Post by dboeren on May 26, 2009 18:10:37 GMT -5
This was my first game. I found a local player to demo it for me, and I'm pretty sure he has only played solo at home as he wasn't that familiar with the game either. Despite that, it went fairly smoothly other than having to stop and look up a few rules.
We had only a very simple and small board set up to make the action fast. I played the Soviet box, he had the German box.
To my left was a large house on a hill. We counted the hill as rough terrain going up, but not going down. On the right was a second house at ground level, with a lane of about 4" between the two houses and a small wall running down (not across) the lane. I had a small hill on my end of the board looking down the lane, and further to the right was a small round bunker - basically a short wall in a full circle.
I was to deploy and go first. I put my Chumans lined up behind the house on the hill, figuring that what they needed most was to be out of LoS since they had no firearms. My Guard and officers went in the center, trying to get onto that small hill to fire down the lane.
My opponent I think agreed about LoS, he put his Emaciated behind the house on the hill too. His Wehrmacht were in the lane, the Doktor and Officer were behind the small house.
I sprinted my Chumans up closer to the house on the hill - I wanted to have the option to go around either side and I knew that our ability to cross terrain would give us the jump on the Emaciated if they dared try to scale the hill. They ambled up on the other side, also remaining hidden. My Guard moved onto the hill and fired a couple shots downrange at the Wehrmacht to no effect. As I would learn, models do not die easily in this game - most armor rolls seemed to have a 66% chance of passing and almost all models have 2 wounds. My Psi-Officer also header for the hill while the Wehrmacht returned fire and the Mad Doktor realized that he needed someone to inoculate and sprinted over to join the Wehrmacht. The German officer made a break for the bunker.
The Emaciated realized their predicament and kind of stood around uselessly so my Chumans broke sharply to the right and ran across the lane, now taking cover behind the small building. The Psi Officer (now on the small hill) fired several bursts downrange killing the Doktor and both Wehrmacht. It's looking bad for the Germans.
My force proved unable to hurt the German Officer in cover (too much armor) and sooner or later he was bound to get lucky. Moving closer into range, my Psi Officer used a psychic push to move him out of cover which allowed my two Guard to do 1 wound to him. The Officer surely wanted to regain cover but it took all his AP to kill my political officer who just got in range to throw a grenade and he surely didn't want another volley of them coming next turn.
Finally, the Chumans charged the German Officer (vaulting over the short wall) and with the +2 strength bonus from charging took him down. Realizing that they were severely outmatched, the Emaciated (who had still never really done anything useful) decided to run away and maybe link up with some more friendly forces before coming back to this village again.
So, we lost our political officer but were otherwise unharmed. I was pretty pleased with the Chumans, who effectively stalemated the Emaciated as well as finishing off the enemy officer. I was also very happy with the performance of my Psi Officer who did the majority of the killing and his Psychic Push is what enabled my Guard to score a wound against the German leader. The Guard were OK, I'm not sure how much to expect from basic troops. The biggest disappointment was the political officer who didn't really do much at all except soak up some firepower
Overall the system seemed solid and I liked the alternating squad activations. Models with higher training levels seem substantially more powerful, but I think this sort of fits with the pulp-like setting. Officers, heros, etc... are larger than life and can do Hollywood level things that elevate them above the basic troopers.
The biggest negative point right now is the minis themselves which seemed small and unimpressive. I realize that we are free to use other minis, but having cool minis really helps get people interested. Of course, it also didn't help that my opponent's German force was unpainted and his Soviets seemed like they were not given much attention and only painted in the basic "covered in paint" sense.
Right now I'm considering ordering the rulebook the next time we place a group order to further investigate the system. Then we can play a few proxy games and get a better idea of how the system works out with a full detachment.
We had only a very simple and small board set up to make the action fast. I played the Soviet box, he had the German box.
To my left was a large house on a hill. We counted the hill as rough terrain going up, but not going down. On the right was a second house at ground level, with a lane of about 4" between the two houses and a small wall running down (not across) the lane. I had a small hill on my end of the board looking down the lane, and further to the right was a small round bunker - basically a short wall in a full circle.
I was to deploy and go first. I put my Chumans lined up behind the house on the hill, figuring that what they needed most was to be out of LoS since they had no firearms. My Guard and officers went in the center, trying to get onto that small hill to fire down the lane.
My opponent I think agreed about LoS, he put his Emaciated behind the house on the hill too. His Wehrmacht were in the lane, the Doktor and Officer were behind the small house.
I sprinted my Chumans up closer to the house on the hill - I wanted to have the option to go around either side and I knew that our ability to cross terrain would give us the jump on the Emaciated if they dared try to scale the hill. They ambled up on the other side, also remaining hidden. My Guard moved onto the hill and fired a couple shots downrange at the Wehrmacht to no effect. As I would learn, models do not die easily in this game - most armor rolls seemed to have a 66% chance of passing and almost all models have 2 wounds. My Psi-Officer also header for the hill while the Wehrmacht returned fire and the Mad Doktor realized that he needed someone to inoculate and sprinted over to join the Wehrmacht. The German officer made a break for the bunker.
The Emaciated realized their predicament and kind of stood around uselessly so my Chumans broke sharply to the right and ran across the lane, now taking cover behind the small building. The Psi Officer (now on the small hill) fired several bursts downrange killing the Doktor and both Wehrmacht. It's looking bad for the Germans.
My force proved unable to hurt the German Officer in cover (too much armor) and sooner or later he was bound to get lucky. Moving closer into range, my Psi Officer used a psychic push to move him out of cover which allowed my two Guard to do 1 wound to him. The Officer surely wanted to regain cover but it took all his AP to kill my political officer who just got in range to throw a grenade and he surely didn't want another volley of them coming next turn.
Finally, the Chumans charged the German Officer (vaulting over the short wall) and with the +2 strength bonus from charging took him down. Realizing that they were severely outmatched, the Emaciated (who had still never really done anything useful) decided to run away and maybe link up with some more friendly forces before coming back to this village again.
So, we lost our political officer but were otherwise unharmed. I was pretty pleased with the Chumans, who effectively stalemated the Emaciated as well as finishing off the enemy officer. I was also very happy with the performance of my Psi Officer who did the majority of the killing and his Psychic Push is what enabled my Guard to score a wound against the German leader. The Guard were OK, I'm not sure how much to expect from basic troops. The biggest disappointment was the political officer who didn't really do much at all except soak up some firepower
Overall the system seemed solid and I liked the alternating squad activations. Models with higher training levels seem substantially more powerful, but I think this sort of fits with the pulp-like setting. Officers, heros, etc... are larger than life and can do Hollywood level things that elevate them above the basic troopers.
The biggest negative point right now is the minis themselves which seemed small and unimpressive. I realize that we are free to use other minis, but having cool minis really helps get people interested. Of course, it also didn't help that my opponent's German force was unpainted and his Soviets seemed like they were not given much attention and only painted in the basic "covered in paint" sense.
Right now I'm considering ordering the rulebook the next time we place a group order to further investigate the system. Then we can play a few proxy games and get a better idea of how the system works out with a full detachment.
