sho3box

I got a quick mid-week game in with COM last Wednesday, so we played the “Surrounded” mission.  The Marines/Eldar set up in the middle of a 4×4′ table with a larger force of bugs equally divided on the four table edges.

The Marines/Eldar also got an emplaced weapon as part of the scenario set up but  I forgot to put it on the table before the above photo was taken.  It features in the later snaps (for all the good that it did).

The emplacement is still missing and the Alien queen really should have her base painted: it looks awful.

The scenario specified the 4×4′ battlefield.  Therefore the bugs were able to close quite rapidly.  Some decent reaction fire from the marines whittled their numbers down a bit, but a run of poor activation rolls meant that the marines became bug chow pretty fast.

The Alien queen (with the embarrassingly unfinished base) flinches a little from incoming fire while the mauled xenomorphs prepare to slice up the eldar guardians.

The marine units got to fire a couple of times, but recurring activation problems meant that a lot of bug units had an easy time getting in close.

“Tough” units (such as the “Colossal” trygon above) are particularly hard to dent in this system.  The marine power armour troops (represented by wraithguard) are very hard to shift when using rank and file bugs.  As such they tend to be a must-have unit in games, even though they are pricey.  In this game the Power Armour troopers again showed their worth by hanging around for longer than any other marine unit.

I set up the marines in a silly fashion.  I should have concentrated them a bit more on one side or the other in the hope that they could take advantage of numbers to squish the bugs piecemeal.  Memories of a previous game where the marines set up so close that they got over run in quick succession meant that I spread my troops out in an ineffectual fashion.  They paid for my poor generalship with their tiny metal and plastic lives.

This game wasnt a drag or anything and it played out very quickly, but it ended up being a bit of a dice fest rather than a narrative generating battle like the Save the Miners game last week.

In Swatters the bugs can move very fast and forcing the marines to set up less than two feet away makes some of the engagement a forgone conclusion, which is a bit unsatisfying.  The activation system can always throw a spanner into plans of course (a good thing as it encourages maneuvering and gives more chance for narrative and the like) but I think that I would like to try this scenario out another time with the bugs coming in from either end of a 6′ table instead: I think that it could be more fun that way.

Filed under: Game Rules, Games in Progress | Tagged: Bug, Aliens, Tyranid, Eldar, 2013, Swatters |