Monday Skirmish - Heavy Gear Blitz

On Friday night the wife and I played a game of Heavy Gear Blitz using her newly assembled Utopian force. In addition to that new force we had a bunch of papercraft terrain printed out from the DP9 website and n-scale roads to use for this battle. Had rivers and graveyard bits, among other things to use, but didn't want to over fill the field since we weren't sure how good the Utopian's would be on the field.

The battlefield wasn't as even as I was thinking it would be when I set it up. One of those things that you have this vision in your mind, but it doesn't pan out once the figures are on the field. The little city crossroads I figured would be lightly used, with most of the action being around the tree on either side of the combat.

The buildings did look good, but as you can see, they didn't take up all that much space. Need more buildings in the form of ruins and whatnot to really help fill out everything. What was one the field was actually a double printing of the pages DP9 offered of the 'UrbanSeries'. I have some larger GameCraft 1/144 scale ruins on order, and those have 5x5 placements, give or take an inch on either side. That should really help to fill everything in. need to get some barricades and cotton ball fire/smoke things built, as the battlefield, but it just missing that bit of realism. So far the Heavy gear battlefield if looking great everything considered. I think the next things we have to focus on is getting trees and shrubs that actually fit the scale properly.

Anyhow, wife and I rolled for who got to choose side and deploy first and my leader pulled out a win there, so I chose the side with the city, as it just seemed fitting that the 'Protectors of the Badlands' would actually be protecting the city from an incursion.

My Fire Support Squad deployed first, mainly behind the buildings, and mostly out of sight, expect for the AC Cataphract lord who took cover near the front left of my Deployment zone. Two of the Fire Support squad deployed behind the trees on the right side of my deployment zone. The Strike Squad filed into any spaces they could fit into. The Coyote deployed on the road, as I simply wasn't sure what to do with him, and figured in the worse case, the road gave him a nice firing lane straight forward. The infantry sections deployed along the back ranks of my deployment zone to make use of their mortars, and to use the gears in front of them as extra protection.

My wife didn't have so many options with the massive number of drones she brought to the battlefield. She more or less was more focused on keeping the drones within ten inches of either matrix controller in both her units. She was using the Support Troupe and Recce Troupes from the Utopian starter set. It was actually a pretty overwhelming sight for me, since I was only used to seeing five Black Talons across the field.

The Cataphract Lord once again pulled out winning the Initiative letting me go first. I had the Strike Squad begin moving forward cautiously, getting a few pop shots against the drones in the open. I used a command point to activate my Coyote out of sequence when I saw that it had a clear shot at my wife AC, but the roll was terrible and no damage was done.

My wife moved her drones equipped with LRFs forward and prepared to use her Pinpoint Barrage function against a Strike team member who was crossing the road near the crossroads, but she botched on the first roll and went OoA on all of them.

Taking advantage of the FO that was still active on the Support Armiger, a Crusader IV gear fired his rocket pods off, which both hits were undefended enough to destroy that machine. The other Crusader IV moved slightly out of cover to get a lock on to a drone that was working through the woods and hit with it's rocket pods as well. The warrior gears in the wood didn't have as much success however, and could not take out any other drones at the range they were at. The Cataphract finished up the activation by using his MFM and hitting three of the drones that were packed together at the edge of the woods, taking all three out of action.

The Support Squad moved forward and with their AGMs, destroyed two my the Strike squad team members.

I finished off the round by the infantry using their mortars, and while some damage was done, nothing was killed outright.

The second turn my wife won the Initiative and got to go first, activating her Recce Troupe and moving them forward. The Coyote was hit hard, bringing it down to critical damage, but not outright destroying it. the Strike Squad leader was destroyed and another member brought down to critical by massed firepower.

I moved one of the Warriors from the forest out to get a FO on the remaining Armiger in the Support Troupe, and then followed that up by the rest of the fire support squad focusing on destroying that machine. Unfortunately this left the Warrior out in the open, which I would be punished for shortly.

My Wife moved the Support Troupe drones forward again, destroying the Warrior I had carelessly left in the open for the FO.

The Coyote fired his LRG again, but couldn't hit the AC with the -2 modifier, after which he backed off to get cover. The single unwounded strike squad member jumped out of cover to the road and moved forward, hitting AC, but not able to get past his 4 defense. The heavily wounded Strike Squad member on the left of the board rushed the nearest drone, knowing it couldn't really hit me, but I also failed to hit it with my strike. The infantry didn't perform that well this time around, doing hardly any damage worth mentioning.

The third turn started with me taking back the Initiative. The two remaining Strike Squad members tried to make something count, but neither was able to cause any damage in melee or range.

My wife did something I wasn't really expecting, and certainly not something I was ready for. She threw a HHG right at the heavily damaged Strike Squad member who was in melee with one of her drones. The Strike Squad member died, but her actually managed to save for the drone. The drones moved forward past the wreckage of my gear unable to get any damage done to my Cataphract Lord as they did so.

The Fire Support Squad started to step out of the cover of buildings to get some clear shots at the incoming drones, taking out large numbers of them due to the bad dice rolls of my wife. At this point her drones were all getting outside that ten inch radius they had to be in for, so became much easily to pick off.

My infantries mortar took out all three drones that were coming towards the Cataphract Lord, as well as taking out the last of the Support Troupe squad drones.

I kept control of the Initiative at the start of the forth and final turn, and did so by moving my last Strike Squad member forward down the road, his shots missing the drone straight in front of him.

She rushed both her last two miniatures forward, locking my Crusader IV and Strike Squad member in combat. She failed to hurt my Strike Squad member. She tried to hurl another HHG at the melee like she did earlier, but failed to hit. the blast deviated to the roof of the nearby church.

My Coyote yet again failed to do anything this turn after I moved it forward, so I went on to the Fire Support Squad. I decided now is the time for  me to move the Fire Support Squad forward to finish off the AC and last drone on my wife's side. The AC managed to survive most of the attacks without issue, but one lucky shot from the Warrior armed with a RFB managed to get him down to heavy damage. The Cataphract Lord got within range to use his LRG on the, and thanks to the -2 modifier, destroyed the invader. The last drone was destroyed by the Crusader IV gear in combat with it on the road.

Man of the match reward certainly goes towards my Cataphract lord this battle, as his MFM and LRG gave him two weapons to more or less deal with the entire horde coming down his flank, while he was built of sturdy enough stuff to not take damage from the popshots each took at him. Finishing off my wife's AC was also something that just seemed the right thing to happen in the end.

The biggest disappointment of the match certainly comes from the Coyote. He didn't manage to cause a single point of damage. Even the Infantry units managed to make their points back in the end. Not really happy with him right now, so need to figure out if I need to rearm him, or try to fit in a Red Bull for a lot more IF.

My wife said that she really enjoyed her force, but had bad deployment and some really bad die rolls. Other then that she actually seemed to enjoy her Utopians more then her Black Talons. We will most likely go back and modify her list so that she can make better use of the Pinpoint Barrage ability of course, but for the first time on the battlefield they did decently enough. The second turn I was actually worried with her taking down two of my Strike Squad members, and leaving two others heavily damaged. Her AC simply refused to die, so many wasted shots against that guy, and  it wasn't until the last turn that I finally started to damage her.

In the end, it was great fun to have a game. I'm not making a point of me winning since this was the first game we played, and so many things