LVO 2015 Day 3 – How I wish that there were more

Than the twenty-four hours in the day

chrisloomis13

Day 3

At the beginning of day 3, with only 2 games left the Resistance was out in a commanding lead.  Next was Cameron’s PHR and a bit behind him was Martin’s Shaltari tied with my own.

My first game I was paired against Scott’s Resistance again, this time playing Recon.  I do not like Recon for a few reasons, but recognize it as being in my favor playing as Shaltari.  Here is Scott’s list again in case you forgot.

Scott and I both jumped straight into buildings closest us and started searching ASAP.  He was focusing long range fire on a building I had infantry in, while I was aiming for his infantry transports.  I kept my gates pretty tight as he had those dasterdly Pathfinder Archangels.  Early  he flew one in to kill a Spirit, knowing it probably wouldn’t survive the AA, which it didn’t.  This may have been a good trade had I not had the card allowing me to bring a destroyed Spirit back.  Also, throughout the game he forgot to activate some of his Freeriders a few separate times.

He located an objective first and took it of the table.  His Freeriders were also netting him a lot of intel as well.  I did limit his infantry, taking out some of the Jackson APCs to strand the Fighters, and eventually the Lifthawk that went with them.  I pounced on his Freeriders as soon as I had the opportunity.  This meant by mid game I was trailing by 6 or 7 points, but he would not be able to score more easily as the intel he had not found was on my side.

With the Freeriders dealt with I kept searching, knowing I needed every bit of intel I could get.  The dice gods shone down on me as I found not one, but two objectives and had gates in the area to cart them off.  I was also lucky his Kraken carrying his Veteran Battlebuses were not any closer, as they had the AA howdah, which was just shy on range to take down one of my Spirits carrying an objective.  The game ended and after KP I believe the tournament score was 14-6 to me.

Last game of the tournament and I am up against Randy and his UCM.

This was the Crystal Death scenario.  Originally it said everytime a ground based unit moved to put a crystal out, but in the previous game on this table they modified it.  There are a set number of green and purple crystals.  One in each corner so that each player has one of each color, and one of each color in the center.  Crystals will shoot at any unit that comes within 4” of it.  Green crystals are Acc3+ E6 AA while purple crystals are Acc2+ E9.  They are A10 with 1DP, and any shots against them that roll a 1 are reflected back at the shooter with the same stat as the weapon fired at them.  The mission had 2 objectives each side in buildings close to the player edges.  These were found and scored the same, with the exception you had to carry them off your opponents edge and units that return will come in from that edge.

courtesy of Randy

courtesy of Randy

I asked Randy if his list was built based on what was painted, and he said it was a mix of that and the local meta.  He said that the tables he typically plays on are incredibly dense.  I’ve always thought DZC cities are fairly empty in comparison to real world cities, but finding an LZ must be really difficult.

courtesy of Randy

The game started with us both shooting the ground crystal near our edge.  He also took out the air crystal on his edge, but I left mine for defensive reasons.  We started trading blows, but fairly quickly we both had found our objectives.  I kept mine with the Edens behind a large building, waiting for an opportunity to shoot them towards his edge.  I was in no hurry since his Rapiers drove on.  One of his jumped in his Bear APC, while the other in a Raven made go at my edge.  The only AA within range was the Yari who both missed.  He won initiative and activated the Raven first.  I reaction fired with the Yari, and even played Assisted Targeting on them, but to no avail.  Now I really had to clear a corridor for my gates to fly the objectives off.

Rudolph the Firedrake VS. the World -courtesy of Randy

My Firedrake went right to go around the building and confront the Rapiers who were headed his direction to meet him.  This was good as it may open the left up for the gates.  At the end of 5 I made my move.  One gate was able to move far enough past his Condor and Falcons, but the other had to take a different path due to the prudent pilots rule.  At the start of Turn 6 we measured.  One gate off, but the other was 21” out, coming up 1” short.  Dang, the second time in 2 days my movement came up a bit short (the other against Rich’s PHR the previous day).  My Firedrake moved in close range to blast his infantry holding his other objective and rolled a 1, so no template and with that my chance of winning ended.  The game was a draw, and I won on a slight KP advantage.  11-9 to me.

The tourney ended with Scott in the lead and Cameron and myself tied for 2nd.  In the beginning of the series I reported a 3rd place, but it turns out things were added wrong on the day of.  Ignoring painting score, Cameron and myself tied with 92 points.  I also tied with Rich’s PHR for best painted.  I thought comparing units to units Rich and I were about even, but the kicker is he had an awesome display board, and I would of given him the title had I been sole judge (paint scores were done by opponents).  His army can be seen on his blog here: http://greenstuffindustries.blogspot.com/2015/02/my-phr-are-ready-for-lvo.html

With that, the LVO was over and I quickly packed up and headed to the airport, as I had no time to spare.