Sunday, August 25, 2013

Alpha Strike AAR Game 1 - You'll always remember the first time

First, welcome new subscribers - Fred Richards, brathac, Vladdd309, Ferb (good blog), Andrew Saunders, Paul Waechter, and Sean.  Go click on the avatars above to see the other blogs they follow and if they have one themselves.  I wish there was an easier way of keeping track of new subbers. So these may sometimes get repeated. However, I appreciate the time you all take to read and comment and sub.

Here's the set-up post for my first game of Alpha Strike.

Board at Setup
 I made a few tweaks in the map and objective.  Basically, there were two objectives, one was causing the enemy to lose, through destruction or crippling 50% of their forces. The other was by taking the center hill and holding it for two end phases. Or, in Alpha Strike terms, the objective needs to be occupied for successive end phases. 

First "blood" Jagermech inflicts damage on the Trebuchet
The crippling is part of the Forced Withdrawal rule that basically says once a unit gets to a certain level of damage it needs to high tail it for the home edge and get off the board. It can't deliberately shoot anything unless an enemy closes with it.  This is how the game ended.  The defenders had three units reach this crippling stage before the attackers did. Though it was close.  The attackers were only a few bubbles of damage from also having their third crippled. 

End of Turn 1
Both Panthers were crippled first for each side.  The defenders did successfully destroy the attacking Team Atlas's Grand Dragon.  It took possession of the hill objective and was subsequently blown to pieces. That was the only destroyed unit. It will cost 75 Warchest Points to replace.  The only problem, the next scenario or track is called "Breaksthrough" and it doesn't allow either side to refit or repair their equipment. Makes sense, but is not good for either side because I can't use the units that are very damaged because they already meet the critieria for Forced Withdrawal before the game begins.
End of turn 3 and last picture - watch the video for the whole thing
 Each track tells you how much of your force you can use in the next track.  I'm using their Battle Value (BV) to measure this. 

The cover of the forest really helped.  Future games need more cover.  Though, once in cover, things become tough to hit.  And it you're in the open, forget about it.

The video is kind of squirrelly(sp), but here it is:

2 comments:

  1. Interested in seeing how this develops.

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  2. I think the campaign makes sense if you bring a force much larger than what you have. The book is assuming you have 12 mechs, and only field 4 of them (33%) in the initial battle.

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