Practice makes....

...for slightly janky victories.

I played a couple of practice games of TY for an upcoming local competition. We've really taken to 100 point TY on an 8x6 and it really has the right feel to it.

This report needs to be prefaced with McBeth testing new dice. His d6 rolling is highly skilled and I had no expectations that this was going to be any different. It was quite different. When it was on it was on but when it wasn't, oh boy, it was not. Scorpions driving through woods, no problem. Hitting enough things or passing 3+ firepower rolls, they were frequently not on.

We played on Scotty's awesome table which, I think, has a very pleasing amount of cover and open spaces. We have been prone to playing on really tight tables which has probably meant that the knife fight that some armies need to play (including mine, I might add) has been somewhat more common than we probably would have liked.

I set up holding the central objective with my infantry and leaving the outer one largely undefended knowing it was likely to be assailed by Chieftans and I could reasonably move the infantry platoon to hold it and survive the experience. McBeth held his central objective with infantry and Warriors (!) and his left with a couple of Blowpipes and 3 Chieftans.

  

I set up my LAV-ATs with a commanding view of the table centre and easy access to oversight of the objective on my left. They duelled first with the Warriors (removing a couple) and then with the Abbots in the far distance. Removing 2 of the Abbots in the early turns meant that the repeat bombardments that they spent most of the game suffering did not materially affect the LAV-ATs.

I went for a quick and dirty road dash with a LAV platoon on my right, intending to either flank the Warriors or remove the Blowpipes and threaten that objective. We realised about here that if I'd placed them better I could actually have won the game on turn 2. Erk! They didn't survive the combined fire of the Blowpipes, Warriors and Chiefs, but I decided it was a cost worth paying to have one platoon take pretty much all McBeth's turn one fire.

I pushed my first M60A1 platoon up enough to get into a gunfight with the British Striker Swingfires. This is a hiding to nothing for the M60A1s but with some support from some LAVs and one REALLY lucky ATGM shot, I got them off the park. I did lose the M60A1s and the LAVs in the process though. 

A view down the table. My last LAV-25 in a gun battle with 2 Warriors. I lost.... At that point the Brit infantry advanced and were given a delightful greeting by the GPMGs on the LAV-ATs and the 40 mike-mikes on the AAPV7s. They spent most of the rest of the game pinned down. You can see the remnant of the Strikers on the rear of the hill as well.

On my right, these Chieftans spent most of the game stuck where they couldn't move into the open as the risk of ATGM from the LAV-ATs on one side and HMMWV TOWs on the other meant danger! As it turned out, that was where they needed to be.

This is the table at the end of Turn 5 or 6. We didn't get a lot of reserves and the shots we had on table were looking at long odds most of the time. You can see the last two Warriors in a gun battle with the HMMWV TOWs (ineffectual on both sides), the British infantry in the mid table fighting with the AAPV7s and the LAV-ATs. The Abbots are just out of frame on the right having withdrawn out of range of the LAV-ATs.

And then suddenly it was all on and I completely forgot to take photos. Again.

I got my last two platoons of M60A1s on and drove one up my right and one up the middle. McBeth's reserves all arrived a turn behind mine. His Chieftan HQ and second platoon advanced towards the objective on my left as I did to the objective on my right. Over the last three turns I drove the platoon on the right aggressively up the board towards the objective, covered by the HMMWV TOWs. A single Chief went down to a double bail from the HMMWVs. The Chiefs had a couple of good cracks at the M60A1s but to no effect.

We talked through the right course of action for me here - which was me aggressively charging. Our conclusion was that I needed to Blitz then move 14" with stabilisers to get on the flanks of the two Chieftans holding the objective. McBeth placed my M60A1s in exactly the right spot to not have to suffer concealment penalties. So 8 shots, needing 5+ to hit:

And the result:

It was a really good learning game for both of us. Figuring out just as I finished my first turn that I could have effectively won the game in turn 2 with LAVs making a turn 1 Road Dash to be on the objective and forcing McBeth to remove them or lose was a real moment and reminded all four of us playing practice games that the win conditions need to be remembered as they are slightly different from TY V1. I really like McBeth's list - those Warriors are AMAZING - and it looks gorgeous. The Warrior platoon is a really solid core and the Chieftain is a great tank. It also has access to a solid amount of ATGMs which, when you're running M60A1s is a real problem...

As a post-script, friend Shep arrived at the club and took McBeth's new dice for a test drive just to make sure it wasn't just McBeth's rolling that was the problem. Result of test:

I'll leave this to you, dear reader, to consider whether these d6s are haunted or not.

I went on to take on Pelarel's British infantry and yowzers, that was a tough game. There are SO MANY MILANs in that list and honestly, I was afeared for my M60A1s. I went after Pel's squishier units with my LAVs early in the hope that maybe I could keep enough of them alive to support my Marines getting into his infantry platoons. That really did not pan out. It was a real grind and while I cleared out most of Pel's light vehicles before his Challeys arrived, he removed most of my LAVs, most of my infantry and half my M60A1s without me having gained a lot of ground. It was only rushing my last remaining LAV-25s onto the objective while distracting Challeys with rear shots from a pair of insanely aggressive M60A1s and hoping that he missed the two LAVs with a bunch of shots from LAWs and Charlie Gs (and me making a last stand test to stay on the board as it panned out) that ended the game.

Bonus Photos
Because I totally didn't take any pictures of my game with Pel, I've included a couple I took of his sweet sweet Lynx choppers ITOWing Blogger Scotty's Leo 1s:

 And his amazing Harrier proxies, these Jaguars, after they cluster bombed some Leo 2s!

Next Time
Some finished projects. I've been doing a fairly radical reorganisation of my workspace and am slowly working out where things go and what's on the project list from now to December. We floated a game of Necromunda at the next club day and I have had some new bits for my Cawdor arrive from (gasp!) Forgeworld....