Smoke and Moiras
After Game two…
it was time for 400 points of Panic Room, Bakunin versus Tony (zhukov2)’s Hassassins.
Overview
- Mission: ITS14 Panic Room
- Forces: Jurisdictional Command of Bakunin versus Hassassin Bahram (400)
- Deploy First: Bakunin
- First Turn: Hassassin Bahram
If you’ve seen my 300 point list from last game, you know that I like the Sin Eater with Marksmanship. So we’re taking 3. Then we fill out the rest of the Kusangi link with a Custodier in case I see a TAG and Agatha in case I need healing. I still have points left over, so a Taskmaster, Riot, Wolfgang Haris and pile of Morlocks round out the list. It’s the haris’s job to take and hold the Panic Room while the Observance troops destroy everything outside with cleansing fire.
Panic Room v2
GROUP 1
8
1
KUSANAGI (Lieutenant) MULTI Rifle, E/M Grenade Launcher, Zapper / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (+1 | 39)
REVEREND CUSTODIER (Hacker, Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle, Pitcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 31)
MOTHER AGATHA Vulkan Shotgun / Pistol, EXP CC Weapon. (0 | 38)
REVEREND MOIRA MULTI Sniper Rifle, Zapper / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 29)
CENOBITE Heavy Rocket Launcher, Light Shotgun / Heavy Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (1.5 | 27)
GROUP 2
TASKMASTER Heavy Rocket Launcher, Light Shotgun, Crazykoala / Heavy Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (1.5 | 42)
RIOT GRRL Boarding Shotgun ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 29)
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MULTI Rifle(+1B), Chain-colt / Heavy Pistol, DA CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 35)
4
SIN-EATER (Marksmanship) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 35)
MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Assault Pistol, AP CC Weapon. (0 | 6)
8 SWC | 399 Points | Open in Army | Copy Code
Tony’s bringing this nonsense. He’s got double Asawira powered by Tac Aware Muyibs, and then double Bokhtar hanging out with a Lasiq.
GROUP 1
ASAWIRA (Lieutenant) AP Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 39)
GOVAD (Engineer, BS Attack [AP]) Rifle, Light Shotgun, D-Charges ( | GizmoKit) / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 26)
MUYIB (Tactical Awareness, X Visor) Spitfire, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 34)
LASIQ (BS Attack [+1 Dam]) VIRAL Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 27)
BOKHTAR FTO (Paramedic, Tactical Awareness) Viral Rifle, Light Shotgun, D-Charges ( | MediKit) / Viral Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 50)
GROUP 2
BARID (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device [UPGRADE: Trinity (-3)]) Rifle, Pitcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15)
PANDORA (Hacker) Pitcher, Pulzar, Flash Pulse(+1B) ( | MediKit [+1B]) / Viral Pistol(+1B), CC Weapon. (0.5 | 26)
KAMEEL (Hacker, EVO Hacking Device) ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 15)
McMURROUGH Chain Rifle(+1B), Grenades, Smoke Grenades / AP + DA CC Weapon. (0 | 27)
MUTTAWI'AH Boarding Shotgun, E/Marat, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 9)
7 SWC | 399 Points | Open in Army | Copy Code
Group two is the stuff that everyone used to hate about HB, specifically triple Mutt. Somehow McMurrough fit in here too, but thankfully there aren’t enough orders for him even with the Kameel EVO extra order. Pandora is an inspired choice as well, because of her ridiculous dodge penalty and the fact that she’s a character for the purposes of parking in the Panic Room as well.
Deployment
Tony won the roll off and chose deployment, giving me the side with lots of elevated buildings. He assumed I was going to go first, but i stymied his plans by choosing to go second even though I was deploying first. His thought process was that by giving me the side with elevated buildings (and presumably first turn) I’d be stuck up there trying to get off the roof and into the central room. Little did he know this was exactly what I wanted.
You see, the fact that my deployment zone was all rooftops meant that the two console things you can touch to stay safe were on the roofs too! They grant cover, and also make me immune to the Biotechvore zone. Tony can blow them up, but he has to fight through a Sin Eater first, and at that point it’s not really worth it? I can only hold one reserve, so I just started things off by putting down two Sin Eaters, one on each console thing.
The Morlocks all had a spot, spread evenly across my deployment zone on the ground level to guard against Mutts and AD troops. I positioned the links in a way that they wouldn’t be caught by HRL templates and were near ladders to get off the roof when it finally came time to do so. I also made sure they were outside the initial 4″ death zone so I could just not move them for a whole turn and be safe.
I left the Moira MSR, the Cenobite, the Taskmaster HRL, and obviously the two Sin Eaters out to ARO. With that, it was Tony’s turn to deploy. He did a similar thing to me in spreading his Mutts out. I think here he made a mistake in deploying the Muyibs on the left, in a position that he’d have to move them. He should advance, but sometimes it’s beneficial to dump all your orders into something and trade it for a valuable outcome–e.g. a McMurrough run. I think there’s something to be said for his group organization–it’s almost worth it to put the Lasiq and Bohktar into the second group to make the units there more usable.
The first group will be fine on its own. In any case, the Muyib/Asawira link ended up far on the left side with the Bohktar in the middle and most of group two weighted to the right. In a normal game of Infinity, this is probably okay, but this is a game of Panic Room. Everything wants to get to the middle of the table, and simple geometry says that Tony has to move his units farther than mine to get there. Admittedly he has some benefit over me not having to deal with an elevation change, but I can actually cut the hypotenuse as well by doing a long skill jump off the roof if I need.
I put the third Sin Eater down to sounds of exasperation from Tony and he puts down McMurrough. Tony is of the opinion that he lost the game in deployment, more specifically the choice to give me the elevated position. You know, I have the high ground and all that.
Not the gif you were expecting, I imagine. Anyway, I’m inclined to agree. I have an elevated position that I don’t need to vacate, have better sight lines, and any resource expenditure on Tony’s part to remove my Sin Eaters is actually beneficial to me. He has to move farther, and across more lines of fire than I do which means that even though he has smoke support he has to plug more gaps that I do because his forces are more spread out.
In other words, the shape of his deployment is weaker and I have the right tools to disrupt his movement. I’m inclined to agree that he’s starting from a pretty significant disadvantage. Taking advantage of the shadow zone afforded by the Panic Room and just shoveling material forward into the safety of that zone seems preferable, even though I have the tools to get chain rifles on him when he’s clustered. The game is still very interesting, although I do sympathize with his frustration in having to play through a game with such a positional disparity from the start.
Turn 1
Top of 1 – Hassassins
I take orders from group two. He’s got 13 orders in the first pool and 11 in the second so it’s just a larger percentage of orders lost. Furthermore, I’m taking 2/3 of his regular orders in group 2, which has real implications on his ability to push McMurrough forward. I’m confident that even with 13 orders in the first pool my ARO net and the unwieldy movement of links will keep me from suffering too much damage.
As expected, Tony starts by setting up smoke with his Impetuous orders.
He has a shot on the Taskmaster with the Lasiq by climbing the Lasiq onto a roof and manages to down the Taskmaster with a crit. Importantly, the Taskmaster is just unconscious. Furthermore, the Lasiq has now gotten onto a roof. Even with Climbing+, that’s still effectively 0″ of forward movement, and is in effect negative average movement forward, because he has to climb back down and the Bohktar are chained to the Lasiq!
I don’t have MSV on the table, so Tony’s free to set up more smoke to cover his approach. This is fine by me as it effectively is halving the movement of his warbands and spreading the expenditure across multiple units–the double edged sword of Haqq irregular unit spam.
Even with the nerf, Mutts are still annoying AF, so the fact that he gets on into the Panic Room under the cover of smoke is quite irritating. The Sin Eaters can see the door on my side, so Tony plops the smoke right there. Bah.
With the smoke net down, it’s time to get the rest of his units out of the danger zone. Not to belabor the point, but a little pedantry is important for pedagogy here: had Tony just deployed his units out of 4″ from the table edge, he wouldn’t have had to move at all! Anyway, the tool of choice is the Muyib HRL, just outside of 32″ against my Sin Eater. It doesn’t go well for the Muyib.
Still, this order expenditure is enough to get the Muyib/Asawira link out of trouble, and Tony can now focus his attention on the Bohktar/Lasiq link. He rushes them into the central objective room and tries to remove the Sin Eaters with the Bohktar through smoke. Not a bad plan, but Marksmanship is very very strong. We’re just outside of 16″, so the rangebands favor me.
| 19.5 | 30.7 | 49.9 |
It’s worth noting that this is a straight up coin flip for Tony. Heads, he takes out the Sin Eater. Tails, he has a 2/5 chance of taking a wound and a 3/5 chance of having spent an order with no positive outcome. It takes two orders, which is statistically normal in this case, for Tony to take out the first Sin Eater.
He’s not so lucky in engaging the second. He takes a wound…
and then goes unconscious on the second order.
He ends the turn with the remaining Bohktar, the Lasiq, and a Mutt in the room. Lots of other stuff is in cover but in a weak position, and McMurrough is just straight up exposed in the open because he ran out of orders–exactly the outcome I had hoped for when I docked him two orders in group two.
Bottom of 1 – Bakunin
After the Morlocks move up where they can, I decide to engage McMurrough using the Moira. She’s on 18s thanks to being in a full Reverend core and DAM 15 is the highest I’ve got in my toolkit right now. McMurrough tries to dodge out of there instead of throwing smoke, which is reasonable–I can play all sorts of tricks with smoke like using intuitive attack and such, and McMurrough can dodge quite well and into safety.
Regardless, the choice doesn’t matter because Tony rolls low and the Moira hits McMurrough while the rest of the link slowly shuffles off the roof. McMurrough surives and makes it around the corner out of LoF. I continue the shuffle off the roof and importantly get Agatha to a position where she can see my Taskmaster to MediKit him back up successfully!
At this point I use the Morlocks as the Observance intended and swing them into the room and into base to base with the Bohktar. I swing on the Bohktar, not doing any damage, but the Mutt drops the Morlock. Drat.
The Taskmaster pops up and crits the Lasiq and Mutt off the table with some hot HRL takes–should’ve started with this. Bah. Not sure why I didn’t. Tony played it well with the dodge on the Lasiq and the shot on the Mutt.
I roll a second Morlock into the room and swing on the Bohktar, getting hit in the face with a shotgun template for my trouble. This time the Bohktar takes a wound and I’ve got another KOed Morlock on my hands. All the commotion grants Tony a free dodge with McMurrough into the room–putting him right in the cross hairs of the Taskmaster. I have a 44.5% chance to do a wound, and I do two, taking McMurrough off the table.
I’ve been using the Taskmaster haris as I intended, blasting away with the HRL while the Riot BSG and Wolfgang barge into the room. The Riot Grrl throws two slugs into the Bohktar (she left ZoC of the Taskmaster, who’s still on the roof), and the damned Bohktar dodges again.
This does, however, put the Bohktar in LoF of Wolfgang granting me an opportunity to Berserk. Tony throws a viral pistol at Wolfgang, which is a pretty good idea if you’re expecting me to fail some BTS rolls… but I don’t, and the Bohktar is down for the count.
Wolfgang and the Riot post up in opposite corners to create a crossfire with the Reverends just outside for spiritual support.
Turn 2
I’m dominating the Panic Room with a Character for a 2 point lead.
Top of 2 – Hassassins
Tony sets up smoke with a Mutt and I decide to dodge my Riot Grrl into the smoke to hold down the approach.
After picking up their downed HRL comrade, the Muyibs advance on the Panic Room through some more Mutt-provided smoke.
The Govad has MSV1 so it challenges the Riot Grrl, intending to trade. I oblige and we have a template fight. I can hit both the Govad and the Mutt, so I figure I’ll get at least one of them and end up losing the Riot Grrl but putting the Mutt dogged.
Now the biggest of bois Asawira is in play, having been delivered by Muyib express. It splits burst between Wolfgang’s dodge and the Taskmaster’s shot, losing the face to face to both but tanking the rocket.
Wolfgang is now in base to base, which is decidedly not great.
Tony decides to shoot into CC with the Muyib spitfire, so I dodge with Wolfgang while the Asawira gets KO’ed by the Muyib. I’ll take it!
Wolfgang is now out of the building, so the last Mutt is free to run in and E/Marat the the Cenobite, who dodges out of LoF. The Taskmaster whiffs his shot…
but double Sin Eater decidedly does not when it comes time for the Taskmaster to dodge.
The remaining Asawira engages Wolfgang, who dodges again to Tony’s extreme frustration.
The downed Asawira makes its regen roll though, so I’ve still got that to deal with.
Bottom of 2 – Bakunin
I lose a third Morlock, but the fourth one makes it to a position where it can threaten the Panic Room easily.
I get Agatha and the Cenobite into the Panic Room and pick up one Morlock and kill the other with MediKits while the two Reverends tank a nanopulsar from the Asawira.
Kusanagi is in play now, and she easily drills a hole into the Asawira with some AP rounds.
and then I force a dodge out of the Muyib HRL while I get Kusanagi up on building and in overwatch.
Sadly I lose Agatha to the Muyib as she moves past the open door, but I’ve still got the room locked down.
Turn 3
3 point lead for me.
Top of 3 – Hassassins
Tony’s in loss now, but he’s still got Pandora! Pandora tries to dodge her way to victory…
but eventually gets tagged by a rocket from the Cenobite and that’s that.
The Asawira, having passed its regen roll again tries to fight Wolfgang and gets obliterated with Wolfgang surviving.
Bottom of 3 – Bakunin
I secure the room with Wolfgang…
get my classified with the Custodier…
and mop up the rest of Tony’s forces save the Barid who is parked on a console in the back for a
9-0, 285-15 Jurisdictional Command of Bakunin Victory!
Post Game Analysis
I think Tony’s assessment of the game is reasonably accurate–his deployment was problematic, especially in the face of my very high quality AROs, all of which I’m willing to lose. I was able to blunt his attack on the first turn and make it cost quite a lot. Panic Room also has an incredible second turn advantage, which is why I chose second turn. In fact, I’m pretty convinced that in the current mission set and with my playstyle, I’m just heavily incentivized to go second period. Sometimes it goes poorly, but there’s usually something I could have done better in my play and it’s not necessarily the choice to go second overall.
I do think that the Muyib/Asawira link had some spatial development issues. It’s just really hard to push a 5-man aggressively into the midfield and have it stick. You’ll note that I had my own troubles with that, but I had the benefit of a positional advantage overall so the net outcome is probably neutral. In general I think the Asawira has a fair amount of staying power, but not in the open and not against the tools I had available. I misplayed Agatha a little bit, but I was feeling the order crunch and was trying to be efficient by taking some risks.
I’m not sure if 4 Morlocks or 1 Chimera would have been better in this situation, but I can see the pros and the cons there. I think this game is a good case study of extrapolating experience from one list/scenario combination into another. I felt very comfortable piloting my Biotechvore limited insertion list which is quite similar (and in fact is the core of this list). Panic Room and Biotechvore are of course pretty similar missions, and so I had a pretty good familiarity with my tools and a solid plan and stuck to the execution of it.
Bottom line, I think it was a confluence of factors that cost Tony this game. We talked about it a few days later and he was pretty convinced that it was his deployment, and I agree, that definitely started all the dominoes falling. In any case, always a pleasure playing Tony and hopefully you had a good time reading.
