So we've added a couple players to our little Deep Wars group, bringing us up to four. The four of us have played a couple games together now. Our latest was this past Thursday, where we had a modified "hold territory" game. Here was the initial setup:
In this scenario, two of the players controlled Ancients of Atalan warbands, one played Dark Mariners, and one played Fortune Hunters (me). The Ancients had discovered an underwater structure, and Matlal the Elder decided to go in to see if there was anything worth salvaging. The remaining Ancients took up defensive positions outside the structure. The Fortune Hunters heard about the find, and were coming to investigate to see if anything was worth stealing. Unfortunately, the structure was in territory controlled by the Dark Mariners, so they showed up to drive the Ancients off. As we are all still relatively new to this game and trying to figure out how different actions and models work, we didn't worry about points. We just brought what we wanted to throw on the table. The Ancients ended up with 4 of the Chariniform combat mechs (mechanical sharks) on the table, which proved to be a real pain.
The Ancients did a pretty good job of keeping both the Dark Mariners and Fortune Hunters at bay. They were helped early on by the local wildlife--one of my Tactical Dive Soldiers got eaten by a shark. Again. This happened to me a couple games back. Same model.
The shark caused a gruesome kill on my diver, which caused the other Tactical Dive Soldier and the Heavy Support Trooper to make a morale check. (The breaching mech doesn't have to take morale checks, as it is artificial.) The other Tactical Dive Soldier--the one that DIDN'T get eaten--failed his morale check MISERABLY, and retreated off the board. The Heavy Support Trooper ALMOST retreated off the board as well. So, I was down by half my force almost right off the bat. *sigh*
Meanwhile, the Dark Mariners were having their own difficulties with the Ancients' mechanical sharks:
In three different hand-to-hand combats, that one shark rendered three Dark Mariners fallen. But, a short while later, the Dark Mariners had their revenge:
We decided that after three turns, the Ancients players would roll 1D6 to see if Matlal would emerge. He did on turn 4, and then the chase was on--Matlal had to get off the table edge with his artifact from the structure without getting killed. The Ancients players set up a VERY good blocking defense to protect Matlal. This was partially accomplished by one of the Ancients' Acolytes setting up a boiling wall, and cooking my Heavy Support Trooper in his armor:
My breaching mech was able to get a torpedo shot on Matlal...unfortunately, it only recoiled him, but the resultant blast killed one of the Acolytes.
By this point, the Dark Mariners were too far away to catch Matlal, and my lone Breaching Mech was being blocked very effectively by the Ancients players:
We called the game due to time constraints, but in reality there is no way we could have caught Matlal before he got off the board. We can only hope that whatever he salvaged from the structure won't tip the balance in the Ancients' favor...
So, we're having a REALLY good time with this game. For this scenario, we played on roughly a 3'x3' surface, so we would have more player interaction. We're getting better (and faster) at calculating combat rolls, and some of the other actions are falling into place as well. We're scheduled to play again at the end of August, but I think we'll play two smaller one-on-one games next time. The comedic point of the evening was provided by the Dark Mariners player; after killing the two mechanical sharks, he looked over at the Ancients players and said, "So...is it Shark Week yet?"
Thanks for reading!
