Sunday was my first wargaming activity since the beginning of July and it was a 200pt game of Alien Squad Leader with Owen at the club. Owen has recently brought his Human Imperial Strikeforce army up to 200pts, so I knew that I'd be facing that particular enemy. I decided to take my Alien Imperial army, but with a few modifications since its last outing, back in December last year. I decided to drop the power-armoured Elites and replace them with a Phase tank with an aiming device and a homing missile. I thought that the extra long-range firepower might come in handy.
The battle scenario we fought was Scenario 4 - Envelopment. This meant that Owen could reserve up to four stands to deploy from a flank and I had to defend an objective. As the defender, I set up the table. Most of the cover was on my side, understandably. I was unsure where the Human reinforcements would arrive, so I thought it might be useful to station some robotic forces on the left, where they could operate without any need for a command stand.
In the centre I had two urban areas. In the left-hand one I had my phase tank and some troops and a heavy weapon stand. The right-hand one was the objective I was defending.
I put my other Heavy Droid in the objective area, supported by another H/W stand, the Force Commander (Inspirational Leader) and some more infantry (behind the buildings).
I deployed more infantry on my right flank and had all my Trained Beasts and Tribal Auxiliaries, including a sub-commander behind the main lines.
Before long, Owen's Strikeforce advanced, taking advantage of its Sudden Strike rule.
I began to move troops up to counter, hoping that my infantry on the right flank hill could defend against the deployment point there.
Things began to go well for me. My Superior Energy Weapons were scoring plenty of hits on the power-armoured Humans. I was worried about the light vehicles emerging on my right flank, though.
I brought the phase tank into play, scoring a few hits, destroying a Human APC and pinning the Human heavy weapons team in the ruins across the table. My Heavy Droids were in play, but the Robotic infantry had nothing to do. I tried to being them closer to the action.
My Trained Beasts despite a few stands getting shot up, crashed into hand-to-hand combat with an APC, ripping the vehicle to pieces with their claws and generally going on a rampage. This, for me was the turning point in the battle. The Beasts made mincemeat of stand after stand of Humans (who had already taken a few hits). I did lose the most successful set of Beasts in the end, but the rest of the Beasts went into a mad fury, ripping the light vehicles to pieces and forcing the Humans to breaking point.
Eventually I only needed to knock out one more Human stand to force Owen's troops to break. I managed to do this with some accurate fire from a H/W stand. Game over.
This was a tricky battle really, a lot less one-sided than it appears from the pictures. If Owen had succeeded in his plan of unloading his troopers and having them storm into the objective, I am sure that he could have won, but my Beasts really were on top form. In the end I only lost two stands of Beasts and one of Imperial Infantry.
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