This week's Shasvastii practice game pulled up "Mindwipe" on the random generator. This isn't a popular mission, but I was up for giving it a go. My opponent was bringing Ramah Task Force.
I'd won the first turn, so wanted to set up pressing the button on a console securely. I had my fancy hacker (a Shrouded Killer Hacker) hiding near the button, with a Speculo Killer tucked into a nook where she could see the console as well.
This plan worked very clearly. The Speculo threw smoke over the console then re-impersonated, then the Killer Hacker came up, pushed the button within the smoke, then re-camoed and headed off to a new hiding spot.
The rogue AI was hiding in the most defended console, in the centre of my opponent's deployment. I used my remaining orders to walk up the Speculo Minelayer to drop another mine in the most awkward spot possible, then again re-camoed.
My opponent sensibly and efficiently cleared the mine, discovered and killed the Shrouded Minelayer, then went to focus on the mission. He brought up a Hunzakut who cleared a Taigha creature before making his way to the console, crawling the last part of the way to stay out of sight of the mine laid on the other side of it, while smoke kept my Q-Drone from impeding the button pushing.
Leila Sharif decided that E/M mining the entire console building was a reasonable and proportionate thing to do. It was a good way of stopping any sneaky rush for the server.
I decided to send my Paramedic Seed Soldier to do my classified with my opponent's HVT. Pesky repeaters got him targeted, then I just couldn't pass a WIP check! At the time, I thought I'd got my classified, but as I was heading home, I realised I'd counted an order in the wrong pool, so texted my opponent to Correct the Record.
I sent my Uberhacker to try and get the console, but hadn't noticed a model who could discover them, which proceeded to leave him sitting in the Repeater network. Checking the Mindwipe special hacking programme, it's burst 1 and D/A, so I was certain it would be multiple orders to clear it - so I went after the hackers first, and the Shrouded got melted.
My opponent made some consolidating moves, then brought on a Hakim, who was able to take out the Q drone, but there weren't quite enough orders for him to get back anywhere safe, or reach the console. That said, it took me some orders to bring my Mentor around to clear the Hakim and for my Med Tech to repair the Q Drone.
I sent Sheskiin in to try and score some servers. Not able to fight through to the main server, I decided on taking out one of the others - I did so, but she got Flash Pulsed as she did, meaning I put my remaining orders into defending my own servers.
The Ramah fireteam was able to make their way up and destroy my centre server, which was also a decoy. My opponent had gotten muddled after picking the server to my left, but we looked back and determined that he wouldn't have had the orders to successfully hit the Rogue AI server.
With my classified actually unscored, this left us both scored with one console and one decoy server apiece. This felt right for such a close, cagey game. I don't hate this mission, but can see how you need to design your list a lot for it, and it favours the player going first heavily. In particular, locking out a console for your opponent is incredibly tough on whoever is going second.
Still, I feel like I'm getting a good cross section of Shasvastii units, and am starting to get a good idea of what I get on with running in this edition.
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