Warhammer 40,000 Crusade Battle Report: Astra Militarum vs Adeptus Mechanicus

 

The campaign continues...

The Tallarn "Seventeenth" picked a quiet looking planet to 'invade' to try and get some level of redemption for their absolutely terrible showing in the campaign so far. Unfortunately, their efforts to find an isolated spot to set up a base were interrupted by having picked a spot a lost force of Skitarii were searching to try and find some kind of radio to communicate with their higher ups.

We were playing a custom mission, with multiple locations to search for the "real" objective with a dice roll. You could score any objective before the real objective was found, but the moment the real objective was found, that was the only point to score.

Of course, the Skitarii immediately found their radio on the objective on the furthest left flank, that was hardest for my troops to reach...

In the centre, the Leman Russ Executioner sought to take out the Skitarii transport to stop it reinforcing the main objective.

While the Hellhound put the hurt on the Skitarii holding the objectives, the Armoured Sentinels tried to take some wounds off the the Onager Dunecrawler.

In the centre, my disgraced commander managed to prove himself to his troops by holding the centre for a brief moment before being absolutely wrecked by killer servitors.

The right flank was over-run by Rust Stalkers killing everyone in sight.

While the Hellhound was attacked by a Mechanicus walker, it wasn't able to cause much damage.

As the Onager's super death ray thing picked off one tank at a time, the walker fled fighting the Hellhound to charge into the Sentinels that were bullying the surviving Skitarii, and managed to swing the fight in favour of the Mechanicus.

With few Guard survivors, but honour restored to a couple of disgraced units, the Astra Militarum withdrew from the field, leaving the Skitarii delighted to have finally recovered a working radio...

Infinity Battle Report: Clicking with Combined Army

 

A little while back I knocked together a quick Combined Army list to get a feel for the faction. It wasn't particular complicated, just a standard set of support pieces built around the Charontid HMG and the Anathematic Hacker.

We were practicing Unmasking ahead of Red Star Blues, and my opponent (who wasn't playing the tournament as they are TOing) brought their Acontecimento force. The main threats were a Tigbalang and a Knight of Montesa.

I was lucky enough to take out the Tikbalang due to it being a little bit over-extended, at which point I started throwing warbands at the engineer who'd come forward to push a button until one of them succeeded.

On a cheeky off chance, I had my Dartok speculatively fire a Pitcher into the Montesa, and managed to successfully isolate it. It was later able to reset itself out of it, but it certainly stopped a rampage early on!

In the end, I started pushing my Anathematic forward to push some buttons and target some decoys, but by this point I'd lost too many models for it to have enough orders to get forward and get the job done.

Overall, it was a slightly unusual game, in that I managed to outgun a PanOceania force in many ways, but my opponent managed to stay true to the mission and get more of the objectives than I did! While I wasn't successful, it felt to me like the Combined Army really clicked for me as a faction and a lot of the models who have a particular role were doing well in their roles individually. I need to spend a bit more time understanding how they work together in a force, but all in all I'm very happy that I'm headed in the right direction.

Going places and doing things?

 

So, it's been a pretty busy week, all told. I've been Going Out and Doing Things an awful lot, which meant that I haven't had a huge amount of time to get any hobby done. I did manage to do a bunch of tidying on the hobby desk so it didn't look quite this bad, but I think it's deteriorated again as I sorted my KR cases to work out what models I was taking out and how I was packing them.

Early in the week I did grab a few of my Combined army models who needed basing material adding to get that done.

The basing material takes a long while to dry, so getting it done early means that when the weather breaks to allow some undercoating, they can be ready to go.

Wednesday night I had a practice game for Saturday's tournament. I took a bunch of profiles I haven't tried before to see if they were good. My opponent hadn't played in a while, but brought a pretty tasty Tohaa list, and some models didn't survive long enough for me to determine if they're good or not. One that did was the Rindak, a heavy infantry paramedic who can deploy into the midfield. He's pretty tough, and while he was eventually taken out, he's a tough nut to crack and I'm keen to try him out again.

The other model I tried out was the Caskuda I'd just assembled. It has to drop in, and with the table we had and not having been able to clear reaction pieces, I had nowhere good to drop it in. I went after the sniper who was pinning me down, but it just got exploded by reactions before it could really do anything.

Saturday was Red Star Blues at HATE (Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts). It was a three round tournament with Frontline, Unmasking and Firefight. I was bringing my vanilla Combined again. I'll write up what happened later - I've got other blog posts planned for this week, but maybe next week?

Sunday was a Bring and Buy at HATE. I went up to the storage unit and picked up a bunch of stuff I'd packed up previously before getting a cab down to the club.

It was a pretty productive day clearing things out. I sold enough bits and pieces to cover the cab ride from the storage unit and the cab ride home, so its a net success. It was good to get back to selling things.

This many things to do in a week was massively exhausting. It was all fun and productive, but also A Lot. I definitely feel like a bit of a rest after all that!