Battle for Xilos

The short Batrep: Despite incredible construction speed, Shaltok uses his Outcasts to overwhelm the defending C3. His suits, though, are humbled!

Turn 1: A lone Outcast disruptor team noticed the secret building and quickly radio’d in the problem. The pair laid down some suppressive fire on a C3 squad hiding in the undergrowth and tried to take cover. Far away from them, Shaltok quickly arrived, as did Bomber and Battle squads. Whilst Shaltok laid down some useful fire, the Bomber squad forceda defending unit Down and the Battle squad took out a D1. The construction nanosphere was building at breakneck speed (6).

Turn 2: Outcasts ran onto the battlefield from all over the place, sometimes firing, at other times just running into safety. An Outcast command squad lashed out at a lone weapons drone as _it_ shot on their Bomber squad, which went down in confusion. Shaltok struggled to make a dent in a single D1 drone that was opposing him and, even worse, a lone C3 strike squad stood firm against scourer fire from a Battle squad, then a charge (that they repulsed) and then stood firm under Disruptor cannon fire (see bottom of picture). The constructor nanocytes kept up the pressure (another 6 = 12!)

Turn 3: The brave C3 strike squad finally crumbled under continued disruptor fire from the outcast cannon and surviving battle suits. Shaltok finished off the drone blocking his advance then took out a batter drone ahead o fhim. He now threatened to advance on the central defenders. The Bomber squad remained cowering but to show them up the Outcast command squad charged the D1 threatening them and beat it up, kicking in its plasma support weapon and whipping it into the ground. It limped away and tried to bury itself into the jungle floor. Not far from them, the squad of Outcasts advanced under the threatening eye of a targeter and poured fire into the interceptors that were harassing the Bomber squad, wiping them out. Against, on the far edge, the disruptor cannon put down more suppresion on teh single C3 squad holding their end of the table. The nanocytes building the transmat were almost finished… (another 6! = 18).

At turn end, though, the plaintively bleeping, damaged D1 failed to respond to a Get Up! order and the Concord had lost too many units: they were overwhelmed.

In the post-game wrap-up, we wondered what would have happened on turn 4 if the damaged drone had managed to Get Up! (see last picture with arrows). We quickly realised that the Ghar troopers and Outcasts could reach the transmat defenders, take the transmat and destroy it, especially since the Bomber squad could launch an unopposed attack and Shaltok’s Command Crawler could take out any remaining defenders. Nonetheless, a close game.