Durgama Takeover

Army:

Hassassin Bayram:
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This is the first time I make a list for Hassassin Bayram. I‘ve played a game with them before, but it was a randomized list and about a year ago. With Blackwind on the horizon I‘m giving them a try for Durgama campaign.
For Highly classified I wanted to try some sort of a death star link that can accomplish several classifieds on it‘s own and brings several good shooters and resilience. So I went with an Asawira heavy link with Ghulam NCO who as more ressources in Darpan due to the additional Lt order. I wanted to have a second Asawira Spitfire to be able to cover more of the board. For defense I got a couple of Ghazi, a Daylami, a Fanous and a Nadhir as suprise. I added a Fiday to disrupt my opponent early in the game. The remaining points went into additional specialists to cover all classifieds – a Najjarun, Rafiq and Farzan.

Kosmoflot:
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My opponent brought Kosmoflot and wanted to try a Kosmosoldat Haris. Additionally, he brought a solid – true - Rokot link with wildcards. To make use of this Lt orders he added a Scouts guard. Then he had a Irmandinho and Wardriver to cover the classifieds and finally some Kosmoflot allstars – Uxia and a Bear.

Deployment

Kosmoflot won Initiative and decided to take first turn – to make use of Uxia and have more place to do classifieds while my troops are still in DZ. The map was pretty much crowed with terrain, I was hard to find long firelanes. I took the side which I felt would be much easier to defend featuring a long wall with two small entries. My opponent put his HVT quite into the middle in a corner of two boxes and I‘ve put mine to the very right side from my perspective.
My opponent spread his troops in his DZ leaving his core link far from the HVTs as he supposed them to be safe there. This should turn out to be an error as it also would take him several orders to get to the HVTs where the action would happen. After the match we concluded that he might have known before as the classifieds heavily involved the HVTs.
I bunkered my link in the fortress leaving my Asawira Lt outside to split the juicy targets. Then I layered a proper defense in front consisting of my irregulars and additional templates (engineer, Rafiq). The Farzan went straight to my designated target for Sabotage. Then Uxia was deployed over infiltrating but she didn‘t find a sweet spot as my fortress was heavily guarded. I deployed my Fiday mostly to disrupt the Rokot link figuring that one Rokot had to be the Lt.
We forgot about the turrets at first, but placed them afterwards. Mine was covering the fortal approach into my "fortress" with vision to my HVT, while Vade2's turret was placed close to this Scot's Guard covering this core link, bear and SG.

Game

Top of 1:
The Irmandinho moves forward and throws smoke due to impetuous. I should have gotten AROs possibly for the Asawira but I didn't see. Then, Vade2 recognizes that the Fanous and Daylami would still see approaching specialists. Hence, Uxia comes into play deleting the Fanous. Then, the Irmandinho moves further providing more smoke, such that my HVT guards don't have vision on the corridor anymore. Then, the wardriver approaches and succeeds on Espionage and Telemetry, rendering the turret targeted. Then, the hacker retreated to the HVT and the Irmandinho moved through the smoke to sabotage the reactor like building right in front of my fortress. As he had to leave smoke the turret was able to shoot him. Anyway, 3 Classifieds where already done. With only few orders left, vade2 decided to take further action with Uxia, killing the Rafiq, but getting shot by his Shotgun template. The remaining orders where used for minor repositioning. This felt like a win for me as the Rafiq was only a backup solution anyway. Additionally, I was able to spotlight Uxia in the attempt of killing the Rafiq (which I had forgotten before. So I had solved Telemetry already as well.

Bottom of 1:

With 3 Classifieds done by my opponent my goal was to prevent him from doing the last one. Hence, I started moving my core link towards my HVT to be able to shoot the Kosmosoldat (the only Visor/Sensor unit Vade2 has brought). To my Surprise the Kosmosoldat was intentionally placed to watch out a short corridor (about to my HVT). So my Asawira Spitfire was able to get LOF without spending to many orders. I think with the mission in mind this was a huge mistake. The linked Asawira killed the Kosmosoldat in one go. Then, wanted to do Espionage, but had to get of the Wardriver and Turret first first. My Asawira shot the turret in two orders taking a wound in the first shoot out. Killing the wardriver afterwards turned out to be harder then expected, because it wasn't easy to get LOF. Finally, I could achieve both the Killing and the Classified. getting gready I dropped the Asawira out of the link trying to shoot Strannik and Frontovik, suceeding only on the later. The Asawira went unconcious. Being affraid of the bear, I moved my troops back into safety with the remaining orders in group 1. I had moved the jammer ghazi with his impetuous order so I used his irregular to get him being a wall, but forgot to flip his order token. So I did the mistake to activate my Fiday to attack the core link, specially the Rodok I figured being the Lt. Then, I saw my mistake and had to leave the Fiday right in front of the whole link. Additionally my Asawira Spitfire failed it's Regeneration.

Top of 2:
My opponent moved most of his troops into CG 1 (except the Controller). Then, he easily brought down the Fiday while he placed a mine. Dropping the Volkolak out of the link he detonated the mine and took a wound. Then, it was time for the bear. He charged to my DZ (over the Nadhir) without me getting LOF except for the Nadhir which I wanted to save for the link team. He was able to coup de grace my Fanous while the daylami waited for his opportunity. My Ghazi dodged into LOF. Running slowly out of orders Vade2 decided to just rocket the bear over the wall to kill my engineer although I told him before my camo token (-3) might have D-Charges as well (for Sabotage). I figured the bear was out of jammer range, but both Ghazi and the Daylami used their templates to kill the bear, while he threw his hammer against the engineer's dodge - both failed. Now, there wasn't much to do for my opponent, except using his LT orders to guard the HVT corridor with his Scot's guard.

Bottom of 2:
With most threats gone and the link team far away I got more cocky and moved my link team to the HVTs again, as Yara needed to get LOF to the HVT. The Scot's guard was hard to bring down as I needed several discovery attempts to unmask him and afterwards several rounds of shooting to bring him down. So, my link team took position close to my HVT. As Vade2 would have to move his link I moved the Ghazi into the midfield to prevent him from taking the shorter way.

Top f 3:
Vade2 moved the controller into group 1. The Strannik tried to bring back up the SG, but failed. The core link was moved to pretend my link fromchecking his HVT's identity. My Nadhir got a nice shot into the Rodoks, killing two (especially the Lt.), but died to the Volkolak's fire. His patcher took a wound from my Ghulam NCO in overwatch.

Bottom of 3:
I missiled a Ghazi into his HVT guards killing the patcher and Strannik. My Ghulam NCO then smoked the place, so Yara was able to check the HVT. My Ghulam Hacker mapped a box in my opponent's DZ afterwards and my Farzan sabotaged the tower in front of him. I wanted to shoot the bear's controller and remaining rodok with Yara but failed in a first try. As both laid templates (luckily I saved the ARM checks) over my whole link I decided to pass my remaining orders. Resulting in a

Hassassin Bayram 10 - 5 Kosmoflot win!

After Action Analysis:

First I have to admid, that the dice failed Vade2 most of the time, especially his ARM saved were poorly. But also I figured that most of the shooting happened in my active turns. This was due to the fact that my playstyle was rather defensive. I guess it wasn't a fun game for Vade2 - sorry - but this allowed me to minimize my losses and also make him waste a lot of orders for repositioning. Alltogether, I think his deployment wasn't optimal for several reasons:
- His troops were far spread although most of the action involved the HVTs.
- His essetial troops (like the Kosmosoldat) were not guarded. I think he should have been deployed way more defensively.
- Uxia wasn't a threat. Still, we both considered where to put her and both didn't see a better place with targets for her as my stuff was guarded pretty well and the 16" DZ (campaign special) didn't do her a favor.

I guess I played to defensively. Repositioning the link team totally into the fortress again at the end of turn one was eating a lot of orders. Also maybe I didn't choose the best tools for the gunfights when the Asawira Spitfire was gone as those took way to long to succeed.
Additionally I was luckiy for the bear and Uxia not performing up to their potential and some deployment errors of my opponent. Otherwise the game might have been a different one. Especially the map did me a favor as it was pretty crowded. That was good for my Spitfires and bad for HMG and Autocannon.
Still I believe that HB has a lot of great profiles for various roles (Daylami, Ghazi, Asawira, Ghulam (NCO!!), Nadhir, Fiday to name a few). Luckily Those are on my side for this campaign. See you soon for another report.