"Hi, Kirby. I have a request of yourself and the Pink Army.
Myself and some friends are playing out a Badab War campaign, using the Imperial Armour books. We are currently in Phase I of the campaign, and will be playing out the 'Massacre At Bellerophon's Fall' scenario at the end of March. We have already played a 'dry-run' of this scenario, and it is quite clearly a very difficult one for the Loyalist player to win.
I have attached a PDF copy of the scenario, though I suspect that you cannot legally publish this on your website, so I will summarise the scenario below:
The Loyalist player deploys fist, anywhere on the board, but not within 12" of any table edge. Unless they have the ability to deep strike, no Loyalist forces may be held in reserve. The Secessionist player then deploys their forces anywhere outside the Loyalist deployment zone as long as they are not within 6" of an enemy model. As much of the Secessionist force as they wish may be held in reserve. Unless deep striking, Secessionist reserves may enter from any table edge. The first turn is decided by a roll-off, with the Secessionist player adding +1 to the roll if they have fewer units on the table than the Loyalist player.
It is a 2000-point game. The Secessionists may exchange Heavy Support slots for Fast Attack. The Loyalist player must field 3 Indepedent Character HQs. These are the Objectives for the mission. For every character killed or removed from play, the Secessionists gain 1 objective point. For every character which survives, the Loyalists gain 1 objective point. The player who scores most Kill Points will also gain 1 objective point. So 4 objectives points available, making the game fairly easy to draw.
The game takes place at dusk, so roll a D6 at the beginning of every turn. On a 4+ the remainder of the game is treated as a Nightfight mission.
The battlefield is a Rust Zone, covered in metallic debris. The terrain is therefore unstable: all hills count as Difficult Terrain for infantry, and the inside of any building/ruin counts as Dangerous Terrain.
The game is usually 6 turns long, but will end after turn 5 on a roll of 1-2.
In our practice game, this scenario was SO difficult for the Loyalists to win (the Secessionists came out 4-0 winners). The Loyalists are surrounded from the outset, so Side/Rear shots on vehicles are easy to acquire. It's no walk in the park for Infantry either, with the special terrain rules. Also, if the Loyalists lose 2 Characters, the best result they can hope for is a draw.
So Pinkies, if you were the Loyalist player, how would you attempt to win this scenario? I would be thinking of taking 3 characters in Terminator Armour with Storm Shields, and keeping them in reserve. I would pray that they do not arrive early in the game, thereby decreasing their exposure to Secessionist attacks (not very heroic though, and hardly a reliable strategy!). Are there any better ideas?"
Lame scenario :P. What you really want to do is create as big a 'bubble' as possible to protect your true army inside and you want this bubble to be cheap as possible. This is essentially a bubble-wrap gone nuts and you want to push the Seccessionists out from your army as far as possible. This gives you a somewhat normal game. From there you obviously want to go into a corner as much as possible. In the centre of the board is possible to not provide any real benefits from reserving but you're then going to have a hard time actually surviving. By using a corner you can defeat any units the Seccessionists put there and then wall off the table edges as much as possible and use the extended bubble to protect you.
With regards to army list...well I'll have to let someone like Puppy help you here. I'd read his review and try and take advantage of some the special characters they have access to rather than handicapping yourself and reserving 'tough' ICs. You're already at a disadvantage and playing with less points isn't really going to help though it obviously does gear towards the mission. You could of course take 30 TH/SS and put the ICs in there and say "bring it" lol.
Does anyone else have some thoughts here or experience with this scenario they'd like to share?
