Battle for Xilos

Battle At The Farm – 2000 point Antares Edition
It’s our last big game for the campaign, so we made it the biggest yet and busted out the wargames nostalgia.
Since we didn’t have quite enough people to properly run Xilos’ scenario 6, we opted to dig out a fun ol’ scenario from days gone by and take a crack at adapting it to Antares. It worked remarkably well – it was a very close and fun game!

Just don’t do what I did way back when and hide your Jervis vs Andy battle reports in your algebra book to read during class; drink your milk and stay in school, kids.
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A long-dead Space Warlord’s treasure is rumored to lay buried somewhere on this remote farming site. Decades ago, his band of green-skinned alien Marauders captured the treasure here only to be caught in a deadly firefight with a group of heavily-armed defenders and lose the treasure in the process. The IMTel and Ghar both became aware of this treasure and set out to capture it. The C3 forces arrived first and have already taken up position in the ruins of the old farm. As they await reinforcements, the first wave of bloodthirsty Ghar descend upon them. It appears that history is about to repeat itself.

Setup:
The terrain was set up in a similar fashion to the original Battle At the Farm, with the generator on the hill being swapped out for a TransMat pad. (How else do you thing the IMTel found this place?!)
Place 3 treasure markers along the center line of the board to represent possible locations of the Ancient Warlord’s treasure.

Deployment:
Concord (Defenders) set up half their army in and around the farm complex.
Ghar (Attackers) set up half their army up to 10″ onto the board
Remaining forces arrive beginning on Turn 2 (roll as normal) and come on from the player’s board edge.

We haven’t used Drop rules for AG chutes yet, so…drop troops can drop in this scenario!

Duration:
6 Turns, roll after that to see if play goes into a 7th turn
or until one army breaks/loses half its order dice

Victory Conditions:
Control the Farm at the end of the game: 5 VP
Karg is slain/routed: 3 VP
Josen is slain/routed: 3 VP
Possession of the Ancient Warlord’s treasure: 3 VP

Treasure
Beginning in Turn 2, non-sharded units can attempt to recover the Ancient Warlord’s treasure.
At the end of a turn, if you control a treasure token, you may check to see if you’ve found the treasure.
One of the three tokens is the treasure. The others could be useless old coins, vicious Xilos creatures, or whatever else you feel like. Put three chits is a cup and have one of them represent the treasure. Draw a chit for each tresure marker you control. If it’s the treasure, then yay! If not, keep looking. Control of the treasure can be handed off.
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The game started with ridiculously effective shooting on both sides.
First, Josen called a Follow/Fire order and pinned-out a 5-suit Ghar Assault squad with the help of an X-Howitzer and X-Launcher (yay!)
The happy dance was short-lived, though, as an Outcast squad managed a terrifyingly lucky lugger gun shot…and destroyed the C3M4. Oh, the humanity.
After that crazy exchange, Josen’s artillery crews continued their onslaught, managing to take out a Ghar suit squad in turn 2 and another in turn 3, each time through sheer volume of pins from multiple Net shots. Reducing the scatter distance of OH with targeter probes is not to be underestimated!
The drop troops managed to secure the treasure, but were subsequently drowned in pin markers from Ghar bombard shots.

Turn 4 looked to be the deciding point in the battle. The C3 were an order die away from breaking, but they were poised to knock out some decent dice from the Ghar bucket as well. The Concord troops pulled out all the stops, even blasting through some battle suits with an Interceptor assault.
It was too little too late, though, as Karg ran away from the Interceptor and onto the farm. The Bombard Crawler also entered the farm’s perimeter, crunching the artillery crews as it waddled its way through.
As we entered turn 5, the Concord had reached their break point and the Ghar still had enough dice to keep going. We called it for the night, but found it to be a really fun scenario to mess around with.