Firefight: Control the Intel

Following on from last weeks musings about the scenario's on offer in Firefight we played Control the Intel this week. The scenario is based around holding 1d4+2 objective tokens with 1VP being awarded at the end of each round for each objective your side holds.

We increased the points to 1250 a side with the though of adding some armoured units in and filling up the table a bit more. It looks like the standard competitive game is going to be around 1500 points so it would be good to get that as our normal game size. At the moment we aren't getting through the turns very quickly as we learn the rules and look things up.

On the night we only managed to get through two turns in the end as we spent time trying to work out rules queries and how best to use our units at any one point. But as with the previous games lots of casualties had been caused in that time so the end was reasonably clear.

In the game itself Mr T put his two tokens on his right flank and I put my three tokens (we rolled for 5 tokens and took turns with me placing first) on my right flank as well. This meant that we had nothing in the centre to fight over.

In the game I took a Progenitor with smoke grenade launcher for the first time in order to try and cover the advance of my forces. I chose to activate it first and got lucky with the dice (1d10 needing a 5+) to lay out the smoke template I needed in front of a large portion of my army. With that in place it allowed my rats to move up without being shot into charge range. In most games you can't charge something out of your line of sight, but in Firefight you can. Doing so does 'Hinder' your charge which means you don't get a +1 to hit but the Veer-myn have a command ability that negates that and allows you to take the bonus. The smoke is only height 4 though so tall/flying units and hills will negate that advantage.

Whilst Firefight borrows from KoW in many respects including the term Hindered Charge it treats them in different ways, which I kept getting wrong. In KoW being Hindered makes it more difficult to hit so if you normally hit on a 4+ then you'd hit on a 5+. In Firefight being Hindered means you don't get the bonus for charging which would mean that if you normally hit on a 4+ you hit on a 3+ if Unhindered. As a player of a melee army this is one rule I really need to get right!

The game also showed me the importance of being able to activate after your opponent has run out of activations to a melee army. Most of the Forge Father units have Assault Reaction abilities that they can use if they are unpinned and un-activated. That means if they are charged after they have activated the assaulters can get in without fear of taking casualties or the opponent evading away in the case of the bikers. On my right I held back units to run the Forge Father activations down until they had to either sit and take the charge or retreat out of my range.

As ever with the learning games I/we got some of the rules wrong like the un-hindered charge bonus. I got two rules wrong on the Tunnel Runners as I'd not realised they couldn't charge into rough terrain and also thought they got a Scout move if deployed on the table at the start of the game. The scout move is actually for units with Aerial Deployment.

Other things to keep in mind is that Beast and Vehicle units cannot claim objectives so for army building the Veer-myn will need to be careful not to overload on both those unit types. The Rat Swarm is a really useful activation padder as it's a Troop choice for only 35 points. But they cannot claim objectives so you need other units to do that.

One unit that put an appearance in right at the end of the game was the Hammerfist Drop troops. I think this will be a really useful unit for the Forge Fathers as it gives them the ability to place a good shooting/melee unit anywhere on the table pretty much. This could be a real utility piece for them as it makes their opponent keep it in mind when moving about and allows some flexibility to react to the table situation.