Alien Squad Leader - The Soviet Armoured Fist rumbles on.

I was keen to get my Second Global War Soviet army back on the table again, so a game against Nick's Alien Enslavers at the club yesterday was just the ticket. This was a 200pt battle, so I got an opportunity to deploy my Super Heavy Tanks, unreliable experimental technology but packing a massive punch because of the Primary Weapons system on each tank.

The battle we were fighting was Breakthrough/Rearguard Action, Scenario 6 in the rulebook. I was the attacker, and to win I had to get two units across the table and exited. I'd played this before and managed a win, but I was less confident this time, because of the inherent unreliability of my tanks. Also, I was worried about the psychic powers of the Enslavers.

The table was set up with a river cutting it in two. Luckily I was able to reposition the built-up area nearest to the forest to give my troops some useful cover.

I had a plan, but it all depended on using my long-range firepower to whittle away at the Alien hordes. The Heavy Tanks were on my right and the Super Heavies on the left, with mobile rocket artillery and field artillery in the centre  to launch hopefully devastating barrages.

The infantry were always going to be secondary in my plans, but I deployed them on the flanks to prevent the Aliens from getting around and attacking my vulnerable artillery.

Supporting my armour I had a stand of Mechanical Scientists, inferior infantry defending Mechanics who could repair damaged vehicles.

The Alien Enslavers were a truly bizarre force. Giant tentacled brains. eldritch vehicles, fearsome-looking beasts and hordes of psychically-controlled Thralls.

Supported by floating heavy weapons, the alien tanks and infantry occupied the village on the Alien right.

My tanks soon began to hit their targets, causing damage to the Alien armour. The white figure is a Subject Telepath.

The Alien centre was packed with Thralls, but indirect artillery fire began to thin their ranks. Getting these out of my way was crucial to my plan.

I was also keen to drive off or destroy the Alien armour in the village. 

This force on the Alien right worried me. I didn't want to have to divert forces to fend them off, but I didn't want them coming over to my side of the river either.

I got my vehicles into cover as soon as possible. I didn't want my defensively weak mobile artillery destroyed by Nick's Beast of the Air.

My super heavy armour came under attack, sustaining hits, but my Mechanical Scientists were able to effect battlefield repairs and kept their threat very much alive. I also lost some infantry, but my core force remained intact.

One concern was my Sniper, who was generally unable to trouble the enemy, missing with about 80% of his shots. Re-education in the Gulags beckoned.

Slowly, the enemy forces were thinned out, but I was still not going to commit my forces to advance until they had overwhelming force. 

Finally, with the alien tanks on my right destroyed, the time came to get some troops over the river, my tanks sweeping aside the much-reduced screen of Thralls.

I was still worried by the Psychic threat, though and I concentrated my fire on the command stand on the hill.

These guys were also a concern. I took time to try and weaken them as much as possible.

My centre remained solid. both the indirect artillery and the tanks were causing damage to the aliens.

One tank was lost due to psionic attacks, but my advance continued. 

I ordered more armour to cross the bridge, once the aliens were weakened to such a degree that the threat was becoming negligible.

I sent my mainly-useless sniper into hand-to-hand combat against the Master of Thralls. Almost inevitably, he lost and his death meant that he wouldn't suffer at the hands of my NKVD goons in one of my dungeons.

However, this was just a minor setback as my armour and infantry poured forwards  to gain that all-important breakthrough, with two units leaving the table, with more to follow unopposed.

So, a resounding victory for the Soviet Armoured Fist. I am really beginning to like this army a lot. It isn't fast and it does suffer from unreliability, but The Stubborn characteristic means that troops don't suffer command penalties if pinned, so choosing to be Pinned instead of Falling Back makes a lot of sense.

The opportunity to re-roll shooting dice with tank guns upgraded to Superior Firepower is also useful. It gives you a second chance to score hits on targets you have missed with the first shot.

I've been the attacker twice with my Soviets now. I think that overall they are probably going to be a better defensive force, but they do offer an all-round threat from the massive firepower they can deploy.

A new army for Alien Squad Leader - Second Global War Soviet Confederacy

In ASQL V3.0 there are several new army lists. One set of armies that I liked the look of from reading the playtesting version of the rules was a group covering the "Second Global War"

The rule book has this to say about the Second Global War;

"The 2nd Global War occurred within an alternate timeline in the Earth's history, in which each side developed strange new weapons within their laboratories and workshops of war, some of which worked sufficiently well to put into production."

The rules go on to list five separate armies, three for the Allies (The United Kingdom of Albion, the Soviet Confederacy and the American Union) with a bias towards new technologies, and two for the Axis (German Occultists and Far Eastern Empire) with the emphasis on arcane knowledge and the supernatural serving the cause of creating genetically-enhanced super warriors. This is clearly a "Weird WW2" type of thing, which I reckon has a fair few fans and should prove popular.

The list that particularly appealed to me was the one for the Soviet Confederacy army. I just needed to decide how I was going to put this army together.

Of course, I could just have bought a load of WW2 Russian infantry, tanks, vehicles and artillery, but where's the fun in that? In any case, I already had an army painted up that could easily be used for this, once I'd rebased it onto 5cm square bases. All it really needed was some suitable vehicles.

The army I wanted to reuse was one of the first 15mm sci fi armies I ever bought, using Ground Zero Games Neu Swabian League miniatures. I really like these figures, they have a certain "look" that just appeals to me. Not too futuristic, but suitably different enough to work in a parallel Earth setting.

The other thing that I like about this army list is the number of tanks that can be used, together with the optional use of indirect fire rocket artillery.

So, I set about rebasing my infantry and collecting and painting some tanks and other vehicles. Finally, I've finished the job off and here are the results. First, an army general (the three figure base) and two political commissars;

Four bases of Green Recruits (inferior infantry), with three figures per base.

Four bases of "anti-tank guns", a.k.a Heavy Weapons;

Four bases of mortars, representing "field artillery", a.k.a more Heavy Weapons;

Two sniper bases (front) one heavy, one standard, one base of Mechanical Scientists (rear left) and a command base (rear right);

Four bases of power-armoured Battlesuit Wearers (I love these figures);

The next two pictures both show three bases of Veteran infantry and one Command stand;

Note that in all the above pictures there are a mix of weapons on each stand. This is just for aesthetic reasons,  they all count as having small arms (apart from the Heavy Weapons stands and one of the two snipers). The Mechanical Scientists are a specific unit that can repair broken-down Unreliable vehicles, unhappily a feature of these army 2nd Global War lists which reflects the experimental weaponry.

Now, here is the armoured fist of this army. First, we have three tanks (which can be upgraded to heavy tanks at the cost of +1 point). These are from Brigade Models;

Next two armoured transports with rocket launchers, from TheSceneUK. To save points, these could be downgraded to unarmoured trucks;

Next, also from TheSceneUK, two experimental super-heavy tanks;

And finally, from GZG, four stands of Light Vehicles in the shape of NSL hover-cycles.

So, I have now created a different kind of Human army, one with some plus points, e.g. stubborn infantry and commissars who can motivate the troops to advance and ignore Fallback dice rolls but also some negative ones. i.e. unreliable experimental technology and slow and unreliable vehicles and tanks.

I am looking forward to getting these onto the table at some point. I've clearly, as usual, got too many troops for a basic 150pt army, and even a 200pt one, but at least I have a lot of options here.

I am also wondering if, with a few suitable additions, I can deploy my Corporate Mercenary army as a Far Eastern Empire force. It looks like a distinct possibility.

What I bought at Reveille

I really meant to post this last week but, mea culpa, I forgot!

Anyway here is my haul of goodies and shinies. First off, here are some figures from Annie at Bad Squiddo, including the new Lizard Woman for Frostgrave Archipelago, who I don't think is on the website yet, and the excellent Land Girls with shotguns.

I bought a Saddle Goose dice bag/token bag from Glenbrook Games (no artificial giraffes were harmed in the manufacturing of this bag).

I bought various dice (we always need dice, surely?). The gold, silver and bronze 8- and 10-sided ones are from Magister Militum and the rest are from Annie's bargain bins. 

I bought a female Lewis Gun team from Ironclad Miniatures' VBCW range.

I also bought some 15mm wizards and some gravestones from Magister Militum, for a couple of new projects (of which more will follow in due course).

In these bags are some new resin and metal sci fi vehicles for another project (a new ASQL army). They are new items from The Scene but they aren't on their website at the moment. They are very nice, as are the vehicles which are there. I may have to buy more. I do like what The Scene is doing with these vehicles. They are very nice and have lots of possibilities.

And finally, and no, I am not doing a Star Wars project, I bought these two flyers from fellow club member John Curry. These will get a paint makeover and be reincarnated as distant flyers for a future ASQL army.

Not a bad haul, really, and lots of painting ahead of me.

Aliens!

As I wrote in my background piece about my imagined star system, in addition to the various Human factions there are also alien (xeno) species who inhabit the system. 

One faction is the aggressive and militaristic H'Rin Brood Family of the Glorious Kra'Vak Dominate. These are represented by the excellent GZG Kra'vak figures and vehicles. 

As I wrote previously, the Kra'vak are a planetary-based species, living on many worlds spread across a number of systems but there are also roving fleets of Kra'vak clans who are constantly seeking out new systems to conquer. The H'Rin Brood Family are one of these armadas of freebooting spacefarers. Their forces are mobile and fast-moving, as befitting aggressive raiders. The H'Rin raiding parties generally contain three types of troops. These are known to the Humans as hastati, principes and triarii, organised into maniples of between 20 and 30 individuals. The hastati are younger Kra'vak who act as scouts, the principes are older veterans who fight as the main strike force and the triarii are heavily-armed elite troops who act as a reserve or as assault troops. Each raiding party will contain all three types, grouped into a cohort, which might be supported by auxilia, who can be from any number of allied species or who might be contracted mercenaries or even pirates and outlaws.

So here are the three basic types of H'Rin Kra'vak troops. First, two maniples or platoons of hastati scouts. Each platoon consists of two squads of 10 troopers with energy rifles and 2 heavy energy weapons, with a commander and a section of 4 troopers with support weapons and a section leader/FOO.

Next, the main strike force of principes, comprising experienced fighters. Each platoon (maniple) consists of two infantry squads of 10 troopers (8 with standard energy rifles and 2 with the heavier support versions), plus a support squad of 8, equipped with 4 rocket launchers and 4 sniper energy rifles.

Finally, there is a single maniple of 15 triarii, elite veterans in heavier armour and completely equipped with the powerful assault energy rifles.

 This unit is accompanied by the overall cohort leader.

I have also painted up a couple of anti-grav vehicles for this raiding party, a command and ECM vehicle and a powerful tank.

 Finally, I have painted up two units of auxiliaries to add some variety. First is a platoon of Xar Bug warriors. I really like these. They are suitably alien-looking and are equipped with a variety of projectile and energy weapons.

Last, but not least I have a unit of what I can only describe as most definitely being Not-Space Orks, not least because they are red. These are all GZG Alien Mercenaries with the exception of the two bike riders, who are from The Scene, where they are described as Wasteland Warriors. In my imaginary future, these are members of a race called the Orak, pirates, outlaws and mercenaries.