More Infinite HATE: Infinity Battle Report vs Neoterrans

I recently pottered down to HATE again to get a game of Infinity again. This time the mission was Frontline, and my opponent was playing the Neoterran Capitaline Army.

I placed my HVT in a nicely awkward spot behind a storage container, with a Hidden Deployment Spektr next to her. He was a forward observer, in case I needed an extra specialist up there.

On the left flank, we had my Mobile Brigada Lieutenant, a Grenzer Sniper, in a much less aggressive but no less annoying position, and the ever awkward Pi-Well.

The right flank was mostly intended as area denial on my HVT - an Interventor with Killer Hacking Device and Lunokhod Sputnik should be quite capable of stopping anyone getting too close.

The Neoterrans dropped some horrible forward deploying remote with an Auxbot way too close to my Camo Prowler for me to be happy. (His bot is in the top left quarter, by the pedestrian crossing, while the Prowler skulks on the left hand side of the shipping container directly below that.)

To counter, I dropped in my Total Reaction remote half behind a shipping container, with a clear view of the PanO remote. I also had a camo token up on the roof of the building in the centre, in an awesome sniping position. The camo token was actually a mine, dropped by the Zero hiding in the big square room to the north.

After a lot of nervous shuffling, the Bolt link team opened up on the TRBot, successfully taking it out.

This frees up the PanO bot to start a murderous rampage, starting off by flaming my Prowler. I declare an Engage as getting into close combat with it is probably my best chance of stopping those brutal flamethower shots from turning me to mush.

And here's a positioning mistake veteran players will recognise - Pi-Well is too close to the Prowler, and in a straight line, so will get caught by the flame, failing his dodge and losing his ODD (although he passed his armour roll!).

Complete rookie mistake - I place the Prowler facing towards my lines for no good reason, thinking that it's close combat and it doesn't matter. The PanO bot tries to walk away, the Prowler goes to smack it and messes it up, getting Electric Pulsed and immobilised with his back to the entire PanO link team.

The only redeeming moment is that someone gets in a lucky shot and takes out the AuxBot. The main remote continues on to try and take out the Mobile Brigada (I found out later he'd correctly guessed my Lieutenant), but fortunately, a lucky face to face roll has the Brigada put a nice big hole in the bot, on the far side of the board to the PanO Machinist.

Having discovered the "sniper" is in fact a mine, and wasted a bunch of orders trying to move around it before discovering the truth, the Bolt link team introduce me to the fun of "Drop Bear" thrown mines, leaving a bunch of the board inaccessible to me until the mine is dealt with.

And finally, a couple of bots and the machinist head up the field towards the HVT. One of the two is an EVO Hacker remote. I immediately get very tempted to try out this new Killer Hacking Device I have burning a hole in my list...

My turn starts in a pretty dull fashion (so no pictures) with my Grenzer nosing around a corner and drilling some holes into the TR bot on the far side of the board (up in the top right corner, for those following along at home). I also have my Engineer run back to the TRBot and get it back up and working, much to my opponent's dismay...

The Killer Hacker Interventor then throws up a Cybermask, runs up to next to the HVT, and helpfully drops out a Fast Panda. The new hacking programmes feel like selecting from a menu where everything is delicious, and I eventually settle on Red Rum.

It seems this is an excellent choice, as the EVO Hacker takes so much damage from the hacking programme that it melts into scrap, through it's extra unconscious levels to dead - and no chance for the Machinist to repair it!

PanO turn two... A Bolt with missile launcher carefully edges into position... (The PanO HVT is nestled up in the corner of those boxes, so pretty much unreachable.)

And down goes my TR bot, for good this time.

For reference: Don't just set up your Engineer out of blast radius of your bots - don't leave them there after they've patched them up, either!

(At this point, my objective of completing an Engineering roll on the HVT becomes impossible, as I hadn't brought a doctor.)

The link team then wake up and go murder the Prowler just as he's coming around.

Then the Machinist makes a brave run across the table to repair the PanO bot to injure, then finally take out my Lieutenant...

After the loss of Lieutenant turn, I take more of a pounding, losing more and more models. I manage to run the Lunokhod up the field to cause a bit of damage and try and score some points, but the Spektr gets unlucky and goes down, meaning a loss to me...

Key learning points

• Remember to be careful about model facing, even when you think it's not important
• When healing or repairing models, remember to step away again, doubly so when you know your opponent has a missile launcher
• Start working out some better offensive plans to actually kill things - dirty tricks and defence is solid, but being ground down in the casualty exchange!