Turn 11 Continued:Cawdor -v- EscherI attacked Joffrey's Spore Cave. Taking the Spore Cave would nearly double my income per turn, and put me in a position where I could finally start generating a decent profit every turn. It would also destroy Joffrey's ecconomy. Depending on casualties, he would go from a profit of approximately 55 creds per turn (which was already significantly less than what he was earning a couple of turns ago), to about 20 creds per turn which isn't enough to replenish losses. I know, because I was there 4 turns ago, and it was only due to the corrupt and venal nature that is intrinsic to the Bieber generation (sorry, Crew4man), that I escaped. And I won't let Joffrey escape like Octavian and the Orlock Player let me escape. It's not in my nature. I practice law as a commercial litigator, specialising in insolvency. My enemies don't come back.
Set up:We rolled a gang Fight. I split my gang into 4 teams. A bit thinner than I normally like, but I meant to surround Joffrey, pin him, pounce and annihilate him. I wasn't going to be happy with a win, or even taking a territory, I wanted to have at least 8 of his gang members out of action before he bottled.
I set up Jacob and Ram on the third story of a tower in heavy cover with a commanding view of the battlefield. With BS5, a One-In-A-Million Heavy Bolter and a clear line of sight to 66% of the table, Jacob wasn't just setting the foundation for my attack, he was commanding the battle. If a Heavy with a Heavy Stubber can be likened to the drummer in the band, in that he sets the beat that everyone else must follow, then Jacob is like the conductor of a symphony orchestra. Any Escher who unlucky enough to fall under his gaze would die.
Underneath Ram and Jacob, Abraham would lead the frontal attack, with Amon and Abijah. Abijah would soak up any bullets, Amon would counterfire with his twin Autopistols, and Abraham would counter Assault with his Sprint and WS6.
My first Vent team attacking from the left would be Boaz, with his flamer, Asa as the counter assaulter and Zohar as the bullet taker. My second Vent team would be Jemuel with his flamer, Josiah as the counter assaulter and Isaac with a Heavy Stubber. Isaac would be deployed if possible behind the main Escher force to catch them in a crossfire with Jacob's Heavy Bolter.
Normally, I wouldn't split my gang into such small groups against a close combat gang comanded by a player like Joffrey, but I figured that Shamora's low Leadership would grant me abit more flexibility than usual.
Joffrey set up with his ranged team in the centre of the board on the second level, and the rest of his force in two groups of 5 and 6 on each side. No mercenaries.
Turn 1:Joffrey got the first go and moved forwards and into cover, doing his best to negate the best spots for my Vent teams. He ran his girls under cover in the centre of the board, staying clear of Jacob and his Heavy Bolter. In the shooting phase, he threw two smoke grenades ahead of his main force to protect the approach towards the next cluster of cover. Both Grenades missed their mark though and scattered to the right. His ranged team pinned but didn't wound Ram. The grenades landed in fronto of Abraham, Amon and Abijah preventing the Escher from shooting at them.
In my turn, I ran Abraham and Abijah into the protection of the smoke clouds, Amon trailing them slightly with his bad leg.
Two of the Escher ranged team were in sight during the shooting phase, and Ram (who had recovered from being pinned) took one down, causing her to fall behind cover, and making the other flee out of sight, thus denying Jacob a shot with his Heavy Bolter. Jacob shifted to cover the main Escher line of advance, and went into Overwatch.
Boaz, Zohar and Asa crawled out of some Vents on the left, Boaz deployed out of sight, and Asa and Zohar deployed in heavy cover, with Zohar closer to the Escher to attract the first shots. On the right, Jemuel, Josiah and Isaac all deployed in sight of the Escher, but in as much cover as possible. Normally, I prefer to deploy my Vent teams out of sight, but I wanted to start shooting with Isaac as soon as possible the next turn, so that meant setting him up in sight of the Escher, and required Jemuel and Josiah to be deployed along with him.
Turn 2:On turn 2, the Escher fanned out left and right in reaction to the pincer attacks from my Vent teams. On the left, Zohar received 2 wounds from the Escher Heavy Stubber, and another from a shotgun, going down. Asa took a wound too, but still had plenty left. between them, they exhausted about half of the Escher firepower for the turn.
On the right, Josiah took a wound and was pinned, but Jemuel and Isaac remained unscathed.
In the centre, the Escher tossed another cuple of smoke grenades to cover their advance past Jacob's Heavy Bolter on the next turn.
On my turn, Jacob and Ram had nothing to shoot at, so I kept them both on Overwatch.
In the centre, I Abijah darted out of the smoke clouds and was met by a hale of autopistol and boltpistol fire. He took 2 hits and a wound, but a boltpistol went out of ammo. Abraham followed, sprinting into cover, ready to charge into combat on the next turn. Amon came last, twin autoguns spitting death, wounding a ganger and pinning Shamora.
On the left, Asa's Nerves of Steel recovered him from pinning, and he charged into close combat. Boaz walked up next to Zohar's body, positioning himself for a future flamer blast or possible charge, and took down an Escher with a blast from his shotgun. Asa downed his opponent in close combat and consolidated into cover. Zohar's True Grit allowed him to recover from being downed despite his wounds.
On the right, Josiah got to his feet and he charged an Escher Juve, but embarrassingly managed to actually lose the combat, but luckily avoided taking a wound. Jemuel went into overwatch next to Isaac to cover him in the event of an Eascher countercharge. Isaac also went into overwatch to cover Josiah in the event of an Escher countercharge (which was a sure thing).
Turn 3:On his turn, Joffrey made sure to stay out of Jacob's way and charged a Juve into close combat with Abijah. Shamora remained pinned, which was fortunate, because she had to roll a 1 on a d6 to fail to pass the pinning test, and if she got the charge, she could probably defeat even Abraham, and if Abraham went down, then Joffrey would probably be winning. As it was, she failed, and Joffrey's position remained weak.
His Heavy Stubber hit Zohar again, sending him down once more, but also ran out of ammo.
On the left, shooting at Asa and Boaz was innefective. Joffrey could have charged Asa with a Juve and a ganger, but I think he was hesitant to risk two low level gang members against a veteran like Asa. I think he wanted to try to pin him for a turn, and get Maleficent into position for a charge on the following turn. I think that was a mistake, since Asa would be hard pressed to take both of them out without a charge bonus. But mistakes are what you make when you are under pressure. As it was, Asa didn't even get pinned, and was ready to charge on the following turn.
On the right, Glinda - Joffrey's best close combat specialist apart from Shamora countercharged Josiah, or would have if Jacob hadn't lined her up with his Heavy Stubber, shot at her 6 times, hit her 4 times, wounded twice, dealing her a fleshwound and taking her down. The Juve in close combat with Josiah didn't get lucky twice, and received 4 wounds, comfortably taking her out of the game. Joffrey would have to test to bottle on his next turn.
In the middle, Abijah disarmed the Juve attacking him (Ursula) of her sword (we play Disarm as only lasting until the end of the game rather than destroying the weapon permanently, because having a Juve 'disarm' a gang leader of something like a plasma gun on a single unmodifiable roll of 4+ and have it lost forever is bullamphetamine parrot), and then ignited her at pointblank range with his handflamer, sending her out of action.
At the end of Joffrey's 3rd turn, he had one ganger down, and 4 out of action. I had one man out of action (Zohar), and a lot more bleeding, but 10 of my guys were still in the fight, and Josiah, Asa, Abijah and Abraham were all in charge range.
On my turn, I had the option of playing conservatively, hunkering down into cover out of sight of his ranged team (which I could probably cover with Isaac, Ram and Jacob), and otherwise either using pistols to pin the rest of his gang and go into overwatch where necessary to prevent any countercharge from some of the demons like Shamora or Morgana.
beslubber conservative. I don't play Cawdor to sit back in cover and shoot like some sort of limp wristed Van Saar nancy boy. I play to burn people and chop up their corpses. I charged. Asa landed on a Juve. Josiah slammed into Bellatrix. Abijah hit Tabitha from one side, and Abraham from the other.
I could have charged Abraham into Shamora, but that would have meant fighting across a barrier, and a fight between Shamora and Abraham would be tight enough without giving her that bonus, and I wasn't about to do Joffrey any favours in that regard, no matter how many times he called me a chickenamphetamine parrot.
Leaving Shamora unmolested was a calculated risk, since it would allow her to attack next turn, and she would surely target Abraham for an assault, which would be very dangerous for him. Luckily, Amon was there backing up his boss, and he went on to Overwatch, both autopistols trained on Shamora, fingers ready to burn two entire clips the instant she tried to break cover to charge. I had outmanouvered Joffrey, and he din't like it at all. And he definitely didn't appreciate me putting the game on hold for ten minutes to carefully explain the subtle nuances of the relevant Necromunda tactics and mechanics to several interested onlookers.
On the left, Boaz wasn't quite in flamer range, so I had him take a shot with his shotgun at Morgana, but he missed. I should have put him in Overwatch. Ah well.
On the right, I pivoted Isaac to face the direction of the ranged team (who were hiding out of sight), and put him on Overwatch. I ran Jemuel around behind Josiah with a view to executing a flamer attack a bit later, if necessary, and acting as a meat shield, should Isaac not be able to keep the Escher ranged team pinned. In hindsight, that was not a wise move, since from Overwatch, Isaac could really only have pinned one of them (there were 3 at that point), and would not have been able to unpin himself if they managed to fire back at him (which was a definite possibility).
Asa dispatched his opponent as expected, and followed up into Morgana. That would be a close fight next turn.
Josiah absolutely pasted Bellatrix (combat score 11 to 5), but still only managed to do only 2 wounds (she had the Step Aside skill), one of which was a fleshwound, so she stayed on her feet. I need to give him Jemuel's handflamer to give him S4 in close combat.
Tabitha managed to land a single hit on Abijah, taking him down, but because Abraham was there, he didn't go out of action. Abraham avenged the slight, easily taking her out of action.
At the end of Turn 3, I had one guy out of action (Zohar), and another down (Abijah). Joffrey had 8 down. His Leader was pinned behind cover, and was facing a charge from an unwounded Abraham.
On the right, Bellatrix was locked in close combat with Josiah and losing. On the left, Morgana was locked in close combat with Asa, with Boaz and his flamer ready to intervene with his flamer, shotgun or sword as necessary. To the rear, he had 3 unwounded lasgunners, but they were covered by Isaac with his heavy stubber, and to a lesser extent by Jacob and Ram, should they reposition.
Even if he passed his bottle check, he was looking at losing at least another ganger this turn, and likely another 2 during my turn. His realistic best case scenario was that he would take down one of my guys (Asa), but if he did that, then he was almost certain to lose Morgana to Boaz's flamer in return. Still not anywhere near enough to save the Spore Cave, and even then, with only his ranged team left, it would just be a matter of time before he lost in a bottle roll off against Abraham's Iron Will.
The smart option was to voluntarily bottle out.
He took the smart option. And the mockery and humiliation which necessarily follows such an abject surrender.
Thoughts:A very comfortable victory, but not a perfect one. I made some mistakes, and in a lot of games, they would have cost me. As it was, things worked out. Luck went both ways. I was lucky that Zohar managed to get back to his feet to take a second blast of Heavy Stubber fire. If he had stayed down, my left flank could have crumbled. Shamora staying pinned on turn 3 was lucky too.
I definitely got unlucky with Jacob not being able to take a single shot the entire game, though that tends to happen with the heavier weapons. Opponents avoid them like the plague. Still, his presence essentially took the Escher ranged team (who are normally pretty effective) out of just about the entire game because they were afraid to stick their heads out of cover.
I was probably a little unlucky with some of the close combat results, and I think I would normally have won a couple more of the fights, or at least ended them earlier. On the other hand, I got a bit lucky with Joffrey's shooting being a bit more innacurate than I would normally expect, so it could be argued that I was lucky to even get into the fights in the first place. Having said that, I think Joffrey had an off game with some of his judgment calls, especially with close combat. The models he managed to charge into close combat were relatively weak, and he let my best guys get the charge a number of times (although it has to be said, most of my CC guys except Abijah have the appropriate agility skills to be able to charge from a long distance).
I think next time I will swap Josiah and Asa from my Vent teams. As it was, my left Vent team had 7 wounds, and my right Vent team had only 5. If Josiah had taken an extra wound from counterfire, my right flank could have crumbled.
The Map:Cawdor: The Hand of Redemption - Underhand
Escher: Gothika - Joffrey
Delaque: Black Coats - Gannicus
Van Saar: The Second Stringers - Jonah
Orlock: The Mortlock Cartel - The Orlock Player
Goliath: House Bloodaxe - Octavian