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After a long wait my AT-43 armies arrived today. I had already picked up the Damocles initiation set late last week at a heavy discount, I got very lucky with an eBay bid and noone else bid against me. While the set was mostly bought as reinforcements it did allow me and my regualr gaming partner to try out the game. I lost, damn Golgoths.

Anyway here are the images:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Comments

Not everything is in the pictures I have rulebooks tape measures and dice of course, and six crates, 24 low walls and 3 high walls. There is also a Steel TacArm not present, which is spare, and a few assorted Golems, mostly with relays but some spare weapon specialists.

Everything came depackaged and condensed for low cost shipping, consequently there was a little bit of damage to some items. The Baal Golgoth was already broken on initial delivery, and the Wraith Golgoth from the Damocles set I bought last week had to be broken to repose a badly glued weapon arm.

The units are laid out in legal unit order with a few placeholders in one Storm golem unit to account for the spare golems that are going to be recut and de-relayed. One of the Overseers is actually an assault golem overseer, I decided against getting assault golems good though they are. I want my golems to have as little character as possible, Overseers excepted. I bought the assault golem attachment due to its low price and for the slightly different arm pose, I intend to do a conversion. Looking back on it it would have been better if I had just got Storm golems attachments instead but at the time I was looking tio get some assault golem unit boxsets in later -now too low on the priority to make budget.

Looking at the big hulking Golgoths the lineup doesnt look very fair, but I have definate plans for a Fire Crawler and a Wing Trooper unit, the latter is on its way.



Questions

1. How do I get the hatch on the Defender Cobra to stay shut without gluing it?

2. Anyone know a UNA and Therian colour scheme to touch up the miniatures using the correct paint colour palette? GW paints prefered.

3. A unit is supposed to alway have a leader model even if no leader exists, so for my overseer units I want to include relays unpaid for. This is so if the overseer dies I wont be using an overseer as the temporary leader but a more reasonable plain golem with relay. As I have excess relay golems this looks sensible. However if I were playing you would you accept the 'illegal relays present, so long as they were not used as such?

4. The balance between tri-lens and without on Damocles Steel trooperws is not even. So while I had enough troopers for four units I cannot even it out. I decided to use the troopers with caps for my sergeants in all four units, and the troopers with trilens but an open helmets as medics. Between the two it fixeed the problems, but not there are om tri-lens in non tri-lens units and vice versa. Whatv to you think of this work around, got any better ideas to share?

Now I have a fresh minis related battery of questions to ask.

Orlanth wrote:
Questions

1. How do I get the hatch on the Defender Cobra to stay shut without gluing it?

I dont know exactly what you mean as I dont play UNA, but ususally when I need not to glue and hold tight I use rare earthh magnets... I use to make all my 15 TAU battlesuits fully customisable

Orlanth wrote:
2. Anyone know a UNA and Therian colour scheme to touch up the miniatures using the correct paint colour palette? GW paints prefered.

Sorry I use vallejo and my Therians are REd-ish

Orlanth wrote:
3. A unit is supposed to alway have a leader model even if no leader exists, so for my overseer units I want to include relays unpaid for. This is so if the overseer dies I wont be using an overseer as the temporary leader but a more reasonable plain golem with relay. As I have excess relay golems this looks sensible. However if I were playing you would you accept the 'illegal relays present, so long as they were not used as such?

There is ALLWAYS a leader, but he/it may not be an officer. Yes there is no problem for me to have relays count as normal golems but be sure your opponent knows

My wing trooper set arrived today, it was second hand with two breakages. No problem as Wing troopers break sooner or later anyway.

No new pics.

The more I look at my UNa the more I like them. My first vie of th4 meics saw all the flaws, but looking at ther army in general I am impressed with what has been done. I still am not sure they are worth full price though.

The Therians need more work doing to them, and the painting quality between sets varies alot, some golems are dire, others better, the medusae look good though.

Badger will be around later in the week to see if he can replicate his victory over the UNA with larger forces. Also we now have all the rules, I am thinking of taking pics and posting a battle report.

Orlanth wrote:
1. How do I get the hatch on the Defender Cobra to stay shut without gluing it?

It ought to just stay shut on its own. It should be a very tight fit.

Orlanth wrote:
2. Anyone know a UNA and Therian colour scheme to touch up the miniatures using the correct paint colour palette? GW paints prefered.

Head to the AT-43 forums. Lt. Nevsky gave me a detailed description of his color mix using GW paints in their Modeling forums, whatever they're called over there.

Orlanth wrote:
3. A unit is supposed to alway have a leader model even if no leader exists, so for my overseer units I want to include relays unpaid for. This is so if the overseer dies I wont be using an overseer as the temporary leader but a more reasonable plain golem with relay. As I have excess relay golems this looks sensible. However if I were playing you would you accept the 'illegal relays present, so long as they were not used as such?

AT-43 is not a WYSIWYG game. On their forums, Rackham have said as much. Substitute anything for anything you like as long as you have the appropriate unit card. If anyone tries to give you flak over it at a gaming table, have them point to the part of the rulebook which says you have to be WYSIWYG, they will not be able to, problem solved.

What I do if I want to field three Storm Golem units such that I can use all my Damocles Storm Golems is to put the relayed units together with Urash, pretend they're his "bodyguards" or something. Being a Hero Urash dies last, so you never need to worry about knowing who the Overseer is.

Orlanth wrote:
4. The balance between tri-lens and without on Damocles Steel trooperws is not even. So while I had enough troopers for four units I cannot even it out. I decided to use the troopers with caps for my sergeants in all four units, and the troopers with trilens but an open helmets as medics. Between the two it fixeed the problems, but not there are om tri-lens in non tri-lens units and vice versa. Whatv to you think of this work around, got any better ideas to share?

See answer above. Use the right cards, and no one cares - and the advantage of using identical units is that in their FAQ Rackham ruled that you may move any unit that matches an activated card when you activate the card.

So, if you run three identical Steel Troopers unit, you have three cards in your order which may be used to activate any of those three Steel Trooper units...which does in large measure defeat the whole purpose of unit cards and planning your activation order...and which also can make somewhat of a mockery of the Red Blok Interference ability...but them's the rules. It's all about having fun, right?

I've found the UNA blue changes from unit to unit. Vallejo French Mirage Blue comes close to my Cobras and one of my Death Dealers, but not my steel troopers or tac arms.

Re: the cockpits. Just press them closed. They'll stay closed.

1. How do I get the hatch on the Defender Cobra to stay shut without gluing it?

If I am looking at the picture correctly, is the problem that it is bulging out? If so, you can shave the inside of the U a bit with a xacto. It shouldnt effect attaching it too much since there are two nubs where it hinges.

2. Anyone know a UNA and Therian colour scheme to touch up the miniatures using the correct paint colour palette? GW paints prefered.

Using GW, I believe Lt Nevsky had the best results in this post here

http://en-forum.at-43.com/viewtopic.php?t=5753&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20

UNA Inf:

Armor: Custom UNA Blue-Gray*, ,shadowed with Badab Blackwash, highlight is Space Wolves Gray
Clothing: Basecoat with Codex Gray, camo is Shadow Grey, edges are washed in Badab Black wash.
Gloves and Belts: Kommando Khaki with Devlan Mud wash for shadows
Boots: Chaos Black with Codex Gray highlight
Metal bolts, guns etc... Chainmail basecoat with Badab Blackwash
Knives: Dark Flesh handles, scabbard is Bestial Brown. Add a little white to the Bestial Brown for the highlight

*Custom UNA Blue-Gray: Mix a 50/50 mix of Codex Gray and Spacewolves Gray in a large paint pot. Add about 15% Shadow Gray to that mixture, and then add about 5 - 10 drops of Enchanted Blue.

3. A unit is supposed to alway have a leader model even if no leader exists, so for my overseer units I want to include relays unpaid for. This is so if the overseer dies I wont be using an overseer as the temporary leader but a more reasonable plain golem with relay. As I have excess relay golems this looks sensible. However if I were playing you would you accept the 'illegal relays present, so long as they were not used as such?

I would not have a problem with that because I would see your overseer. I believe the OIS box comes with 2 relays per squad which was confusing. You can always cut one off or paint one RED to be an actual relay

4. The balance between tri-lens and without on Damocles Steel trooperws is not even. So while I had enough troopers for four units I cannot even it out. I decided to use the troopers with caps for my sergeants in all four units, and the troopers with trilens but an open helmets as medics. Between the two it fixeed the problems, but not there are om tri-lens in non tri-lens units and vice versa. What to you think of this work around, got any better ideas to share?

Yep, the caps are your sgts/cpl/leader

I use my non helmets as my medics and paint the shoulders white or with the red cross. I believe the OIS box works out as 1 cap, 5 tri lense, 2 MLs (one with one without) and 2 non helmets, but I could be wrong.

If you can, steal the tri lens off the missile launcher guys. I believe it is supposed to be 1 tri lens and 1 helmet per OIS box. If they are tough to pry off, dump the figure in a cup of hot water (nuke the water for ~3 minutes). It will be scarily soft, but it is resilient.

OR... if you get a normal unit box, you get extra heads.

Cairnius wrote:
AT-43 is not a WYSIWYG game. On their forums, Rackham have said as much. Substitute anything for anything you like as long as you have the appropriate unit card. If anyone tries to give you flak over it at a gaming table, have them point to the part of the rulebook which says you have to be WYSIWYG, they will not be able to, problem solved.

Yes the game might not be WYSIWYG but I want to get as close to it as possible. Having a unit mostly with tri-lens or mostly without means for me I will pay the points or not.
I didnt know until this morning that tri-lens actually gave +1 accuracy as well as stealth negation. I am tempted to give tri-lens to me Wing troopers to give their guns some range, but I like the orange goggles. Perhaps they have targeters are on their shotguns and are tied in to HUD systems in their goggles.

Cairnius wrote:
What I do if I want to field three Storm Golem units such that I can use all my Damocles Storm Golems is to put the relayed units together with Urash, pretend they're his "bodyguards" or something. Being a Hero Urash dies last, so you never need to worry about knowing who the Overseer is.

The 'bodyguard' for Urash sounds like a good idea though, I like workarounds like that. However I am using my spare relays by including one in every squad with an overseer anyway, to act as replacement leader model for targeting purposes. Also I am making up a medic team from relay Storm golems with necron even possibly some tyranid bitz.

haywire wrote:

1. How do I get the hatch on the Defender Cobra to stay shut without gluing it?

If I am looking at the picture correctly, is the problem that it is bulging out? If so, you can shave the inside of the U a bit with a xacto. It shouldnt effect attaching it too much since there are two nubs where it hinges.

The Cobras canopy does 'close' but there is tension and it reopens again, so it fits but somewhere there is a pressure against the seal. I will slowly selectively file the edges of the canopy where I think the presure is, I think its somewhere near the bottom.

haywire wrote:

2. Anyone know a UNA and Therian colour scheme to touch up the miniatures using the correct paint colour palette? GW paints prefered.

Using GW, I believe Lt Nevsky had the best results in this post here

http://en-forum.at-43.com/viewtopic.php?t=5753&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20

Thanks for that.

haywire wrote:
*Custom UNA Blue-Gray: Mix a 50/50 mix of Codex Gray and Spacewolves Gray in a large paint pot. Add about 15% Shadow Gray to that mixture, and then add about 5 - 10 drops of Enchanted Blue.

If I make a custom pot I will make a fairly large pot so that I dont need to remix ever. However is their a Vallejo paint that is a close match, their model colour range possibly has something very similar as the UNA grey because they do a HUGE range of colours for WW2 models. The blue grey could well be WW2 French, and it would stand to reason if it was.

haywire wrote:
I would not have a problem with that because I would see your overseer. I believe the OIS box comes with 2 relays per squad which was confusing. You can always cut one off or paint one RED to be an actual relay

I am thinking along the lines of doubling up sergeants and relays if my Damocles boxset components get any bigger, one for the sergeant, one for the corporal who takes over, and is always otherwise the last to die specialists excepting. If I paint a corporals stripes on one leader and segeants stripes on another they will be ready. For the realys I was thinking about givng the relay cylinders a coat of brass paint with a dark inkwash so they stand out a little more. For the 'sub-relay' I simply do not do so.
I am now thinking the extra sergeants and relays is possibly a blessing.

haywire wrote:
Yep, the caps are your sgts/cpl/leader

I use my non helmets as my medics and paint the shoulders white or with the red cross. I believe the OIS box works out as 1 cap, 5 tri lense, 2 MLs (one with one without) and 2 non helmets, but I could be wrong.

1 Cap, 1 tri lens without visor, 3 tri-lens with visor, 2 missiles (one with tri-lens, one open), 2 open helmets.



I am considering either:

Using the troopers with caps as sergeants in all units. The tri-lens without visor is my medic, I will convert over one lens into a wider silvery light as per normal medics. Missiles exchange over. I am left with uneven numbers of troopers and one non-tri lens squad has some two tri-lens members. This can be rectified by using the spare tri-lens heads from the wing Troopers, but it does involve a little conversion work. A corporal will be an ordinary man from each unit painted with corporals stripes.

or

Use the troopers with caps as sergeant and corporal in non-tri lens units, use the tri-lens open visors as medics still and then split the rest normally. This is a whole lot less work, but having two troopers with caps per squad looks a bit odd, wheras having a capped trooper in a tri lens team fits. A good sergeant is more busy directing fire and watching over his men, and seeing the 'bigger picture', not watching for the enemy himself, having unrestricted arc of vision is probably miore useful than zoom lens.

or

I could use the caps as mechanics and have the sergeants equipped identically to the rest of the grunts, this should be no problem so long as the stripes are visible. Also techies with caps looks right, and they will not want distance lenses but good open vision.

haywire wrote:
If you can, steal the tri lens off the missile launcher guys. I believe it is supposed to be 1 tri lens and 1 helmet per OIS box. If they are tough to pry off, dump the figure in a cup of hot water (nuke the water for ~3 minutes). It will be scarily soft, but it is resilient.

I will be doing this anyway, for no better reason than because the leg poses will be identicle for each team unless I swap over half the heads.

Now let me get this right. I put the minis in some water then microwave them for 3 minutes? Or microwave the water to superheat it then dip? Can you give me a clear no room for interpretation 'recipe' for this please.

Orlanth wrote:

haywire wrote:
If you can, steal the tri lens off the missile launcher guys. I believe it is supposed to be 1 tri lens and 1 helmet per ODIS box. If they are tough to pry off, dump the figure in a cup of hot water (nuke the water for ~3 minutes). It will be scarily soft, but it is resilient.

I will be doing this anyway, for no better reason than because the leg poses will be identicle for each team unless I swap over half the heads.

Now let me get this right. I put the minis in some water then microwave them for 3 minutes? Or microwave the water to superheat it then dip? Can you give me a clear no room for interpretation 'recipe' for this please.

http://en-forum.at-43.com/viewtopic.php?t=402

Microwave the cup of water with no mini in it. Basically to get it "brewing tea" hot. Plop mini in, wait about 10 seconds. Remove with a tool (because water = hot!!) I use needle nose pliers for both removing the mini out of the cup and for removing the head.

I also used this method to get that SGT torso on for my Tac Arms and to swap legs with some of my wing troopers.

The heads usually come out pretty easy. The torso needs some muscle to put back in.

You can also use this to straighten therian reaper blades as well if you follow it with a bath of cold water.

I love those fire toads orlanth , its like a family picture!

Mommy cobra, daddy snake, and 4 little toads!

LunaHound wrote:
Mommy cobra, daddy snake, and 4 little toads!

Extract from: Golgilocks and the four Toads.

....and baby Toad said, "Who has been eating my Steel Troopers, and they are all gone!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I am getting this stuck in my head now, Papa Cobra, Mama snake. Dammit, Luna I wont be able to think about my UNA walkers the same way again!

Well I can break the pattern by getting a Fire Crawler sooner rather than later I suppose.

Grandpa fire crawler says "get off my lawn!"

AH! that reminds me , you already placed your order so i wasnt sure you needed anything else . there was a big at-43 sale on ebay last week. the fire crawler was $32 i think . But either way im getting yelled at again on spending stuff ( trying hard to sell my warhammer stuff now! )

Your 4 golgoth , that must be so fun making 2 of them Incubus variant and go snipe everything >< (after reading the army book , i feel Therians are still very human... not machine like their appearance. if anything still sadistic o_o)

LunaHound wrote:
AH! that reminds me , you already placed your order so i wasnt sure you needed anything else . there was a big at-43 sale on ebay last week. the fire crawler was $32 i think . But either way im getting yelled at again on spending stuff ( trying hard to sell my warhammer stuff now! )

I will be getting more later, and I still have my Red Blok army to go.

LunaHound wrote:
Your 4 golgoth , that must be so fun making 2 of them Incubus variant and go snipe everything

well I want to convert at least one into a Kraken Golgoth, if i get an extra Wraith Goltgoth I will be converting three into two Kraken Golgoths. I had plans for how I wanted to do this with the passenger hold beign a cylinder on the back with a usable volume rather than floorspace, Therians are higher rtech, so their passangers float in a compact 3d space ratgher than get seating. then when I got the Therian army book in my delivery I found that the proper Kraken is almost exactly that, just using a Ball Golgoth chassis. So now I am thinking of either getting two more Baals while they are cheap and converting them, or converting three Wraith Golgoths. The latter is better.

My idea is to get a plumbing connector with a 90 degree corner, cut at the corener and add an empty Yakult bottle as the hold at a backward angle. Becasue they are the right size and shape. This does mean buying some Yakult, but that should probably do me some good. Add the 'herad section of a Wraith golgoth in front of the bottle, mount cut down guns on top. Each half a nucleus cannon. Finally space six legs around the plumbing attachment and fix the attachment to a flying stand.
Sounds simple enough.

As for making Incubi, I think the Krakens cannon are bad enough. They dont snipe but Krakens will be moving anyway, also the ananogenerator helps.

Orlanth wrote:

LunaHound wrote:
AH! that reminds me , you already placed your order so i wasnt sure you needed anything else . there was a big at-43 sale on ebay last week. the fire crawler was $32 i think . But either way im getting yelled at again on spending stuff ( trying hard to sell my warhammer stuff now! )

I will be getting more later, and I still have my Red Blok army to go.

LunaHound wrote:
Your 4 golgoth , that must be so fun making 2 of them Incubus variant and go snipe everything

well I want to convert at least one into a Kraken Golgoth, if i get an extra Wraith Goltgoth I will be converting three into two Kraken Golgoths. I had plans for how I wanted to do this with the passenger hold beign a cylinder on the back with a usable volume rather than floorspace, Therians are higher rtech, so their passangers float in a compact 3d space ratgher than get seating. then when I got the Therian army book in my delivery I found that the proper Kraken is almost exactly that, just using a Ball Golgoth chassis. So now I am thinking of either getting two more Baals while they are cheap and converting them, or converting three Wraith Golgoths. The latter is better.

My idea is to get a plumbing connector with a 90 degree corner, cut at the corener and add an empty Yakult bottle as the hold at a backward angle. Becasue they are the right size and shape. This does mean buying some Yakult, but that should probably do me some good. Add the 'herad section of a Wraith golgoth in front of the bottle, mount cut down guns on top. Each half a nucleus cannon. Finally space six legs around the plumbing attachment and fix the attachment to a flying stand.
Sounds simple enough.

As for making Incubi, I think the Krakens cannon are bad enough. They dont snipe but Krakens will be moving anyway, also the ananogenerator helps.

Have you seen this:

http://en-forum.at-43.com/viewtopic.php?t=6135

Wolfen wrote:

Have you seen this:

http://en-forum.at-43.com/viewtopic.php?t=6135

Funnily enough I was just looking at that.

My Kraken will be different from the official model, of which this is a close copy.
For a start the plumbing connection means that the cylinder is for storing troops in suspension to be sucked up and blown out the hole at the bottom. If the Kraken is simply assaembling troops I see no reason why it is limited in contents, essentially it is a moving factory not an APC. After all nanogenerators dont require resoource tanks to build stuff and the volume those tanks hold could make an army let alone a unit.

Its another scale malfunction for the Therians background.

Over here in Germany we mark our minis with a small color dot and put a similar colored dot on the card representing the appropiate unit.

Does the job. Rackham is quite liberal about this but we prefer it a little bit more strategically and tactically challenging.

It's picture and battle report time. Well it is not much of a battle report, hence no new thread. Its more a feedback session for the battle we fought rather than an offered story.

BATTLE 1.
On the day my armies arrived I had a mad bash with a friend Badger who came over to play. In the first game we played lengthways over my dining table, covered with a buff coloured cloth and with crates and blocks over half the board.

The game was simple the idea was to make up a game including all my current miniatures, Badfger rather likes Therians and wants to play those all the time, this is fine by me, as I prefer human factions. He outgunned me by 1000pts and chose a fun scenario that I found difficult to compete in.
The UNA are defending a medical centre on an asteroid, there is local gravity and atmosphere due to a force field (probably stolen tech itself). The Therians detect this and attack by suprise. bafger set up all terrain and a few units. A med tech team in the corner by the primary objective, two steel trooper squads one in front of the med tech team and one on the secondary objective a fortified position with and arch of crates on one side and low walls in front. Various other crates nd walls provbided plenty of cover, and a single ruined building. A Defender Cobra was set up near the back.

After this we would bring on our forces a third at a time, each turn for three turns, the set up minis counted towards my third for the first turn.

As we used all the miniatures I had three Heroes. Due to the scenario and the sneak attack stark was asleep and would not be up and able to get to Copperhead until turn three, until that time it was just another Defnder cobra. Tiamat would arrive the same turn.

The Therians had some craters which provided basic cover to infantry but not enough for bonus cover and counted as half movement to go through. Other thqan that there was nowhere to hide. As this was an inhuman wave all ** infantry had what is best described as the without number rule. In return all UNA forces were fearless, with Stark or not. We also used the simplified damage rules for striders from the Damocles boxset, this was because we used the cards for activation and thus could not put them in dividers and mark off damage.
It was also agreed that Therians bercause they were robots and had routines did not have orders except for split fire, they would come on and on like Cylon centurions heedless of losses. However despite where the battle took place the UNA had no medics in its units (because I hasd no medic miniatures painted up).

With the rules thus simplified we could have a big game and learn the system a bit at a time.


Well it was a slaughter, technically the Therians should have lost because they lost pretty much eveything they had bar a few goliaths, but the basic infantry kept on coming back. Eventually the UNA was able to hold the Therians off but lost all their forward defence, some surprisingly quickly, and reinforcements often died the turhn they arrived. eventually the Therians scoured the forward defences to take the objective. All vehicles except Copperhead, Defender Snake, the Baal Golgoth and a body hacked Tiamat were destroyed by game end. I was however very unlucky with my locked shot missiles, Wraith Golgioths seemed to be invulnerable after the first two missile hits and they had one hull point left. So much so two 'last legs' Golgoths survived two turns longer than they should have absorbing fire after fire. I never even got around to shooting the Baal Golgoth, which performed poorly anyway.
My UNA lost but it was a great game and sold my regular gaming partner on the system, though he wants to concentrated on getting Confrontation instead.


Some lessons and observations:

1. This game is refreshingly deadly at range. Cover is important and heavy weapons can auto hit and auto kill. Playing with a good width betwween players was a good idea.

2. 2500AP, no thanks. after a token game with a Damocles boxset last week we kicked right into 4500AP vs 5500AP (approx) game, it played quickly at that level. No mucking around with a few 30cm tiles we will be playing 40K scale armies on full wargames boards.

3. As warned there are a few rules in the game that really need a rewrite. We will do this ourselves if needs be. AT-43 isnt big enough to have a real convention of play so therwe is less iniertia against our own fixes.

4. The UNA has the feel of a modern army with indirect fire missiles and decent ranged guns with heavy firepower. It really felt like a modern army rather than the retro feel of 40K.

5. Badger learned quickly to target my Tac Arms quickly to prevent me from getting my laser designators in. In this battle many of my steel trooper were out of range, by the rear objective. Also I had two ** striders out of LOS to most of the incoming Therians. Most missile fire was indirect. We had to make rules up on the stop to acount for spotting units being destroyed. We agreed that if only one unit cound spot and it was destroyed the lock would remain (as the missiles had been puinged with the info, but would expire if the target moved. It was arguedcagainst voiding the laser marker for destruction iof units as it would man tracking which unit had fired which laser designator.

6. Armour 9 and 11 light vehicles and battlesuits do not hold up well to Therians firepower even with cover saves. It was a shock to find just how quickly Tac-Arms died the first time it happened, and how few units were needed to inflict those losses, it was two sets of easy rolls and the unit was wiped. I thought about this and reaslised that any exposure to fire risked annihilation.

7. Even with cover paid for I had lots of excess LP each turn, eventually I would bid the maximum for Authority simply because I had no use for all the points I generated. I wonder what I was doing wrong, if I had missed some critical uses of LP. I paid points to activate twice, cover and split fire - I wonder if there was anything usual that the points go on. All this might have been a side effect of using Tiamat and Stark.

8. Indirect fire is sickly powerful. We abandoned the no cover save rule immediately. Instead you get cover if there is cover between the centre of the blast and the model hit, it doesnt usually make much difference. The official scatter rules are pointless as you hit anyway, even with smaller templates. I heard rumour that scatter is now automatically 10cm in a random direction, which is better (we used this for the sdecond game) I have alternative blast rules worked up that we will be trying out next game.

Some questions.

1. How do we account for all, or nearly all, the LP to be used?

2. How do we allocate a turn sequence while keeping the cards visible for allocation of damage and sourcing stats? I thought about numbered counters.

3. For as unit with a hero in it what card to I use for activation the hero or the unit?

Later I wioll be posting the second 'battle report' with some pictures.

Did your friend love the Tiamat?
Quoting from another player " Tiamat is a nightmare to kill in any game it exists in , not just AT-43 "

Poor Tac Arms , they are too fragile to survive anything they dont kill first xD

LunaHound wrote:
Did your friend love the Tiamat?
Quoting from another player " Tiamat is a nightmare to kill in any game it exists in , not just AT-43 "

Yes, but not so much especially. Tiamat is the onoly character I currently have, and rather stands out. Badger uses her for generalship, less so as an assault unit. Tiamat did get into combat on the final turn of the first game, and we quickly realised she was sick but she makes for a figurehead unit.

LunaHound wrote:
Poor Tac Arms , they are too fragile to survive anything they dont kill first xD

Indeed. It was bad enough when Badger thought: 'kill the TacArms to stop the laser designators'; in the second game this was unnecessary as we shall see, but Badger targeted them first anyway. Even with full cover they die super quick. Steel tac-Arms are priority #1, Death Dealers #2. Though I dont know why, 24 rerolled shots is not a lot when I am rolling the dice, we have a laugh whenever I inevitably turn Epstones torrent of fire into a dribble of hits. For some reason my luck with some units in AT-43 is appalling. To be truthful Badger hit my ** striders first last game but once the obvious was dealt with it was straight onto the TacArms.

1. How do we account for all, or nearly all, the LP to be used?

I guess you mean how to spend them all? Easy, the more you get into the game you will realize that some rules you dismissed at first as seemingly useless pay off when used under the right circumstances. I would also suggest to play the first games according to the rules and only later switch to house rules. You need a good understanding of the rules to make the most of them and you only get them if you play, paly and again play. Most of the times I do have just the right amount of LP but sometimes I wish I had even more, especially as a Therian you tend to loose the bid for going first. Also the possibillity to save up an activation and in the next round to activate two times at once can get very powerful.

2. How do we allocate a turn sequence while keeping the cards visible for allocation of damage and sourcing stats? I thought about numbered counters.

Use Easy-AT, it prints boxes for crossing out damage etc., mark your AFV accordingly and it becomes really easy to track damage.

3. For as unit with a hero in it what card to I use for activation the hero or the unit?

We normally use the hero card and keep the unit card for reference.

Well , people tend to want to shoot the coolest looking units. >:"D

I cant help think , Tiamat is used sort of in a way like Tyranid's without number. She is extremely fast and will arrive before the rest of the armies do , and start causing damage. Then Astatis will teleport in and tie up the rest of the army , by the time Tiamat dies , and Astati's unit starts to die too , Tiamat will body hack ><

So like.. 3 enemy units killed for cost of 1 astatis + her golim

Duncan_Idaho wrote:
I guess you mean how to spend them all? Easy, the more you get into the game you will realize that some rules you dismissed at first as seemingly useless pay off when used under the right circumstances. I would also suggest to play the first games according to the rules and only later switch to house rules.

An unfair cheap shot.

We went to house rules to make damage tracking on vehicles easier for now, until we have a set up to do vehicles properly. We cut out a lot of rules for the first game to keep it simple. such as the tradeoff of fearless to bypass morale rules and a discrepancy of cover to show how much it really matters. The first game was just a very large version of a Damcles scenario with much missing. The second game used full rules, except where they dont work. I have been designing my own games off and on since the 70's. I have a good eye for rules systems and can see when the mechanics are off quickly, often faster than playtesters and vet players. There are a lot of problems like that in the system, and for some reason Rackham cant see them. I noticed many of them on first reading, and see precisely why Cairnius has problems with some of the rules.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:
You need a good understanding of the rules to make the most of them and you only get them if you play, paly and again play. Most of the times I do have just the right amount of LP but sometimes I wish I had even more, especially as a Therian you tend to loose the bid for going first. Also the possibillity to save up an activation and in the next round to activate two times at once can get very powerful.

The problem here is that rules are all over the place. Therians get extra ways to spend via routines, UNA apparently dont and I am wondering if there is something I missed, or FAQ'ed changes I am yet unaware of.

We dismissed none of the options for tactical purposes and none of the LP spending rules were omitted except for Creation, and only because we have no Hekats. Rally is not a big issue, mostly my units are either near whole, or destroyed. As far the using points on orders. We could split fire more and overwatch is good for reducing cover saves. From the second turn I did increasing amounts of overwatch orders, this tallied up 2LP per inantry unit with cover. Still not enough unless I squandered some on authority.
Double activation and delayed activation is a common use of points for us, especially if there are none of the right type of target visible.

So my point remains, do you normally have plenty of LP left playing UNA? I can see easy ways for Therians to spend them all, UNA less so.

I have a question ><

When you fusion 2 damaged *striders ,

does the **strider that emerges get full health? do you get to choose which variants they are?

I'll be honest about one thing ( even after i read the rule book ) Im having alot of trouble understanding how shooting and damage works . The pictures of the dice and monkey face are seriously confusing me .

LunaHound wrote:
Well , people tend to want to shoot the coolest looking units. >:"D

I cant help think , Tiamat is used sort of in a way like Tyranid's without number. She is extremely fast and will arrive before the rest of the armies do , and start causing damage. Then Astatis will teleport in and tie up the rest of the army , by the time Tiamat dies , and Astati's unit starts to die too , Tiamat will body hack ><

So like.. 3 enemy units killed for cost of 1 astatis + her golim

Atis is on the buy list, as is Urash. They dont cost much and I wondered why I missed Urash last time around. Atis at least needs Grim Golems which were not discounted so could not reasonably be ibncluded without dropping something else important.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LunaHound wrote:
I have a question ><

When you fusion 2 damaged *striders ,

does the **strider that emerges get full health? do you get to choose which variants they are?

The strider is whole, but has no relay. Yes you can choose variants, the trouble is you need Urash or both striders in one unit.

LunaHound wrote:
I'll be honest about one thing ( even after i read the rule book ) Im having alot of trouble understanding how shooting and damage works . The pictures of the dice and monkey face are seriously confusing me .

The face is called munchy, and I dont like it either.

Happy face means 1+, unhappy face means 7+ all on d6.

I prefer universal Heads ticks and crosses instead.

Steel Tac Arms can be nasty when they get close to infantry, 6 autohit/autokills when at range 1. When using tac-arms or other type *** infantry, I try to have a squad in front of them with TAKE COVER and KNEE TO THE GROUND. That way they don't die so quickly because the infantry squad takes the hits first, and they can shoot/designate over their covering infantry squad.

UNA and therians are odd. I find that UNA has all the leadership and doesnt need it when Therians need it and don't have enough. BUt then without Stark, theya re going to need the LP for morale checks once they start taking hits to stay from routing.

On Munchy. Happy Face = auto success/hit. Sad Munchy = auto failure/miss. I find that I keep saying using the wrong sign (+/-)

Strider damage and card stats- when I first started, I used an index card that had the armour and the boxes listed.
Now, I use the Easy AT-43 program and it prints all that fun stuff out for you.

Knee to the ground works both ways. You can shoot over them but so can the enemy.

If 'Knee to the ground' only effected your shooting then I see a good reason to take that and it would explain why more LP are needed. However the RAW reads:

With a knee to the ground a unit will not get his if it is caught in the zone of fire of a shot.

So if you move a meat shield up and it drops down it provides no cover both ways. The only way around that wording is if you pay the LP for this order at any time, not just during your activation, which you cannot do. Thus you could activate the Tac Arms, move them behind your troopers and order the troopers to go 'kneel' so the Tac Arms can fire. Such unit coordination would work and is realistic also... for 19th century. Its also a house rule again.

Knee to the ground is actually redundant, it should be part of the take cover rule. Troops taking cover in the open lie flat, they get some cover save and get out of the zone of fire of following troops. Troops behind walls hunker down with similar effect. As it happens its useful in game when you have two lines of troops but a poor rules mechanic.

Knee to the ground is not redundant, depending on the situation you will choose one over the other

And again, many people at first (myself included) thought that we could deduct everything just from the rules. We all had to eat crows after some time. House ruling is fine, but one should first get live experience. Knee to the ground is a very good example how you are still missing such experience.

I understand what it is there for, so you can have two ranks. The trouble is I dont live long enough to manoeuver a two rank line. From the visual examples you dont need knee to the ground to shoot through your own squad just squads in the way.

The hard lesson I learned was that sure I can bring on reinforcements but when units are advanced they just get slaughtered. Even with the 4500pt game played yesterday on a 4x4 board I came to one circumstance where it was useful, with multiple units hiding behind the same cover because there was nowhere else to go.

Sure I used it, but it wasnt useful per se but a logical part of the take cover rule both squads were using. When both quads squat behinsd a low wallneither is in the way of the other, they get up to fire then squat afterwards.

Dont get me wrong, the flow of the game looks good, it just needs some ironing.

Besides you are yourself a house rules player. Looking at the board you posted pictures of it has way more cover than any of the scenarios I have seen even accounting for the odd walls in the Damocles tiles.
You also have fiddled around with the cards. Both points I agree with and have intention to do.

On this point I intend to number my squads and have set custom cards for them. As for the terrain, I too need a lot more. I didnt have anything like enough for yesterdays game and it showed. On that note I will post pictures and a small mini battle report of yesterdays bash later.

House rules? Sorry, we are playing AT as intended by the game designers. The scenarios are there for getting into the game and not so experienced gamers. We are using only rules published by Rackham for our games. Heck, we even had tournaments with them. "Additional rules" were only the descriptions for missions and Rackham supports the idea of creating your own missions.

Fiddling aound with cards? Please explain.

Maybe europeans find it a little bit easier to improvise, but most of our gamers even in the english-speaking countries never had problems. We don't need a company that always tells us what to do next.

From what i can see you want to run before you really learn to walk.

BTW 4500 AP is a little bit crowded for 4x4, I would rather go for 2000-3000 on such a board.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:House rules? Sorry, we are playing AT as intended by the game designers......
Fiddling aound with cards? Please explain.

This:

Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Over here in Germany we mark our minis with a small color dot and put a similar colored dot on the card representing the appropiate unit.

That makes a HUGE difference in play from the actual rules. In the main rules taking multiple identicle units is a tactical advantage. You do know you get away with not having to pay an LP to relocate a card this way. The Rackham rules penalise taking varied units because they got the game design around the cards wrong. So many extra cards and crap, but few actual unit cards for activating and play.

I am not complaining, I want to make my own unique identifiable unit cards too. Likely based on the Universal Head downloads.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:From what I can see you want to run before you really learn to walk.

Big boys learn to swim by jumping in the deep end. Besides I have plenty of games design experience, and can see problems in mechanics quickly. I am not the best player, but I can fix rules good. Case above. How long did it take you to realise the cards needed changing, after extensive play, or on day one?

Duncan_Idaho wrote:BTW 4500 AP is a little bit crowded for 4x4, I would rather go for 2000-3000 on such a board.

4'x4' is what we had at the time and my gaming partner wanted to play as big as possible, i had not a moments problem with that. Just before this I laid the two board sections in an L shape to make a 6' wide deployment area for a 6'x4' board with a third missing, my Therian army fit neatly along a 6' base edge, that army is currently 5.5k so 4.5 in 4' was a little bit of a squeeze but we manage and it looked like a game. It certainly want too many soldiers to handle.

I don't want to fall into the Rackham boxset mental trap of 2500AP armies, I aim to make games of 6k+ on a 7'x4' board. With adequate terrain, capturable drop points neutral entry points on the board sides this should be very doable.

We played from day one with marked cards. As far as I know the rule of activating similar units with the same card never made it into an offfical errata and never gets mentioned in the rule book.