As the HATE Infinity League had lazily drifted into Season 10 for the final round. I drifted a bit on reporting these, but thought it would be good to write up this last one as it was a rather spectacular 400 points with Spec Ops and Soldiers of Fortune extras, using the new Season 10 mission Frostbyte.
I was pleased to be drawn against PeterHB, whose Imperial Service I have played a couple of times before, and who has mostly been cursed with a rampaging Hellcat ruining all his plans. In the spirit of good natured japery, I decided to not take any Hellcats, but instead two full combat groups including four Yuan Yuan drop troops - mercenaries I was allowed to take because of the Soldiers of Fortune extra.
A defensive Alguacile link, McMurrough the angry werewolf and an Iguana TAG rounded out the list. We ended up playing at Dark Sphere due to PeterHB not being free on a Wednesday for a while, and Dark Sphere having the magic power of Being Open On Tuesdays.
Unfortunately, I stuffed up deployment and the gap I left for my reserve model (the Iguana) left it slightly visible and it got smoke sniped. The Operator ejected but the Wu Ming happily stomped up the board and shot him down.
The Wu Ming link was as brutal as expected, and caused a lot of damage. Unfortunately, for me the Yuan Yuan performed so disappointingly that they haven't even merited a photo... Most missed their targets, one landed and managed to cause no damage before being gunned down.
McMurrough had another disappointing day. I think he's great but I've just not quite managed to get him to work yet.
Herein is a lesson about model placement. Here we see an Intruder HMG, sadly unconscious after a lucky critical hit in ARO. He's out of sight, because I was smart and moved him out and back again on the move that he took the crit.
So, I get a Jaguar to throw smoke over everything, bring a Tomcat doctor in as a drop troop, and heal up the Intruder. Hurrah.
But wait. Here comes a Rui Shi remote. A smoke grenade is placed. The Rui Shi can see through smoke, and as it comes around the other side of the firelane, it can see the back of the Intruder, when a smart placement would have meant I'd have got a normal shot back as the Intruder can see through smoke himself when looking in the right direction.
With the Intruder neutralised, the Rui Shi comes further forward. Oh look - neither the Jaguar nor the Tomcat are looking in any kind of useful direction if the Intruder fell. One of them should have been, even if the other was then covering the other side of the shipping containers. Sloppy and badly planned - this cost me all three models in the end!
While my Spec Ops wandered up the table and managed to, by dint of shooting people in the back with a Combi Rifle, take out two heavy infantry single handedly, it was too little too late. The Imperial Service had scored most of the points and I had lost 9-1.
PeterHB deserves some serious kudos here as he played an excellent game, using the right tools for the right jobs. Meanwhile, I made several stupid errors which compounded a likely loss into a thorough drubbing. Once the house move is done, time to get as many practice games as I can in for the new season!
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