Durgama Takeover

Sera Arzumanyan adjusted the fresh-from-the-printer Lieutenant's insignia on her uniform and braced herself to enter the briefing room. With a deep breath, she pushed the doors open and entered the room talking.

"Listen up! The Ambassador is here on Raveneye for three more days, and we're staying to escort him back. Section Yek is unloading and delivering the supplies we brought with us for the Nomads. We've been assigned to running readiness exercises with Nomad elements. We're engaging with the Jurisdictional Command of Bakunin in the Port Battery at 1300, local time. A perimeter will be established for us by the Nomads, and the Quartermaster on the Iskanderun is working on compatible quantronic dummy rounds.

Sergeant Syed, assemble a team of your Djanbazans and meet us back here at 1200."

"Yes, Ma'am. I have Ersoy and Nacar, but Akbas and Demirci are on assignment planetside. Do I have authorization to requisition two more from Section Se?"

"I'm aware, and no need. Meet Ashur Yusouf and Levan Baratashvili."

Two nondescript figured stepped forward from the edge of the room, and as they did so their appearance shifted uncomfortably into helmeted figures in standard issue Djanbazan body armor.

"Pleased to meet you, Sergeant. The Hafza Unit is well versed in Djanbazan battle drills. We won't let you down."

Lt. Arzumanyan moved on.

"Farooqui, you're my second. Afri, you're with us. I need you on lookout so the Nomads can't take down our command structure."

Arzumanyan leaned on the holo-table showing an overhead map of the exercise zone in the Port Battery.

"The designated area has been divided into these quadrants, and in the centre of each quadrant is a dummy console with basic access control and firewalls. Our objectives are to achieve tactical control of each quadrant, and to hack into the consoles and make them recognize our squad as friendlies."

"Who is running infowar for us?" Sgt. Nabil Farooqui interjected.

"I'm glad you asked, because I'm feeling dramatic. Yalaz?"

Shadows from two corners of the room came to life and moved to flank Arzumanyan, revealing the blurred outlines and hazy quantronic disturbance of active camouflage. The movement stopped and came abruptly and sharply into focus as two Al Hawwa' operatives.

"Sergeant Yalaz and Corporal Kateb reporting for duty, Ma'am." said the Al Hawwa' on the left. "We took the liberty of taking a look at the defenses on those consoles, and they won't be any trouble."

"Any other concerns before we get to work here?" Arzumanyan asked the room.

"Yes, Lieutenant. On my way here I was stopped by one of the pirates who didn't so much ask if they could join the exercise." Afri, the Ghulam sharpshooter, replied.

"They are privateers, they have letters of marque from the Funduq Sultanate, and they have been contracted to provide private security on this venture. I expect enlisted and commissioned soldiers alike to treat them as comrades in arms."

"Yes, Ma'am. It won't happen again."

"Good. Now, Farooqui, run us through what we discussed earlier."

Arzumanyan leaned closer to Sgt. Yalaz as Farooqui began speaking and whispered "It's not the Yuan Yuans, is it?"

"No, I already reviewed Afri's comlog, it was a Bashi Bazouk that spoke to her."

"Praise Allah, I am not ready to command a Yuan Yuan."

Above Gallery is close ups of Haqqislam deployment.

Djanbazans on the left, where I thought they might have better room to advance.

Ghilman on the right, where they ended up completely locked down by a Riot Girl Missile Launcher, but I could have the NCO and LT safe while the Sniper got link bonuses and could see some of the objectives on that side.

Hawwas near each console on my side.

Azra'il counter deployed the riot girl, but really that didn't work out well.

Turn 1:

I had first turn, and spent some time staring at that Riot Girl Missile Launcher locking down the entire right half of the table and realizing how bad the math was for me.

I pushed a button because I knew it was safe and part of the mission, then re-camouflaged.

I attempted to push the Djanbazans up to give the HMG a lateral shot in good range bands, but didn't have the orders to get there. Perhaps I should have prioritized that and left the Hawwas to later.

My Ghilman were in group two, so I had orders to spend on them but nothing safe to do with them. I moved the sniper out of LoF and scored a lucky wound on the ML in the process. I then threw some hail mary spec fires at her in the hopes of getting her to dodge somewhere safer for me. With my last order I moved the Sniper back into her overwatch position, but she went down that time.

Turn 1, continued:

Gint moved his Uberfalls down toward my Djanbazans. Shotgun templates were valuable for me here, and I was able to neutralize the Uberfall team, but not before they had eaten my entire core fireteam.

Turn 2:

The Chimera was left of the Uberfallkommandos, and I finished her off with one of my Al Hawwas.

I brought in Bashi Bazouk to try to remove that Missile Launcher with a coordinated order. It didn't work. In retrospect I should have brought them in earlier to come up behind the Uberfalls and try to pick off some of them.

I pushed the other button, but the writing was on the wall. I lost both Bashi and the Azra'il, and had only put one Zero Unconscious.

This is where turn 2/3 get blurry for me. This was round 1 of a tournament I was also TOing, so I had multiple things going on.

The Riot Girls Move up and Avicenna heals that Zero. Gint doesn't even need to mop up the remnants of my army, and leaves me barely not in retreat for turn 3.

I try my best to make life hard for the Nomads but my tools are very limited at this point. I think I manage to put another wound on one, but that's all.

Gint is always a great opponent, and has gotten quite canny since we last played. It was a fun game. I see some places I could improve on what happened, but I think largely I didn't have the right tools for this lineup. Yuan Yuans would have been much more valuable to me than the Bashis I think. The table also put a big wall through half the field, and I separated my Djanbazans from my Smoke Grenade Launcher. I should have picked a single flank, or at least placed them to support each other better. Smoke + Djan HMG would have been much better numbers to take out that Riot Girl. I think there are generally some flaws with how I constructed this list and I'll probably revise it.