Once more in Iskandria...

As a bit of a change from the usual fayre, we were looking for a game for last weeks club night and Kev had asked me if I had anything in mind and having recently come across the Urban War rules, this jumped to mind, so we decided on that. Dave K was also looking for a game for the evening so we had a three way drop down game just playing to break point, last man standing.

Kev was as his usual, plumped for Gladiators;

4 Secutors
2 Retiari
1 Decurion
2 Pit Beasts
1 Greater Pit Beast
1 Myrmillio
1 Exo Suit
and 1 Taurian Howitzer

Dave being the man he is stumped up for Viridians;

4 Marine's
1 Marine Sergeant
2 Special Forces
1 Sniper
2 Shock Marine's
1 HMG Team

I, being the underhanded tyranical/imperialist/dictorial peacekeeper that I am, went for VASA as usual;

5 Peacekeepers
1 Peacekeeper Sergeant
1 Archangel
1 Archangel Sergeant
2 Oni Class Battle Suits (Allies)

With a good amount of terrain on the board and the teams equally spaced, the word was Go! and with the first initiative going to Kev and with his first shot of his Howitzer landing right in the middle of my Peacekeepers, I was not chuffed, loosing the Peacekeeper Sergeant on the first roll of the dice.

Now, after lots of slagging and general comments to the fact that 'what do gladiator's do with a howitzer in an arena' and ' no it's not a mortar, it's a howitzer' it came to the fact that Kev had fielded his howitzer in the last couple of games but no one had noticed, such was it's un-erring in-accuracy. Not this game it seemed. And so it proved.

The game then resolved itself into Dave's Viridians bunching up and slowly sidling round to face the on-coming Gladiators while keeping each other in sight for support. Kev with slightly more numbers split his force with the shooty types taking cover and watching the advance of the VASA while lobbing the odd howitzer shell in my direction, while the bulk of his close combat (most) troops advanced quickly on the Viridians.

I meanwhile fanned out (trying to avoid incoming artillery and tried to get as many guns to bear on the Gladiators in my sector while menacing towards the Viridians with the Battlesuits.

The Viridians did pop up pretty early on in the direction of the VASA with their sniper climbing up the landing pad and emerging on the roof for a vantage point and promptly took a pot shot at the advancing Battle suits but to no effect, but the rest of their troops were occupied with the Gladiators slowly moving round to meet them.

The battle suits in reply sent a hail of depleted uranium rounds from their Autoguns and the second suit nailed the sniper.

A second Peacekeeper soon followed the Sergeant being atomised by artillery but the encroaching Peacekeepers and Archangels started to worry the Gladiators as they fanned out and started to get a good number of shots onto a small number of defenders.

The combat between the Viridians and the Gladiators began to hot up with both sides feeding in more and more but the Viridians began to get the upper hand with the Gladiators slowly getting the worst of the fight.

The Gladiators began to feel the pinch and trying to fight two fronts, began to look dodgy, rapidly approaching their break point with loses mounting from the Hand to Hand Combat with the Viridian's and one going down to fire from the Peacekeepers, quickly followed by one cut down by one of the Arch Angels.

In a make or break attempt to pull out something, Kev targetted his own Greater Pit Beast which was surrounded by five or so Viridians (and was probably soon going to go down with that number of opponents against it) with his howitzer.

Once again, he was spot on target, and though his pit beast did take a wound he managed to take out four of the Viridians with the blast in one go, evening things up more than a little.

An Archangel hops over the field to take up position where the sniper was and dispite Cal2 and three shots, failed to hit the now distant Viridians. The angel was soon cut down by return fire finding neon signage insufficient cover.

The second Archangel falls to return fire from the Gladiators ensconced under the pipefarm but the accompanying Peacekeepers cut down the Gladiator responsible in return. Quickly followed by another from the advancing Battlesuits.

The lead Battlesuit then charged into the fray and the lone gladiator didn't stand for long and another of Kev's troops was down. This being followed by the demise to gun fire of the Big Beast, bringing Kev to break point and the subsequent check was failed and the Gladiators legged it.

A lone Peacekeeper on the bridge thinks he's safe miles from anyone...

This then left both the VASA and the Viridians a distance apart and both within one casualty of break point.

Dave consolidated his remaining troops at the far corner of the field and I began an advance trying to keep to cover.

Dave then spotted the lone Peacekeeper advancing across the walkway and at maximum range of three feet away and bearly visible, the HMG team opened up and cut the unsuspected Peacekeeper down. The break point was duly checked and two ones on two D10 obviously meant the galaxy's finest had had enough too, and victory went to the novice Urban War player, Dave, who in his own words muttered the proverbial "beginners luck". Not so, well played by all.

An absolute smashing game (as the spur of the moment one's often are) and the game even drew a spectating crowd for some of the more spectacular moments (or the swearing got too loud).

A good show all round and perhaps a taste of things to come in the forth coming Necromunda campaign. Here's hoping.

You can see another view of the game and some more (better) photo's over on Kev's blog at Double Six Required