Legion Imperialis - Battle for Honour

Game two of the weekend, was knights with some marine support against a vehicle heavy Auxilla force.  In this game we played that all knight melee weapons have engine killer (1). Two damage worked well, and the combat still took more than one turn to resolve, just not the entire game. Generally, The engine killer is an essential skill if you are playing against knights and titans.

This game was a bit more straightforward, and it developed into a standard pin wheel.  However the Knights in the bottom of the picture had more success then the heavy vehicles in the top of the picture and the game ended with a Knight/Marine victory.  The Shadowswords did some early damage on the Acastus but when the knights shifted to their left and the shadow swords didn't chase them the Acastus was then able to show its worth by destroying or helping to destroy two detachments of tanks. This game also showed me the limitations with Auxilla who are out of command range and unable to receive First Fire orders, when they are providing Advancing Fire they will start losing tanks before the full weight of their fire can be felt.  

Transport detachments are incredibly powerful, not because they kill anything but because they give a strong slingshot movement to transported forces (This seems to be the intention), but also they can act as dummy activations if you are waiting for your opponent to commit to something, and can also act as mobile fences to prevent your enemy moving into some areas of the battlefield with vehicles or infantry. I am not sure these last two effects were intentional and they definitely make 10pt rhinos well worth their cost.  They probably should be required to receive the same order, and activate at the same time as their transported detachments and there could be a special trait that required lightly armed transports to receive only fall back orders once their cargo was unloaded.

 

Auxilla infantry are probably where they should be for points/power level, they hold objectives just fine but don't do much else, and die quickly unless garrisoned.  Marine infantry seems also to be quite sensible with them all having a distinct role, terminators are an anvil not a hammer IMO.  I have come around to Ogryns and Veletari, initially I thought their Rend rule was too strong (it is strong), but without it Auxilla forces would have no way of defeating garrisoned infantry except by collapsing the building so from a game play perspective they make sense.

I need to build some roads 🙁

Legions Imperialis - March of Titans

This weekend I squeezed in two games of Legion Imperialis. Both were approximately half sized games.  In the first one I wanted it to be just titans and some infantry, for scale.  The second was Knights vs. tanks but more on that later.

The mat was 3x3 and it does seem small but the game played fine. Deployment zones were 6 inches in and just toeing on to the mat was acceptable. Being on top of each other did not seem to hamper the game much, perhaps it was just a very dense sector of the battle.  Both sides were almost mirrors of each other based on an Axiom Manipule, (one of each Warlord, Reaver and Warhoud) with five infantry detachments and four knights each.  No formation special rules were used but the faction rules for Imperial Fists (Accurate when on First Fire), and Auxiliary Chain of Command (can only use advance orders if not within 6” of their commander) were.

First two turns were a general advance with cover being provided by the Warlords and Legion Gryponicus Reaver.  The traitor Reaver had a melta weapon which forced it to move more aggressively to get into range. There was a battle between the warhounds and a knight, top of the picture, which ended in mutual annihilation, thanks to some supporting fire from the Marine Devastator detachment.  By the end of turn two, both Warlords were also destroyed.

The third turn had an interesting situation where one Cerastus charged the Acastus.  Since the acastus had 4 wounds (not to mention it can heal), they were essentially stuck with the Cerastus always winning the fight but only doing one wound so the Acastus died in the last round of the game..   

Eventually the Loyal Reaver destroyed the traitor and the remaining marines were able to secure sufficient objectives to give the loyalists a victory.

Some observations were.  Titans should have titan killing weapons in their load out and should make use of cover (the -1 does help).  I think the best load out for titans is the long range stuff.  Being out of range with 30% of the guns of a 400pt detachment (Reaver) is not my idea of a good investment.  Things like heavy barrage missiles and gatling cannons are great for knocking down void shields and then a volcano cannon to seal the deal seems like a pretty cost effective selection.

The devastator marines are very versatile as they are able to garrison structures and destroy vehicles. Their frag missiles also do a good job of killing other garrisoned infantry at long range, for infantry.

Initiative was a big deal, but not because of activation order. But rather, when setting up the combat for garrisoned forces.  This refers to a previous comment of mine about “gerrymandering”.   Essentially the person with initiative can get mileage out of a detachment with models with different CAFs, even if it is not their detachment.  For instance 6 Assault marines charge a detachment of 4 Auxilla and 4 Ogryns garrisoned in a building.  If the marines have the initiative they can pair the auxilia and marines one to one and the four remaining ogryns then smash the two remaining marines.  The combat should be a 4 to 2 victory for the marines and result in the Auxula detachment being pushed out of the building.  If the Auxila have the initiative then the Ogryns are paired one to one with the mariners and the four auxilia pair up on the last two martines.  This should result in all 6 marines stands being destroyed and 2 auxilia being destroyed simply because of who has initiative (this only works when one unit is garrisoned, anywhere else the pairs are determined by movement).  Maybe it is a corner case, but if you play with a lot of structures it will come up, so try to charge structures when you have initiative.

Legion Imperialis a Second Look

 

Yesterday I played through a fun game of Legions Imperialis, we played 1600 pts aside with Imperial Fist Space Marines and Heretic Sollar Auxilla.  It was an intro game and both sides had two formations, one Infantry based and one Armoured.

It has been about two years since my last game, see post below 🙂and I was eager to try the revised rules from the FAQ and the new compendium Liber Strategia.  It also allowed me to reflect on some of the rule interactions which I will go through after a recap of the game

The mission was Devastation and the lists were

Both players were new to the game so had fun moving towards each other and rolling dice.  On the second turn we had some excitement with the Auxiliary Commander leading a charge with their ogryns and auxiliary against a structure garrisoned by terminators. The combat was inconclusive and when more marines joined the following turn it swung in the loyalist’s favor. There was also an air-assault launched on one flank when the marines tried to attack and destroy one of the Auxillary’s home objectives from a Thunderhawk.  They managed to melta bomb a detachment of tanks but the Veletarii launched a counter attack and pushed the marines off (FYI the Veletariii are 33% more expensive).

We didn't really keep track of the points and the game was more about learning the rules then winning. At the end of the game the marines certainly controlled more of the board, but with the three undamaged super heavy tanks the auxiliary were not out of the game.  Some general observations

Setup.  I deliberately kept the large structures or clusters of small structures 6” apart so that infantry could not move between them shooting all the while.  Also I think a fun game needs more types of terrain then just structures and open terrain.  Ruins and/or obstacles will certainly make the game more interesting and not just about destroying infantry hiding in buildings. 

Orders.  I think revealing all the orders at the beginning has grown on me. Rather than ruining the “suspense”,  It mitigates the advantage of having more activations. This way if your opponent has more activations you still get an idea of what to expect when your activations are finished and you can no longer react. You can also still use a master tactician to try a few surprises.  Another great rule is the Auxiliary Chain of Command, The Auxiliary have slightly better tanks for a similar price to marines, only being able to be given first fire if near the commander is a huge disadvantage, but also something that is fun to work around.  Ogryns cause a lot of fuss as well, seemingly because they are better than the lore would have you believe by easily smashing through large groups of marines.  I am less worried as they are expensive and without them the Auxilary would be hard pressed to push garrisoned space marines off of an objective.

Moving is moving, now that infantry are no longer marching triple the transports make more sense and transports with assault are monsters.  I do think that transports with march orders should not be able to unload detachments but that is a minor quip.

Shooting works well and the best part is if your opponent has a unit you really covet, no problem, it's a civil war and you have access to your own version (most of the time).  Natural game balance, brilliant!

Close combat gets a little confusing, it can be resolved quite easily in friendly situations but since the player with initiative organizes the pairs, and if there is a garrisoned detachment involved (that can be assigned to any opponent touching the building) it could get a bit cheeky with the player with initiative gerrymandering the combat. Long story short, you want initiative on a turn with important combat.

All in all, I think I am enjoying it more now that I have printed tons of stuff and that I am getting some of the nuances in the game.  The baked in balance helps as well.

Legion Imperials First Battle and Thoughts

 I have found that when it comes to understanding a new game system, you can read the rules all you want but until you play it, it is hard to see how the pieces fit together. For this battle we used mostly the contents of the Legions Imperials (LI) starter box, both sides were approximately 900 points each. The game was played on a table 4 x 4ish, (the mat is a meter wide so deployment was done on and off the mat). The intent for this game was to try and forget as few rules a possible, we came close but certainly not perfect. This meant that deployment and the first round or two were quite slow but picked up quickly as rules became more familiar and the model count dropped. I was curious to see if garrisoning detachments in structures was worth the benefits, how fragile flyers were, and how robust titans really were.

Building lists in LI is quite straight forward. Armies are made of formations and formations are described pictorially and contain detachments. In modern terms detachments are platoons. Since the opposing forces were essentially drawn from the starter box there was little choice on what to take. It also forced the core detachments of formation to include all the supporting units. In hindsight, even if I had access to all the models I would still make combined core detachments. Since the owner of the detachment can choose what stands are removed the specialized units can be protected by their “normal” infantry units. Also, the specialized units became the anchor in close combat for the detachment but more on that later. The Solar Auxilla did make one detachment as small as possible (four stands) and the other core detachment twelve stands.

In addition to the core models we also used a Fire Raptor Gunship and two Questoris Knights for the marines. Also the marines took two battle tank detachments when their formation technically restricts them to one. The list building rule of having only 30% of your points on strategic assets (knights or titans) was also violated slightly for each list.

I have enjoyed the list building aspect to all GW games and I think this game is no exception there are quite a few choices to make, and your force can certainly be tailored in many ways. Maybe all the flyers form a single detachment to get the discount or does each formation take a few. This decision will effect a formations break point, when a detachment takes a moral check and also number of activations. In general I think large detachments are better, except for maybe flyers. The other choice is the weapon selection for your more powerful units. Some choices seem to be no-brainers, Vanquisher Cannon!, but weapon selection on Knights and Titans makes a huge difference on how the unit is employed.

The table was set up with one side mountains, then hills and urban terrain in the centre, and moving into a more open space. Both sides set up their armoured detachments in the open area and infantry in the urban centre with agile walkers preparing to move through the ravines. The mission was simple, break the enemy lines and steal one of the three objectives in the enemies deployment zone.

Round 1

In the first round the detachment orders were a nomination of march and advance. This is probably quite typical. The only exception would be if Titans were facing other Titans then I would definitely put the Titan on First Fire orders. In this game the Warhound had a Gravitation Gun and a Turbo-Laser. Since the Grav Gun has only a 30” range, medium range for titans but longer than most vehicle or infantry weapons, it advanced. In future games I think I would try and give Titans weapons with ranges that are 40 plus so they can reach most of the board from their deployment spot and spend the entire game on First Fire. In this game the hound got lucky as a large marine detachment (8 stands) occupied a building within range and the building was brought down with a single grav gun hit (most weapons can't do this but buildings are far from invulnerable) all but one marine stand was destroyed in the collapse. I don't think the shot had a lucky roll, just that the opportunity was lucky. Even through the fire raptor had advanced orders and could have deployed to the board, it chose not to since it could not get into the rear arc of its desired target, the armoured units. Every turn flyers moves onto the board from the deployment zone edge (including the small bit on the sides), and then removed in the end phase of each turn. This means that it would take two turns of an enemies advance before the Raptor could get rear shots on the tanks. Otherwise the armoured detachments blasted away at each other. Typically each main battle tank has a one dice primary weapon and possibly an anti tank secondary weapon. Each system hits on around 4+. The Leman Russ would save vs a lascannon on 3+ but the predators saved vs the vanquisher on a 5+, not to mention the range advantage of the vanquisher. Dice were on the marines side, one Predator and two Leman Russ were destroyed.

Round 2

In this round everyone left the buildings after seeing the destruction of the grav gun last turn. All the infantry continued the advance and the armoured detachments that were in position went on first fire as other detachments moved closer. The knights moved into a position to see the Warhound hoping to draw some fire. The maximum amount of damage this Warhound could do in a turn was only enough to kill a knight if it got perfect shots. This round the Raptor was able to get in behind the Solar Auxilla armoured detachments but only did a bit of damage to the heavily armoured tanks. The Solar Auxilla tanks however ripped the marine tanks to pieces since initiative allowed them to fire the first detachment in the First Fire phase and the first detachment in the Advanced Fire phase. As predicted the Warhound damaged but did not destroy a knight, unfortunately the sentinel detachment was able to sneak a missile through for the last point of damage. In this round the Warhound started taking shots and lost all of its void shield and took some damage. Also this round all but one of the marine tanks were wiped out by the Solar Auxila armour. The lone marine tank failed its moral check and was issued fall back orders.

Round 3

This round saw a lot of close combat with an Ogryn charge into the Contemptor dreadnoughts. The dreadnoughts managed to kill one with over-watch and was then engaged by the remaining three. The marine commander anticipated this and also charged in to the combat to fight beside the dreadnoughts. In the centre of the board the marine detachment (8 stands including 2 terminators) charged into the large (12 stand) detachment of Auxilla. While the Orgyns were defeated by the dreadnoughts it was only because of some lucky rolls and the presence of the commander. The marines and terminators were torn apart by the axe-wielding solar auxiliary, Veletarri, however managed to stand their ground because of the determination of the terminators. The standout ability in close combat is Rend, the extra d6 for the axe warriors and Ogryn completely offset the superior close assault factor (CAF) of the marines. 

 For shooting, the gunship took the two remaining wounds from the Warhound, thanks to the rear armour bonus, but after the Titan had destroyed the last knight, again with sentinel support. The Rapid Fire weapon attribute also seems powerful, it makes to-hit rolls of a 6 become two hits. This is powerful because when firing on over-watch or firing at flyers 6 are needed to hit anyway.

Round 4

Not much was left in this round the dreadnoughts tried to charge into combat to help the remaining terminators, one was shot by over-watch of the sentinels. Sentinels have 4 dice per stand against walkers and infantry, and since any detachment with first fire or advance orders can over-watch, even after they have moved the sentinels were able to move into a position to cover the Auxilla before the dreadnoughts charged. The gunship showed up again to try and kill the Auxiliary armour who had taken a marine objective but again failed to do significant damage (their armour is the same as the Warhound, but it was against their front armour). The dreadnought and commander were able to break the Solar Auxilla but only after the last terminator and marine stands were destroyed.

Round 5

Round 5 was played briefly but the victory was given to the Solar Auxilla as they were able to take one enemy objective and the marines were unable to get any.

Playing the game is the best way to learn a game. In Legion Imperials the infantry do feel like cannon fodder, fodder that can secure objectives. Tanks can be tailored to either infantry support with lighter weapons or for engaging other tank units with heavier weapons. Flyers darting onto and off the board feel like fast air and not hovercraft. The Titans are interesting, they are very powerful but even a stand of marines with heavy weapons can knock out void shields, and the Warhound did get destroyed. I think their advantage is the tremendous range on their weapons and their towering height. Structures are definitely a double edged sword providing great protection against most weapons and being an easy target for a few.

Alpha Strike Post 3. Do I have the Way

 

Is it ironic that heavy doses of salt create fertile soil for ideas? Another clever name for this post could be Fighting the System.  It seems that in my view of boardgames, as with much of my life, I demand that it unfold the way I see them being played out in my head.  Maybe you have just finished painting a beautiful centerpiece to your army, but it got vaporised immediately, maybe you only need to roll a certain, and likely, number but it never comes up, or maybe you don’t ever win initiative, not even one time, until you only have one mech left and everyone else still has multiple lances… argh….  Oh, I like to think the ideas in this article are mine, but I have read someone else’s article a while ago talking about how to deal with the vaunted double turn in AoS, it is a discussion on initiative as well.

Spoiler alert, I was the first of three to be eliminated in the latest game of BattleTech I played. I could blame the dice as I didn’t win the all-important initiative until it was too late.  Or I could admit I was playing the game I wanted to play in my head and not the game that was in front of me and governed by a set of written rules that my imagination couldn’t change.  I think in both of my recent posts I have mentioned, or alluded to, the disproportional importance of initiative.  But maybe I should have said, if you want to play aggressively you need initiative.  If you are going to storm the center of the board and be the first on the objective, it certainly helps to move last so that you can get the best arcs on your opponent or choosing to remain out of arc entirely.  If you don’t you will just move aggressively onto the objective and then watch the opposing mech take up ideal firing positions and tear you to pieces.

But what if you played defensively when you didn’t have the initiative?  Moving your mech forward slowly, keeping them in cover, keeping them with arcs that covered both the objective and the most likely place you opponent would move?  Letting the person with initiative go to the sole objective first…  By doing this you are mitigating the effect of loosing initiative and biding your time until you do get it, at which point you turn up the aggression with what forces you have left.  At least in games you can plainly see, even if you choose not to, who has the initiative and then you can decide your actions based on a fact. In real life you need to sense if you have the way, thankfully giant war robots aren’t real...

I am sure that with this approach sometimes you will bide your time, fight tooth and nail and just die. But I for one prefer to look back on a game like that and know I made the right decisions, so then I am fully justified in blaming the dice. 

As for the game itself.  It was a three player “capture the flag” scenario where the team that moved the objective token from the middle of the board back to their starting location would win the game.  The objective token could be carried without penalty but if two opposing mechs were in base-to-base contact with it one had to be destroyed before it could be moved.  This led to a fairly silly “Rings of Steel” situation.  The flag was also located on a hill with large structures to give the appearance of a defendable position.

All three of us had a rag tag assortment of mechs that we arranged into two lances each so that we could all begin with an equal number of activations.  And yes, this time I did look at my opponents lists, and I did destroy the Archer, Huzzah!!

To be honest, I was not the first at the objective but did charge a large mech onto it to tussle with another mech who had staked a claim.  After both mechs had been shot to pieces by every other mech the captured flag was placed within a well painted ring of steel, this did take a few turns as the rule was you had to stop once you contacted the flag.  The following turn the fastest mech of the bunch was able to scuttle off to victory.

BattleTech is growing on me, and maybe with time and experience I will be able to appreciate its subtleties.  But for now, I still consider it very beer and pretzels, which are wonderful as a mid-week distraction.  But most importantly, rolling dice on a table with quality scenery, beautiful miniatures, and friends you can banter with is never a bad evening.  Oh, and this one player did use a death from above attack, and it worked….

Alpha Strike Post 2

Sometimes it takes a while to get your thoughts down on paper. Several weeks ago, I had my second game of Battle Tech Alpha Strike.  This time we each took a Battle Group (BG) comprising of two lances and a command mech.  For this game we tried the Command and Control (C2) rules as well as allowed mechs to improve their pilot skill.  Both BGs were close to 300 points.  We played the C2 a bit different from the rule book, we limited the range of the inter-mech communication to 12” and each lance was its own network that couldn’t talk to an allied lance, the commander could choose a network if they were in range. Both BGs had the same C2 networks.  We didn’t play a scenario, but hope to do it next time, this was just a “learn the rules” slug fest. 

For our deployment we both set up one lance in the center and one lance on our respective rights.  During the battle, my opponent consolidated his forces and was able to focus fire with his entire BG effectively against one of my lances at a time.  I began a right flanking with my light lance, and tried to support by fire with my other, heavier, lance from the terrain in the center. My flanking was unsuccessful, as I did not commit.  When they should have closed with the enemy, to get into their blind spots, they moved out of the line of fire. While the light lance gained some concealment from the terrain, they were not in a good position to damage the enemy until the end game when it was too late.  The lesson learned is likely that (cheap) mechs with low damage, short range weapons benefit tremendously from the additional damage when attacking into the back of an enemy mech and really should get stuck in no matter the cost.  If they are tasked with a harassing screen, they will not cause enough damage to force the enemy to react.  While I was not tabled it was convincing victory for my opponent, I would attribute it to their ability to select and maintain an aim (even if it was to methodically destroy one mech at a time) and their list building (we will get to this later).

If you are unaware of the C2 rule; essentially you take the range modifier of the closet mech in the network to the target.  This rule combined with damage being resolved at the end of the turn allows you to hang a mech out to dry and reap huge benefits for the rest of the lance.  The effect can be quite powerful, but I don’t think the rule is broken as long as both sides have equal access to the ability.  I feel it just speeds up the game with every mech hitting more often.

Know your enemy.  My opponent had glass cannons that I was not targeting, I should have looked closely at their list and figured out a target priority.  One nice thing about Alpha Strike is it is very easy to get the gist of an opponents list.  Essentially you compare hit points to damage of all the mechs separately.  The mechs that do the most damage with the fewest hit points should be the ones on top of the target priority list. During the game I was constantly surprised by how his mechs of a similar type, but different variant had better guns than mine, it wasn’t until the end that I realized they had generally less hit points. It does seem that a lance of 50% glass cannons and 50% brutes would synergize well with the C2 construct.

Initiative is still king. While there are several valuable game wide factors to consider, initiative seems to be at the top of the list. Once mechs get close, and because you can turn a mech as much as you want while it moves, initiative becomes king.  Moving out of arc provides a clear advantage and if you can pull it off with a big gun you will have a distinct advantage.  Since initiative is an unmodified roll off it essentially comes down to chance.  Some special rule allows mechs to shoot and resolve damage during movement, combat intuition.  In our game only one mech had this ability so it wasn’t a huge factor, but it was able to knock out a mech before shooting in the middle of the battle.  However, if an entire side had this ability, it could be an NPE.

Battle Tech Alpha strike is a fast and accessible game that has a rich universe perfect for narrative campaigns.  Are there ambiguous rules that need more than the normal amount of good behavior from both sides, I am not sure but probably not more then any of the common wargames.  Certainly, there are a few broken special rules but nothing pre-tournament guidance from a TO couldn’t fix.  If one were to play this competitively, I would have mild reservations about competitive Alpha Strike.  I think the narrative feel of the game would benefit from mechs having less armour and more structural points so that critical damage would have a bigger impact, however this would lead to slightly more bookkeeping and another area where variance could possibly spoil the experience, detonating ammo.