A Challenger Appears!

Whilst on the Reaper message boards a few months ago I came across a person who was in my town and was interested in playing CAV. Well, as indicated by the severe lack of activity on this blog RL has been kicking me in the teeth, but yesterday we finally got together and threw some dice and pushed some pewter. No pics for a couple reasons, first I didn't want to keep stopping to take pictures as the kids were interrupting enough on their own, second my camera seems to be on the fritz again.

He had never played it before, but had played Warlord 2e so was familiar with the basic RAGE concepts. Providing models was no problem on my part so I set up a couple forces with him playing Terrans and myself as the Ritterlich. I would normally have played a Rach force, and almost did, but wanted to keep the game simple to get the basics down so didn't include IA, strikes, or recon models with EST or ECM. Also didn't use the faction abilities in order to keep things simple. He played with 2x Starhawk VIs, a Starhawk V, and a Falcon in one section and 2x Wolf tanks in a specialist section. I had 2x Tigers, a Jaguar, and Gladiator II in one section and 2x Wolverine tanks in a specialist section. Table layout was my 4x4 table with a large hill in the center, a smaller hill in each quadrant of the table and a collection of crystal outcroppings I've had sitting around for a while scattered around the center of the table which we counted as rough ground.

I set up my CAVs in the center of the deployment area and my tanks to my right flank. He set up for a pincer with a 'Hawk VI, Falcon, and a Wolf on his left and a 'Hawk VI, 'Hawk V, and Wolf on his right. From the word go I knew it was going to be ugly for me, he killed the Jaguar on his first activation with an amazing critical hit. Throughout the game the Tigers barely got out of their deployment area because I kept attempting (and failing) repair rolls. The Tigers eventually managed to kill the 'Hawk VI on his right the Wolverines the one on his left, but by then they were all I had left. I'm starting to think my d10's are cursed and I need to melt them down and buy replacements. Either that or switch to a d6-based game. My dice were definitely cold, and his were hot. He rolled a lot of crits. I don't normally blame my dice, but I couldn't enact any kind of plan because when I would try anything, the rolls would fail. Still had an enjoyable game though and had fun talking miniatures with somebody. He enjoyed the game and I'm sure we'll get together for more Big Stompy Robot goodness. He does commission paining on the side so I'm looking forward to seeing his models.