anyway.

We fought the first battle of the Source Campaign last night. Joshua won the points, 49 to 36 to 15.

The special objective was the emperial sarcophagus of Our Father-Emperor, who died on Source. It represented control of the August Solar Throne. At the end of the battle, Rob owned it, so he gets +1 to his multiplier for control of the August Solar Throne.

Joshua, the Sisterhood of Taw: 49 vp
Who controls the August Solar Throne? 98 (2 x 49)
Who controls the flow of Smoke? 49 (1 x 49)
Who holds absolute moral authority? 98 (2 x 49)

Rob, the Kalik Federation: 36 vp, +1 control of the throne
Who controls the August Solar Throne? 108 (3 x 36)
Who controls the flow of Smoke? 72 (2 x 36)
Who holds absolute moral authority? 36 (1 x 36)

Vincent, the House Aestatis: 15 vp
Who controls the August Solar Throne? 45 (3 x 15)
Who controls the flow of Smoke? 15 (1 x 15)
Who holds absolute moral authority? 15 (1 x 15)

So:
Rob's winning the throne, 108 to 98 to 45
Rob's winning the flow of smoke, 72 to 49 to 15
Joshua's winning moral authority, 98 to 36 to 15

Weep for ME, O children of every sun.

Rob and J took many pictures. I hope they'll post and link to them soon!

Will do. They're all on my camera so it's all on me to fix. I'll try and get it done today or tomorrow.

Must have pictures now! Rahr!

Exciting!

We should be having our first campaign battle sometime next week (I hope), once our third player has retrieved Lego from his parents home.

But for now, I shall join the clamour for photographic evidence!

Cheers
Malc

I created an album in Facebook, before I figured out that people not in Facebook can only see it if I manually permit them. I'll figure out a way to put it in a more internet friendly place, but for the time being if you're on Facebook, look for Robert Bohl and then look at my albums.

Ok, I created a Photobucket album for the first session.

(They sure don't make those interfaces easy!)

Here's the story of the battle from my point of view.

Joshua didn't expect to start the game in the lead, thus playing defense, but he did. He put the sarcophagus along one edge of the battlefield, piled with killer nuns, and his other station in the opposite corner, with just an artillery-armor mech to guard it.

If I were to pull a move like this, it'd become "Vincent's forces are separated and get torn apart." Why for J it becomes "Vincent's and Rob's forces split themselves up and badly divide their effectiveness," I'm not clear. But that's how it works.

Initiative for turn 1 bites me pretty hard. A couple of my mechs go first, then all of J's nuns, then the rest of my mechs, then Rob.

So my side jumps hard on initiative and smashes into J's nuns while they're fresh and mean. We do a little harm but really what happens is I lose my first mech in the first half of turn 1. Oh, did we say this here? No ranged weapons at all, except J's artillery. So to attack with my first couple of mechs I absolutely have to break formation and leave them hanging out there exposed.

Anyway, all I really accomplished is, I pulled J's nuns out of position so that in the bottom of turn 1, Rob's creepy tripod alien mechs could slip past and seize the sarcophagus.

Go me.

The midgame was, oh, dashed hopes. Having committed and already lost a mech, my only chance to come out of the battle ahead was to stay in and do well. See, meanwhile, Rob had committed to the sarcophagus too, so instead of fighting J for it, I had to choose between fighting for it and fighting J, but to win the game I had to do both.

It didn't work out for me. Three distinct times I blew big damage rolls I needed to ace, while four distinct times J aced move-attack-defend rolls I needed him to blow, and Rob rolled consistently well enough to stand me off.

The last turn was particularly bitter, with a last-white-die nun of J's managing to hold off an undamaged mech of mine. Her dying, just that, would have changed our VPs significantly: J down to 35, me up to 18. Still a bad loss for me, but it would've put me at 1/2 everybody else, not 1/3 everybody else.

I think that's a pretty accurate assessment. I got quite lucky with dice. There was one attack where Juggernaut went up against a fresh division of nuns and I rolled 4 out of 6 damage dice (maybe 5 of 7) as successes.

Awsome!  Love the multi-pronged Battle report format.  Love the fresh looking mechs.  I love how the greenery is a tiny little "Oasis" in the middle of the bleak, gray, grity landscape of the planet "Dunesque," heh heh.

I know how that goes with the dice. Sometimes you are rolling big numbers of damage and you get absolute bupkiss. Nothing.

But, man, you guys have lots of big grey plates and trees! We have twenty trees in total!

Cheers
Malc

Malcolm: Those are thanks to me - I wasn't using them, so I gave them to Joshua. I'd offer you some, but those were all of them, and shipping overseas is a pain.

Damn, it clipped the last half of my message - I was going to say, I'm super happy to see them actually getting some use instead of sitting in my closet.

I am Frodo WHO HAS SEEN THE AWE.

So I see from the comments in the photobucket album you're trying a new rule?

A couple of new rules, in fact. I'll post about them soon.

I look forward to reading them.  :-)

I got super lucky a couple of times ??? Rob's Juggernaut took out four of my nuns while I took out his defense and one of his two attacks, but then, those nuns are all about piling on the dice.

One thing you don't mention, Vincent: when the fight got too stiff over the sarcophagus, I decided to live to fight another day and I got the fuck out of Dodge, leaving you guys to fight over it. Rob couldn't let you have it, and you couldn't let go without getting pincered. So I booked it.

It wasn't without cost. You'll note the pile of corpses whose femurs will be made into daggers, bones slipping silently into the throats of the forces of the self-absorbed Duarch and splattering the ground with the blue ichor of the born-suffering of Kalik.

Soren, those trees aren't from you, or at least most of them aren't. The base plates and stuff are, though. The trees are the best $3 I've ever spent on Ebay. The baseplates made it easy to play on the floor and gave us a good way to define the edges of the table, which would have been important if any of us had had to run.

Darrin, the greenery was only that big because it happened to be all the green I'd brought. Source (the planet this battle was on) is mostly a lush, gorgeous jungle, filled with wondrous plants and animals, including the flower from which Smoke is derived. This, though, is part of the Imperial facility that processes the stuff. You'll note that the jungle creeps in faster than it can be mowed.

Thanks for the heads-up Joshua.  I was doing a bit of a pathetic play on words with "Oasis" in quotation marks, and the "grity" comment.  I know this campaign is for a galaxy, not just a planet, but I just couldn't resist letting my inner geek out to play, even if it was only for a moment.