The Battle of Blueberry Gulch

The Battle of Blueberry Gulch (As we were drinking Blueberry Ale during the game.)

“Hey, what’s that?” I ask pointing to a large tank.
“A land raider.”
“It’s cool looking. What’s the armor?” I ask wondering how easily my Broadsides will destroy his work of art and the many, many points it must represent. His tears (metaphorically) will be delicious and for the Greater Good or something.
“14.”
“Oh, so like 14 front, 12, 10?”
“No, 14 all around.”
“Oh.” That’s... a challenge. 4 to glance with a Broadside. 3 Broadsides on the table. 2 Fusion Blaster Piranhas. And every troop unit he put on the table is wrapped in a Rhino.

A whole lot of transports, not enough Armor Penetration to pop it all first turn and my sight lines were partially obscured by terrain.

I’ll spare you the full Batrep, we ended in a tie in turn 7 which was the best I could hope for after all my troops were killed except some Kroot who spent 7 turns sitting on an objective.

My Piranhas blocked in his land raider, popped drones and then annoyed him. The Piranhas faced sundry forms of getting incapacitated, weapon destroyed, immobilized, etc. His terminators did have to disembark to kill the Drones which I took as a moral victory.

Moments of Learning:

1) Sniper Drones suck. They seem good on paper. Another Broadside is points better spent.

2) I do not miss my Hammerhead. Sure it had a big gun, with cool gearhead upgrades, looks awesome, but in it’s place are two broadsides. Twice the gun, and twice the twinlinked. Also, with a TL upgrade and a HW Multitracker, it gets to fire zee missiles! The option to fire the missiles makes it superior to the Hammerhead Burst cannon in terms of range, if not in terms of rate of fire. My testing agrees with Shoot Tau Thrill.

3) A Devilfish provides the same cover silhouette as a Hammerhead for 1/2 the cost. Sure it’s risky using a troop filled transport as mobile cover but the 3 to 4 Crisis Suits behind it make it worth it.

4) I’d been fielding Fireknives (Plasma and Missile Pods) exclusively. Plasma kills Marines dead. However, getting into Rapid Fire range is chancy and point for point, stripping my list down to 1 team of Fireknives and a FKnife commander and using the point savings from the other 3 man squad equates to 2 2 man squads of Missile Pod Suits. With the enhanced Range and Twin-linking, I think it’ll be an improvement.