Acontecimento v Haqqislam - Acquisition

Hey folks. Had a cracking game this weekend and managed to take some photos, so thought I'd write up a battle report. Might turn this into a small, ongoing thread if I get a chance to write some more of these. Anyway, enjoy!

Scenario: Acquisition

My List:

GROUP 1 9 1
NAGA Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 30)
NAGA (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 28)
REGULAR (Sapper) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 22)
REGULAR (Sapper) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 22)
REGULAR Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 16)
REGULAR (Minelayer, Sensor) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 14)
REGULAR Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)
REGULAR Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)
REGULAR Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)
WARCOR (Aerocam) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)

GROUP 2 8
GUARDA DE ASSALTO MULTI Rifle + Heavy Flamethrower, D-Charges + AUXBOT_2 / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 49)
AUXBOT_2 Light Shotgun + Eclipse Light Grenade Launcher / Electric Pulse. (- | 6)
BAGH-MARI HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 26)
TRAUMA-DOC Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
PALBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
PALBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
MULEBOT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
MULEBOT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

6 SWC | 300 Points

Open in Infinity Army


Opposing Force:

Haqqislam (vanilla) led by Saladin. List included both a Fiday and Al-Djabel, and was split into two combat groups, the first with five regular and three irregular orders, and the second with six regular and three irregular orders. My opponent had a healthy supply of Ghazis, Daylami and infiltrating specialists to contest the midfield, but a apart from the Fidays only had a Khwarij Spitfire and Lasiq Sniper for serious gunfighting duties.


Table:


Table – show from PanO deployment table edge.

As shown, the table has two main elevation levels. Not pictured is some of the lower right corner; there is another watchtower there. It offers an elevated position, but not high enough to see across the elevated crates in the board center.


Deployment:

I won the roll and elected to set up second on the side with the watchtower. My usual rule is to not let a vanilla or hassassin Haqq list take first turn if possible, but Acquisition strongly favours second player if they can hold out until the final turn with assets in place to score, so I took the risk.


Haqq deployment.

My opponent announced that he had a Strategos 3 lieutenant and deployed broadly conservatively. Show below is the view of the board from his table edge – his left side of the board is flush up against the corner of the truck and building shown here, meaning Saladin is squirreled carefully away in the corner, protected by a naffatun, muyib with heavy rocket, and the ghazis. One of two infiltrating daylami made his way to my deployment zone edge, but the other failed, joining his regular panzerfaust friend in the enemy DZ.

With two models left in enemy reserve and the strong expectation of Fiday, I struggled to adopt any kind of formation that might be resilient to impersonating attack models. In the end I seized on the idea of using the watchtower in my deployment zone as a way of restricting possibly infiltrating deployment – the result was a sort of Fort Kickass containing a palbot, a sapper sniper, my lieutenant regular and a warcor, all placed so that there was no remaining space to place a S2 model.


Fort Kickass. To note - with the exception of the tower where everything except the sapper and the palbot are prone, I'm using regular order tokens to denote models in the prone position, and their facing.

The rest of my link team were deployed at lower elevations around the watchtower. The silhouette shown is the minelayer's antipersonnel mine. The idea was that if anything closed to eliminate a link team member, it would at least take the mine's detonation for its troubles.


The Guarda de Assalto, and incoming trouble.

Elsewhere in the DZ I had some scattered remotes on picket duty, and in about the board center behind a cargo crate along the ledge of a building I had a palbot, the Guarda de Assalto and his Auxbot.

As feared, as his reserve drops, my opponent deployed not one but two Impersonation markers (shown here – the red circles) – a Fiday and Al-Djabel both. Both were placed so that whichever group I took orders from, that Fiday would be able to lay smoke, while the other attacked directly. It was an interesting setup.

I designated the Guarda as my datatracker. My opponent designated his Khwarij.


Round One:

Off the bat, the Fiday rolled in. Al-Djabel laid smoke and crossed the footbridge to engage my Bagh-Mari HMG. Laying smoke took the bulk of his diminished order pool, but he had enough to close to melee and ruthlessly execute his opponent and re-enter impersonation.

The regular Fiday – a boarding shotgun, AP CCW variant – was less fortunate. Entirely accidentally, I'd deployed the Guarda's Auxbot to close off foot access to the Guarda himself, meaning the Fiday was forced first to engage the Auxbot before she could get to my datatracker. Forced to engage the weaker opponent, she demolished it handily, but was stunned by a flash pulse from a watching Fugazi on her way into combat, and ended her turn in no position to re-enter impersonation.

With the Fiday's attack unable to execute my datatracker, the Daylami who had succeeded his infiltration roll made his attempt. Closing to a little over 8” away, he went for broke with the panzerfaust, but was beaten in the F2F roll by the Guarda and died to a DA round from the multi rifle.

With few other offensive pieces to leverage this turn, my opponent finished up by revealing one of his camo tokens on my right flank to be a Hunzakut forward observer, who activated that console and laid a defensive mine down.

Having weathered the Fiday attack mostly intact, I set about digging myself out of my own deployment zone as best I could. The unmasked Fiday was easily dispatched, gunned down by a volley of MULTI rifle fire from the Guarda de Assalto. The bulk of the rest of the second combat group's orders were spent first trying and failing to unmask Djabel, and next trying to bait him out of impersonation by putting both the Trauma-Doc and Guarda de Assalto into suppressive fire overlooking his position. He declined to reveal himself.


Djabel waits patiently.

The rest of my left flank was locked down by a deadlock of my own creation. The position I'd taken had ample lines of fire into the enemy DZ, and I'd chosen to place everything looking at everything else to discourage coordinated panzerfaust shots into my sniper nest from my opponent.


Nobody move - snipers, the lasqiq and panzerfausts face off.

Both my snipers can clearly see both his panzerfaust daylami and his hassassin lasiq. Activating with anyone would be deadly, so I decided this deadlock would be someone's future problem. Instead, the Nagas moved to earn their pay. The left flank Naga (a forward observer) moved up to seize the console and lay a defensive mine, then re-camo (shown in the image above – more efforts to tempt out Djabel; again, he declined).

There was little more I could do on the left flank and I was satisfied with the security of models keeping an eye on the sneaky hassassin, so the remainder of my orders were spent on the right. A lone fugazi did the hero's job first and took the enemy antipersonnel mine to the face (tanking it like a champ). That flank's Naga then moved out to secure the objective; he laid down a mine then turned the corner to eliminate the enemy Hunzakut, siezed the console for himself, laid down his remaining two mines, and returned to camo.


The Naga is the leftmost token. We're playing the watchtowers as solid buildings.

With that, I passed the turn.


Round Two:

With Djabel pinned down by suppressive fire and doing a fine job just wasting my time as he was, my opponent deployed his Ghazis to retake the right flank. One made the long trek up the table through the cover of multiple smoke grenades to make the martyr's journey into the minefield I'd laid. She successfully dodged not one but both mines on two consecutive orders before engaging the Naga with an intuitive chain rifle.

She was wounded by return fire from his combi rifle, and used the remainder of her pool's orders to press her attack in the usual pick-your-poison manner, trying to force me to dodge or reset. I elected to dodge on the grounds that an isolated naga was better than a dead one, and she successfully jammed him before finally running out of orders (and keeling over at the end of turn).

Another of the camo tokens then revealed itself to be an Al-Hawwa assault hacker, who moved up to seize the console and data-scan my Naga, netting my opponent his classified objective. She wouldn't have enough orders to re-camo.


A very lonely naga.

The bulk of the rest of my opponent's turn was spent doing incidental setup and follow-up to the above attack run. A Muyib moved up to kill my Fugazi, the final camo token revealed itself to be a farzan forward observer who dropped into suppressive fire to try to cordon off the midfield, and similar. Apart from the dead Fugazi, it was more a fight over ground than the infliction of any serious casualties.

With my order pools still chiefly intact, my response was lengthy. First, the deadlock on the left flank had to be broken to clear my advance. The resulting conflict was bloody; with multiple incoming panzerfaust and sniper AROs, I lost both sapper snipers clearing out just the enemy Lasiq. However, this also absorbed the ammunition complement of both the daylamis, meaning the way was now clear to advance, at terrible cost.

Additionally, it was finally time to execute Djabel. I'd reduced him down to IMP-2 the turn previous, and with the sapper snipers not needing to move, both had been able to declare Discover+Shoot as their orders. He took no sniper fire, but these free discover rolls unmasked him, and the Guarda de Assalto ended his life before moving on to tackle the Muyib who set up overlooking the right flank.

The remainder of my orders were spent on an extremely length excursion with the left flank Naga KHD. With enemy overwatch cleared, he advanced hard up that flank, eliminating both Daylami (who were terribly position to fight back with just shotguns now that their panzerfausts had been expended), gunned down the Farzan after finding a path into her back arc to attack from outside suppressive fire, and even made it far enough around to land a volley of shots into the Al'Hawwa's back.


A long way from home. This shot is from the enemy deployment zone. That's the naga tucked into the nook at the bottom.

Along the way this turn, I'd managed to step on the neck of a Daylami to secure my Extreme Prejudice objective. The score was shifting in my favour.


Round Three:

Hemorrhaging orders and with no specialists left to claim or reclaim objectives, my opponent hunkered down to secure the central Tech-Coffin. The remaining Mutt was moved to a covering position, and the Khwarij finally advanced under cover of smoke to set up in suppressive fire overlooking the center of the table.

With the game weathered and survived, my own final turn was the standard Acquisition run on the objectives to take all I could. The isolated Naga spent his last and final order moving to re-take the right Console (the fourth time it had been activated this game) but was gunned down dead by the Khwarij for his troubles. Acontecimento Regulars spent themselves valiantly trying to clear the Kwarij and also died, but not before one of them reached the left console to control it.


Objective secured.

The Guarda de Assalto added himself to the tally of models dead at the Kwarij's hands this turn as he too rounded a corner and died to a volley of fatality spitfire rounds.


He tried.

Finally, with no models left that might manage to make it to the central console, a lonely Fugazi on my right flank made a run on the right console and – inexplicably, after the lethality of every other ARO the haqqislamite had delivered – made it there intact.


He succeeded.

With both players having scored their classifieds but both consoles activated and controlled by my troops, the game ended 5-1. Minor victory to PanOceania.


Comments and critique welcome. Haven't had much experience writing Infinity batreps, so any feedback is useful. Thanks!

 

Thanks mate.

I like VaulSC's work too. I'll have a think about your suggestion.