Ragefist Crane
I’m starting to practice for an upcoming tournament where I plan to play ISS and Tunguska, both factions I don’t have a lot of time with. I do, however, have a fair amount of time on this table:
Overview
- Mission: ITS14 Biotechvore
- Forces: Imperial Service versus Steel Phalanx (300)
- Deploy First: ISS
- First Turn: Steel Phalanx
We’re playing Biotechvore for testing purposes. I’m really interested in playing with the Crane agents, because they seem fun and I rarely see them, so I’m including one in my list. Obviously in ISS it’s a Kuang Shi core, and I’m taking advantage of the SWC savings from the Crane to take a bunch of Husong and other heavy weapons platforms. The other link is a Hsien with Zhanying and Miranda, because Miranda is my bff.
Chill Vibes
GROUP 1
8
4
CRANE AGENT (Lieutenant, X Visor) Spitfire, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 49)
DAKINI MULTI Sniper Rifle / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1.5 | 20)
GROUP 2
CELESTIAL GUARD Monitor Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 13)
KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5)
HÙSÒNG Yaókòng Heavy Machine Gun / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1 | 24)
SON-BAE Yaókòng Missile Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1.5 | 16)
WÈIBĪNG Yaókòng Combi Rifle, Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 15)
HSIEN MULTI Marksman Rifle, Nanopulser ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, AP CC Weapon. (0 | 53)
ZHÀNYING (Hacker, Hacking Device) Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0.5 | 25)
MIRANDA ASHCROFT Combi Rifle, E/Mitter(+1B), Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (0 | 25)
6 SWC | 299 Points | Open in Army | Copy Code
Jordan’s taking a step away from his usual Ariadna and is playing with his Steel Phalanx that Erik painted. He’s got a Hector/Machaon link a Hippolyta link, and a Hoplite/Scylla link with Penny. Pretty efficient and lots of tools, although I’m not a huge fan of the Hoplite Red Fury.
Jordan (sprocketgx)
HECTOR (Lieutenant [+1 Order]) Plasma Rifle, Nanopulser, Grenades ( | TinBot: Firewall [-3]) / Heavy Pistol, EXP CC Weapon. (0 | 69)
MACHAON Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0.5 | 36)
MYRMIDON Chain Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 16)
HIPPOLYTA Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Flash Pulse, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, EXP CC Weapon. (0 | 40)
HOPLITE Red Fury, Pulzar / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1 | 38)
Scylla FTO & Charybdis FTO undefined / undefined. (0.5 | 40)
PENTHESILEA Submachine Gun, Nanopulser(+1B), Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (0 | 29)
Deployment
Like the parallel game I’ve got going on,
I chose to take second turn. Jordan was kind enough to give me the table side that I needed to stay on the same physical side of the table. I set up the Husong to control the approaches to my deployment zone and held the Dakini in reserve. The Crane and Kuang Shi went on the left because I felt there were places for them to live outside of 16″ there. The Hsien would have to figure things out on the right.
One of the things I’ve really learned from playing a bunch of Biotechvore over the years is that if you don’t plan out a spot to exist in the midfield, you’re going to lose. If you get deployment, that’s really the thing you’re looking for over anything else. Jordan’s deployment was pretty straightforward. the Hoplite on the left, Hector in the middle, and Hyppolyta on the right. Penny was in the middle near an open advancement lane.
I think Jordan’s reserves were Hippolyta and the Hoplite, mine was the Dakini watching much of the table.
Turn 1
Top of 1 – Steel Phalanx
I take two orders from Jordan, mostly to negate Hector’s orders. Penny starts things off by landing some smoke to protect from the Dakini.
Next the Hoplite moves to challenge the Son Bae. It ignores the explosive ammo, but it can’t ignore a crit! The Hoplite fails both saves and the Son Bae is victorious!
Machaon throws some eclipse smoke to protect Hector, and they scoot forward out of the deployment zone.
Hector challenges one of the TR bots–I win the face to face but Hector is ARM 8 so all the bullets bounce off and he scoots into total cover.
Hippolyta moves next with her Myrmidons. She’s not going to hurt the TR bot that can see her, and I elect to dodge forward to get some free movement as she throws smoke to get out of danger for subsequent moves.
She then picks a fight with one of my Kuang Shi and drops it.
Jordan’s out of orders. We determine that everyone’s out of the zone save one Hippolyta’s Myrmidons, who goes down.
Bottom of 1 – ISS
Jordan doesn’t have much in the way of guns so I am pretty safe to move up the board while shooting. I start by challenging Penny with the Dakini MSR.
It takes a bit but I eventually drop Penny.
I then decide to challenge Hippolyta with the Crane spitfire, who annoying doesn’t have triangulated fire. I’m on something awful like 4s, but it doesn’t matter because Hippolyta crits and does a wound to the Crane before throwing smoke on the next order.
I decide to do the most fun thing possible and move into CC with the Crane against Hippolyta. Everyone gets into a big pile of bodies so I’m on burst 3 to Jordan’s burst 2:
| 43.4 | 30.5 | 26.0 |
Not the best plan, but definitely the most fun. I should have intuitive attacked or something. Anyway, we both crit, and then we roll again on the next order and Hippolyta crits and I don’t. Well, goodbye lieutenant!
I park my Kuang Shi nearby to discourage Jordan from moving Hippolyta around, and then coordinate the TR bots forward. The Hsien, Miranda, and the Zhanying make it forward as well. I lose the Weibing to some lucky shots from Scylla as I try to get a repeater in range to isolate Hector. Ah well.
We measure and one of the TR bots goes down and the Hsien takes a wound.
Turn 2
Top of 2 – Steel Phalanx
The Myrmidon starts things off by fighting one of the Dakini–obviously it wins, but the other Dakini manages to dodge out of CC. I elect to not fire with the Kuang Shi as I’d be definitely at -12 or worse.
Miranda’s in a terrible spot, but she’s in the way of Machaon and Hector, so they start firing. Machaon starts first but I manage to dodge the fire. Turns out Mim -6 works both ways!
Machaon smokes up the approach while I try and fail to isolate him with Miranda’s E/Mitter as he briefly leaves cover.
The smoke allows Machaon and Hector to make it forward safely as Jordan sends a Myrmidon to take out Miranda… unfortunately for him I can lay a nanopulsar on everyone as the Myrmidon leaves smoke, forcing a (successful) dodge by everyone.
Miranda defies all expectations
| 24.2 | 25.0 | 50.8 |
and lightsabers the Myrmidon in half. That CC Attack (-6) is no joke.
The other Myrmidon elects to not move and trigger a ton of chain rifle AROs…
so the Chardybis tries to take out Miranda with its flamethrower only to get Carbonite’d by the Zhanying in the shadow of the plane wing. Miranda dodges successfully, at least.
Bottom of 2 – ISS
Well I’m in loss, which sucks, but I’ll manage. I start by getting the Hsien out of the zone. Machaon successfully blocks further nonsense with smoke and the Chardybis resets.
I throw the remaining Dakini under the bus to take the Chardybis out with a crit from long range.
The Kuang Shi don’t do anything since they’re in chain rifle hell, so I spend everyone’s irregular fixing positioning and getting the TR bot and missile bot all the way up onto the plane wing. I’ve got one more order, the Zhanying’s, which I elect to spend on trying to Oblivion Hector. Thankfully, I succeed.
Turn 3
Top of 3 – Steel Phalanx
The Myrmidon takes its Frenzy order and tries to take out a bunch of Kuang Shi. I dodge the controller and the two most likely to be templated while templating with another Kuang Shi. Unfortunately the controller goes down with the Myrmidon, but the Kuang Shi survive.
Jordan would like to extricate Hector and Machaon from trouble, so she tries to escape the Kuang Shi around the tail section of the plane, intending to just dodge her way to victory… it doesn’t work and I land a missile, deleting her.
Jordan still has orders but elects to not spend them under the watchful eye of a TR bot and a missile bot.
Bottom of 3 – ISS
I need to get some classifieds done, but I can’t do that with Hector and Machaon right there. I throw the Son Bae under the bus to force smoke out of Machaon. Hector kills the Son Bae but the smoke is down and that’s what I need.
The Zhanying goes to work, first grabbing In Extremis Recovery…
then Data Scan off of the HVT before securing it.
I decide to attempt an intuitive attack on Hector with the Kuang Shi–maybe I’ll crit twice over two orders. Nope.
That’s game! Jordan got Predator off of the Crane and Dakini, so it’s a
8-2, 142-133 Imperial Service Victory!
Post Game Analysis
I am not a fan of the Crane spitfire–giving up on the triangulated fire/sensor toolkit is just too much, especially on this table versus Steel. Dakini MSR, unsurprisingly, performs very well. I liked the Hsien haris I had, but I’m not happy with the order pools, they feel kinda weird. I think I might try some other organizations later, but for now I’ll stick with similar lists and see how they feel.
I think one of the key problems Jordan had was just not enough guns. I’m also a little confused by the choice to move Hector into the middle of the table into a very obvious fishbowl. I imagine it had something to do with classifieds, or maybe just the shape of the table form Jordan’s point of view, but it just felt needlessly risky. The Chardybis could have been used more effectively as well to combat the forces I had there.
I think this is really just the effects of Biotechvore–no one wants to just pell mell run into the center of the table, but you have to. I had a better shape in the midfield and that really made all the difference. I’m also happy with the way I played in loss of lieutenant, just being careful and judicious with my moves. It’s worth noting that I effectively had 7.5 SWC on the table to Jordan’s 2 SWC. This allowed me to better project threat and let my links offer mutual support to one another because they had the range. In contrast, Jordan had a bunch of disjoint links that were sort of there solo. Steel has a lot of power in close range, unit for unit, but you really need to spend some SWC to “cover each other’s backs,” so to speak.
I will say that I’m glad Jordan is playing something different now–it’s always fun to play him but there’s only so much Kosmoflot I really want to fight… Thanks for reading.
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