Hive Hythe Campaign - First Contact.

So on monday night, we played the first games in our campaign. We each took two campaign turns and fortunately each had a game.

Campaign Round 1

On this first round, each player took the decision to expand their territories by capturing an adjacent tile. As such in the first campaign turn there wasn't any fighting to be done.

We decided that at the end of each player's campaign turn they can put their gangers to work in their territories. This means that players who didn't fight, still get to gain income.

Three out of the four of us decided to take the first round's income and stash it away. Ben, instead decided to splash out on another ganger after achieving some successful dice rolls. A little bit of a double edged idea - on one hand, he only had four gangers, so a fifth would enable him to  make the most of farming his territories, on the flip side it pushes him into the next income category.

A worthwhile price to pay he says, only time will tell if it will pay off!

Campaign Round 2

So Lewis is up, and having previously claimed a territory that butted right up against mine, he decided to try and put the screw on me and attack. I had hoped to consolidate my position a little further first but never mind - FIGHT!

Battle one

A traditional 'Gang Fight' we set up on either ends of the board. There's some open space in the middle of the board, and I decide to use that to my advantage, Lewis is running an all shotgun gang so will have to travel if he wants to take me out. 

I decide to sit pretty and use my ranged weapons to take him out as he gets close (yeah yeah, beardy, I know)

First shot of the game ends up being a corker! one of my gangers with an autogun shoots across the board at a regular warbanger with shotgun. 6 to hit, 6 to wound, 6 on the injury table - boom, he's out of action! unfortunately, the sixes stopped there and he failed his ammo role. But still, he did his job!

Chalk one up for Stephen C. Gaul.

The next couple of turns were unfortunate for the warbangers - the lack of central terrain made it difficult to move closer to me. whilst I managed to down two more fighters whilst pinning others.

At this point, both gang leaders are within pistol distance of each other and spend the whole game failing to hit or wound each others gang leader - neither wanted to leave the cover to make the run into combat.

Third turn, the warbangers get closer and unleash a salvo at one of my guys on the first level of a tower - manstopper round to the chest - successfully wounded my guy and downs him, being close to the ledge, I fail my Initiative and he goes plummeting off the edge, taking a second st4 hit as he smacks into the floor beneath him. A second down result *phew* he remains there until the end of the game.

The main core of the battle consists of the teams on the right firing upon each other. With some incredibly lucky (and highly uncharacteristic dice rolls) the Iron Fists manage to down two more and OOA another one of the Warbangers with no return effects.

On the left hand side, two opposing 'kill teams' get close, the Iron Fists burst out of cover and attempt a grenade attack, it was appalling and went careening 8" off target. The Iron Fist flamer failed to do any damage, or set anyone on fire either, but did manage to pin the Warbanger flamer. 

Lewis failed to pick the flamer up at the start of the turn and melt me back. His shots go wide too. eventually it comes down to close combat - both sides duke it out, but the warbangers fail their dice rolls and another two go out of action. 

Despite Lewis' determination to continue suffering such pain, his men overrule him, fail the bottle role and his team flee. 

After action - lewis had five guys go OOA at the end of the battle, and rolled four 'A-Ok' results and one horrific scars meaning the guy causes fear! not the result I was hoping for!
I failed the roll for my downed guy and had to roll on the injury table. he suffered a head injury (probably from that fall) and now has to roll for stupidity/frenzy!

I'm definitely pleased with how my team fared in their first game. Lewis didn't do to great, but he isn't heavily into his wargaming. However he learns quickly and learnt a lot from this game, the next won't be so easy.

Ben and Ian are up next

Ben up next, he takes another territory and continues his spending spree and buys another juve. He now has the largest gang with 11 men. Ian comes along next and isn't content to let ben farm lots from the gambling den - he attempts to 'raize' it, which would mean ben would have to work that territory for two campaign turns to receive income from it again. 

A ballsy tactic - lets see if it payed off! 

We see the Crimson Reavers face off against the Toxic Avengers in a Gang Fight scenario. Lewis and I set up this time, and went for a very centrally compact terrain set up. And it definitely provided a very different playing field to the last match.

The game was played along the short (3') depth of the board with both teams able to get into the action very quickly. Both players had 'Vents' territories and made good use of them. 

Battle Two

The Crimson Reavers took the left hand, the Toxic Avengers on the right. The two 'twoers' in the centre of the board formed the arrival zones for the Vent Teams ben took the middle and Ian the upper tower.

Ben very much used the terrain to his advantage in this game, and set up in a way that required Ian to come to him, the dense terrain was an advantage for ian here, but the spread of Bens models across the board made it easy for ben to get a shot in somewhere. 

On Ben's second turn the Toxic Avengers were able to draw a direct LoS to the Reaver gang leader, a lucky shot and some lucky dice rolling put him out of action - not a great start for one of Ian's heavy hitters. Was it a sign of things to come?

The Avengers put the pressure on with lots of pinning, though for the next couple of turns neither side was able to truly make the most of the shooting, until Ben's heavy stubber roared into life after find a good vantage point and downed a couple of the Crimson Reavers, and then all hell broke loose.

Players were having men downed left right and centre, and Ian even managed to put a couple of Bens men OOA. even still those OOAs only served to level the playing field given Ben's purchase of a ganger and juve earlier on. 

The large building (in the bottom-ish right of the picture) housed 4/5 of ben's men including his gang leader. They put the pressure on Ians forces on the bottom left of the board before moving to threaten the top half. With some atrocious dice rolls from both players, they soon ended up dropping below the bottle test threshold. 

In the end it came down to who would fail it first, if ian passed and ben failed he would win 'by default' and end up denying those creds to the Avengers - however with his gang leader OOA, he was rolling on a 7 instead of an 8. The dice hit the deck, tumbling away - and came up as 5! 

He pushed through the turn, pinning and hiding where he could until it came to ben's bottle test - with his leader still in place, Ben had the advantage on the roll - unfortunately for Ian, the Toxic Avengers were determined and held fast. The last round ended up putting another man of Ians OOA, after which Ian voluntarily left the battlefield.

Both players had multiple rolls on the serious injury table Ian rolled a couple of recoveries and an also a head wound. Ben however was not so fortunate and lost a ganger but otherwise fared well with recovery rolls. 

Ending the evening 

I concluded the evening by taking another territory and raking in some more creds. As a result of the battles we all leveled up some of our gangers - which included some stat changes so we're now looking again at how we've kitted out our gangs. With two of us on 7 territories and two of us on 6, and some improved gangers, the next session will prove interesting!

The territories map after two campaign turns.

Green - Ben - Toxic Avengers
Blue - Ian - Crimson Reavers
Red - Craig - Iron Fists
Yellow - Lewis - Warbangers