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CanCon 2019 Tohaa – Where There's Smoke...

Discussion in 'Battle Reports' started by RobertShepherd, Jan 29, 2019.

  1. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    This weekend saw Australia's biggest Infinity event, the Satellite Tournament at CanCon, and as with last year I had a pretty cracking run so I'm writing up a recap in the hopes that people find it interesting.

    PLEASE NOTE: If any of my opponents have an issue with anything they feel I’m discussing unfairly/unfavorably please feel free to message me and I am happy to adjust the reports accordingly. :)

    List Construction

    The scenarios this year were generally on the combat-centric side of things, although without any pure killing without regard to objective missions like Annihilation. From start to finish we'd be playing: Supremacy, Decapitation, Frontline, Supplies, and Firefight.

    I'd been bouncing back and forward over the year between playing Combined and Tohaa for this, but my Sygmaa Trihedron conversion project was close enough to finished that I decided to put the last month into getting it done and taking it.

    This was the list I played in all five rounds:

    CanCon 2019 list 1
    ──────────────────────────────────────────────────

    GROUP 1[​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]9 [​IMG]1 [​IMG]2
    GAO-RAEL Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW. (1 | 31)
    KAELTAR (Chain of Command) Light Shotgun, Flash Pulse + 2 SymbioMates / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 21)
    KAMAEL Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12)
    SAKIEL Paramedic (Medikit) Combi Rifle, Nimbus Plus Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)
    MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 13)
    MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 13)
    CHAKSA AUXILIAR (Baggage, Sensor) Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 10)
    CHAKSA AUXILIAR (Baggage, Sensor) Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 10)
    KERAIL PRECEPTOR Submachine Gun, Smoke Grenades + 1 Surda SymbioBeast / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 20)
    [​IMG] SURDA SYMBIOBEAST Pulzar / Viral CCW. (0 | 8)
    LIBERTO (Minelayer) Light Shotgun, Chain-colt, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 10)

    GROUP 2[​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]7 [​IMG]1 [​IMG]1
    NIKOUL Viral Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 28)
    GAO-RAEL Spitfire / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 33)
    KAELTAR (Chain of Command) Light Shotgun, Flash Pulse + 2 SymbioMates / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 21)
    MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 13)
    KERAIL PRECEPTOR Submachine Gun, Smoke Grenades + 1 Surda SymbioBeast / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 20)
    [​IMG] SURDA SYMBIOBEAST Pulzar / Viral CCW. (0 | 8)
    CHAKSA AUXILIAR (Baggage, Sensor) Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 10)
    CHAKSA AUXILIAR (Baggage, Sensor) Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 10)
    DIPLOMATIC DELEGATE (iKohl L1, Specialist Operative) Nanopulser, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5)

    6 SWC | 300 Points

    Open in Infinity Army

    This list is built around a few core concepts. The first and most obvious is the resilient and annoying Tohaa overwatch. I've kept this limited in this list to just a single Gao-Rael sniper and a Nikoul ambush unit (rather than two Gao-Raels, or a Gao-Rael and a Sukeul missile), which is a light presence by the standards of some Tohaa lists. This is because the high water mark for firepower has risen considerably over the last year, with many armies now able to bring firepower pieces that can consistently engage and destroy a hard castle at range, and I didn't want to over-invest in the face of that. The Nikoul's value in this environment has gone up considerably not least because it combines both MSV1 and Mimetism, which puts it on efficient ground against the large number of mimetism fireteams now in the game (Dakinis, Veteran Kazaks – which it's excellent against thanks to viral rounds, and Kamau – although it will never outshoot a Kamau sniper) and Sapper, which lets it often deploy on the very back of the table edge, consistently outranging HMGs and often even missiles, while also providing full DZ coverage against enemy drop troops. The Gao-Rael stays because at least a single MSV2 piece can lock certain armies straight out of the game until they dispose of it.

    The second major element of the list is the ability to engage up close and personal. The triad of a Sakiel and two Makauls is something I've run a lot (this list evolved from an initial prototype that had two such triads) and it's something I strongly recommend other Tohaa players experiment with. It combines a wide variety of close assault tools with a specialist profile, and is cheap enough that if it never leaves your deployment zone they're still just about worthwhile as orders and corner guards. This team would survive only a single game intact but would sell themselves dearly every single time. Generally I would recommend a forward observer over a paramedic unless you like killing your own models, but in this event we had supplies and the medic bonus for opening boxes is massive.

    Complementing the Makaul team is a Kerail Preceptor with Surdabeast in each group and a Libertos minelayer. These are mobile, cheap, versatile attack pieces that, like the Makauls, can accomplish nothing and still be worth their points as orders, corner guards and delay elements. One of the major things I wanted this list to be able to do was be consistent, and a big part of that is being able to absorb a dedicated enemy alpha strike. As noted above, just having symbiomates on snipers isn't enough to do this any more, which means the value of things like dogged models template weapons and deployed mines have gone up hugely as a means of providing a defense in depth if the snipers fail or have to hunker down from the start.

    The list was rounded out by a third triad in the second group led by a Gao-Rael Spitfire for just well-rounded ranged firepower and general versatility (the Gao-Rael has surpassed the Sukeul HMG for me thanks to the combination of forward deployment, the sudden surge of mimetism in the game, and the fact that the Sukeul's capabilities begin to toilet-bowl the second she loses her armour; it's also the best model we have for engaging a Kamau sniper, which to my mind you must have a plan for in any competitive event right now).

    Finally, there are four chaksas because you can never have too many flamethrowers watching corners and also I had a joke goal for the event of finishing with more than fifteen hundred VPs surviving over five rounds, and a Delegate because she's yet another template and also I always have surplus command tokens so she's effectively a regular order for five points.

    To note, I had a second list which was a small variation on the first, cutting the second Preceptor and consolidating both Surdabeasts to one handler, and upgrading the Kamael lieutenant to a Sakiel with viral rifle. Without time to playtest multiple lists, and certainly without time to paint more than a couple models for a second list, this was a small adaptation that would improve my game against a few very specific lists I expected I might play against on the weekend, namely PanO and StarCo spec-fire lists built for decapitation (and possibly firefight) where I wanted to have a two wound lieutenant with symbiomate, and against the Avatar or similar hyperpowerful TAG where the Preceptor with two beasts is my best hunter-killer to go after them. As an upside the double beast Preceptor would also let me savage any non-linked melee specialist like Achilles, but I didn't expect to see him much this weekend.

    On to the games!
     
    #1 RobertShepherd, Jan 29, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  2. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    Game One: Supremacy v Varuna Immediate Reaction Division

    Round one was against a Newcastle player called Jason running VIRD. A mild nightmare scenario right out the gate since I consider VIRD to be the most powerful faction in the game right now by a small but non-negligible margin (having played them myself for a half dozen games and being giddy with power every time), made worse by the fact that my opponent won the roll and picked deployment and setup advantage.

    In Supremacy, second turn for scoring is a massive advantage, but under no circumstances did I feel like I could give a Varunan player the chance to get the first go at me off the back of an optimised deployment (which would allow him to eliminate my snipers and have unfettered control of the board). So first turn it was.


    Deployment

    [​IMG]

    As shown, the table is on the open side without being a shooting gallery, with multiple deployment zone to deployment zone lines of fire that would restrict easy movement up the table. I deployed trying to take best advantage of the buildings that I could, with particular intention to lock down my left quadrant which had several places that I could squirrel away Chaksas to ensure an easy dominate while my Xenotech ambled around (synched to my diplomatic delegate).

    The two snipers sat vertically stacked; you can see the Nikoul on the roof of the building, while the Gao-Rael is on the ground floor looking out a window. A surdabeast and handler too each flank, while the Makaul and Sakiel team hunkered down on the left and the Gao-Rael spitfire's team took the right.

    In response, my opponent took the grey-brown building in the center-left of his zone and turned it into a bastion, with the inevitable Kamau sniper on a roof (joined by the usual set of Fusiliers, and an ORC with Feuerbach on ground level watching the long lane down the left side of the table). Helot decoy and camo markers went down across the entire board, as did a couple forward deploying camo markers that would obviously be Zulu Cobras. Finally, some Fugazis would go down including one behind the brown building on the right, staring down my two snipers at something like 40”.

    My Libertos would reserve deploy forward on the left flank, and my opponent would likewise deploy a Kamau HMG to sync with his delegate.

    The SWC count was too high to allow for a Cutter, but with the models visible on the table I did expect to see something in hidden deployment, be it a Croc Man or Echo Bravo.


    Summary

    Perhaps as expected, the tempo of this game would be set by the resilience and quality of Varuna's overwatch more than my own. Unexpectedly, this resilience and quality would come from that aforementioned Fugazi dronbot who, over two turns, engaging in ARO at about 40”, would beat the nikoul and stun it, beat the gao-rael and stun it, beat the nikoul and stun it again the next turn, beat the gao-rael and force me to spend a symbiomate stopping a flash pulse, before finally going down on the fifth order over two turns.

    This little Fugazi that could, in combination with me rolling a lot of consecutive failures to discover against camo markers (that being what the snipers were doing as their short move skill while getting blinded by the Fugazi), would keep my offensive options limited. I picked away at his order pool as best I could, with the Libertos rushing forward under smoke and then using his camo, getting discovered but making it to cover just outside the enemy deployment to lay some mines that would mostly serve to waste a bunch of time, but otherwise my early game was spent staging models for later attacks, getting the multiscanner placed, and generally hunkering down and pushing buttons.

    The libertos, at least, did his job well and wasted a lot of enemy time on the first turn. A palbot was used to blow up the mines he'd placed outside the DZ but my opponent forgot about the one that had been placed at game start and walked a Pathfinder through it en route to a button, which unfortunately represented my most successful offensive action to that point in the game. With no more willingness to engage my snipers than I was to engage his, he tried to pick around the edges with his Zulu Cobras, before pulling them back and re-camoing.

    With the Fugazi doing it's work again on my second turn before finally going down three orders in, I had to exercise a lot more patience on the right flank that I wanted. I was able to pick up the Zulu KHD with the Gao-Rael spitfire but otherwise just could not push up past the Mosque they were holed up in.

    Things went a little better on the right with my Makaul team finally breaking cover, moving up through smoke and making a nuisance of themselves in that little nook on the far left of the table just outside the enemy deployment zone. Because the Gao-Rael sniper had needed to waste orders from the first group killing the Fugazi I didn't have enough left in the tank to commit to this attack, but I was able to sacrifice a Makaul in exchange for the Kamau HMG and a Shock Marksman Helot, which is ostensibly a good trade but was very resource intensive to accomplish.

    The general anemia of this game's offensive action would continue with my opponent's turn; he was finally beginning to hemorrhage regular orders at this point and had to use them on the remaining sensor+jammer Zulu Cobra to re-engage my Gao-Rael spitifre and finally start picking that triad apart. He also had to rush his Feuerbach ORC into his zone to contest my models there, with what looked like a slightly optimistic move+move to get from the back of his DZ, around a corner and halfway across the 12” mark, just barely getting there to contest the zone on the last order.

    The final round saw short, sharp action and conclusion. My models that I had left moved up to contest as much as possible. My nikoul tried to engage the ORC but failed, which left everything down to the Sakiel and remaining Makaul. They spec fired smoke to just not clip the ORC, rushed around the corner and bailed into melee. My opponent elected to dodge on the grounds that a 2” move would get back back far enough that the ORC would be covered by kamau overwatch, got cut to shreds by the Makaul, and then my now-duo pulled back, pushed a button and prepared to finally die. My opponent for his part executed them with panache, slammed his link forward to make sure his zones were secure but couldn't push far enough through my still-surviving snipers to control one of my zones, and that ended the game.

    Result: 7-4, Minor Win
     
    #2 RobertShepherd, Jan 29, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  3. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    Game Two: Decapitation v Tohaa

    Round two was against Infinity Media Luminary and last year's CanCon winner Ben Addison. Having had the good fortune of playing a couple games against his co-host Marty while he was in town the weeks before the event I have nothing but good things to say about these guys, although the prospect of playing last year's champion so early into the event was daunting.

    Critically, I won the roll for first turn. I don't subscribe to the idea that decapitation is won or lost on this roll (I know a lot of people would disagree with me but I've also never lost this scenario going second), but there's certainly no special advantage to going second and having a chance to establish ARO superiority in this matchup can be extremely valuable.


    Deployment

    [​IMG]

    Ben picked the side of the table with the highest ground and force me to handle a deployment with an extremely wide, blank space on the lower left. Thanks to the scenario being decaptiation with the 16” deployment zone I had a fair amount of freedom regardless, but it certainly took some time to set up with such a lot of space relatively empty. The Nikoul proved his worth here at least, caring not a whit for the parking lot I plonked him in.

    My gao-rael sniper team deployed on the lower right, as far back as possible and with my kamael lieutenant well hidden, with every approach covered by various snipers and flamethrowers. All of my kill-pieces went down aggressively across the left and centre, hiding in the shadows of those buildings from the rooftops and bridges that I firmly expected Ben to plant his ARO pieces on.

    Just visible, hidden in that tiny nook on my far left, is my HVT. I also have a preceptor positioned centrally and one on the far right flank. These are typically my datatrackers thanks to their massive speed in this mission, and I placed them to be able to pick whichever one was closest to his HVT as required.

    As expected, Ben dropped a hard castle on on the left flank, with a Gao-Rael sniper, Sukeul Missile and Kaeltar Specialist all in ARO against anything I might activate with. He also placed a Sukeul HMG prone on the bridge leading toward the elevated building in the middle of the table, and defended the close approach with a Makaul carefully positioned to be just barely outside my Nikoul's LOF and two camo markers (no prizes for guessing what they were) blocking the way to his HVT, which is hidden behind those double-stacked crates.

    On the right was a lighter triad of a Kaeltar, Sakiel with viral rifle (not the lieutenant; that was a kamael on a rooftop underneath his overwatch pieces) and makaul, and some chaksa.

    My reserve drop was my Libertos as always. The libertos itself deployed prone to make a nuisance of itself and possibly go after the Sukeul; the mine was placed to cover the two enemy camo markers, the enemy HVT and the enemy makaul (just barely in by a tenth of an inch; when I placed it, I'd banked on the legality of the mine being due to the HVT in its trigger area).

    Ben's reserve was a clipsos, out of TO camo and his datatracker, prone on the rooftop above my HVT. A cunning ploy.


    Summary

    With first tun at my disposal I was faced with a choice between playing for short-term or long-term rewards. Essentially, with the orders and models I had against the defence Ben had layered, I could either make a rush under smoke on his HVT for a quick five points and leave the overall board position uncontested and at Ben's discretion to engage, or I could kick his teeth in first and score second. With a symbiomate and two wounds on my datatracker, I figured the long game was ultimately the safer one.

    I began mostly by making mistakes. I'd played on this table the night before during a narrative event so just made some assumptions about LOF without confirming them that ultimately weren't accurate. This led to about half a dozen orders being spent doing various things with smoke and my Gao-Rael spitfire that put her in a nice position but didn't actually kill more than the Kaeltar specialist that wasn't contributing to the main overwatch link.

    The slack got picked up by my snipers and sakiel paramedic. One of the keys to engaging overwatch from a static sniper position with tohaa is to create artificial pie-slices with a mix of regular and eclipse smoke. In this case that meant laying eclipse smoke to block LOF between his and my Gao-Rael snipers, and then regular smoke to block LOF between his Sukeul missile and my Gao-Rael sniper, for the easy -6 to hit. It still takes time and patience to work through the symbiomate and armour, but I put her wounded and prone which was good enough for an early play.

    I took a quick detour to suicide my datatracker's Symbiobeast forward. This disarmed the enemy libertos' mine (disarmed in the sense that any model can be a minesweeper at least once) and also killed the standing enemy makaul when it took the flamethrower shot at me and was in range of my pulzar and my libertos' mine. With another dangerous element down, only his Gao-Rael sniper stood to engage the long bands. I engaged this piece with my Sakiel paramedic, who was able to vault up into a good position and take the firefight at within 16”. With the burst and range advantage I was able to put down the Gao-Rael in a few orders, knocking it unconscious it rather than just wounding it which was a great advantage, and had just enough orders left in the first group to pull the Sakiel back a little and bomb one of the makauls up the ladder and into melee with his Clipsos. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Clipsos elected to shoot rather than dodge (knowing that if she dodged she'd take iKhol and martial arts penalties for her trouble) and took two flamethrowers to the center mass for her trouble. The makaul died, but with his datatracker dead Ben was locked out of 3pts for the rest of the game.

    With a few orders left in the second combat pool I blitzed the second Preceptor forward, engaging and killing an enemy Chaksa before positioning mostly to be threatening and annoying. I'd get her facing wrong after making a bad assumption about what terrain did and didn't block LOF, but her sacrifice would be worthwhile.

    With his overwatch elements so thoroughly discombobulated, and without much smoke to play with either, Ben was on the back foot in a big way for the entire rest of this game. He took his kills where he could get them, but with both his Sukeuls on elevated positions, each of them stood up only to take overwatch from both my snipers, and my spitfire, all in ideal range. A symbiomate is a great comfort in times of distress, but splitting burst four three ways into five shots back without cover is a terrible proposition and things have gone badly indeed when it's your best offensive option.

    To his credit, he was also able to make some plays in the short range, with a Gao-Tarsos walking in and avoiding the HVT stun pistol to at least nab him a couple points (before dying to the flamethrower of the makaul that changed face on his arrival) and also go after the preceptor on the right with his viral sakiel and trying to gum up my advance with his libertos on the left, but without any pieces remaining that could engage at range he was only going to make up so much ground.

    The remainder of the game would close out the objective race in the expected way. I had more than enough disposable elements to push through his Libertos (in the end, I engaged it with a Makaul and shot the mine it laid with my snipers) and clear the way to his HVT with my datatracker Preceptor. My own Libertos then stood up and advanced across the bridge to surprise shotgun his lieutenant in the back, and from there it was all pretty much done and dusted. We skirmished back and forth a little longer but there was never going to be a chance for Ben to recover either army points or lieutenant kills, so we called the game shortly therafter.

    Result: 10-3, Major Win
     
    #3 RobertShepherd, Jan 29, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  4. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    Game Three: Frontline v OSS

    Round three was against OSS piloted by Gavin Bateman, a man known across the Australian infinity community for the fullness of his beard, the freshness of his memes, his general contribution to the community and also by the foreboding moniker of 'Critler'. I am not afraid to admit that my testicles may have receded up into my body to somewhere around my liver.

    OSS is a tricky but playable matchup for Tohaa mostly off the back of their tremendous capacity to secure ranged dominance over us. Thanks to remote presence and a cheap, WIP15 engineer, the Dakini link is incredibly robust for as long as you have the orders and command tokens to keep putting it back together – and to top it off, they have one of the best white noise generators in the game in the form of the Danavas. The tohaa advantage is at the short range, where flamethrowers and melee represent an attack that nothing in the sectorial deals well with.

    Gavin won the roll and elected to deploy second on the side of the table with the highest ground. Despite Frontline once again being a scenario that strongly emphasises the scoring advantage of the second player, I didn't feel like there was any circumstance under which I could let a player of his caliber have the first swing off the back of a deployment advantage, so I went first.


    Deployment

    [​IMG]

    To note, we're playing the vegetation as solid and with some, but not all, of the buildings as having playable interiors (determined chiefly by whether they have a roof that could be easily removed).

    In a deployment that will probably look fairly familiar by now, I hung back with my snipers covering the rooftops from the longest ranges possible to prevent easy HMG engagements, and postured aggressively with all my shorter range elements. I had something of a plan for my first turn this game, which is always dangerous to lean too hard into before an opponent even deploys, but I was confident in my positioning and the strength of my makauls' smoke throwing arms. As always in Xenotech missions, my Delegate picked up the synchronisation, making her irregular order essentially a free regular one even without command tokens.

    Gavin built an incredibly hard castle in the centre of the board. A full dakini link with CSU, with the dakini sniper covering the rooftops (although out of LOF of my Gao-Rael thanks to those generators on the roofop in the center) with a Zayin TR HMG on ground level behind it, both watching the Nikoul. Both his netrods landed in good order just outside his DZ, and he had Lamedh flashpulse bots out on the corners covering the close-ish angles and his other Dakinis and CSUs all watching possible shenanigan attack angles. A warcor went down prone on the far left building, synched to the Xenotech, and the lieutenant Shukra prone on the level above her. A pair of camo markers within 8” of each other covering the two middle alleyways. The feared and expected Danavas with Hacking Device Plus went down on the very far right flank. There was also an Asparas somewhere, but I didn't see where. His Dakinis were BS13 with number 2, though, so she must have been somewhere and I'm sure he had the points for her.

    My reserve Fishman went down on the left flank. The camo token visible in the image above is actually the mine, because my plan was to heavily occupy the hanger building just above it and a mine there makes the position very hard to assail. The Libertos itself is hanging out in the alley up the left of the board, with nefarious intent.

    The reserve posthuman deploy saw a Mk5 with submachine guns and E/M grenades in that big white building with the dish on the rooftop, an engineer behind the Dakini link and with 1.5 SWC off the board a near-certain sniper lurking about somewhere.


    Summary

    My first turn opened with the opportunistic kills that it's almost always a good idea to take while you can get. The central team with the Gao-Rael spitfire threw smoke to manufacture a pie slice for the Nikoul so that it could engage the Zayin without engaging the Dakini sniper, and with favourable range bands had the Zayin on a tasty -9 modifier and easily put it down. The rightmost preceptor then laid smoke for the Gao-Rael spitfire who moved up and eliminted the Lamedh rebot on the right flank. This was a win since it eliminted the OSS repeater on that flank, and there was likewise no repeater anywhere near the midfield, meaning the Danavas would need to spend a lot more orders laying her pitcher in order to get white noise in useful places.

    (To be honest, eliminating repeaters is a fairly weak countermeasure all things told, but every extra possible point of failure in an enemy plan represents a potential advantage – not that it would matter in the end, because Gavin had played two brutal games before this today, was pretty much operating on muscle memory, and basically blanked on having white noise for most of the game.)

    With the easy kills taken I had two other plays to make on the first turn. The safe and easy was the positional gambit I'd set up to make on the first turn; using the smoke I'd already laid to cover the Nikoul, my Makaul team closed the remaining gap and bailed up into the hangar building I'd covered with a mine. Two Chaksa servants joined them, meaning that any attack into that building would face a prodigious amount of flame, and I also had two baggage models in the central zone from turn one. I also used the delegate's order to move up the Xenotech, and some regular orders to place the scanner and throw the Xenotech out of synch range but into the back of said hangar which would interfere with any E/M spec fire from the posthuman in the adjoining building.

    Finally, the last play of the turn was to use the preceptor and makauls already on the right flank to lay a couple of smoke templates just far enough up to let the Libertos move to within 8” of the flight of stairs on the far left building. This let it move-move across the distance, daring a Dakini discover roll, which succeeded but to no avail since the Libertos had already reached total cover. From there it was a simple matter of scooting up the stairs to see the Warcor and executing her with its shotgun, disconnecting the Xenotech. This may sound like a small thing but it represents a massive potential points swing, since reconnecting the Xenotech is painful at the best of times and with his REM-heavy army the only nearby model Gavin might have used was his Shukra lieutenant, who would take multiple sniper shots as well as fire from the Libertos if he dared stand up.

    Gavin's counteroffensive was by the numbers in the most literal sense. That Dakini link was fully intact and the Sniper had no trouble engaging and destroying the Nikoul in two orders. This cleared the way for the link to debark the tower, bail around toward the right flank, and open up with the HMG against my Gao-Rael sniper. To Gavin's bad luck, I crit him in ARO. This is not normally an issue with the Dakini link since it's straightforward to do what Gavin did, which is move the engineer (in the other group) up to repair and reform the link. However, his next face to face roll was inconclusive (two crits cancelled one another) and running short on orders he was only able to strip the mate off the Gao-Rael before the link pulled back. This left him well outside my LOF and watching all the close angles of attack, but also meant the entire link, and engineer, and two netrods were behind that horizontal corrugated wall just outside his deployment. And it was my turn.

    My first half-dozen orders this turn were a clinic in the advantages Tohaa has at close range in this matchup. The Makaul + Sakiel team moved out of the hangar building and wove smoke to close with the Dakinis in good order (when I say wove smoke, I mean threw it to block LOF but also leave gaps between terrain and the smoke templates to allow for more smoke to be thrown to cover the next leg of advance). The Sakiel took point on the last leg to supplement the eclipse smoke with a nimbus plus zone (taking a flash pulse for her trouble but no worries, she wasn't the star of the coming show) before the Makauls stormed the breach.

    For those not feeling like doing the math, a nimbus plus zone is a poor visibility and saturation zone. Poor visible zones impose a -6 both on attacks into and reactions against attacks out of or through the zone, which means that a Dakini is dodging on 1s. The Makaul split burst between two targets to avoid the penalty of the saturation zone, Gavin shot back with everything except the engineer, and to make a long story short by the end of the turn Gavin's engineer was alive but his entire dakini link and half his netrod farm was not – and not just unconscious, but dead, preventing any possibility of engineering them back.

    There was more skirmishing after this, bits of back and forth as my Preceptor went in after his Naga and Posthuman engineer, and I made the mistake toward the end of this turn of not counting Gavin's remaining points very accurately. Out of sight and mind, I completely blanked that he still had the Danavas on the table and thought he might be close to retreat, and moved a lot of models in ways that left them in deep danger the subsequent turn. Gavin grabbed this mistake with both hands as his posthuman sniper revealed and crit to death, incapacitated, or just straight blew away eight or nine wounds worth of models in four orders.

    For all the sniper's bravery, the damage I'd done in turn two was too much to meaningfully recover from. A suicide run by the Libertos put down his Shukra lieutenant, and after some ineffectual skirmishing with the Sniper I ended up just running a makaul up and around cover (through a volley of flash pulses, which stunned him but couldn't stop him) to engage her in melee and prevent any possibility of a sneaky recovery.

    Gavin's final turn was a straightforward matter of spending his remaining command tokens to make the Danavas immune to retreat and giving her a second regular order to spend just so she could get up into his zone. I flipped a 19pt Intelcom card on this zone but it wasn't enough to outweight the posthuman sniper and danavas, but despite scoring his zone, Gavin still hadn't place the scanner, meaning he was on zero points overall. Meanwhile I had my zone, the middle zone with my Xenotech, and I'd placed the scanner. The first turn gambit with the Libertos had paid off.

    Result: 5-0, Major Win
     
    #4 RobertShepherd, Jan 29, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  5. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    Game Four: Supplies v JSA

    Round 4 was against Rory Cartwright's JSA and I would describe this as the first matchup that was favourable for me out the gates. The MSV presence, as well as my heavy flamethrower and sensor threat, are near-perfect tools for dealing with JSA's most dangerous models. The game gets much more interesting if JSA is bringing a heavyweight of some sort (TAGs or a samurai link) but neither the table nor scenario favoured such a deployment.

    On top of that, I won the Lieutenant roll. I'm normally pretty comfortable playing second on supplies with my list but I wasn't about to give JSA's ninjas first turn, so took the initiative happily.


    Deployment

    [​IMG]

    This table was not an easy one for JSA to play on. There was high ground in or just outside both deployment zones; Rory made the hard but correct choice to deny me a forward deploying Gao-Rael sniper in that huge tower on the right side of the table. Instead, I had the deployment zone you can see. This was the right choice, although after quite a bit of puzzling I was still able to make good use of the high ground I had access to. My Gao-Rael sniper forward deployed on the high, leftmost rooftop with the rest of his link prone on the rooftop of the building behind her. Meanwhile the Nikoul went down on the grey platform on the red building in the centre, which gave him a view of every single objective and all the major approaches to my deployment. The spitfire used the same rooftop to forward deploy just on the staircase with the rest of her team behind her, and otherwise I was spread out hugging cover and watching all the close angles with a variety of template weapons. The Libertos would eventually forward deploy on the left flank, since I judged that box the hardest for me to get early in the game.

    By this time we were on day two of the event, and a lot of the forerunning lists were no longer secret. Rory knew a lot of what I had and in particular was afraid of the prospect of an aggressive alpha with any of my warband-like models. In retrospect I don't know if this knowledge served him well, because he felt like he needed to deploy incredibly conservatively including having his HMG Keisotsu very far back out danger from warbands. His only overwatch pieces was the Keisotsu missile launcher in the building at the back-right of his deployment. He otherwise deployed a wide smattering of Keisotsu as an obvious order battery for a significant hidden deployment presence, Yojimbo on the far right flank hoping to advance under cover of the alleyway, and two Ryuken nine, one on the massive tower and one on the building just to its left. Their mines were deployed to guard the angles very close to his DZ rather than being deployed aggressively, which I can make sense of but definitely took pressure off my first turn.


    Summary

    Before anything else, I spent a command token to move a Chaksa from group 1 to group 2. Rory could (and did) subsequently take orders from this pool, but it still meant I could spend all my remaining command tokens coordinating move-moves and move-sensor sweeps with three Chaksa, giving me ample coverage across the middle of the table.

    First, though, I had to clear out the Keisotsu missile, which the Nikoul did handily on two dice 12s to two dice 10s. This was a risk – mostly a risk of a crit – but was well worth trying since it would make the entire rest of the turn much easier. My nikoul takes fights like this a lot although usually when going second, which lets him counter-deploy in a position on the back of the table in LOF of the enemy missile, which pretty reliably produces an engagement at greater than 40” (which against a Keisotsu would result in them hitting on 4s). In this case, though, I took the closer position to watch the objectives, but was luckily not punished for it.

    With the enemy overwatch down the sensor sweep could proceed. This sweep revealed a Ninja KHD and Saito Togan, both up close near buttons. Rory had known this was coming but considered it a necessary sacrifice; both were unfortunately left in LOF of the Gao-Rael spitfire and eliminated in a few short orders.

    Most of this work had been done by the second combat group, meaning that even with the lost regular order from the transferred Chaksa I still had plenty of orders in group one to move the makaul and sakiel team out and sweep the centre. With the paramedic bonus in Supplies, the Sakiel easily picked up the rightmost box, handed it off to the makaul, picked up the centre box, and then the team booked it all the way back to the very back left of my deployment.

    Rory commented afterward that you know a game is going badly when you start your first turn with plans A and B both out the window. Most of this turn and the rest of the game for him was throwing whatever resources he could at the wall and hoping some of it would stick. He reformed the Keisotsu link and engaged the Gao-Rael sniper but thanks to the conservative deployment of the HMG I mentioned above, it was in bad range and hitting on 7s to the Gao-Rael's 12s. It won one F2F with a crit and some hits (the latter of which I canceled with the symbiomate) but couldn't do so a second time and died. A Kempai with marksman rifle on the rooftop near where the missile had been then took charge and stood up, taking down the Gao-Rael sniper at equally extreme range but dying to return fire from the Nikoul. A lot of the rest of the turn was in this vein, with models standing up to take face to face fights against multiple targets that they had no business winning, out of a hope that something good might happen. A few Keisotsu were able to very gun down the Chaksa that I'd sent up the field to sweep out enemy ninjas, but that was about all that could be done.

    From my second turn onward, my focus was chiefly on locking Rory out of a counter-offensive that might force a draw late in the game. A surviving chaksa discovered but couldn't kill a third hidden deployment model – an oniwaban – but I was able to lock it down with mines and overwatch and otherwise I ferreted out Yojimbo with my Gao-Rael spitfire and his surviving Ryuken with my right flank Preceptor and beast. They'd later slam into the reserves in his deployment zone, but that was more a denouement than any meaningful action.

    I never picked up the final box, but I did secure the HVT and even manage to complete Capture by leaving a Kaeltar in base contact with an unconscious Ryuken.

    Result: 9-0, Major Win
     
    #5 RobertShepherd, Jan 29, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  6. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    Game Five: Firefight v Tunguska

    The fifth and final game was against Tom Boele from Sydney. Tom is a smashing player and absolutely lovely bloke who I'd played an incredibly close Aconticemento v Aconticemento game the year before, and he was running a Tunguska army this year.

    Of all the games I played, this was the one with the most riding on the lieutenant roll – not as much because of the scenario (although it has nothing to favour going second) but because I knew Tom was playing a limited insertion Hollow Man list and strongly expected or at least had to fear the presence of an Interventor. White noise makes the fight between my snipers and his all sorts of terrible, and in Firefight Tom would have no real incentive to move into the middle of the table where I might jump him in melee after my overwatch went down.

    Very – very – fortunately, I won and picked first turn.


    Deployment

    [​IMG]

    Much of my deployment this game was spent focusing on making sure that walk-in airborne deployment models off any of the near table edges wouldn't gut my army. Chaksas and other models went down bang up against the board edge in multiple locations, as would a prone kaeltar specialist watching the entire length of my deployment with her shotgun and flash pulse (despite being blue-tac'd down she would make the ultimate sacrifice when she fell while I was over near Tom's deployment zone and got stepped on by someone walking by). The snipers were on high ground – very high ground in the case of the nikoul, who wouldn't be vulnerable like a prone Gao-Rael would to super jumping hollow men looking to get higher and strip the cover advantage of a prone model – while the spitfire was forward deployed up on the far right flank. Precpetors would position relatively centrally in each table half and the makaul team would be hunkered down behind the central high ground on the center-left of the board.

    Tom had picked what looked like and I agree was by far the safer of the two deployment zones to hunker down in and adopted a very defensive position. Rather than try to engage my snipers directly he kept his missiles watching long angles that I nevertheless wasn't directly covering. If you can see the tape measure on the table in the image above, for example – that would correspond almost directly to one of his hollow man missile lanes, while still being carefully concealed from my Gao-Rael who might have outranged him.

    Also hunkered down with the link was both a clockmaker and the feared-but-expected interventor lieutenant. Tom's only other deployments was a TR HMG behind the hexagonal white ruined building in the forward middle of his deployment zone, and Mary Problems off to a side, a bit useless in this matchup with nothing in my army hackable. One model – almost certainly Raoul Spektor in this scenario – was missing from the table.


    Summary


    There is a school of thought in Firefight that the game is best played conservatively, just sniping out what you can while keeping your army – and points – intact. But with Tom's conservative deployment, I saw an opening that I might exploit to accomplish a truly decisive attack on the first turn.

    The first step was to clear the path I would need to take in subsequent orders. The preceptor on the right would crawl out around her cover to the left, but throwing smoke as she departed to give the Gao-Rael spitfire the engagement she wanted against the TR HMG remote. It took a couple orders to bring it down, but with five dice on 12s vs four dice on 5s, the nomad remote was banking on multiple crits to win that fight. With that first obstacle cleared, the preceptor made directly for the enemy deployment zone (pausing briefly to loot a panoply for a flamethrower), not with the intent of attacking but with the intent of dropping a smoke grenade right at the foot of that mountain the hollow men were lurking behind.

    It took two throws, but this one smoke template completely cleared the makaul and sakiel triad to advance directly toward the nomad deployment zone without needing to stop until they were almost at the base of those foothills. From here it took two orders to weave in an eclipse grenade and nimbus plus grenade, but with that accomplished I was able to repeat to Tom's hollow man link what I'd done to Gavin's dakinis during game three. Both Makauls died doing it but with the nimbus penalties to dodging, by the end of the run, I'd killed both hollow man missile launchers, the clockmaker, and the interventor.

    This, for all intents and purposes, decided the game. We played on for another turn and a bit but with his entire force now packing nothing longer range than a multi rifle and pinned down behind foothills by snipers that vastly outranged him, there was no practical play Tom could make to adjust the course of the game. I would in a subsequent turn have the Preceptor who'd paved the way for the Makauls jump herself and her cat up over the foothills and start tearing up the remaining hollow men (including the datatracker) in melee before finally dying to a chain colt, and have the Sakiel paramedic manage to successfully medipack a makaul (after accidentally executing the Preceptor), but this was was objective point farming more than anything else.

    Result: 9-0, Major Win


    Overall Conclusion

    Whew. What a couple days and an absolute murderer's row of opposition to the end. Come the close, four majors and a minor was enough to secure second place, pipped only by excellent PanOceanian player and forum native Daboarder who pulled a resounding five majors out of his belt. You can see the final results here at https://infinitycancon.com/player-leaderboard/ including a little VP score that somehow accomplished the joke goal I'd set myself at event start.

    Overall I'm very happy with how my list performed. The makaul triad was the MVP but every model pulled their weight in some capacity over the course of the event. The only things that really played out differently to how the list had done in the play testing games I'd had was a) going first every game, when in playtesting I either always lost lieutenant roll or only won in scenarios where I wanted to go second, the exact opposite of what happened during the event, and b) only killing maybe a half dozen models in melee, when during testing I think I drew the Predator classified and fulfilled it with bonus point in like 80% of games.

    I would have liked to have played against TAK, and been interested but a little scared to play against vanilla Combined (the melee presences in my list kill an avatar like nothing short of Shinobu but very good Combined players will do everything they can to deny you a clean run), and frankly I'll count my blessings that I only had to play against a single Varuna player although in time I might become more comfortable with that matchup (and to be fair I haven't actually lost to Varuna yet but they've consistently been the hardest matchup for any list I've played in any faction).

    If I had to run through it all again I don't think I'd change anything, although with the relatively short notice decision to paint and play my Sygmaa I think I would like to have had time to properly develop and test a second list. This year's scenarios didn't necessitate it, though – but with CanCon over, there's plenty of time now to try out the weird and janky ideas that bubbled up during development but got left on the cutting room floor at the time. Running a ten camo marker list in Tohaa can't be that bad, right?
     
    #6 RobertShepherd, Jan 29, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  7. andre61

    andre61 Well-Known Member

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    love all the table set ups
     
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  8. Obeisance

    Obeisance Well-Known Member

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    Great write up, you do good work.

    Also interesting hearing your logic on a few piece choices.
     
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  9. GrantC

    GrantC Active Member

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    Great result, and excellent write-ups! I don't know how you manage, I can't even remember that much detail after a single game..
     
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  10. zapp

    zapp Well-Known Member

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    thanks for the report. Very interesting.
     
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  11. BlackCadian

    BlackCadian Well-Known Member

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    Thank you so, so much for this comprehensive write-up! Writing batreps takes ages but I very much appreciate it!

    Congrats on your ranking, too!
     
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  12. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    I just tried this list (literal no changes) in a Frontline Vs Varuna, friendly game (out of tournament, no time, my rival choose the mission but knew I was using 4 chaksas, etc...). Enemy was Fusilier Core (Kamau Sniper, Fusilier grenade launcher, fusiliers) with EVO and Patsy Garret Haris (Kamau HMG, Mimetic Machinist) and a machinist in group 1, and 2 camoed Helots, 2 Flash Pulse bots, 1 Bulleteer, 1 specialist remote, 1 trauma doc, and can't remember the rest.

    He won Lt roll, chose side and for me to deploy first, I chose to go first (lost 2 regular orders from Grp1) and he started his remotes in Overclock. For triads I chose a Gao Rael (sniper & 'mate)+Makaul+Kaeltar, and Kamael+Sakiel+Makaul on group 1 and the gao-rael (Spitfire & mate)+makaul + Kaeltar in group 2.

    The Nikoul did nothing but place pressure on my rival ('mate, simbiont armor, foxhole, furthest back possible in a corner covering more than half hte table in diagonal), and that was quite good. The chaksas I placed to move and secure the closest lane and deny it to the enemy with a single move, and the Libertos was, too, my last model to cover my HVT and right flank (thus the shadowed approach to the Nikoul and kinda my weakest flank). The smokers were more or less in the center, and the Diplomat, with the Xenotech, on the left (and did nothing but advance + advance on turn 1, and advance the Xenotech + deploy on turn 2).

    He deployed everything hanging back but for one camo marker, forcing me to spend orders to seach to engage his sniper and his Bulleteer (and unable to reach the haris).

    First turn was me using orders to move the Gao Rael Sniper throgh Eclipse smoke to engage the Kamau sniper with cover and range, took a flash pulse to the face (enemy failed) and wasted 3 orders and the mate to remove it (2 crits in the last one...), but got blinded by a flash pulse. Moved the spitfire to engage the Bulleteer (had to kill it twice, the second with the GRSniper), moved the GRp1 Kerail to near my enemy's deployment zone, remove both helots (lost a Kaeltar and Makaul in the process, remade triad leaving my Kamael alone back in my deployment zone), and lost some other units in my second reactive turn, but the total removal of the bulleteer and the lost of Patsy's Haris in his active turn (Gao Rael sniper again... lost the symbiont, but won!) coupled with my leftmost chaksa crossing my leftmost lane to the enemy DZ and flaming his EVO (dodged), specialist remote (died) and palbot (died) meant he was reduced to the Fusilier Core (reformed with 4 10pts fusiliers and the Light Grenade Launcher one), and the regular machinist (the Trauma Doc died to Gao-Rael Sniper fire while killing my grp1 Kerail...) in group 1 and the EVO and a specialist remote on group 2 made him concede.

    Overall, I found the list quite agressive, with great backline support, and it was my first game controlling Tohaa (I have fought them like 6-7 times in nearly 5 years...), my only guide being a light read on your writing on the CanCon (and 4 crits in the whole game... got 2 against me, too), and by no means was a list in a style I would have designed for me, but had lots of fun anyway with it (including trying to place a name on each unit... I bought the army second-hand but for the Igao, Rasail and Gorgos, and just today bought the Kerail box and the Diplomat XD) and certainly found quite easy to insist on certain actions and risk units (trusting the Symbiont armor), but the Varuna's list was kinda light regarding power distribution.

    Certainly, my rival went for a 2 Rambo approach (the Haris, the Bulletter) and a "tower" (the Core), while I had about one brute force point (the Spitfire with MSV2 in a triad and with Symbiont and mate... quite the rambo!), the Kerails as scalpels (sharp, but with weaknesses) and exceedingly good backfield support.

    Edit: I won 10-0, by his last turn he literally hand only the 4 Fusiliers + grenade launcher, a Machinist with the Xenotech and the EVO, no command tokens and everything in his deployment zone.
     
  13. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    Very cool @xagroth . Glad you had fun with it in particular! :)
     
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