Last Friday, I managed my first game of Planetfall past 5000
points. People have told me this game gets better the more points you play, and they are not wrong!
My opponent and I agreed to play the game to 5360 points as
this was the most he could field points wise.
My force was slightly short of this, but I topped myself up
with 15 logistic points.
In essence the Terrans that I face had:
A fully topped Core
Two full Heavy Helix’s
Hawkers Industry Aerial Helix
My force consisted of
Fully kitted out Core Helix
Full Heavy Helix
Leivathan Helix
Works Raptor Recon Helix
Game Highlights:
After getting setup, Simon played Mastery of the Skies to
give one of his Tyr’s Interceptor, I won first activation, and linked fire with
my Wraith to do my best to destroy it before it had a chance to do the damage
to me.
Unfortunately my rolling (24 dice) resulted in only 10
damage, which caused one point of damage.
When the Tyr returned fire, using a placed shots he managed
to score a whopping 18 successes, two points of damage! Followed by a pinpoint
(4) roll I was not convinced things would go well.
Fortunately my 5 shields save 9 successes, and the point of damage on the Tyr knocked it down to 8, keeping me alive.
The rest of turn one had me focussing down (and destroying
both Tyr’s, and taking two hullpoints off his Hawkers command element.
Turn 2:
I spent my maximum Logistic points to ensure I won the roll
to go first as I did not want those artillery strikes called in on me, and then
proceeded to kill the main Hawkers industry flyer from the off.
This is the turn where things began to die, as we worked our
way through three of four full units each, with his entire Hawkers Industry
Helix dying, his Tank Destroyers from one Heavy going up in smoke & both
Vidars from his Core.
We had a bit of mutual destruction as my Desolators had two
damage on one of them. The other was closer when his Vidar’s advanced, and took
a further two damage. I promptly failed my Disorder test, taking two markers,
and meaning the unit was doomed at the end of the turn.
However this did mean that with Forlorn hope and not yet
activated, the Desolators surged into effective range, and launched a 34AD
barraged into his Vidars, successfully causing enough damage that when they
failed their Dis-order they were also given a Forlorn hope marker.
Turn 3:
We ran out of time before we could complete turn 3, but by
the time we packed up the score was 2 / 30 in my favour on the tracker, and my
opponent conceded a well fought game.
Analysis:
Easily my favourite game of planetfall yet, you actually
feel like you have played more than just two and a half turns with the number
of activations you have.
It also really highlights the tactics around your helix
activation order.
I ended up with:
11 activations in my Core Helix
2 in my Heavy,
2 in my Recon
3 in my Leviathan.
I have had previous feedback that those 11 activations in my
Core Helix would effectively lock me out of doing things with my other helixes,
however when you consider that the Leviathan has potentially three activations,
but only if it deploys its transport, it’s a nice easy one activation on the
first turn.
Follow by two quick Recon activations and then two Heavy I
was able to quickly get into my Core helix and work from there.
In the first turn most of my opponents units were too far away for me to effective threaten them with Cyber Warfare without exposing my own tanks, so I didn’t lose too much sleep over being unable to lock their activations out.
I was also able to cripple / destroy some of his heftier units before they could inflict serious damage on myself.
Will the tactics work every time? Probably not, but then again
a few more games under my belt will surely show some of the weaknesses.
A few more snaps from the game, and yes I really do need to find out a better way to do these battle reports!
Comments
Is that the usual amount of terrain you use?
Only reason I'm asking is that we tend to use a lot more, and I'm starting to think that it affects how the forces balance against each other.
We tend to just let someone setup the terrain as well, we haven't used the setup rules from the rule book, mainly to save time.
Do you have any pictures of how much you use? Would be good to get a gauge, feel free to pm me on the forum or post here :-)
This is about the amount we've used so far, but I get the feeling that it's far too much for my poor fishheads... Only way to get any decent lines of fire is to be dangerously close.