These Gutter Runners were perhaps the most significant intruders into Ironforge since the last For The Horde attempt.
Whatever casualties were taken by the dwarves during that raid, they clearly hadn't the strength left to stop the eight Land Raiders squaring off against each other now.
Even Thief Catcher Thunderbrew was a no-show.
We back up army lists in case people don't feel like making them fresh.
Furthermore if one player is uncertain of their ability to make a valid army composition, or they just don't feel like it, they can duplicate their opponent's force.
These rules got the battle kicked off quickly which was nice.
JR and Taste rolled their Land Raiders into the Hall from the Great Forge and Tinkertown respectively.
Just as JR's tanks emerged into the chamber, his attempted opening shot was blocked by a pillar.
Taste continued to cruise forward firing his left-hand lascannons scoring two devastating criticals.
We were using the expanded vehicle damage charts from the Compendium and a single special result could be quite perilous.
These two Raiders from JR's formation each suffered severe damage while their counterattack resulted in meager results such as the doors on the lead tank being stuck shut.
The front-left tank suffered a broken steering column and went out of control, sending it in a wide turn arc resulting in a high-speed excavation of the nearby wall.
It also provided a brief bottleneck to JR's further advance and maneuver.
Taste's formation continued forward landing another telling hit which filled the cabin of another Land Raider with gas.
Bailing out of the vehicle, they joined up with the other Gutter Runners and made off in a manner suggestive of their name.
Recovering from this downward trend toward ruin wouldn't be easy for JR.
The functional tanks had to brake for their own safety, returning fire wherever they could find
LOS.
One managed to damage the accelerator device on Taste's lead tank, forcing it to speed up.
Based on how things had been proceeding, many players would have lost hope.
But over the next few turns Taste's rolls were abysmal.
JR gradually pecked away at the weapon and drive systems of his enemy.
It was no longer clear what the outcome would be.
The combatants had been rolling away from each other firing their lascannons backwards.
Players are allowed to shoot from any point they were in during their movement phase and each combatant was making duck-tailed motions to get shots off with both lascannons while also making the needed turns.
They now each slowed to 3" speed to make the tighter turns needed to complete a figure 8 pattern around the pillars.
Yet this would leave them slightly more vulnerable than the 10" they'd been using up until now due to the loss of the hit penalty.
Just as Taste straightened out and re-accelerated back towards the Tinkertown entrance, JR missed a shot by a margin of 1.
Had Taste still been completing his slower turns, it might've been game over right there.
Another of Taste's Raiders had crashed into the NW section, shattering priceless Uldaman artifacts.
In the last phase of the exchange I had to issue some tricky rulings over the ambiguous wording in the source material.
The result of one shot in question was something like "Destroys the turret if the vehicle has one, reroll if not."
At first I wasn't sure if the result should be rerolled, since the pintle mount that
STC vehicles in later versions had a 360 degree fire arc which made them something close to a turret.
Semantics and a label seemed to be the only thing separating them.
However we found in the Rogue Trader manual that the version of the Land Raider we were using was equipped with a simple forward-firing bolter.
The result of the reroll was utterly debilitating; a fuel line fire which killed the crew instantly and would blow the tank up completely shortly after.
There remained only 1 fully operation tank on each side at this point.
Yet another deadly strike would lock up the autosystems on JR's final vehicle.
They would continue to drive forward (interrupted for about 20 minutes while I fixed a bug in the Out of Control Vehicle C# script) into the museum.
Until the very last they kept shooting and for a while it looked as though EVERY tank would end up destroyed or disabled.
Just when it seemed like it would be up to the crews to finish the battle with their knives, JR's final lascannon shot inflicted a mere 3 damage and failed to trigger a special chart result.
The battle was over since JR's final tank was wedged into the museum section so that its port lascannon couldn't acquire a target and had made an omelette out of the Fossilized Egg.
Taste had one healthy Land Raider left and could just park at a safe angle, firing at will.
JR had proven that with enough grit, resolve and grim determination, a crushing defeat could be completely turned around into a not-so-crushing defeat.
Thanks for reading.
These battles are fun and I really appreciate that people are watching the VODs and checking out these reports.
But actual attendance has been low recently.
Don't be shy! Come join us. Link's in my signature.
