu Jing response was swift and fierce. Their Blue Wolf and Kokram came down the middle, shooting the poorly position Varangians in the back (as Yu Jing are known to often do). Kokram also managed to carefully place a mine in the armory entrance near the disguised Raptor. The terrifying duo continued into our DZ, managing to down our Millicent drone and a Raveneye. However, our Cyberghost turned the tide by possessing the Blue Wolf. This seemed promising, but Kokram managed to barely hit the Blue Wolf in a retreat back into the armory with his E/Mitter, thus immobilizing and isolating the machine. Speaking of the armory, due to some carefully planned mine placements, the Raptor’s bot was taken down by a shock mine, while the Raptor himself was successfully hit by Kokram’s E/M mine, when both attempted to unsuccessfully flame a monk who entered the armory. The now frozen Raptor was a bird caught in the snare, allowing a Beasthunter to charge in with the monk and make easy prey of the Raptor with a ferociously explosive melee attack.

Our loses heavy, our Crusher attempted to make a close drop to the armory, but failed, and so instead was forced to take a longer route. He did manage to take down a Libertos and the monk inside of the armory, but that was all he could do. Our Cyberghost planted a new repeater next to the armory (as the Blue Wolf destroyed the first one earlier), and after a failed attempt to carbonite the Kokram, the Cyberghost settled for completing our data collection classified objective.

Yu Jing focused on taking down the Crusher, though he managed to kill the murderous Beasthunter before going down (though the Beasthunter did manage destroy the repeater outside of the armory). The rest of the Yu Jing forces moved to consolidate their holding on the armory with more mine placements, while Kokram managed to loot a mimetism -6 module from a panoply after taking down the Crusher.

What remained of my squad had one final gambit to make. Moving all but the Cyberghost into a single group, and reforming the Haris fireteam, the core security team (down to four members) and the Epsilon, Psi-Cop, and Betatrooper Harris moved in to take the armory. Cho lead the charge, with her and her squad managing to avoid and clear the mines placed near two of the armory entrances. The way now clear, the Betatrooper approached the armory entrance, where Kokram waited. The Betatrooper fired it’s submachine gun, landing two hits as Kokram tried to dodge, while the Betatrooper took a wound from a shock mine across the room. Kokram’s armor managed to hold against both submachine hits. With only two orders remaining, the Harris fireteam made the risky gambit of having the Betatooper run in while the Psi-Cop peeked through the same entrance, and the Epsilon ran across the right outer side of the armory. Kokram fired his shotgun template into the Psi-Cop and Betatrooper, while the Psi-Cop fired back her double Nanopulsers. The Betatrooper succumbed to the hit, but the Psi-Cop survived. Unfortunately, Kokram also survived one of the hits he took. With a single order remaining, and needing to contest the room, the Epsilon came in from the other side, attempting to bring Kokram down with his own Nanopulser. Kokram weathered the hit, while the Epsilon was brought down by the shotgun blast in return.

With little to resist them, Yu Jing managed to swiftly take down the Psi-Cop, loot the armory, and hold it. A parachutist of theirs also gathered key data about the area. In the end, our defeat was hard. Though I’m glad to report that our forces, including Cho, were able to avoid capture. I would like Command to take particular note of Krit Kokram. His survivability skills and ability to use so many orders efficiently were very impressive, and I would highly advise that our forces handle him with extreme prejudice in future engagements.

Improvements:

There were several tactical mistakes that I made during this engagement. The first was failing to order the Raptor to continue firing upon Kokram when he entered the armory. The odds were in the Raptor’s favor of wounding, and possibly even taking out, Kokram, and although the Raptor risked being immobilized and isolated, the trade off of killing the NCO Engineer that was in a Duo fireteam with the Blue Wolf would’ve been greatly worth the risk. It would’ve affected Yu Jing’s order efficiency immensely.

As alluded to earlier in my report, the Varangians, after moving forward to lay down the smoke, were not positioned well, which allowed to Blue Wolf to get easy shots into their backs. Better positioning could have at least made the Blue Wolf’s job harder. The Millicent bot also could’ve been tucked away safely in the second story of a building in our DZ, rather than on a ground floor the Blue Wolf easily reached.

Lastly, while the data the Cyberghost gathered I’ve been told will be useful, it would have been better to use that order to setup the Epsilon in an overwatch position. With the Blue Wolf having been essentially removed from battle, and a suspected enemy sniper in a position that could be fully avoided, the Epsilon would’ve been safe from long range threats, and could have better covered the Crusher from certain angles.

This was a devastating loss for our forces, though we certainly tried our best to help our Pan-Oceania allies. I only hope they’ll be able to hold back the ferocious forces of Yu Jing better than we were able to.

*This is not a jab at my opponent, just a convenient excuse as to why I didn’t take the best pictures. ;)