N4 Escalation League Part 2

Even with a lockdown-light at the moment in Germany, a lot of work and several games in TTS increase the backlog and deny the time to write down all the battlereports. So the second part of the report about our Escalation League took a bit longer than expected.

 

Round 2: Hunting Party

While the first round for me turned out quite nice, I hoped to continue this in round two. The choice of mission boosted this, since I am the only one with proper experience of these nieche-missions in our local group. Also my opponent, Bakunin, lost his first round horribly, so what could go wrong?

At the time I was preparing these lists, I thought that I could build a Varangian-haris, what is not the case. So I wanted to slinghot Shona into CC with this link and gluing things down. The Lawkeeper was the major beatstick, utilizing his speed to remove obstacles from the perfect position. In case something goes wrong, there is a Beta spitfire and a full linked Psi COp MMR as last defense. Minimizing on specialists here should reduce the opportunities for my opponent to score some points.

The haris of Reverends is a general appearance in his Bakunin-lists. For Hunting Party, their high PH is a real benefit. I am not sure about the composition there, maybe Kusanagi was also in that list to add some firepower. Besides that, everything else is gathered in a core-link build around a Riot spitfire as major beatstick. A Morlock and a Zero KHD should cause some trouble besides that.

The map has some niece elevated spots in the center, topped by a tower in the south deployment zone. I manage to go first and get the south deployment zone.

The haris with Shona takes the right side, since I can simply smoke the edge and advance there. The core-team is scattered on the left around the corner with the Lt high on the tower to be safe. As a back-up, the Beta takes the center.

The Moderator-core is also deployed on the right, the Reverend-haris on the left. A Morlock screens the core-links.

My Badlands Patrol takes the left center and gets a camo marker infront of him on the center line.

Starmada 1: Mr. Mad Cop advances, which triggers the Zero KHD, placing a mine. The Psi COp glues him to prevent further problems and then disables the mine.With the next movement, the Badlands Patrol gets shot by a Moderator. To get a better position, the Psi COp advances a bit, which is used by the Zero to reset. On the left the Varangians advance and enter suppressife fire under smoke.

Bakunin 1: The Riot Grrl utilizes her visor, executing both Varangians and Shona without any problems. A new mine is placed by the Zero, which fails to activate the console.

Starmada 2: A first shot of the Beta is dodged by the Zero, which leaves the LoF. The next four orders only scratch the armour of the killer-Moderator and the Beta needs to retreat. Before entering suppressive fire, he recieves a first wound.

Bakunin 2: First the Zero activates the console, then he drops a mine next to my link. The following shot downs the Psi COp. I am out of options here, so the game ends.

While I loose 7-0, our Newbie scores the second win against Shasvasti, taking a good place to win the whole league, but still leaving everything open for the last round.
Would the Patrol have reached his target and burn down the Reverends, I would have been in a much better place. Loosing him to a Moderator with combi rifle was bad. Having the Zero unglued that fast was bad, too. But when the Beta fails to kill the Moderator several times, things were gone. My smoke-dodge plan with the Varangians failed totally, since I misjudged the new potential of MSV 1. Being able to see through smoke, even with the modifier, limits the potential of smoke-tricks drastically.

Round three: Highly Classified:

Luckily we could use the last possible date before the second lockdown to end the league physically, of course with enough distance and safety-measures. So it went against WinterFor with the aim to score a major victory and hope to win the league with enough objective points.

The anchor of this list is the Beta-haris with two Psi COps, since this team can shoot nearly everything and score several objectives on the way. Saladin should grant me some more flexibility. The list also was created before I knew about the missing haris/core for Varangians. So one needs to go on his own, while the other one guards Shona on her way forward. Parvati rounds everything in terms of classifieds and once two turns are played, the Santiago should be able to wipe out whatever is left.

Due to the time and an advanced time for the game in that evening, I am not really sure about some points of the list here. There was a Fusilier core with Karhu and Orc for classifieds and to do some shooting, a Boygg for more shooting and a MSR Nisse for reactive shooting. To do some other stuff, a Nokken is included, as well as a Pathfinder. There may have been a further heavy weapon, but I don't remember properly.

Our big shopping center cut the right into two pieces, while the left was taken by smaller terrain pieces. There was no deploying on the higher roofs allowed, but the north got slightly better ARO positions, especially into the midfield.

I somehow need to go second, starting in the south.

Two REMs, a Nokken MSV and a heavy gun take the left, while the core, together with the Boyg and the Pathfinder start centered or on the right. The HVT is deployed on the right, behind the bus.

Together with Saladin, my haris takes the right side. Parvati hides in the center and Shona together with two Varangians are deployed on the left. The HVT also is on the left side.

The Nisse MSR is deployed on the high building on the left side and my Crusher guards my HVT in suppressive fire.

WinterFor 1: The Pathfinder crosses the table, scoring identity check on my HVT. On the right, the Boygg climbs up the shopping center and does a wound on my Beta, while everything else dodges out of sight. Some units advance a bitand the Boygg enters suppressive fire.

Starmada 1: My hacker scans the Boygg out of SF for datascan, so that the Beta can gun him down easily. On the left the Crusher finishs the Pathfinder and the MSR, then enters suppressive fire on his own.

WinterFor 2: A Fusilier hacker scores datascan on my Crusher, then the core team advances. The Karhu repairs the Pathfinder, scoring test run.

Starmada 2: The haris team advances, cutting through the whole core-team and scoring extreme prejudice on the way. The Psi COps then score identity check and follow up on the HVT.

WinterFor 3: Someone shoots down my exposed Psi COp hacker and scores extreme prejudice on him, making the game a tie.

Meanwhile the match between Bakunin and Shasvasti also ended in a tie, leading to the result that our newbie won the league with 7 OPs, followed by myself thanks to some more OPs and 4 TPs, while Bakunin took the third place, also with 4 TP and Shasvasti on the last place with 1 TP.

In general the league was a good start into the new edition, since everybody had the chance to include new skills and units slowly and could focus on new interactions in the first games. I did not expect that everyone of us goofs at least one game, mixing up the ranking completely. Only our newbie failed to mess things up. So now the consideration for lacking experience is gone and the big guns are taken in the future. But of course only strong games let you grow. For the future, we need to find some ways to deal with Covid during the winter, but the next project for our small group is on the horizon!