Sidalis IV: The battle for Sector 115

After a long time, here is a new battle in Sidalis IV, this time played with Strike Legion. I am using 1cm x 1.5cm markers for light and medium vehicles and infantry teams and measuring distances in centimeters instead of inches.

The battle of Sector 115 marked the escalation of the conflict in Sidalis IV, with the first confrontations between armor platoons. Terraforce command, still waiting for reinforcements, decided to set up an HQ on the planet to overview ground operations. While it was still under construction, NovaCorp sent a strike force to take control of the area.

Setup

Terraforce (blue) must defend its headquarters, represented by the rectangular template with the building marker, on the left. If the NovaCorp forces have any elements within 8cm of that building by the end of the fourth turn, they win. The green areas represent brush (difficult terrain that provides cover for infantry) and the hills within them count as one elevation level.

Terraforce (blue) has two platoons of four Wolverine medium tanks and one platoon of infantry, equipped with rifles. One squad has a SAW and the other has an anti-tank missile launcher. NovaCorp has three platoons of three Omega tanks and one platoon of infantry with two squads equipped with SAWs. Both forces are considered Trained.

Battle Report

I played the Terraforce units, against the Nova Corp using the solo rules presented in the Skunk Works supplement. The overall plan for Terraforce was to place one tank platoon on the hills to the south, the infantry on the area of brush to the north and the other tank platoon as a barrier to the enemy advance. I decided that NovaCorp would go offensive, pushing with all their tanks through the middle, while their infantry would contest the northern brush.

Sidalis IV: Smuggling Artifacts

I still haven't finished making my miniatures for the Qwik campaign that I intend to run for the Solo Tabletop Gaming Appreciation Month, but I did get some time to run a little game for my ongoing multi-system "War of Sidalis IV" campaign. This time, I used Flying Lead as the rules set for the battle.

During the War of Sidalis IV, one of the main priorities of both sides was securing the alien artifacts. NovaCorp would send autonomous transports guarded by small squads of soldiers to bring artifacts from research stations to their space ports or to armored bunkers. Once they learned of these operations, the Terraforce started to set up ambushes to stop them without destroying the artifacts.

The Forces
There are five NovaCorp soldiers, all of which are Q3+ C2, equipped with pulse rifles (C+2, long range, auto fire, move and shoot) and body armor. They have the Steady under Fire special rule. They should be deployed within one base distance from the vehicle.

The transport vehicle's stats are Q4+ C3 and it has the Short Move, Slow and Vehicle special rules. It is deployed on one board edge. Upon a successful activation it will keep moving towards the opposite edge of the board in a straight line. If doubled in combat, the vehicle is disabled and won't move anymore. If tripled in combat, the vehicle explodes, causing a C3 attack to all soldiers within one Long from the center of the vehicle. If the disabled vehicle has at least two soldiers in base contact with its sides, the three figures can activate as a group to perform a short move.

The Terraforce soldiers are organized in three fire teams of three men. All of them are Q4+ C2, equipped with kinetic rifles (C+2, long range, select fire, move and shoot) and body armor. There are six patches of woods in the board, and the location of each fire team is randomly determined after the NovaCorp are deployed. Each patch can have only one fire team.

Victory Conditions
The NovaCorp side wins if the transport vehicle leaves the board through the opposite side. The Terraforce wins if they prevent this from happening. If the transport explodes, both sides lose.

Battle report
This picture shows the board setup. I'm playing the NovaCorp soldiers against the automated Terraforce ambushers. [I decided to have the fire teams activating in order from closest to farthest from the vehicle. Each figure activates independently (using Dogui's activation procedure) but all figures of a fire team should be resolved before moving to the next one.]

The Terraforce won initiative and moved out of the woods firing. Their automatic bursts didn't do much against the transport but took one of the NovaCorp soldiers out of the fight. The NovaCorp forces moved forward and managed to suppress one Terraforce soldier and take another out of action.

The Terraforce disabled the transport with an aimed shot, so the NovaCorp soldiers moved to base contact, in order to start pushing it, suppressing one soldier and sending two others into hiding.

The Terraforce soldier who was laying prone after recovering from suppression took an aimed shot against a nearby NovaCorp soldier, causing a gory death. The horrific display caused the other soldiers to panic, starting to run from the battle.

After this, there was little point in going on, so the remaining two NovaCorp soldiers left the board. One of them fired one last aimed shot in an attempt to cause the vehicle to explode but failed. The Terraforce captured the transport vehicle winning the scenario.

Sidalis IV: After the Bombs

After I found out that I had misunderstood the rules for reactions in groups (especially the Received Fire reaction tests) I wanted to play another game of Chain Reaction 3.0. This was an opportunity to have another scenario of the War of Sidalis IV.

At the beginning of the Sidalis conflict, the local Terraforce commander needed to optimize the use of the few available resources to halt the NovaCorp operations. He ordered the use of the available star cruiser for orbital bombardment of some key military installations (wisely saving some bombs at that moment.) After a site was bombed, a small "sweep team" would be sent in to gather intelligence, destroy any remaining operational facilities and arrest any survivors.

Camp Zetarr was a small maintenance facility but the Terraforce command believed it could serve as a relay point for supplies between other bases. A single high-energy orbital bomb was deployed on it and then a team of six soldiers was sent to scout the area.

I set up a 3'x2' board as shown in the following picture. The green areas at the corners are impassable terrain. The ruins block line of sight and have a Defensive Value of 3. The patches of rubble count as rough terrain that slows movement but does not provide any concealment.

For simplicity, the NovaCorp soldiers are all Rep 4, carrying pulse rifles (using the semi-automatic rifle stats). The Terraforce sweep team consists of these six soldiers:

The War of Sidalis IV

Sidalis IV was a colony funded by Nova Corporation. Like many other prospection colonies, the corporation had an agreement with the Terra Federation where they would sponsor colonization efforts in exchange for the rights of exploring the planet before other companies. The agreement, however, did not include alien artifacts which were discovered on that colony.

When it was found that Nova Corporation was hiding the discovery from the Federation and was smuggling the artifacts to new facilities within the Hectrim Empire, things went sour. This was considered an act of high treason by the federation council, and soon Terraforce military were sent to take control of Sidalis IV.

Eventually, the Earth Military Forces would arrive in massive numbers and end the conflict but the first few months of the war saw a much smaller contingent of Terraforce troops fighting the highly-trained NovaCorp military personnel, in an attempt to control key facilities and stop the smuggling of alien artifacts.

In this first battle report, an assault group of Terraforce (TF) soldiers meets a NovaCorp (NC) patrol near a research facility. The game was played with the USE ME rules. The Terraforce group consists of a small command squad (Elan 5, Move 6", leader with side arm and two soldiers with heavy weapons) and two four-man teams (Elan 4, Move 6", standard rifles.)

The NovaCorp patrol consists of one Power Armor (light vehicle, Elan 4, Move 4", auto weapon, armoured) and two five-man squads (Elan 4, Move 6", superior rifles.)