Durgama Takeover

1:1
The Black Friar kicked off proceedings by winning a rocket duel with the left-most Daylami on the central rooftop, before a camouflaged Trinitarian appeared on Haqqislam’s left flank. Going on an absolute tear, the Barid was barely able to launch a pitcher downfield before being felled by submachinegun fire. The Trinitarian even managed to take a wound off the Asawira before falling to the latter’s Nanopulser. Meanwhile, the big splodge of Murder Knights barrel up the right flank. The Hawwa is barely able to Carbonite the Spitfire Knight before falling to a Trinity attack from the Knight of Santiago. Haqqislam efforts were for nought, as the engineer simply bypasses the Carbonite hack. Comfortable with their position, the knights hole up near their HVT while the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre pushes forwards and adopts a Suppressive Fire stance, anticipating a push from the now-frenzied Asawira (who went on to regenerate his lost wound).

1:2
The Himaat Alsahra’s plans were seemingly coming to fruition. Although some tragic losses were sustained in the first moments of the battle - the Barid and the Hawwa were sorely missed - the Haqqislamites felt they had the pieces to deal a lethal blow to the Military Order. Creeping right along the central building, the Hunzakut dropped a repeater on the other side of the assembled Knightly fireteam. Although it took a few orders, the Mukhtar was now able to Isolate the Knight of Santiago with Oblivion. It took another two orders to slap a Spotlight on one of the knights. It may have cost half a turn, but the Shaytaniyah’s missiles were finally ready to launch, and those templates were about to bring some hurt to the rampaging Knights…

…were it not for the fact that the Haqqislamite commander had not received any intel on the status of High Value Targets in the field.
[I had no idea that HVT’s didn’t function in the same way as objective markers like consoles, etc. and that “accidentally” murdering them with a template weapon is a bit of a no-no, both in game terms and in terms of common decency. This fact not only messed up a turn’s-worth of wasted orders, but put a spanner in the works of my entire game plan, my deployment having been to maximise the potential of the missile templates doing damage to a closely-packed fireteam in a narrow bit of road. Whoops.]

The rest of the turn was exceedingly ineffectual. The Asawira took on the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, losing another wound for his troubles. With the wheels fully off, the Fiday made a bid for the AC2. Undiscovered, he made it to the objective. Revealing himself with a dashing “HA-HA!” (think 1960s Batman), he backhanded the AC2, hurt his knuckles in the process, and was immediately gunned down by another pesky Trinitarian hiding in the scaffolding by the objective.

Having killed nothing in the active turn, and having achieved only a Classified Objective to Target something, things were looking dire.

2:2
Of course, it could only go from bad to worse at this point. The Knight of the Holy Sepulchre holoprojection-danced his way up to the Asawira before dispatching them with a meaty right hook. Taking up a position on the corner of the building, they had clear shots at the Haqqislamite lieutenant, the Mukhtar (stupidly not facing the right way…), and just about everyone else in the deployment zone. ARO fire ricocheted off PanO armour ineffectually, while the Knight set about murdering the Lieutenant (with the assistance of the Black Friar, who had a cheeky view underneath the awning of the square central building), the Monstrucker, and ultimately, Knauf. As this transpired, the seemingly endless well of Military Orders… orders did not run dry, and the Murder Knights charged their way round the corner towards the objective. Two shotgun blasts and a mine accounted for a mighty loss of one wound to the front knight, before the Hunzakut and the Muttaw’iah were dispatched with ease. Regeneration rolls in the States Phase were not kind, and the Haqqislam forces were now in retreat. There would be no further fighting this day, only a jog back to HQ with our tails between our legs and a few lessons learned.

Lessons:
1) High Value Targets are highly valued. You can kill them with templates, but DEFINITELY should not. Great to hide your big fireteam next to if you fear getting Guided Missiled.
2) Holoprojections are a nightmare and you always pick the wrong one to shoot at.
3) Trinitarians and Teutonic Knights are terrifying.
4) Hack to isolate Fireteam leaders. Don’t forget that Engineers can just sort this problem out, though.
5) Don’t forget about the Repeater your Barid lost their life for.
6) Brutal Cities terrain is beautiful but makes it immensely hard to keep track of things happening across the table.

Thanks for reading. Any tips, pointers, completely-deserved laughter at my expense is welcomed.