In the midst of the chaos after the Fall of Memphis with its attendant skirmishes and battles to contain the Martians in that city, a strange scene unfolded at the 116th Battalion's forward headquarters. A local sharecropper, reluctant to leave his land even with the sound of guns and the terrible Martian war cries coming from not even a mile away, had found something strange as the sun set after the battle.
"It musta come squirmin' into the house cause'a the hot sun this afternoon, tryin' ta find somewhere cool an dark. Well it crawled unner my little boy's bed, and he done nearly woke the dead with his screamin'. I heard there ain't been many caught alive, so we loaded family on the mule n' wagon, and came straight to tell y'all. Last I saw it was still there, fiddlin' with some kind of shiny metal thing. Maybe one a them heat ray jobbers!"
Colonel Dunsten had heard enough. He thanked the man, ordered his men to give him and his family food and water, and called his officers together. A living Martian was a grand prize to bring his Battalion and the 29th Division as a whole, and he intended to fight for it. Knowing that if the Martian device had been a weapon the farmer would have been vaporized, he decided to assume it was a communication device and to move in force. It was a risk, but with only one living Martian ever captured, it was a risk worth taking.
As elements of the 116th Battalion, supported by two attached tank companies, approached the farm, they could already see Tripods striding over the distant trees. They too had come in force to rescue their fallen comrade...
Scenario: Capture/Rescue the Martian! Any unit can "Pick up" the Martian, but it takes one full action, replacing either a move or a shoot phase entirely (or if you move to base on the last move phase, it just ends your move to pick it up). Whoever holds the Martian at the end of turn 6 wins. No break points! Both sides are fully committed to claiming the Martian, who is strangely important to their own species. Move orders are limited to 3 each. We randomized who played which, and the humans (yay) were given to me.
OOB: This is a huge game by my standards. It's very exciting because it is the first time I've fielded pretty much all of my forces (well, ok, I have a few infantry and a HMG left to paint). I'm curious to see how the sides balance. The game took about 2 hours total.
US Army (Me): 4 units Infantry (2 Forlorn Hopes), 2 command units, 2 HMG, 2 Rough riders, 2 Mortar teams, 1 Heavy Artillery Battery, 4 MKIIs, 2 MKIIIs.
Martian Forces (Fritz): 6 Assault Tripods (2 with gas, 2 with dust), 3 Scouts, 1 Grenadier, 2 Slavers, 1 drones, 1 shock drones, 1 scorpion drones, 1 lobototon blasters.
Deployment: The humans won the roll to choose the side of the table, but lost the deployment roll off, so they deployed first. On the right, there was a bit more open terrain, so I placed an entire company of tanks. Afterwards, Fritz concentrated his drones on that side of the table, hoping I'd waste shots on those slow moving units.
The Left was hairier. There was some ruins, so I set up the Artillery behind them, and supported it with strong tanks as well as Infantry, rough riders, and a mortar team. I was hoping to rush them all up into cover. Given how Fritz concentrated very strong forces on the left, I was really hoping to win initiative, as none of my units started in cover.
At the center I deployed infantry to strike from the fields, HMGs to pick off weakened tripods converging on the farmhouse, and both of my rough riders, as well as some MKIIs. My strategy was to hold my strongest forces on the flanks and converge everything into the center.
Thankfully, the humans won the first initiative roll. We needed it to get to that cover. The pre-game bombardment weakened two of the three tripods caught under the template, but it was the first turn's volley that really made me glad I had the big guns. It detonated the Grenadier Tripod, which took out the Assault Tripod next to it, having been weakened by the two artillery blasts. Then my tanks moved up and targeted a green gas Tripod at center, taking it out. 3 Tripods down in the first turn, giving the humans momentum for the next initiative. Further, I had targeted and destroyed the entire unit of shock drones. The Martians had no artillery at all left and they hadn't even fired yet!
The Martian counter-attack was aggressive. Fritz is a strong and aggressive player, and he had his eye on the objective the whole time. He started clustering his tripods near the Martian in the farm house, and was able to pick him up that turn. He used the concentration of his Tripods to rout, then destroy a unit of MKIIs, and take out a few other individual elements. Meanwhile, as I turned my right flank in towards center, he brought his drone forces up to flank me.
Sadly, by this point the battle became intense and I stopped taking pictures. In the above shot, you can see the aftermath of something that happened twice (this, I believe, is after the first time). A Tripod picked up the Martian, and then was immobilized by rough riders, assaulted with infantry, bombarded with artillery, and shot to hell with tanks and HMGs. So, of course it catastrophically explodes, tearing up all of those nearby units. It happened again the next turn, and this took out other Tripods as well. Interestingly, I never once managed to even pick up that Martian during this. I was just cutting down the Tripods, which fell with surprising alacrity. The kill-zone I'd set up around the house worked well, and my dice were on fire for the first 3 turns. That said, I lost a lot of men in those explosions near the farm house, and at the bottom of turn 3, Fritz was able to pick off a fair amount of my tanks forces, whittling units, and in one instance forcing me to spend an order to rally some optimally placed MKIIs.
By turn 4 both forces were nearly spent, but the Martians had gotten the worst of it. The scorpions drones had finally managed to get into the corn fields and slaughter a mortar team before being gunned down by HMGs. With the drones falling, the Martians only had 1 Assault Tripod and the two Slavers left. The humans weren't much better, having a few elements (not units) of MKIIs, two stands of infantry, one mortar team hopelessly out of range, some HMGs (soon to be out of range), the heavy guns, and 1 fresh unit of MKIIIs which had been brought back with an order (I love that Industrial Might). They deployed from the right side of the table, in the Martian zone, causing a bit of panic for Fritz, as that's where his last Assault Tripod was retreating towards to stay out of range of the slow moving mortars and machine guns.
In the last turn, the Slavers were keeping my slow moving units tied up, but two single MKIIs were chasing the Assault Tripod, while the Tripod charged the MKIIIs. Fritz, having seen lots of Tripods detonate this game, was banking on it happening again if I took this last one out. Unfortunately for the humans, that's what happened. On the 6th and final turn, the Martians won initiative and the Assault Tripod took out a unit of MKIIs. When my turn came, and all orders spent, I needed to keep the MKIIIs within 6'' in order to grab the Martian at the end if I could take out the tripod. My two MKIIs were at 8", and couldn't snag it. I shot, and the tripod exploded, and one of my MKIIIs was caught in the blast. I failed my morale roll, and the last MKIII, the only thing that could grab the Martian right next to it, routed.
After all the carnage on both sides, no one could grab the Martian in time, and it died there in the field. A very bloody DRAW.
Still, a hell of a game. I'd say the MVP of the game was the Heavy Artillery which did a lot to weaken or destroy numerous tripods, especially when they clustered around that farm house. If they hit, they're nearly guaranteed to penetrate the Martian armor.
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