Infinity League: Druze vs US Ariadna - The Grid

With only a few games to go, I had another game for the HATE Infinity League a while back. This time it was "The Grid" against US Ariadna.

For those who don't know the mission - there are nine antennae on the field. You want to scan them - either by having any specialist get into base to base and pass a roll, or by having a Forward Observer complete a scan on them at range.

If you scan one your opponent has scanned, it flips to you.

From the second turn onwards, you can blow the antennae up, but only if you've already scanned them and they're currently flipped to you. Destroyed ones still count as scanned. 4 points for having scanned more, 4 points for having destroyed more of the three next to your opponent's deployment zone than they have destroyed your three (I know, I know) and 2 points for killing a "Designated Target" non com deployed by your opponent.

US Ariadna have lacked an update for a while now, so my main worry was their infamous "Inferior Infiltrating Grunts" trick, where there's a small chance one of their well armoured scrubs with a heavy flamethrower ends up right up your nose by your deployment zone and will set everyone on fire if you so much as sneeze.

Here, we can see Saito Togan's hidden deployment, off to the right of the board to try and snag a box in the mid game.

Here you can see my "terrified of flamethrowers" deployment. My link is scattered off to the left, a few models cower in the shadow of the centre buildings, and a couple more are over by the right hand shipping containers.

In the hope of trying to minimise what the US can do in their first turn, I put a linked missile launcher remote up on the roof of a building with a reasonable sight line down that side of the field.

For reference, both of the scary flamethrowers fail their infiltration roll and end up back in the deployment zone.

The deployment is a bit of a refused flank, with the bulk of the US Ariadna on his left flank and the bulk of my firepower on my left flank.

A couple of angry werewolves use smoke to get up to my designated target who proceeds to dodge like anything and avoid being mauled to death...

He runs a bike up to try and take down the designated target - they too fail.

I manage to take out the bike and injure one of the werewolves, and push a bunch of buttons on my side of the table and in the centre.

One of my Forward Observers makes a run to his designated target and takes it out...

But then it all goes a bit wrong. Thinking smart, the US player blows up two of the three antennae on his side of the field. I can observe and blow up the one remaining one - and do so, but all he needs now is to get two destroyed on my side of the field and I can't catch him up.

I'm on the back foot and can't really defend my right flank and centre at all well because my main shooting has pushed up the left flank already.

I make a last valiant effort to push up and get as many antennae flipped as possible...

But he manages to destroy two on my side, then casually flips more than I can get back, and finish off that pesky civilian, leaving the final score a 10-2 defeat for me.

I was thoroughly outplayed here. The fear of the flamethrowers meant I hadn't left enough defence out to do much about his push down my right flank. The denial plan worked excellently and I hadn't got anything in place to try anything as clever.

I've not played the Grid in a while, and it's been heavily FAQed since I last played it, meaning I really hadn't got the hang of the mission. It's a weird little puzzler, and I'm still trying to work out the best strategy to get it done.