Meant to post this last weekend, but other things got in the way. Zorper and I tried out our first game with two battlegroups apiece; he took the UNSC and I took the Covenant. We both had a standard and an armored battlegroup; it was also our first time using the Scorpion and Wraith tanks. Zorper has a lot of 10mm city terrain for DropZone Commander, so we set up a city fight:
Unfortunately I didn't take any notes during the battle, and I've slept a few times since then, so I don't remember all the particulars. It was a pretty good game, interesting to fight in an urban environment (which limited the Scorpion, but wasn't as bad for the Wraith as it can fire indirect). The real sticking point was the flyers; with two battlegroups, we each paid for two air assets (Pelicans for him and Phantoms for me). Neither of us has the models (yet) for either vehicle, so we were using the tokens that come with the game. The air assets turned out to be quite a big deal, probably because of the amount of ground terrain.
After we both had entire infantry units wiped out by air missions in one pass, we decided to get our infantry into buildings to protect them.
Our house rule was that, if the infantry were in the "center core" of the building model, then they were truly inside the building and were therefore protected from aerial attacks. (Note: I'm not sure how this squares with the rules; I couldn't find anything in the rulebook that specifically talks about infantry being protected from airstrikes while in buildings.) If we moved the infantry to the outer edge of the building, they were considered to be "on the roof" and therefore gained the Elevated Position bonus. But they were then also subject to airstrikes.
Zorper tried running a Gauss Warthog unit. They were shut down fairly quickly by my Hunters. His Scorpion, however, pretty much obliterated my Ghosts. 18 anti-armor dice at 40" is pretty rough!
The Scorpion was killed by multiple airstrikes.
The Sun Devil was killed by a combination of airstrikes (basically Wild Weasel missions by one brave, lucky, and fool-hardy Covenant pilot) and attacks from one of my Hunters.
As the game progressed and our respective flyers were getting more and more shot-up, we both got brave and put some infantry units out in the open. Turns out chaingun-equipped Warthogs are just as rough on infantry as airstrikes are!
My air defense Wraith survived until the end of the game, but in the last turn the Spartan nailed my standard Wraith with a Spartan Laser, and then Zorper finished it off with an airstrike.
The Covenant carried the day, but only by one VP; the final score was 43-42. So, not a victory to be proud of. We gave each other at least 10 VP in airstrikes; we both ran at least one in every turn of the game. We didn't track how many VP we each scored from the airstrikes, so no idea if we broke even. But it sure was fun watching the tanks blow up!
The game plays well with two battlegroups, although a third battlegroup on each side might make things cumbersome (unless it was stripped down and didn't include all the air and armor assets we were using). We are learning the rules pretty well and things clicked along at a nice pace. It would have been a much different game had we not played in an urban environment; I think the tanks and the aircraft would have killed a lot more units on both sides.
One final shot--proof that Spartans don't automatically pass their reactive fire tests!
Thanks for reading!
