FLASH FLASH FLASH. Late breaking front line accounts from Klendathu

 Post action battlefield analysis has salvaged declassified exciting front line imagery from the debacle bravely fought action on the Bugs homeworld Klendathu. 

 Post battle inventory of tactical nuclear javelin missiles has indicated a massive loss consumption of munitions. The bugs homeworld has had an questionably effective nuclear blow struck. Pity our Well done fighting men and women of the federation!

 

Hammfilade 2026 - Friday. Starship troopers. Would you like to know more?

We have successfully concluded another Hammfilade weekend of gaming. This year we were later (Sept) than is typically as the summer was incredible busy for a number of us. We went for a slightly smaller cohort this year for logistical as well as socialization reasons. Our big game happened on the Saturday so we aimed for some smaller games Friday, Saturday (if we ended early) and Sunday (for those who could start their commute home later). 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday night Ron and James brought out their starship troopers setup. It had been run in Tacoma for Enfilade earlier in the year. I think most of the minis are from wake's emporium. Rules were modified pony wars I'm led to believe. 

 

 

 

 

 

Doug usually gives us a strategic overview and historical account of the big napoleonic battle on saturday (usually after we've been playing for a while, or when some of us finally figure out what the historical battle actually is...it's almost always a surprise). We insisted on doing the same in some good natured ribbing of Doug. Many many quotes from the movie and book were used. 

 

 

 

 

The battle is from the 1st invasion of Klendathu, the bugs homeworld. Buenos Aires had earlier been pasted by the bugs, promoting an escalation to full war. The intent was to hit the homeworld and end the war quickly....everyone should be home by Xmas. Of course, historically this did not occur and it was a total fiasco. The mobile infantry were ill prepared and the necessary tactics and technology not yet developed. 

 

 

Our commands were instructed to insert by dropship, take command of the area and investigate points of interest. Additional commands ended up generating as the points of interest were touched. For some strange reason the 'random discharges of plasma energy' seemed to preferentially target our ships and our ships were grounded fast. Poor Ron take a hit on the first turn and was humping his command across the table.....it made for a decent reserve when everything started going haywire. 

 

 

 

 

There were two lines of impassible terrain (for the humans only) which channeled us into 2 passes at each line. The bugs continuously spawned. Gun ranges were approximately the same distance as the charge range for the bugs, so this wasn't any turkey shoot. 


To the left we see that the Federation TV Team was left filming near a massive swarm outbreak as Seth pushed on aggressively to retrieve some critical intel from a fallen fort. 

He managed to buy a bit of time with a nuclear tipped javelin missile launch. Unfortunately the radiation was poorly passable for the humans, but didn't bother the bugs much (at all). 

With the situation getting dicey we all ripple fired our contigent of tactical nuclear weapons. The Bugs were lurking near the passes making attempts challenging. To most peoples amusement one of the nuclear missiles failed to hit the bugs when it accidentlly hit a unit of MI along the shooting path. A good third of the platoon was instantly vaporized. 

My own point of interest had a Doogie Howser looking political officer show up and insist we get across the table to another point of interest. Loyal to the end to the human race and unwilling to catch a bullet at close range I complied. 

Ron's slow walker began to establish a central perimeter as the rest of our commands were mostly savaged trying to cross the second line. 

 

We were regularly trying to call in air support and bombardments, often successfully, but hilariously (for the GM) he wouldn't let us use the templates to plan the strike location, and strikes landed after the bugs got another move. So you were trying to predict where they'd be. 

Danger close and blue on blue fire were definitely a thing.  

Seth was doing great work and managed to get to the fort and seize the intel. He was uploading it on the 2400baud modem while bugs massed. 

 

The GM announced an end game state and started an unstoppable wave of bugs moving from the table edge. Lt Seth's command was post humously awarded numerous medals for their successful mission. 

A handful of troops managed to call in extraction and were able to help relay first hand accounts of the historically accurate catastrophe on Klendathu.

 

NetEpic Armeggedon learning game. Marines vs Guard

 On Friday I finally got a chance to try Epic warhammer (technically the netepic rules, which are living rule updates of the epic armeggedon ruleset with is....4th edition of epic?). I have wanted to play this for a long time, and owned the rules at one point, but couldn't quite understand how to set up and win a game. Turns out I'm not an idiot, it wasn't really in the base rulebook and came out later with a tournament back. 

Graham hosted an intro game for Nick, Peter and myself. I took one side and Nick and Paul took the other side. Each sides was two 1000 pt forces, so it worked out well. A 'normal' game is 3 or 4k, and Graham intentionally omitted the more advance things (like indirect fire, and airplanes, teleportation, etc).

I had space marines (blood angels in red and ultramarines in blue). In hindsight my troops were a bit mobility challenged as the infantry blobs had smaller stomp walkers(dreadnoughts) that couldn't go as fast as their transports. Definitely a frustration for me during the game. Opposing force was imperial guard which get lots and lots of tanks, big tanks, and mechanized infantry. And super long range  tank killers. 

 

 

It's a bit hard to describe a play by play as it runs with alternating activations. You often only play to the end of turn 3 and the victory conditions give a clear winner. Victory points are based around control of objectives (placed by both sides in the beginning), as well as breaking your opponents most potent/expensive unit, and racing to seize the objective on the opponents baseline.

 

 

My tanks (landraiders) were able to rush forward and seriously mess up Petes mech infantry advance (note to self, always debuss the infantry). Unfortunately Pete's highly effective and long range tank killer unit then proceeded to remove 2 of my 4 tanks. My rolling was pretty abysmal, so even 3+ and 4+ saves weren't doing much for me. In that I had good company as Nick and Pete suffered from bad rolls most of the game as well. 

 

Nick was able to aggressively rush some of my high mobility, short range land speeders (skimmer units) and almost destroy them. This pretty much removed any chance I had at scooping his objectives in the back field. 

I suspect I eked out the win largely based on my objective placement and close attention to controlling them. I played flames of war for a while and it's all objectives so perhaps I was a bit more attuned to the principles. I remember in May running an adeptus titanicus game where the losing side pretty much forgot to contest an objective....it was a bit surprising but probably shouldn't be. If you aren't used to living and dying (winning and losing) base on objectives and are more attuned to blasting your opponent off the table and can see how it could happen.