By Tcional

Overview

• Mission: Mindwipe
• Forces: Nomads versus Qapu Khalqi (300)
• Deploy First: QK
• First Turn: Nomads

Deployment

QK decided to cover one side of his DZ. Mainly because of the possibility of facing Carlota. Super defensive fireteams with Azra’il nearby. Meanwhile Al Hawwas were covering both consoles and bridge in the middle.

I’ve decided to spread my deployment. Moran covers the right console with a Koala. Sin-Eater securing the right firelane with a Transductor in support. Zoe cowering in a corner nearby. Morlocks in a sort of forward positions. Zondnautica in bottom left corner. Moderator Lieutenant safely behind the boxes having Pi-Well, Transductor and Intruder nearby. Zero KHD near left console and Zero Minelayer covering right building with a mine covering right edge of the table.

Turn 1

Top of 1 – QK

QK opens up with a Yuan Yuan. He tries to jump behind my Sin-Eater but fails utterly and ends up near Ghulam Fireteam Core. Another one and he lands. He gets targeted by Zoe and Sin-Eater manages to turn around a bit, just to see him. Yuan Yuan tries his luck with a Chain Rifle, but Sin-Eater does survive the hit and knocks Yuan Yuan out with a Pistol.
Next up is Djanbazan Haris with HMG. The Yuan Yuan that failed his Combat Jump uses his irregular order and one regular to throw a smoke near the pickup truck and Djanbazans takes out Sin-Eater nice and clean from that position.

Al Hawwa’ in that firelane activates the console and survive CKoala’s hit!

Remaining orders are spent on Al Hawwa’ on top of the bridge. He goes down to Moran and shots him point-blank with a Shotgun. No chance for poor Moran, and I forgot to use multiple Spotlights on that pesky skirmisher. Haris goes back a bit to get a better defensive position leaving Sekban in forward position.

Bottom of 1 – Nomads

Morlocks open with an Impetuous phase. One dies to MSR Alguacil, the other throws a smoke on a console against left-side Al Hawwa’. The Zondnautica goes out and making use of both her Impetuous and Uberhacker orders she gets to the console, activates it in a first try and it turns out that the Server furthermost from enemy Fireteams is the right one.

So there’s only one thing to do. Carlota having still 6 Regular Orders in her pool walks in behind the Rogue AI. Uses one Order to walk towards it and then miserably fails to put 2 D-Charges on the Server. Luckily she completely blows it away with the third one. 

Having few Orders left, second Morlock goes after Al Hawwa’ near the Zondnautica. Goes in for a melee, gets knocked out by a Chain Rifle and Al Hawwa’ makes all the saves

Then Spektr with a MSR shows up! Having only Azra’il in his sight he takes the shots. First Order, 1 hit and both ARM saves successful. Second Order and one ARM save goes through, but that’s not enough.
KHD Zero takes down Al Hawwa’ that shot Moran. 

Last Order was used on Zero Minelayer that took a shot at Sekban and put him down.

Turn 2

Top of 2 – QK

3rd Yuan Yuan tries to drop near my left-side Transductor (my friend forgot to tell me that he is cancelling his Impetuous Order in the first turn, so I was quite surprised), but luckily rolls 20.
Or not so luckily, because he then deploys right on Carlota’s back and gets her down.

First Yuan Yuan goes back into action, throws down smoke for Djanbazans and follows it up with a raid towards Zero Minelayer. Zero goes down to Chain while Yuan Yuan makes his ARM saves.

Djanbazan Duo goes after Spektr and takes him down in 2nd Order while securing Yuan Yuans building.

Djanbazans follow through, but HMG one gets stunned while trying to take out Transductor Zond and decided to hide back in the building while Uberhacker Djanbazan goes into SF inside.

Bottom of 2 – Nomads

Time to counter. I’ve got 7 orders left, so I put my 2 Transductor Zonds in group 1. The Zero KHD goes into the building only to find out Al Hawwa hacker is slightly out of range. Trinities him on the second Order, goes into Camouflage and the gets discovered on his second short skill by an Alguacil.

Having trouble with that part Zoe helps out by taking out HMG Djanbazan and Zero continues his raid while Dodging Sniper bullets.
QK player didn’t notice that there are windows on that side of the building and skipped his Yuan Yuan AROs (I thought he was in Prone) and Zero proceeds to walk closer to Djanbazan to take him out with a Trinity. Djanbazan makes his saves and drops out of SF Mode trying to Oblivion my Zero.

Turn 3

Top of 3 – QK

QK are in a very serious situation. Nomads have destroyed the Rogue AI and QK is far from getting any. Yuan Yuan goes out and takes out Zero, which opens up a route for Uberhacker Djanbazan. He goes out and towards the middle server. On the way he Oblivions Zoe and gives her one ARO to Reset out of Isolation (at WIP6 it ain’t that bad), but she fails.
Near middle Server Djabazan takes a shot at Pi-Well and destroys him, while getting Stunned by Transductor.

One last thing QK did was taking a swing at my right Server with Yuan Yuan. Yuan Yuan gets hit by Zoe and puts a Wound on the Server.

Bottom of 3 – Nomads

9-1 Victory is basically secured. The only thing I have to do is complete my classified objective which is Predator. At this point I still had 0 kills. Zoe has 2 Unconscious opponents near her (both being Yuan Yuan). With her Isolated Irregular Order I decided to put a D-Charge on Yuan Yuan near the Server and I’ve blown him away (at this point there was probably some adrenaline acting up, because at the beginning of the game I was remembering myself that I could Coup de Grace the noodle-eater). 

Then last 3 Orders was an Intruder shooting a Pistol at Djabazan while taking an LSG to the face. 2 Orders later Intruder is laying down, crying Unconsciously and Djanbazan still lives.

Post Game Analysis

So after the first turn not much has changed. Carlota did her job as Server destroyer and secured the victory for Nomads. Just the possibility of her presence was enough to send QK cowering in one corner. I was considering Hellcats with EVO for that mission, but they couldn’t be Uberhackers and didn’t have any anti-materiel CC weapons, so that goes for the Tomcats, which I’m generally not really fond of. Definitely will have more fun with airborne deployed units in the upcoming games, even with Meteor, since I’m a very big fan of Bakunin.

Also Hellcat falling down on 18s (+3 from Hellcat skill and +3 from EVO) anywhere on the table when you need him? I’ll take it almost everyday!
It was the first time I have faced Yuan Yuans and they are scary. I’m happy that I didn’t have ‘the pleasure’ in N3 with unlimited Order Pool.
One more thing that was a super neat idea was to have Zondnautica Hacker as my Uberhacker since she can get where she’s needed in a matter of a few Orders and can get up to 12 Orders with Impetuous and Uberhacker Special Order.
Last comment is on the mission. It seems fun and all, but after this game I feel like the final result heavily depends on your Console roll where you will have to hit the enemy to get the most. I’ve hit the jackpot on my Console activation and had very easy access (I could even get that one with Zondnautica easily) and QK rolled the hardest one to accomplish because he was entirely on the other side of the table from my Rogue AI Server.

PS. playing on TTS resulted in my best photo-documented game to date.
PSS. It’s great to finally see so much hacker presence in the game. After 3 years I feel like this was the first time they played such a relevant role in my game.