I fancied a change of pace to power armour. These guys will lurk at the back of the desk for those times I'm really not getting along with my Marines.

Raxxon Global, a global corporation, has 'conquered' humanity. Everyone works for Raxxon and Raxxon produces everything for humanity. Part of Raxxon's military experiments includes gene splicing, cybernetic retrofits etc. (The usual sci-fi stuff). Anyway, a group of employers have broken off and formed Agents for a Reclaimed Kingdom (ARK), a dissident group devoted to the fall of Raxxon and the reclamation of humanity. Raxxon has labelled ARK a terrorist group, and are at war with them. That's the background, anyway.

The gameplay is based in one of Raxxon's military warehouses, where the ARK player has to get to and capture the information. The remaining 4 players play as the Raxxon defenders. The ARK player has hidden movement (kept secret on a seperate pad), and will only place their mini on the board if a Raxxon agent is in direct line of sight to the ARK player. The ARK player has to get 4 objectives and get out while the Raxxon players need to kill the ARK intruder. There is a turn limit, and a bunch of 'extras' in the form of equipment, innate abilities and a motion sensor. Also, there is a Raxxon traitor who is secretly alligned to the ARK's cause, and doesn't have to reveal the ARK player's position if he can see the ARK player.

The hidden movement aspect of the game is what got us (being the group) super excited about this game. Plus the co-op vs 1 nature of the game should make for some fun banter! Not to mention the rules are incredibly short and easy to learn. It'll be our first play through tonight - I'll write up my thoughts tomorrow, most likely.

My first game was against Daemons. Nothing super crazy. 2 soul grinders, 14 Hounds, a daemon prince and some blobs of daemon troops. It was a good game. It was close in the sense that it teetered back and forth, but eventually a loss for me. However, my Ironclad Dreadnough killed a Soul Grinder! (Ol' Dready is normally dead when he steps outside of his Pod).

Second game was against an Armoured Battle Company IG/AM list. 2 big blobs of infantry, 3 Chimera vets, 3 LR Vanquishers, 2 LR executioners. I thought, after my first game, the Lascannon devs would have a field day. Unfortunately, the under-performed again. Fortunately, my ICD went on an absolute killing spree. 2 Chimeras, 30 guardsmen and a LR Vanquisher... My first win!

Third game was tough. Really tough. The objective was to have scoring units in my opponent's table quarter. I faced Daemons/Orks. 2 units of 14 Hounds and a huge unit of Warbikers with special characters in. It favoured him, run forward smash then score all the points as I can't get out of my deployment zone. Anyway, my Infiltrators blocked his scout moves, then I seized! Focus fire from the army murdered half a squad of Hounds turn 1, then he surged forward. Combat with the dread speed-bumped the force, taking some bikers with him. Then turn 2, I murdered the rest of the hound squad, and because of the way terrain was set up, he was bottlenecked. So I arranged for 5 scouts to block movement forward, then 5 marines, and another 5 marines and so on, effectively slowing him to having to chew through 5 marines at a time. I was doing well to take models off the table and speedbump his surging horde, but I couldn't move around get the objectives. A tough fought loss.

Game 4 was Chaos/Daemons. 2 Flying Daemon Princes, 2 Fire Raptors, A Helldrake, a Hellblade and a Blight drone. 7 fliers. What?! The biggest loss of the weekend. With the exception of 1 nurgling base and 10 PB that were summoned I scrubbed his infantry and started stacking wounds on both DPs, but realistically I was never going to win it. Really great opponent, though! I was fighting for killpoints as the secondary and trying to keep infantry to a minimum so no one could collect the relic. A loss.

Game 5 against Salamanders. Vulkan, drop pods, Stormraven, you get the gist. Set up well, and was all prepared to go first and hopefully cripple the deployed army for the get-go but he seized! It was a really close game, ending in 21-18 to myself. I had a squad of 5 marines in cover on objective 2, he draws objective 2 as his objective. It took 3 rounds to clear them off! There was a turn where 2 guys took fire from 3 drop pods, and a collective of 10 marines (3 combat squads w/ special weapons), and neither marine died. Contesting the objective and denying him the points for his maelstrom. Lucky me! I had a stronger board presence toward the end of the game, but it was close none the less! My second win.

An amazing experiance, all in all. 3 close games, 1 tough game and 1 impossible game (but fun, none the less).