Battle for Xilos

We decided to set up a fairly wide jungle section at the centre of each long table edge. This would prevent us just bringing on forces in the middle and running straight forward to the to the objective. There was an open area around the objective (a shiny black thing left by the Builders) as we are both fairly novice and wanted to advance and shoot.

My Strike Force Blue 519 (Concord) set up by bringing on three squads, with the Commander central. The aim was to use Follow in the second turn to rush each squad around the clump of jungle into the open area. I knew this would be risky as it would set them up to be fired upon. My hope was that three squads plus entering reserves would flood the Vardos Cadix (Freeborn) with targets and at least one squad would get to the objective. If I could achieve this then I planned to hand the item back to one of the reserve squads nearer my table edge for extraction.

By and large, things turned out as expected. Cadix used a Feral squad on my right flank to whittle down one strike squad (who seemed to stay down for the whole game but refused to break). On my left flank, a similar fate met another unit at the hands of the Freeborn Command. This squad stayed strong and advanced closer to the enemy leader but hid behind a clump of trees, ready to pounce if they should advance.

With a reserve squad also moving up on the left ready to support them, the depleted squad sprinted for the objective. Meanwhile, to the right, a pair of C3D1 drones destroyed the troublesome squad of ferals. There was a second feral unit behind them, though.

As it turned out, instead of running the objective back to one of the reserve squads on the left, it was easier to take it to the unit which had stayed down all game. As the Cadix ferals and Vardanari poured fire into this unit, the drones moved further forward to shield them and attack the Command unit approaching from the left.

With one man left in the “down” unit, covering fire came for the reserve unit on my left and he was able to retreat back to the extraction point. Blue 519 are now he proud owners of a black shiny thing left by the Builders. I wonder what it is.