Dude, it's wallabies all the way for me.
Anyway - Round 3:
CawdorEscherDelaqueVan SaarOrlockGoliathThe Delaque targeted the Vents which it lost to the Escher last turn.
The Escher went for the Delaque Workshop.
The Van Saar obviously did nothing.
The Orlock and the Goliath, as expected, went straight for my Gambling Den.
I elected to attack the Goliath Settlement.
Other Gangs:The Delaque managed to beat the Escher (Raid Scenario), but not by enough to take the Vents. The game was actually over really quickly with the Escher player getting unlucky and failing his first bottle roll. Then pissing and moaning about his bad luck.
The Escher attack on the Delaque Workshop was a much closer contest.
Joffrey's decision to go after the Delaque workshop was an interesting one. On one hand, he risks spreading himself out in such a way as to not be able to use all of his gangers in a defence, if he gets attacked at either end of his territories. On the other hand, he knows that I have my hands full with the Orlock and Goliath, and won't be able to commit to a heavy attack on his south eastern territories. Also, taking the Workshop off the Delaque will really hurt the Delaque. It also denies the Delaque the opportunity to attack the Orlock, and gives him access to the Van Saar, who is a weak player with a weak gang. I think that the Orlock are unlikely to attack him. It could go either way for him.
Anyway, the Joffrey won. His gang is bigger than the Delaque Gang and he's so cashed up that they are all really nicely equipped. He had the bodies to absorb the first couple of rounds of shooting from the Delaque, and with the Vents he was able to outflank them and get into melee combat early. Once his gangers got into close combat, it was all over - most of them have swords, a few have two, and his short ranged firepower is pretty powerful because he can afford a lot of autopistols.
The Delaque player should have voluntarily bottled out a turn earlier than the game ended. But voluntarily bottling out between the Escher and Delaque is never going to be an option. Neither of them would let the other live it down. The last turn was an extremely one sided round of close combat where the Escher took out 4 Delaque gangers, including the Heavy. The Delaque did manage to take out the Escher leader though, and partially deafened her. The Delaque only had one guy standing at the end of the fight, and the Escher took the Workshop.
Round 3 - Cawdor vs Orlock & Goliath:I had some strategic decisions to make coming into this fight. I obviously had two opponents who were definitely going to come at me together as a tight alliance. I was outnumbered by a long way, out gunned at long ranged and outmuscled in melee - after the last game, the Orlock player took shooting upgrades and the Goliath player took Combat upgrades. The only area of obvious advantage that I have is in close range firepower, due to my flamers and hand flamers, but they have a horrible habit of running out early, even with 2 armourers in the Gang
One to one, I could easily beat the Orlock player (as soon as close combat happens it's over - Tau would be-atchslap his gang), and the Goliath would get burnt to cinders on the turn before getting into close combat with me, which would make them easy pickings for my melee specialists. Together though . . . gah.
The Orlock can sit back and shoot - they have lasguns with Rapidfire and Marksmen abilities (though thankfully none with both at the same time). They have the best long ranged attack out of everyone in the Campaign. And they don't have to worry about my superior melee, or short ranged firepower until after I've dealt with the Goliath. By the time I get to them, I'm pretty much going to be out of flamery goodness, and I will have lost half my gang to Orlock shooting or Goliath melee.
The Goliath on the other hand, have specialised in close combat weapons and skills, knowing as they do that the Orlock have their back in the ranged department. As a result, while I would normally have been able to cut down their numbers just before they get to me, and be in a position to overwhelm them in CC, I knew that wouldn't happen this time - there are just too many of them. Even after I burnt through half of them, the numbers will still be even, and then they would probably still have the slight edge, man for man, in melee, as I'd initially taken a lot of Ferocity upgrades, and they went mainly for Combat. Their Leader is now a complete beast in melee too.
My tactic last time was to try to take them one at a time - going for the Goliath first, bottling them out, and then concentrating on the Orlock. I knew they wouldn't let that happen again though. I guessed that they would set up a lot closer together, near a tower (we would be using the same board as last time) which would give the Orlock player some nice lines of sight. The Goliath player would set up nearby and move closer to the Orlock in the first turn, to either intercept me if I decided to go for the Orlock, or which would draw my guys into the shooting lanes of the Orlock if I went for the Goliath. A long ranged shooting match was simply out of the question as a tactic.
Now you might be thinking - Underhand - dude just wait until you lose two guys, then bottle out voluntarilly, lose the game but keep the territory. And I would applaud you for your devious strategic thinking. However, if we allowed people to bottle out as soon as the battle started going against them in order to lose a territory, the map would never change. Accordingly, we added a campaign rule [also added to the first post in the thread], that if a Defender voluntarily bottles out, they automatically lose the territory. It's also not referred to as voluntarily bottling out - it's called be-atching out.
So doing that wouldn't have helped me anyway. But even so , it could be argued that it would still be better to give up early to avoid having the gang get smashed up too badly - at least try to take down a few of the enemy, get the extra exp, and then be-atch out before taking too many casualties. And I can see the argument. Unfortunately, it wouldn't have solved my problem.
My problem is that those two little brats to the east think that all they've got the upper hand even though I've pasted them every time they've been stupid enough to get in my way. This is all due to the encouragement they've been getting from Joffrey.
Unfortunately, they might be right.
If I show a single moment's weakness, those two slavering little jackals will think that they've found a soft target and they'll keep coming after me every turn until they finally discover girls. And while my Gangers have earned more advances than theirs, a turn or two from now, we'll be even, and if I lose another 2d6 income territory, I won't be able to replace my losses. 5 or 6 turns from now, Joffrey might have finished off the Delaque, and then I'll have him on my arse too. And then I'm truly beslubbered.
So I took the view that I had to smash these guys this turn and let them know that coming after me is the dumbest move that they can make. If I could kill or do enough injuries to gimp their gangers, and maybe follow up with ripping a territory or two off them, I could probably scare the Orlock player into going after the Van Saar and either cow the Goliath player or make him turn on the Orlock, since there isn't anyone else he can go after.
Having said that, I was still pretty sure that I would lose this round, but I know (because they had told everyone) that if ("when") they beat me, the Goliath player would let the Orlock have the territory as a kiss and make up for taking that Settlement off him last turn. And therein lies the flaw in their plan. They can team up every turn, but there will only be one territory for one of them to take.
They might be buddies now, but how will the Goliath player feel when his heavy and a couple of Gangers die and his leader ends up with a Chest Wound and a Leg wound and the Orlock remain unscathed and also get the territory? How is that fair? How is the Goliath going to feel when I counterattack on my turn and take his settlement? - the Orluck player can't come to his aid and suddenly he's spent an entire turn having the crap beaten out of him by me, and it's the Orlock player who has profited. He wouldn't like it.
On the other hand, what would happen if the Orlock bottled out, but the Goliath ended up winning the fight and taking the territory? - the Goliath would have to keep the territory - where would that leave their alliance? These were the thoughts that raced through my head as I sat at my coffee table in my boxer shorts the evening before the game painting up the last of my Redemptionist counts as Cawdor Gangers.
Either way - I have to give them enough of a fight so that next round it will have to seem like any territory on the map will look prettier to them than the purple ones.
So anyway, the actual game:
The Fight:We rolled another Gang Fight.
The Orlock player set up in the exact same general spot as before, just with a bit more firepower directed at one of the avenues of attack for my Vent attackers. The Goliath player set up closer to the Olock player than last time, with an obvious mind to keep clear of my Vent attackers.
I did something that I don't usually do, and kept Jacob, my Heavy Stubber off the table to start with. My plan was to deploythe majority of my gang from Vents, around to the right flank which would make it harder for the Goliath to take cover, and would make the Orlock have to spend a turn redeploying. Hopefully, that extra turn would be enough for me to tear some big chunks out of the Goliath before suffering the counter attack. Taking the Orlock out first wasn't really an option.
It was obvious after the first turn that the Goliath were happy to castle up under the overwatch of the Orlock Guns. Luckily, I was able to set my stubber heavy up in a spot which gave him a clear line of fire and he succeeded in downing 3 Goliath on the second turn.
After that, the Orlock player concentrated his fire on my ranged guys, and succeeded in taking one of them down and pinning the rest.
Both my new Juves did their duty and soaked up a couple of bullets each. Isaac, my flamer heavy got shot by the Goliath before being able to have any impact at all. Boaz, though managed to take 2 Goliath out of action before his flamer conked out.
I managed to get Asa and Josiah into melee before the second wave of Goliath could turn up to reinforce their guys, and they both took out their targets with Asa successfully following up into a second melee.
The Second wave of Goliaths was much scarier than the first, and the Goliath Gang leader charged in and took out Boaz. I also lost Abijah. Abraham, my Leader counter charged and took out a Goliath, which triggered a mini rout of another couple of Goliaths who fled. The Goliath leader then charged my leader and managed to wound him once(thank god for 2 wounds). Josiah (the guy with all the attacks and parrys) came to Abraham's aid and charged the Goliath Leader, but got slapped down, but allowed my leader to get a lucky hit in, taking out the Goliath Leader.
Except, not that lucky - as soon as Abraham took down the Goliath leader, the Orlock leader, who had been sitting on Overwatch, shot him with a melta gun, taking him down, before he could get to cover.
The Goliath bottled out on their turn, and on my turn, all of my guys except Asa were pinned. As a final act of defiance, I charged Asa into close combat with the Orlock Leader, but he got shot by Overwatch fire and my Gang bottled out, leaving me with my first loss, and the Orlock with the Gambling Den.
Ouch. By the end of that game, every single one of my Gangers was either out of action, down, or pinned. I only just managed to defeat the Goliath, and didn't inflict a single wound on the Orlocks. I made a point of mentioning constantly during the game how easy the Orlocks were getting it. I also slippd in a couple of times how good it would be to have Tunnels instead of all these vents, since being a close combat oriented gang, it can be really useful to be able to set up on ground level rather than up high (the Orlock player doesn't even really use his at all) - hopefully that will draw the Goliath's attention to them at some stage.
Anyway - here is how the map looked after the fight:
Cawdor
Escher
Delaque
Van Saar
Orlock
Goliath