Monday, March 21, 2011

Robots and Raiders

Here's the report of a quick battle I ran with the USE ME rules. In this post-apocalyptic confrontation, a group of raiders comes across an old military base that is being protected by a squad of robots.


The raiders are organized into two squads of three models. First there are the human raiders (Elan 5, Move 4, using Standard Rifles,) and then there are the mutant raiders (Elan 4, Move 6, also with Standard Rifles.) The squad leaders are in the middle in the following pictures.
The robots (Elan 5, Move 4, armed with Superior Rifles) are organized in a single squad, as shown in the following picture.
Setup
I decided to try the solo rules for USE ME to run both sides. I assigned the raiders to the role of attacker, and rolled an Aggressive behavior for them. The robots got the defender role and a Neutral behavior.
Turn 1
The raiders win the initiative and push forward, taking cover. The robots position themselves to fire at the incoming enemies. The mutant raiders, acting last, make a double move to the ruins closest to the robots.
Turn 2
The raiders win the initiative again, so the human squad leaves cover and fires, without any hits. The robots shoot back and then move away, in an attempt to avoid being charged by the mutants. The mutants, however, make a double move again and engage in close combat.
Turn 3
The robots win the initiative and start melee combat, killing one of the mutants but getting one robot damaged in the process. The human squad moves in and fires against some of the robots, destroying one of them. The mutants move away from melee and shoot against the robots, destroying the one that had been damaged.
Turn 4
The robots win the initiative. Heavily outnumbered, they seek cover behind the small outpost building. However, they are surrounded and the mutants get into firing position, destroying another robot.
After that, the robot leader surrenders and the raiders find out that he's actually a human in armor.

Comments
I liked this game; it was really FAST. As expected, the squad movement rules help that. Concentrated shooting against a squad proved to be very effective, so line of sight rules must be enforced, something I didn't do very much. Also, I assumed that you can fire against individual models engaged in melee if there is line of sight. However, I feel it's better not to allow that, as per the optional rules. Lastly, I'm still unsure about the possibility of disengaging from melee combat.

All things considered, this was a fun and quick game. I intend to run this scenario again, but adding grenades and armor plating to the robots, to see what happens.

2 comments:

Sin City Snowman said...

Very interesting battle report Ricardo. It definitely seems like the USE ME rules are very quick playing which is a good thing IMO.

I was a little surprised about the humans firing into close combat on turn three. Most rules either say that it is not allowed or impose a serious enough penalty that doing so it generally a bad idea.

I also noticed in your comments about disengaging from melee. It is usually allowed but typically the opponent is allowed to get a free attack as the model moves away which is pretty reasonable IMO. You are trying to move away so your defenses would be more lax than if you are just concentrating on the fight.

Ricardo Nakamura said...

You're correct on both points. There is a clarification on the optional rules that states that, to keep the game simple, firing at targets engaged in melee with friendly units is not allowed.

As for disengaging from melee, I'm assuming that it is not allowed since it's not mentioned, similarly to FUBAR 3.0 (FUBAR 4.0 Draft 3 includes a mechanic to leave close combat.)