Martin was in, and threw out the following scenario:
A large contingent of UNA troops are occupying a remote base have recently discovered a supply of beer (aka paper ice chest). They want to drink this beer. However, the Therians, Karmans, and Red Blok also want to drink the beer, however, individually they do not have the strength to steal the beer individually. As such, they have teamed up with each other temporarily to steal the beer. However, that will lead to the ultimate question of who eventually walks away with the beer, as it can only be one side that wins.
The UNA forces have a deployment zone of the base, which will be constructed in a fashion to make this obvious. The other forces will have randomly decided board edges as determined by a six sided dice.
The idea would be to have you guys team up to pummel the snot out of me, and then turn on each other when it's convenient. Think Diplomacy, but with rocket launchers. I want alliances made and broken in a flurry of angry backstabbing.
Rules for the beer chest: Only infantry can carry it, and they cannot use jump packs or rush movements while doing so. If a unit is grounded while carrying the beer, an enemy unit that gets in contact with the grounded unit can steal the beer. Otherwise, one cannot steal the beer from a unit that is in contact with it. The beer does not act as cover. If the unit carrying the beer is eliminated, the beer stays where it was.
UNA Wins by defeating all the other armies (Somewhat unlikely, unless you guys start fighting from the get-go).
Red Blok/Therians/Karmans win by stealing beer and transporting it off the table. Only one force can win.
My Karmans, Dan's Therians, and a Red Blok army prepared by Martin and fielded by Anthony would all run 1500 points. Martin would defend a base with 3500 points of UNA soldiers.
When I put my forces together, my number 1 goal was to use my new Type II infantry, only a week old. Karman Wendigos are awesome, and their awesomeness is statistically doubled when they use Venerable Cornelius. To go with them, I fielded a minimum squad of Anakongas, a squad (pair?) of K-Fighters, and an Easy Trike.
Dan had his Wrath Golgoth / Hekat Golgoth combo, which I'm not sure I've ever seen him without. He also fielded three squads of golems. I would say a Grim, a Storm, and an Assault? I don't really know Therians too well.
Martin put together a simple force for the Red Blok player, as it would be their first game. Anthony performed admirably in this role: he stuck behind his striders, and they served him well! He had two Kossaks, a Soldaty with rockets, and a Dragonov Kommado squad with sniper rifles.
To match our three simplistic army lists, Martin fielded a giant 3500-point force. He had a Defender Cobra, 6 Fire Toads, 3 squads of TacArms (Steel, Shock, and Jam, I think), two squads of Steel Troopers, and one squad of Wing Troopers.
We played on a 6x4 foot board with a circular base in the center. There were gaps in the north and south for striders to pass through, but otherwise the whole affair was a combination of bunkers, towers, and low walls. The rest of the field was scattered with walls, ruins, and containers.
Now, on to the battle itself! Martin had the following to say in recap:
A quick recap into how I played the game, just for the hell of it:
Karmans: 3 Fire Toads + Shock Tacs
Red Blok: 2 Fire Toads, Steel Tacs
Therians: Jam Tacs, Iron Rain, Cobra
The Wing Troopers were there to pretty much harass the first infantry they could (which happened to the the Therians), and the other two infantry units were to hide until towards the end where there would hopefully be a giant fracas in the middle.
The way it played out was as follows:
Red Blok Front: My force gets fucked in cocked hat. Quickly. Leaves the top of the base pretty much undefended. I think the only damage I did up there was a few points of damage to the Kossak which were repaired by the mechanic.
Therian Front: Sacrifice a unit of Jam Tacs and Wing Troopers for some pointless damage. Bring the Cobra in and try to do stuff, but miss with both the mortar and the missile launchers. The Iron Rain FT I put down there succeeds in its mission of preventing the infantry from advancing, but no real casualties are inflicted before it is destroyed.
Karman Front: Lose a unit of Shock Tacs because I forgot to use my overwatch fire. Kill anti-vehicle monkeys with my three firetoads, and then lose those to Cornelius. Cobra comes over, bombs the crap out of the Wendigo squad, then is destroyed by the Easy Trike. My "repair" squad in the bunker does some more damage to the Wendigos and then is eliminated as it fails its morale check.
As a result, Daniel's forces were relatively unscathed, but way behind in terms of distance to the beer. Brian had a good number of forces crippled by my units, but was ultimately eliminated by Anthony's traitorous snipers. Anthony went straight up the gut and didn't stop shooting until the smoke cleared, which was what his forces were designed to do.
As it stood, everybody seemed to stand a relatively decent chance of winning. What I was really hoping for was someone to turncoat a bit earlier. Had Brian done so with his Anakongas (and supported it with the Wendigos), Anthony could have been caught with his pants down. Of course, I can't blame Brian for focusing on me at the beginning as I did present the more credible threat at the time (hilarious Stark charges not withstanding).
That was Martin's recap. We had some other thoughts... Dan noted that he had a hard time getting the beer, as the ice chest was large enough that person carrying it could hide behind it and block line of sight. Anthony noted that he liked the simple Red Blok playstyle (although apparently they have all kinds of EM warfare or something that his army list didn't use). He also noted that my forces were eliminated by his medic, which is true... that's how Venerable Cornelius, who has the fire output of an entire infantry squad, fell, to a lone medic. We were really hoping that I would pull off a hail mary, and win the game with one figure.
Also, this game put the last nail in the coffin for my use of Karman jammers. I think the release plan for Karmans is all backwards; I could really use one of the other Type I vehicles on the army book, and the K-Shooter, the Type II infantry that I'm lacking, looks far superior for anything besides taking out Type III vehicles. So I might be posting mods to bootstrap my army list to it's full potential.
Also, as fun as the night was, we played until 1:30. That was too late. Valuable lesson learned, don't break for dinner, don't wait for Anthony, don't deliberate about card order. It's a testament to the down-to-the-wire ending that no one bailed, and we all stayed to play it out.
