The latest Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts Infinity League has just kicked off, with a massive 27 players! The honourable Riker is once again taking on organising duties. We're split into three groups of 9 players with one Mysterious Masked Stranger making sure everyone gets a game every cycle. I've been placed in the middle group, which at least reassures me I won't simply get my teeth kicked in for nine games!
My first game was against a player who's coming back to Infinity after a few months break, and this was going to be his first game with JSA. It being Firefight, though, I was taking no chances and took the first turn when I got the opportunity.
On the right flank, I placed my core link, with the E/M Light Grenade Launcher forward and the linked Brawlers a little further back. Saito Togan was in Hidden Deployment by the right hand Panoply.
On the left hand flank, I deployed a Duo of Hackers (Killer and Assault) to deal with any Heavy Infantry shenanigans, and also intended to advance and pick up the "Net Undermine" Classified.
The game started off pretty well - the HMG neutralised a couple of the JSA core link who'd been left out for AROs, then Saito revealed to throw smoke for the absolute classic "smoke trick" of an MSV2 Sniper shot to take out a Total Reaction remote that was pinning down much of the field.
At the end of my first turn I'd caused a good bit of damage, but there was still a lot of the JSA force left. I'd left out an aggressive number of ARO pieces because I was worried about being over-run by a swarm of effective close combat units.
Yojimbo, being proxied by some other bike model, charged into the teeth of a heavy flamethrower, but someone tanked the armour save and got smoke down.
He then charged forward through the smoke, again tanking the flame hit, to pin the Peacemaker down in close combat.
What appeared to be a bike mounted hacker rocketed forward to take on my sniper, so I went to shoot...
Only to discover it was a Lu Duan using a Holoprojector, which had just advanced into Heavy Flamethrower range. I also utterly whiffed my shooting so the blasted thing wasn't even scratched!
An Oniwaban then revealed and jumped into Saito Togan, who was overcome by surprise and cut neatly in half by the Monomolecular blade of the Oniwaban.
And then the Lu Duan comes around the corner and sets the link on fire, taking out my Data Tracker and HMG...
The game then got very close and serious and I didn't take any more photos. The basic summary is:
- Mushashi picked up an injured Tanko and CASEVACed him into my table half for a bonus classified point
- I was over-aggressive with my Lieutenant and got them killed when I really should have left it
- The Hacker Duo advanced up and managed to Isolate the remaining Tanko to stop it going on a killing spree, before gunning it down with a Combi in my turn
- On the final order of my last turn, my Assault Hacker ran up onto a roof to shoot a Domaru hiding at the back of the field, and he rolled a high dodge. "Well, I need double crit to take him down" - and lo, did I roll a double crit, it turned out to be his Lieutenant, winning me the game.
The final score was 5-4, with 98 and 45 points of troops left alive respectively. I scored "Killing more Troops", "More Panoplies" and "Secure the HVT" for a Classified, while he'd scored two points for the extra goal on his Classified, one for killing my Datatracker and one for his other Classified.
Definitely a win due to luck rather than skill this time around, as that final double crit changed the score from 6-5 to 5-4! A really good game, and super close. Definitely need to up my game, as the club has a lot of excellent players in it.
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