There's been a real batrep drought on here recently, so I'm going to try my hand at writing some and hope to get the ball rolling. I'm going to aim for readability by focusing on the overall strategy and tactics of the battles without going into a lot of detail about individual orders spent. I hope the format will work well, but it's my first time writing batreps so we'll see how it goes! The Old Dominion Disagreement (ODD) is a tournament based out of Virginia. I would never have been able to make the time to attend in person, but because of the pandemic the tournament was held on Tabletop Simulator. So, thanks Covid I guess? Anyway, despite the circumstances I was very happy to be able to play in this fantastic tournament. I think in non-pandemic years it's usually a Satellite, in any case there was a great turnout with 68 players attending. Many thanks to the TOs @Myomer and @rushputin ! I ended up with three 4-point wins, one 2-point loss, and one 0-point loss, which put me at around 14th place (as of this writing I'm not sure if all the results have been uploaded so that may change slightly). I'll post batreps for each of the five rounds below. I hope to have the first one done this evening, and the rest over the course of the next couple of days. Stay tuned :-)
Lists ODD General ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 1 ASAWIRA AP Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 33) ASAWIRA (Doctor [+3]) AP Rifle, Light Shotgun ( | MediKit) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 36) ASAWIRA AP Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 39) GHULAM (NCO) Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 15) BARID (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device [UPGRADE: Trinity (-3)]) Rifle, Pitcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) YARA HADDAD (Strategic Deployment) AP Marksman Rifle / Heavy Pistol(+1B), CC Weapon. (0 | 28) MUYIB (Tactical Awareness, X Visor) Heavy Rocket Launcher, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 25) ASAWIRA (Lieutenant) AP Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 32) GHULAM (Doctor [+3]) Rifle, Light Shotgun ( | MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) FIDAY Rifle, Light Shotgun, Shock Mines, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 27) GROUP 2 1 4 1 FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) DAYLAMI (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 6) DAYLAMI (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 6) DAYLAMI (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 6) MUTTAWI'AH Boarding Shotgun, E/Marat, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 9) 4 SWC | 299 Points Open in Infinity Army This is my main list, used for four of the five missions. The plan is… not subtle. Basically I want to test a theory that Asawiras are incredibly hard to kill, and can therefore be played aggressively. I plan to spend most of my orders on the Asawira haris, which will move into the midfield as soon as possible, killing anything it can find and doing objectives with the Doctor. It will bunker down in a defensive spot, overwatched by Daylamis, and dare the opponent to come dig it out. On turns two and three I should have Asawiras already in the midfield, ready to murder everyone and do the rest of the objectives. The Mutt is there primarily to support the haris with smoke, and to give me something to spend my group 2 orders on. The core link provides utility – Barid with pitcher to take out enemy hackers, smoke to block AROs, MSV2 + smoke to kill tough targets, Muyib HRL for my own AROs, and a defensible Lt. The link is very fragile despite having an Asawira in it, so I want to keep it back near my dz if possible. But if necessary, it can also be a second attack vector to outflank anything that pins down the haris. Normally, I want to deploy one fireteam on each flank. The Fiday does Fiday things. In particular, it’s my best hope for dealing with MSV2 snipers, which are a weakness of this list, and of Hassassins generally. It's also useful to be able to do some damage if I go first and my opponent turtles. ODD Panic room ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 1 ASAWIRA AP Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 33) ASAWIRA (Doctor [+3]) AP Rifle, Light Shotgun ( | MediKit) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 36) ASAWIRA AP Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 39) GHULAM (NCO) Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 15) BARID (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device [UPGRADE: Trinity (-3)]) Rifle, Pitcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) MUYIB (Tactical Awareness, X Visor) Heavy Rocket Launcher, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 25) ASAWIRA AP Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 33) YARA HADDAD AP Marksman Rifle / Heavy Pistol(+1B), CC Weapon. (0 | 25) GHULAM (Lieutenant [+1 Command Token]) Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) FARZAN (Chain of Command) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 28) GROUP 2 2 3 1 FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) DAYLAMI (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 6) DAYLAMI (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 6) MUTTAWI'AH Boarding Shotgun, E/Marat, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 9) KAMEEL (Deactivator, Repeater) ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 8) 4 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army This is my list for Panic Room. Very similar idea, but I've swapped out units that don't like Confused Deployment. Asawiras are of course ideal for putting in the objective room.
Round 1 - Panic Room Map Weird table. One side is incredibly dense, the other is an open plain. I don’t have anything that wants to fight on the open side, so I expect I’ll have to concentrate all my forces on the dense side and hope for the best. Opponent My opponent is playing vanilla O12, with a Gamma HMG, Gangbuster KHD, and Razor as the main attack pieces. He also has three hackers and a swarm of repeater bots, which my Asawiras aren’t very happy to see. On the other hand, I’m happy to see so many points invested in the Gamma, which won’t perform at full potential on this table provided I stick to the dense side. Deployment My opponent wins the roll and chooses first turn. He deploys an Epsilon sniper covering the open side of the table, which just confirms that I’ll be playing entirely on the dense side. Most of his forces also go on the dense side. The Gangbuster passes its confused deployment roll but the Razor, fortunately, fails. I cram both my links and my mutt together on the dense side of the board. First round My opponent spends his first turn moving units up to escape the creeping plague zone, without engaging me at all. With all those hackers and repeaters, the midfield isn't safe for my Asawira haris. Instead, the core link goes on the attack. The Barid takes out a hacker with his pitcher, and I kill some repeater bots, hoping to clear the way for the Asawiras on turn two. I also clear a mine and the Gangbuster’s madtraps. The core is left hanging in the midfield, where I expect heavy casualties, but the board is so dense that I hope it will take my opponent a lot of orders to get the job done. I cancel the team and coordinate them into suppression, and move the Mutt up to guard the easiest approach to them. Second round As expected, my opponent kills Yara, the Muyib, and the Barid. Fortunately, I was right that doing so would take most of his order pool. He moves the Razor and Gangbuster into the objective room. Having winnowed the hackers and repeaters as much as possible, it's Asawira time. The haris moves up, killing targets of opportunity with the Spitfire as it goes. I make a plan to carefully slide the haris into the objective room, fighting relevant AROs one by one while staying out of hacking range. By staying prone, I can avoid fighting the Epsilon at all. Then I have an attention-span lapse, ignore my plan, and charge the spitfire in to fight the Epsilon, eating about four AROs at once. When the smoke clears, the spitfire is wounded and isolated, and the Epsilon is still standing. Ok then. I sheepishly spend the rest of my turn using the Asawira doctor to carry out the original plan, though I don't have the orders left to kill as much as I would have liked. Still, I’ve now got two Asawiras in the room, which nets me 2 OP and gives my opponent a tough roadblock for his third turn. Third round Low on orders, my opponent opts to coordinate his remaining troopers to swarm into the room, hoping to overwhelm me with numbers. It’s a reasonable plan, but I have enough AROs looking into the room to keep it from working. I lose the Asawira spitfire, but the Gamma dies to concentrated fire from suppression and a panzerfaust, and that’s the game. My third turn is mop-up. The Mutt kills the Epsilon, giving my remaining two Asawiras free reign to converge on the room, where they murder the Razor in CC. A second CC kill gives me my Predator classified, for a final score of 8-0. Post-mortem There’s been a lot of talk about the first-turn advantage in N4 – if first player can hit hard enough to cripple his opponent, he can win on his first turn. But the flip side of that is that if first player doesn’t do enough damage, he can lose on his first turn. You can’t afford to leave your opponent with an intact army and three turns to use it. Panic Room is a particularly difficult mission for first player. 8” deployment zones and confused deployment make it very hard to do much damage on turn one. In short, I think my opponent’s choice to take first turn did more to win me the game than any plays I made. When his Razor failed its deployment roll, he had no way to engage me on turn one and had to waste the turn moving up his units – which only made them more vulnerable to counterattack. At that point, I didn’t need to make any fancy plays – all I had to do was spend three turns steadily attacking.
Round 2 - Firefight Map A funny-looking map, but it doesn’t actually play all that strangely. The middle plateau is sort of separated from the ground below, but pieces standing on side buildings are tall enough to see onto the plateau, so the separation isn’t as big as it might seem at first glace. Opponent I’m facing Ramah. There’s a Nahab, a Mukhtar Red Fury, a Zhayedan HMG, Yara, and Carmen for attacking, and a TR bot for AROs. There’s also a Ghulam core link which probably won’t do much other than giving Yara link bonuses. The core includes his obvious lieutenant Ghulam – a heavy price to pay for a fifth command token. To me it looks like a typical Ramah list, but that may be because I've played quite a few games against this opponent and am used his list-building approach. The TR bot is unexpected, but makes sense. Ramah doesn’t have a lot of ARO options to choose from. Deployment I win the game when I win the initiative roll, I think. Firefight favours first player, and Ramah is famously weak on defense, so I choose first turn and expect a comfortable game. I deploy the core link on the central to protect it from Nahabs. The Asawira haris goes on the ground as far forward as possible, ready to attack. My opponent puts an MSV2 Mukhtar on the plateau in suppressive fire with a command token. This does a pretty good job of pinning down my core link, but it leaves me with a full ten orders to spend on turn one. His core link hides in a building guarded by his TR bot on the roof. I deploy my reserve Fiday with easy approach to his lieutenant. My opponent counter-deploys Carmen to block the approach. Probably a necessary play, but if I can’t kill the Lt, I’ll be happy enough to kill Carmen instead. First turn Carmen can trivially murder Asawiras in her active turn, so I need to eliminate her before I can move them up. The Fiday does the job with a shotgun template suicide attack, also catching a Ghulam. The coast is clear, and the Asawiras run forward, using a couple of cautious moves to bypass the TR bot. 6-2 movement and Stealth make for really effective cautious moves. The spitfire could also outshoot the bot, but bypassing it seems more efficient. The Asawiras proceed to shred the opposing backline, killing two flashbots, Leila Sharif, and two Ghulams including the lieutenant. They end the turn in relatively vulnerable spots in the opposing DZ, but my opponent is in loss of lieutenant and doesn’t have the orders to root them out. Second and third turns The rest is mop-up. The Asawiras finish killing the opposing order pool, and do a couple of classifieds. My opponent doesn’t have enough orders to do much, although he does score two classifieds, for a final score of 8-2. I completely forget to poke a panoply for a ninth point. Post-mortem I think my opponent underestimated the Asawira haris, and deployed his core link too close to them. If he’d put it diagonally across from them, I wouldn’t have had the orders to get them to his lieutenant on turn 1. On the other hand, the Fiday could probably still have done the job. We also forgot about Localized Decompression. Terrain zones could have slowed the Asawiras’ charge somewhat. Regardless, honestly I’m not sure that Ramah ever had a chance when going second in Firefight. A TR bot by itself just isn’t enough to stop an alpha strike, and Ramah doesn’t have any other decent defense.
Round 3 – Power Pack Map Sort of a standard map, not much to say about it. Opponent My opponent is a Tohaa with a lot of triads even by Tohaa standards. Sukuel ML triad and Draal triad on ARO, Taquel spitfire and Sukuel HMG triads to attack, and a liberal sprinkling of scary Makauls. There’s also a second Taquel, which turns out to be a Kriigel in disguise. Deployment My opponent wins the roll and chooses deployment, which is probably the right call in Power Pack. I take first turn. I’m not willing to suffer a deployment-optimized alpha strike, even though the mission is famous for strongly favouring second player. My plan for this list has always been to deploy the core link on one flank and the haris and Mutt on the other. Power Pack’s funny deployment rules make that basically mandatory. Power Pack deployment zones can also be really nice for Fidays. My reserve deploys at the far edge of the table, ready to get into my opponent’s backline on one side. My opponent's reserve is a Kaauri, but biometric visors aren’t actually very useful for stopping Fidays in their active turn. First turn - HB Normally I’d like to suicide the Fiday against an important target, but this time all the good targets have symbioarmor. Instead, the Fiday gets into the backline, kills a cheerleader, drops a mine, and goes back into IMP state. Using smoke from the Mutt, the Asawira haris gets into good range to fight a Sukuel ML that has me pinned down. I lose the first f2f but tank the armour, then remove the Sukuel with subsequent orders. I’d like the Asawiras to continue into the midfield, but Makauls would tear them apart up there. I retreat them to the defensive spot they started in. I’ve only killed two or three units, but I’m happy the ML is gone, and my Fiday is in a good spot. I think those Makauls are going to do some damage, though. First turn – Tohaa My opponent gets rid of the Fiday, but loses two units to a mine and a shotgun template in the process. I expect an attack run with Makauls, using Eclipse to get past my Daylami AROs. Instead, my opponent spends most of his turn trying to discover Daylamis, but fails every roll. Eventually, a Makaul tries an attack run, but doesn’t have enough orders to do any damage and is killed by an ARO. I don’t have enough experience with Tohaa to judge whether my opponent was right to try to take out the Daylamis first. It didn’t work this time, but if he’d passed some early discover rolls things might have gone differently. In any case, this is the turn that won me the game – my opponent lost three units on his turn while only killing one of mine, and you can’t come back from that. Second turn and third With an almost full order pool and the ML ARO gone, my core link advances. Yara clears the entire right side of the board, leaving my opponent just outside of retreat, the doctor push a button, and the link claims the midfield. My opponent doesn’t have the orders to do anything on his turn, so my third turn is spent picking up points, for an eventual score of 8-0. The missing two points would have been for controlling the opposing console on rounds 1 and 2 – not an objective worth trying for anyway. Post-mortem The Asawira haris didn’t really shine this time. Killing the ML and surviving an unlucky hit was nice, of course, but plentiful Makauls negated most of the Asawira advantage. The Daylamis were the real heroes of this game – they won just by standing around shrugging off discover rolls. It was frustrating for my opponent not to be able to discover+shoot, since all his units were in fireteams. I hope CB fixes that rule, as I think it’s an oversight. That said, in this case I don’t think it would have mattered since he failed all his discover rolls anyway. The game would have been a lot closer if the discover results had been more average. Power Pack seems like a really tough mission for Tohaa. The saturation zone basically negates triads. In particular, the Sukuel ML would have been a lot scarier if it had had two burst.
Round 4 – Supremacy Map Map An ok map. The forests are all saturation, low viz, and difficult terrain zones, but the board is otherwise pretty open. Opponent My opponent is White Banner with a Shangji HMG fireteam, 3 Guilangs, a Tiger Soldier, and two Long Yas on ARO. Luckily, I figure out early on that he doesn’t have a Hundun so I can move pretty freely. Deployment My opponent wins the roll and chooses deployment, so I take first turn. One fireteam on each flank with the Mutt supporting the Asawira, as per the plan. I see a juicy Zhanshi fireteam conga line, and deploy my reserve Fiday accordingly. Turn 1 The Fiday walks to the backline and suicide shotguns a couple of Zanshi fireteam members. A Long Ya breaks camo to try to ARO the Fiday, but dies to a shotgun template for its trouble. A good start. Unfortunately I don’t get much else done, because I forget about a midfield repeater and my Asawira doctor gets isolated almost immediately. I turn to the other side of the table, using my remaining orders to advance the core link a bit in preparation for a turn two push. I pass turn, and discover that my opponent is in loss of lieutenant! Turns out I got lucky with one of those Zanshis. My opponents gets nothing done on turn 1, and I’m feeling pretty confident. Turn 2 My core link goes on a rampage. They push two buttons, kill a Long Ya, throw a repeater and Trinity a Zanshi hacker, then end the turn in one of my opponent’s quadrants. On the other side of the board, the Mutt kills a Guilang. My opponent is in rough shape. He has 6 orders left… which he uses to excellent effect! A Guilang sticks a mine on my fireteam, then a Tiger Soldier walks on and spitfires my Asawira lt. The Asawira fails his dodge, takes 3 wounds, and dies along with most of the fireteam thanks to the mine. The Tiger also secures one of my quadrants, scoring him 2 OP for the end of the round. Turn 3 Ok, now it’s my turn to be in loss of lieutenant with most of my army gone. I move the remaining two Asawiras up, but it isn’t enough and my opponent is able to keep the majority of zones. In the end, I lose 5-6. I poked lots of consoles, we both scored classifieds, by my opponent scored zones for two rounds. Post-mortem My first mistake was to lose focus and run my Asawira straight into a repeater. I knew the repeater was there, but had another attention-span lapse. My second, bigger mistake was to get flustered and abandon the plan. The Asawira haris was supposed to move into my opponent’s quadrant and hunker down. I still could have done that with the remaining two Asawiras, scoring zones and forcing my opponent to deal with them. There was no reason to switch to the Core link when I know full well that it’s too fragile to leave in the midfield. It’s no surprise that a well-executed attack was able to wipe out the link. In the new Season 12 scoring, a 6-5 loss is still two OP for me. That felt reasonable in this case. My opponent earned the win – he definitely played better than I did – but I still felt like I got a lot done and the game felt very close.
Round 5 – Supplies Map and opponent The map is incredibly open. My opponent is vanilla Aleph, and I’m worried that Atalanta could pin down my entire army. There’s a point in one of the DZs where she’d be able to see all the midfield and a good chunk of the enemy DZ, with no way to approach within 24” even using cautious movement. There isn’t even a ladder for a Fiday to get to her. Deployment I win the Lt roll and choose deployment, so that I can choose the side where I don’t want to see Atalanta deployed. More broadly, I want to see where his snipers are so that I can try to deploy around them. All my fears turn out to have been baseless. My opponent is playing Aleph camo spam – I didn’t know that was a thing. His only ARO piece is a TR bot, which goes on the tall roof in the middle. The rest of his list is skirmishers and a Dakini HMG. There are also some conspicuous gaps. I put my core link on the center roof to fight the TR bot, provide Muyib AROs, and to keep it safe in case his reserve is Achilles (it isn’t.) The Asawira haris goes on my right, ready to do its thing. The Fiday goes next to the TR bot. Turn 1 My opponent spends most of his turn removing my Muyib and Fiday. I try to protect the Fiday by revealing two of my Daylamis to panzerfaust his TR bot during its discover+shoot. Unfortunately the bot survives, and the Daylamis die shortly thereafter to concentrated HMG fire. Nonetheless, I start my turn in a solid position. Yara easily removes the TR bot by shooting it through smoke, and also deletes a skirmisher that sticks it head out. The Asawira haris rockets into the midfield, and I see an opportunity to clear the entire right flank. That seems like a good way to keep the haris safe, so I move past the objective to wipe out all the skirmishers on the right-hand side of the board. That doesn’t leave me enough orders to reposition the Asawiras much, but I figure they’ll be ok since there’s nothing left on that flank except possible drop troops. Turn 2 So, I underestimated the drop troop threat. My opponent makes an excellent play, walking on a Garuda FO. It gets one shot into an Asawira’s back arc, which it uses to fire its FO beam. That may be the first time I’ve ever seen an FO actually use its ability. The Asawira is targeted, and guided missiles start raining down. The Garuda mops up with its combi, leaving the entire haris dead. Ouch! With no better option, I climb my core link down to ground level. I have to judge where to leave it – far enough back to be safe, but far enough forward to score objectives on my third turn. Turn 3 I misjudged the safe position for my core link. To be fair, if I’d left it further back I might just have had no play on turn 3. As it is, I left it too far forward and most of the link gets wiped out by a skirmisher’s shotgun, leaving me in retreat for a 1-6 loss. Postmortem I made two big mistakes. The first was to try to protect my Fiday by revealing two Daylamis. The Fiday was dead anyway, and Yara was going to easily kill the TR bot on my turn. Daylamis may be only 6 points, but there’s still very important to overwatch the Asawiras in the midfield. One of them would have been in a great spot to stop that Garuda. Wasting them early left the haris vulnerable. Second, I pushed the haris too far forward. There was no need to kill extra skirmishers – I should have grabbed a supply box and retreated slightly into a more defensible position. The Asawiras ought to have been in better cover, outside missile template range of each other, and ideally coordinated into suppression.
Final thoughts I like this list paradigm, and definitely want to keep using it. My losses came from my misplays - in both cases, I feel like the list would have won if I'd played better. Asawiras are very, very good. I thought that I would suffer from the lack of long-range guns, but it wasn't an issue in any of my games (although I was lucky not to face any snipers in round 5!) As always, losing is more interesting than winning. I enjoyed all five games, but rounds 4 and 5 were particularly fun. I can try to tease out some lessons from those games: I need to stick to the plan In round 4, I moved up my core link when I had planned to move up my haris. In round 5, I got caught up in murder when I had planned to hunker down my haris in a defensible spot. Those mistakes cost me both games. I need to conserve Daylamis I'm actually pretty good at this one, so it's disappointing that I dropped the ball in round 5. Daylamis are there to not reveal. I need to learn more about safe fireteam positioning In game 4, my core got wiped out, and in game 5, my haris got wiped out. I think I have a hard time judging all the potential approach angles and making sure they're covered, as well as positioning to minimize multi-target templates. I need to think about how to study this aspect of the game effectively. If anyone knows of any helpful resources on the topic, please post them! I need to take drop troops seriously My nemeses in games 4 and 5 were a Tiger Soldier and a Garuda. In both cases, I knew my opponent had drop troops waiting, but I didn't defend against them effectively. I need to take those threats more seriously when setting up for my reactive turn. This was my first major tournament, and I'm quite happy to have come 14th out of 68. A very enjoyable tournament! I hope these batreps are helpful. I enjoyed writing them, and it helped me think about my games. I may write more for future events if folks find them interesting.
Cheers man. and 14 out of 68 ain't to shabby. def when a 6-5 is such a stupidly close game score wise!
It's time to think about list design. The Asawira Haris was 108 points all in one place. The plan was that it would set up shop in the midfield and be very difficult to remove. Did it accomplish that goal? - In game 1, it did, but not until the second round. And Panic Room is kind of a special case. - In game 2, it did, but only because my opponent was in LoL so I could leave the Asawiras relatively exposed. - In game 3, it didn't. The Spitfire did good work, but basically from its starting position. - In game 4, it probably could have if I'd stuck to the plan. - In game 5, it tried and failed. It probably would have worked if I'd advanced slightly less far. Not a bad record, but not amazing either. I'm considering switching to a Duo with a Spitfire Asawira and a cheaper specialist. I could still play them aggressively and force the opponent to dig the Spitfire out of the midfield. Digging them out would be easier to do, but I'd also lose a lot less material when it happened.
