Wednesday 25 April 2018

Aliens vs Predator: Rescue Mission






Hi folks,

Our latest scenario was a rescue mission, with the marine player trying to recover a number of survivors from around the board and return them to operations. Sgt Waz chose to field the marines ("Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps!"). The Predator player, The Trooper, was tasked with collecting six trophies. This usually wouldn't be too hard, but with only one Predator he would have to be extra sneaky. I was running a mix of Alien Stalkers, Infants, Warriors and Facehuggers in an attempt to feed and defend the hive. I would need to kill a number of the enemy AND destroy two out of three objective corridors, all situated just outside the marine deployment zone.








The marines moved through the centre of the board, maintaining overlapping arcs of fire and setting up fire support on the flanks. The lone Predator ghosted away from my stalking blips and sniped at a marine ("turn around"), taking him down with a plasma caster shot.








Revenge was swift, though, with Sgt Waz sending his smart-gunner down the flank to open fire on the predator. With three shots he managed to roll two critical hits, going straight through the Predators armour and leaving it very vulnerable ("if it bleeds we can kill it"). 




Low rolls are better in AvP; 1's are crits.



The return attack killed the Smart-gun operator. With the Predator wounded and the numbers of Marines thinning, it was the perfect time to attack with my swarm. There were just enough miniatures left on the board for me to win the game, as long as I took out the Predator first (so that it couldn't steal any kills!). 








I attacked the Predator with an Alien Infant, but failed to cause any damage. The Predator punched the life out of my Alien with its wristblades, but I managed to roll under 5, causing acid blood to spray everything in the tile. The Predator was killed!








Sgt Waz worked hard to control the centre of the board with strategy cards like suppressive fire. This created a kill zone that I could not move into except at huge cost of models. I worked the angles, getting some Facehuggers in position to attack, but they were destroyed with some precision combat knife work.








With the centre of the board unassailable, I rushed a flank in an attempt to reach the objective corridors and destroy them.








The marine playing back-stop was killed by acid, spat by one of my Alien Warriors, clearing a path for me to attack the corridors beyond. The Marine in the centre of the board pushed deeper into the hive to rescue the survivors, whilst the marine with the flamer fell back to defend the escape route.








In the centre of the board the marine really started cutting loose, taking out my Aliens with every roll of the dice. I finally managed to overwhelm him, causing Sgt Waz to change tactics. With his clearest method of rescuing the survivors gone and the objective corridors under attack, he now fell back at full speed to try and get a clean wipe of the board.




This guy is about to get eaten. Finally.




 I managed to destroy one of the corridors before the flamer marine cooked my attacking Aliens. Sgt Waz then worked back through the corridors, with me throwing everything I could at the remaining two marines, but I just couldn't take them down. Fittingly, the last Alien fell to some more deft knife work (of all things!?). With a very effective flamer backing up the attack, my chances were always slim at that point anyway.








With all of the Aliens wiped off the board, the objective was automatically achieved by Sgt Waz and he won the game. I was really pleased with how the Aliens went in this game, I am starting to get a hang of coordinating my attacks to make sure that I am hitting each target with enough bodies to make an impact. I came within a few lucky rolls of winning the scenario, which gives me a lot of hope for the next game!

See you across the table,

Marc


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