Trouble in the Tarmac - 1st Game

This is the first scenario of the Phase I of the Campaign Book Damocles of AT-43. The scenario is not really well balanced as some of the people already commented in the relevant AT-43 forums. However, I was having the intention to play the Damocles campaign and my intention was to try the scenario. But, as someone pointed to me, the scenario only has some meaning if you play the whole book as the Phase I is clearly design with the worst tactical positions for the Therians and too high advantages for the other Armies, like the Red Block. However, as our Therian player is newer to the game than us and as the real outcome of the game is totally irrelevant for us, we just played it and tried to enjoy as much as possible :D

Army Lists

Red Advanced ReCon Force (Red Block - Frontline) [1430/550]

Assault [1430 AP]

Cap. Vrachov on KK5 [545 AP]

8 Krasny Soldaty with Serg. Tymofiyeva (1 Grenade launcher, 2 Medics, Smoke Grenades) [230 AP]

6 Dragonov Kommandos (Sergeant, 1 ATGauss, Medics, Elect. Warfare, Smoke Grenades) [240 AP]

2 Sierps (Sergeant) [415 AP]

Reinforcements [550 RP]

3 Strielitz Kolossus (Sergeant) [310 RP]

1 Molot (Sergeant) [240 RP]

Therians Cyphers [1498/371]

Assault

Omega Tiamat (Space Suit) [446 AP]

3 Assault Goliaths (Space Suit) [378 AP]

7 Assault Golems (1 Flamer, 1 Alpha overseer, Space Suit) [362 AP]

6 Grim Golems (1 Flamer, Atis-Astarate, Space Suit) [312 AP]

Reinforcements
1 Wraith Golgoth (Space Suit) [371 RP]

The Game

Actually we played twice. The first time, the Therian player tried a very aggressive tactic which leads to the annihilation of the Therian forces. The second time, the Red Block was kicked out of the planet.

We rolled for the role of defender or attacker and the Therians were the defenders, which actually seems to be accepted as a disadvantage for this scenario.

The layout of the battlefield was a bit improvised as due to a mistake we were lacking the second Damocles map and some nanogenerators. So, we solved the issue by painting the needed landing pad on the table and using some low walls in upright position as nanogenerators. Also the Therian player is lacking some miniatures, namely level 1 AFVs, so in some moment of the game we just use some of the Red Block Molots as proxies for the Therians Succubus.

1st Round

The Therians win the authority check and let the Red Block start. The Krasny Soldaty move bravely behind the container on the left of the battlefield and prepare themselves for combat (Take Cover, Overwatch).

The Therians Assault Goliaths deploy also behind of the containers on the right of the battlefield (the side with the nice AT-43 poster ;D ).

The Dragonov Kommandos enter the battlefield on the right side and take position behind the container close to the nanogenerator.

As you can see the first three movements were more or less passive movements, however, now Tiamat gets deployed on the battlefield, on the border of the Therian deployment zone and Dashs around the container were the Krasny unit was hiding and run over them.

She killed three of the soldiers just by moving over them and after that she engaged the other five Soldaty in close combat and killed all of them, also the engagement in close combat removed the Combat Drills of the unit.

From my point of view, the idea could have been great. The Therians wipe out in one movement a full infantry unit, except for Tymofiyeva, but she was lucky with the dice for avoiding being killed by the moving Tiamat. However, the movement left Tiamat in my Access Zone and vulnerable to the attack of Cap. Vrachov on his KK5.

Cap. Vrachov enter the battlefield and fire every single rocket on Tiamat a close range. The result was a molten metal inferno. But, of course, Tiamat tried to hack the body of the closest overseer. Here we made a mistake, the only other Therian unit were the Assault Goliaths, but they were not having an overseer (or at least I can not see it on the Army List) and therefore Tiamat should have been removed form the game.

Also the Therian player forgot to make the routine Creation before engaging in clocse combat, which close the Therian activation of Tiamat and gives the floor to the Red Block for the activation of Cap. Vrachov.

The Therians deploy the Assault Golems behind the container and take cover there.

The Red Block Sierps enter the field and having line of sight on the Assault Golem fire a little inferno on them which manage to kill four of them.

Atis and her Grim Golems unit deploy on the left side of the board, on the border of the deployment zone and get visual of the Dragonov Kommandos behind the container and teleports there killing three of then.
In the control phase we got the reinforcement points for the containers and the nanogenerators. The Red Block got 375 RP and the Therians got 200 RP and 4 VP for the landing pads.

2st Round

On the second round the Red Block got the authority and as first movement, the Sierps run over Atis and her Grim Golems. Here we got a question regarding the running over infantry rules as actually two Sierps run over the same fighters, therefore we consider that they should have rolled twice to avoid being killed by the Sierps as the rule speaks about "an AFV" and not about "an AFV unit". The Sierps killed all the Grim Golems except one and also Atis was killed.

As the Therians were clearly destroyed as fighting force we decided to play it again and see if it was possible to get the scenario turned around.

The funniest part was that Jag, the Therian player, was all the time saying something which could be translated as "I don't care about the outcome, I came here to do it this way" (textually he kept saying "I came here to speak about my book", which actually is a reference to Paco Umbral who was once interviewed on Spanish TV by a very aggressive journalist who apparently told him that he was invited to the program to talk about his last book but as it turned out, the journalist was asking him about everything else except about the book :D :D )

There is a Visual Archive of the battle with some more pictures.