3-way Battle Report
I was giving a demo of some larger scale battles and decided to do a 3 way free for all in order to demo the rules. We didn’t play with reinforcements or VP as the goal was to get the core rules down so many of the strategic elements weren’t represented in this battle. That being said it was a ton of fun.
Setup
The setup featured a lot of terrain, the way AT-43 is supposed to be played. We used a collection of home made terrain, Necromunda scenery and crates. The density of terrain represents a decent board for at-43. it opens up a lot of tactical avenues and will make for a really fun game.
Armies
We used a Therian Cypher list with Tiamat, Atis, Grim Golems, Incubus Golgoth and some storm golems.
RedBlok was vanilla with Urod, 2 Sierps, Dragomirov Kolossus with Lt Dragomoria, min sized krasnye repair squad, and a full size RPG soldaty squad.
The Karmans were also vanilla with 4 kaptars, 8 wendigos with grenade launchers + cornelius, an easy trike, k-shooters and a king buggy.
We didn’t want to complicate things using support squads and what not so we played the core lists of each army pretty much. See the Full report after the jump
Turn 1
Troops deployed as normal with Urod taking a full on assault from bane goliaths. Fortunately the krasnye came in on Red Blok’s next activation and fixed up some damage. This was lucky as the Therian Incubus came on next and re damaged Urod. The Krasnye repair unit got lucky with their one grenade launcher and managed to ground the banes with some lucky dice. Meanwhile the Karmans were happy to sit back and take up defensive positions. Unfortunately for the wendigos they were pinned by overwatched sierps and didn’t dare make an appearance. This gave the kolossus enough cover to advance towards the wendigos, bad news!
The Karman K shooters did some decent damage to Tiamat followed up with the easy trike which destroyed her out right. Unfortunately she simply body hacked into the storm golem unit, putting her closer to the vulnerable king buggy. The kaptars took up a defensive position from which it was easy to move in to repair the king buggy.
Turn 2
Turn 2 saw Urod first repair, then take out a bane goliath with his AT-cannon and do some damage to the Incubus. The therian player then pulled a nasty move by teleporting into the karman K-shooters. The Nearby k-fighters knew that they were going to face the brunt of the flamer in that unit so decided to unload its overwatch into the melee. What are the chances they would kill the heavily armoured K-shooters? Somehow with some unlucky dice out of the 3 impacts the k-shooters took, they rolled 2 sixes, killing them instantly. To make matters worse the grim golems armour deflected enough impacts that there was no way the flamer at the far side of the melee could be allocated a hit. This resulted in the unit getting flamed, killing 3 of the 4 kaptars on the next turn.
Realizing that unless they did something quick, the karmans would be wiped out, they ran full force into the overwatched sierups line of fire in order to take out as much redblok infantry as they could. The sierps hit 6 wendigos killing 1 grenade launcher. Luckily the wendigos manged to get close enough to the Kolossus to cancel their overwatch. If this didn’t happen it would have been game over for the karmans. Instead, at range 0, they fired on the full unit of RPG soldaty with their maser strike scoring 11 hits for double damage and a 10cm radius. with with concentrate fire from cornelius, this scored enough wounds on the unit to kill it outright. The wendigo grenade launchers then killed 5 of 8 of the krasnye soldaty.
The Therian player meanwhile realized attacking urod first is not the best way to go, given his 2 repairs and switched focus to the poor karman player. Tiamat manged to spawn a Hekat, then reach the king buggy in melee. With some lucky dice the king buggy became immobilized, with the flamers facing Tiamat. With the kaptar repair unit wiped out it was all but over for the poor buggy.
The Easy Trike then took a few more damage off of the Incubus golgoth. It we obvious that the karman player was pretty much out of the battle at this point so the Red Blok player destroyed the rest of the wendigos, with his sierps and moved the kolossus to engage the spawned hekats and the Incubus.
Turn 3
This was pretty much a mop up turn for the therian player. With hekats and tiamat screaming towards the kolossus and the banes and incubus bearing down on Urod the end was pretty much sealed for the Red Blok. It was a really fun game and a great way to introduce at-43 to a couple of friends.
Conclusions
Here are the main takeaways from the battle. Don’t engage Urod first turn, you’re better off focusing on the sierps / infantry. The same goes for Tiamat. If you are light on heavy weapons make sure that you’ve taken out the other overseers on the table first, the last thing you need is an infantry unit turning into an AFV. Snipers are great way to do this.
Fly on top of terrain with Buggies. it creates distance between you and other AFVs and doesn’t cost you any extra movement. Melee AFVs will be stuck on the ground.
ZZ rifles are fully able to take out battlesuits (even your own!), sure you need 6’s but with 16 dice you’re sure to get a few hits.
3 way is very fun and a great way to introduce players to the game. Sure you’re not getting RP or VP, but those are things to add in slowly as you get used to the core rules. The next battle we have will be fought over objectives with reenforcements .
