Forum member Zorper and I met up this weekend for some Dirt Fight action. Two battlegroups apiece, his Covenant vs. my UNSC. We were fighting to control a Forerunner station, represented by the Forebearer Beacon MDF terrain piece from TTCombat. It's a great terrain piece, and even though I think it's designed for 28mm it works great for the Dirt Fight models as well.
Here's how the board looked before the carnage began:
The two hills in the near and far corner had light cover on top, and we also had two areas of heavy cover in the opposite corners.
We played the "King of the Hill" scenario for this game, with a few house rules. Basically, for this scenario, whoever controlled the objective at the end of a turn would receive 3 victory points. Here were the house rules we had in place:
-an entire unit (or its remnants) had to be fully on the main platform to "control" the station. If there were any elements of a unit still on the ramp, no points were awarded
-if both forces had units on the platform at the end of the turn, no points were awarded to either side
-aerial missions could not be run within 6 inches of the hill that the station was sitting on. We figured that Phantom and Pelican pilots would be nervous about making high-speed, low-level runs across the battlefield so near to a structure that sits up so high. This also prevented infantry units from getting pulped by ground attack missions once they got on the platform.
It was a really fun game. Turn 1 saw a lot of infantry running flat-out to get to the hill (it took me three full turns to even get anyone onto the ramps). Zorper tried dropping a few Ghost units into my backfield to tie up my forces, but I was able to decimate one with Gauss Warthogs and rockets, while the other one chased one of my Warthog units across the table (but not before nearly obliterating one of my infantry units!).
There were traffic jams trying to get up onto the platform:
That unit actually got vaporized on the ramp by a Covenant door gunner on a passing Phantom. Death is swift in the Halo universe...
Zorper parked his Wraith in a far corner of the map and basically lobbed anti-infantry shots at my poor UNSC soldiers trying to take the objective. I was never able to kill it, and he made life miserable for my infantry. Things started looking up a bit when I got a Warthog up onto the platform...
Alas, it was a chaingun 'hog and not a Gauss turret, but beggars can't be choosers. Meanwhile, my Scorpion tank got blown up at the beginning of turn 2 by, of all things, an anti-air Wraith!
In the end, the Covenant won the day--I think the final score was 36 VP to 31 VP, or something like that. It wasn't a runwaway victory for the Covies. I managed to score the only VP for holding the station, as I had the remains of one infantry unit on the platform at the end of one turn. Zorper was able to contest it in the next turn, however, using an injured Hunter.
As usual with these games, there were several cinematic moments. But one stood out in particular, occuring in the last turn. Zorper charged my Spartan with two fully-healthy Hunters. The Spartan reacted and put one point of damage on one of the Hunters before they could close the gap.
In the ensuing melee, the Spartan rolled four skulls, while the Hunters--even using their re-roll ability--rolled NONE. (In melee combat, rolling a skull on the Halo dice takes one damage point off your opponent.) The Hunters had three damage points between them. So, essentially, the Spartan killed both Hunters and walked away without a scratch!
Fun was had on both sides, many species-specific insults were traded, and we both really enjoyed playing around and on the Forerunner structure. I just gotta get paint on the thing now...
Zorper, I just realized I didn't take too many pictures, so if you'd like to add your comments from the Covenant side and some pics of the battle, please do so.
Thanks for reading!
