Assault on Base Alpha

This week’s wargaming at FWGS was a game of Xenos Rampant. We went for a slightly larger 36 point game, which gave a bit more varied choice of units and also led to a longer game. It was about 2½ hours altogether, which made for a decent evening game.

This was also my first opportunity to try out my new building terrain from Battlesystems. We did an assault on a base, with one side attacking and one side defending. We had some good use of vehicles as well, and the large table led to a lot of use of extreme range shooting. In Xenos Rampant, most ranged weapons have unlimited range – you just need line of sight, and if it’s beyond the usual range of the weapon then the target gets a bonus to their armour.

For this reason I made sure there was a lot of obscuring terrain on the table, otherwise the charge across the table could have been a blood bath.

On my side, I was using my Neu Swabian League figures from Ground Zero Games. I have a lot of these, so could easily field 36 points. I could easily field two or three times that without a problem. My Powered Armour units are 12 points each, and I have five or six of those. For my NSL, I’ve costed all units so that they are multiples of 4, which makes it easy to switch units in and out.

My army consisted of:

• Grav Tank (AFV)
• Mortar Team (Support Infantry)
• Recon Team (Light Infantry)
• Anti-Armour Team (Heavy Infantry)
• Two heavy infantry teams (one is the leader)

My opponent, who I designated as Rogue Troopers* had some oversized units (which turned out to be quite effective) and a couple of walkers.

• Two Walkers
• Support Infantry
• Infantry units (oversized, with a variety of options, including conscripts)
• Command Unit

The walkers were quite nice looking, and made up a total of 16 points of the enemy force.

The Rogue Troopers opted to be the attackers, so we deployed and the game quickly began. The Rogues went first, quickly moving up the table whilst trying to keep in cover. They didn’t quite keep in cover enough, since some of my NSL troops on the roof of one of the buildings was able to take a shot at extreme range and kill one of their conscripts.

It was a couple of turns before we remembered the Firefight option for units, which allow them to shoot back. I moved my Anti-Vehicle unit up to the front gate to cover the centre passage. Vehicles are tough, with an armour of 6, but the Anti-Tank option on elite units halves this armour.

We did quickly run into the question of how halving and bonuses work. Anti-Tank halves armour. Extreme range gives +1 to armour. So do you get the extreme range bonus, then halve, or the other way around? Halving afterwards means the extreme range bonus becomes +½, and fractions are dropped. We applied it first (extreme range is calculated first, then you apply anti-tank effects when calculating hits and damage). This doesn’t mean it was the right choice though.

I had my mortar team back in the base, ready to rain death down on anyone who got spotted. Then I read the rules and realised spotters needed to be within 12″ of the target, so my squishy recon team needed to get up real close. This was going to put a crimp in my plans.

The Walkers moved up into range and started taking shots at my Grav Tank. They bounced off, and my AT unit at the gate managed to do one damage in return fire. The walkers were taking the brunt of the damage, and also handing out most of the damage at this point. My own tank was doing well, and managing to bounce most of the hits against it.

During this point of the game though I probably should have been concentrating more on the infantry in the woods. The tank has the area effect option, which ignores cover bonuses to armour (exploding shells, or something). It is much more effective against squishy infantry than against the hardened walkers.

One of the walkers managed to get a lucky shot on my AT unit, getting 9 hits and killing two of them. In return, my command unit (now on top of the building), got two kills on the Rogue Troopers left (our right) flank in the woods. Finally, my spotters were able to bring down a mortar strike, getting three kills and routing the nearby infantry unit.

My tank at this point was starting to concentrate on the infantry, and was making quick work of them.

However, my Recon team didn’t last long, and within a few turns was reduced to nothing. I wasn’t able to make effective use of my indirect mortar team again this game. Every time that I tried to move the mortar team, they failed their activation check, so I wasn’t even able to move them to somewhere where they had line of sight.

Though the NSL were doing a lot of damage to the attackers, they weren’t well positioned. I was fighting a very defensive game (I was defending the base after all), and this gave the tactical advantage to the enemy. I was getting whittled down, and one of my most potentially effective units (the mortar team) weren’t being used.

The enemy were starting to outflank the base, though as it turned out this unit got beaten back and kept on failing rally checks. My command unit had come down off the top of the building by this point, and was trying to get into the cover of the rear building from which they would cover the flank. With failed activation tests, it took longer than expected.

I finally lost my tank to fire from the walkers, though it had done well. I think I should have used it more aggressively, but I’d been loathe to move it since moving and shooting gives a penalty to shooting attacks,

By now, though the Rogue Troopers had taken a lot of casualties, so had I, leaving me with little to defend the base with. Both walkers were damaged (one down to less than half strength), but they were still operative. I kept on trying to move my mortar team, and they kept on refusing to obey orders.

The single lone survivor of one of the enemy units finally got within line of sight of the mortar team, and was obliterated. This was only the second time they got to fire all game.

With the walkers in the base, it was time for the NSL to beat a hasty retreat. Victory went to the Rogue Troopers, who still had both their (albeit damaged) walkers and two fully intact units.

It was a fun game, but I need to rethink my force composition and tactics. As it often my problem, I wasn’t particularly aggressive. I should have taken more of the fight to the enemy, though I felt that I didn’t have enough units to do that. The use of the mortar team didn’t work due to the lack of spotters. I could have taken two heavy infantry units instead, which would have worked better.

Being in hard cover of the buildings really helped, but it meant that the attackers had the initiative on where the fighting would be.

We used a long table for this, and there was the question of whether we should have started closer together. I do like larger tables for SciFi/Modern, since it allows greater use of long range weapons. But it does mean that quite of bit of time is spent moving up.

Other than “take control of the base” there wasn’t a well defined objective. We could have done a variation on Scenario Hotel: Night Raid from the book. Placing the buildings in the middle would also solve the large table problem.

It was a fun game though, and given the larger point value it lasted longer which is my preference. I don’t think it felt slow at any point though. We got through 14 turns during the game, which is a pretty fast rate.