Druze Vs ACA 300 Safety Area

Not only will this be my first battle report on the website, but my first Druze battle report. Despite playing "Druze" for years now using Haqqislam, and most recently Nomad rules. I can finally say this is my bandwagon, and I'm not budging. (except for maybe the newly released Ikara company rules).

This game was in anticipation of a local mini tournament running the same mission. And was played against my close friend, and common battle partner Royalfork. He's a veteran Panoceania player with a record of upsetting socially awkward people at tournaments, and rolling high armor saves against small arms fire, but nothing else.

His experience with ACA is high, but we haven't played in a while.

His list:

Shock Army of Acontecimento

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GROUP 1 10

REGULAR Hacker (Hacking Device, FastPanda) Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 23)

REGULAR (Sapper) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 22)

REGULAR (Minelayer, Sensor) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 14)

REGULAR (Minelayer, Sensor) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 14)

REGULAR Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

SCYLLA Hacker (Killer Hacking Device UPGRADE: Maestro) Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser + 2 Devabots Charybdis / Pistol, E/M CC Weapon. (0.5 | 34)

DEVABOT CHARYBDIS Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (7)

TRAUMA-DOC Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)

MACHINIST Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15)

NAGA Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 30)

PEACEMAKER Spitfire + AUXBOT_3 / Electric Pulse. (1 | 27)

AUXBOT_3 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (- | 4)

GROUP 23

PATHFINDER DRONBOT Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16)

MULEBOT Hacker (EVO Hacking Device) Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 25)

GUARDA DE ASSALTO MULTI Rifle + Heavy Flamethrower, D-Charges + AUXBOT_2 / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 49)

AUXBOT_2 Light Shotgun + Eclipse Light Grenade Launcher / Electric Pulse. (- | 6)

5.5 SWC | 293 Points

[url=http://army.infinitythegame.com/index.html?l=IwBgTAPgzCIRwCkBWMjgE40EImvRkrimplIsfmRXqRshWAGyIDsGLMAHA7q4ky6IwUFriFMMwqP2xDkUsBlZjgAFgEMRIRAAEpTHWBE0WTfiI3YNyLSCm7dQA===]Open in Infinity Army

Please note this is a rough estimation. Thanks!

My list, which was heavily theorized on and designed for the mission:

Safe Area/Aquisition

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GROUP 1 9 / 1

DRUZE (X Visor) Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher (E/M and Nimbus) / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 27)

DRUZE HMG, Chain-colt / Viral Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 29)

CLIPPER DRONBOT Smart Missile Launcher / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 18)

DRUZE Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Pitcher, D-Charges / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25)

BRAWLER Doctor (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)

BRAWLER Engineer Rifle + Light Shotgun, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)

VALERYA GROMOZ Hacker (Hacking Device UPGRADE: Expel) Combi Rifle + Pitcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 21)

HUNZAKUT (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)

BRAWLER (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 28)

BRAWLER Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)

GROUP 25

FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

KAMEEL Hacker (EVO Hacking Device) Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 25)

PATHFINDER DRONBOT Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16)

FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

PEACEMAKER Heavy Shotgun + AUXBOT_3 / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21)

AUXBOT_3 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (- | 4)

6 SWC | 300 Points

[url=http://army.infinitythegame.com/index.html?l=JwBgTAPgzCIQygQwGYFMAEBBATqxB6TARwFcBLAZzIBcyB7AOwgEYBSYAdhFagFZgwrAIRtO3PgA5gw5t04SeANmZQZ7LkoAsmmTuASOSvrvYGjOkb1OCoy6UMXqdtkIZF6ztqG3enDXwwABZlEOaVtmCxVTNgi3BU5HCJ8Q9XDlC0NOKxcFQMCgA===]Open in Infinity Army

-List discussion-

Druze:

Main link with extra spice. Mostly for redundancy.

Clipper and MSV sniper give me some options.

Peacekeeper is usually another Hunzakaut, but I thought I could use more pressure in the quadrant control missions, and flamethrowers are nice.

I'll do more of a breakdown for the Druze lists soon.

Panoceania:

Standard camp then move up link.

A few forward elements to surprise people and capture zones.

Evo with baggage for rear zones and console control.

I'll get Royalfork to write some more details in another post.

Table-

The pins are the consoles. Very clustered table with a few opportunities for long range AROs

Royalfork quickly won the awful WIP contest, and chose to go second.

(Ajax is a peacemaker) Regulars scattered on rooftops and behind the ice storm crate.

Scylla and Engineer, closest camo marker is a Naga.

This is my right side with the link team and poor mans clipper. Hunzkaut is in the ruins.

Left side has no photo, but is the two fugazi at ground level, evo hiding, and brawler MSR and LT on a roof.

My deployment plan (I was going first) was to literally shove my way into the midfield, kill whatever he had there. And sit. Picking off things he brought up.

Narrative:

The reflection wasn’t mine. It was someone 25 years older, beaten down, destroyed. His eyes glazed over, lost. Nose broken and crooked, a large scar over his lip. This man had destroyed himself for nothing, and his friends had paid the price.

I felt someone sit next to me, the smell of Mihr and Jasmin filled my nose. The bar did say “Anything for 5 dollars”. I started to look up from my drink, tracing my eyes from the gloved hand on the table, all the way to the wrinkled facing smirking at me. Close cut grey hair; a tattoo under both of his glacial eyes. His trench coat falling over the seat seemed to breath with a life of its own.

“Dzerorgave?” He said.

The bar seemed to mute itself as the word floated between us.

I followed his eyes to my forearm. The campaign badge emblazoned upon it, tears of blood spilling from the woman's eyes.

The music slowly faded back in.

I raised my eyes to him again and failed at containing a knowing look.

“The embers are still there, I can tell.” his accent was thick, yet untraceable. The end of his words seemed to pile on top of each other. As if in a hurry to conceal something beneath them.

I looked away.

“I can offer a life you haven’t left.”

My eyes briefly flashed to him again, he was looking forward across the bar.

He motioned for the bartender.

“His drinks are on me tonight” He said, as he slid a card across the bar.

I felt his eyes locking onto me again, I refused to meet them.

“Lead the way, ranger”.

My spine straightened, a surge of adrenaline, the music became unbearably loud. It had been years since..I turned, but he was gone.

The door gave in easily, sliding across a plush carpet. Two large men flanked either side, but they were simply phantoms. The world swirling, I stumbled forwards. One hand gripped the edge of the desk, the other clawed it, then grabbed firm. My head, and eyes raised to meet his.

“Welcome home soldier”

First turn Druze-

He reduces my main pool to 8 Orders

First order- Pathfinder moves up to scanning distance of Naga camoflauge marker.

Reasoning, I'd like to control this strip of land, and my link team is on the other side. Eventually leading to a collapse towards the center to distribute points to different quadrants at will.

Second order- Satlock on the Naga. He holds, I sat lock and reveal him.

Reasoning: Not wanting to get into a firefight, rather just use er, other assets.

Third order- Activate Teampro on Druze fire team.

Reasoning: To avoid crits later on, and the idea of Evo gets me all giddy.

Fourth order- Main pool.

I fire a guided missile, he U-turns and tries to dodge. The Naga is knocked dogged by the DA.

Rest of turn-

With the immediate left field threat dealt with I advance the link team forward. We just started playing hardball no take backs, and I accidentally run the clipper into his MSR regular. It promptly eats a DA round and goes first level unconscious. With Teampro and Valeryia nearby I reform, and HMG the sapper MSR Regular unconscious. My engineer brawler walks over, repairs the bot and goes prone.

I then advance the druze link forward to these positions:

The Nomad pin is a console.

You can see my Datatracker marker on the EM LGL model.

My Druze then spec fire an EM grenade behind the top most (in the picture) Icestorm crate and Isolate a pathfinder, his LT, and a regular minelayer. I then spec fire another behind the Red veil building in front of the office complex and isolate an aux bot, and another regular.

Final order is to activate Overclock on all rems.

Turn Recap Druze 1-

My turn went really well, my only blunder being easily repaired. And the EM LGL doing absolute WORK. Love the idea of this Druze just dropping grenades on dudes. My positioning could have been better as we'll see, but at the time was meant to provoke multiple AROs from multiple angles.

Narrative-

Her beautiful grey eyes closed again, head jerking in a violent flinch.

The crack of the rifle hitting the woman sounded throughout the alley way.

I couldn’t watch the scene, only the daughters reactions.

She couldn’t have been older than 13, her hair falling out of her head wrap down her windburned face.

The world seemed to come back together in slow motion as Arabic filled the air. I turned towards Fatima, now standing over the woman, machete drawn. Her purple lips and piercings seemed to move at an inhuman pace as the words spilled out of her mouth. The woman below her was crying and stumbling over her own words. I turned back towards the daughter, but she was gone. I turned back towards the Druze as the woman on her knees shouted a few final words. With a whir the Dronebot to my right swiveled on it's axis. Fatima, machete resting on the crying woman's neck, cocked her head. I felt her eyes rest on me, her helmets lenses whirred and focused.

"Zionists"

The word slithered out of her mouth, strung itself up, and hung itself right before my eyes.

The woman's burka blew back, her hair flowing in the wind, dust was everywhere.

The Dronebot staggered as it released it's payload into the air, micro adjustments happening even as the missiles left it's tubes.

Even before Reaper called hits confirmed on the security team we were tracking. Booker and I were off, sprinting through the streets behind the Druze. Locals were watching us from the windows, hissing and spitting.

In the distance a sharp crack as the missile broke the sound barrier, followed by a thump as it's micro munitions devastated it's target.

"A short chuckle sounded through comms"

Panoceania Turn 1-

Starting in LoL.

We talked through it quite a bit to figure out his plan of attack.

He coordinated moves multiple units forward: Peacekeeper, Scylla, Engineer, Trauma Doc. Peacekeeper mows down my pathfinder with a spitfire.

Trauma doc runs up and revives the MSR Sapper who then shoots at the Engineer Brawler. He guts to the floor prone. The sniper then fires at the Clipper and is completely killed by the guided missile launcher. One of his regulars clambers onto a roof and fires at my EM lgl, the LGL isolates him back. He then engages the EM with another regular and succeeds in knocking him unconscious.

He puts MMSlvl2 On the peacekeeper and coordinates a suppression fire on it, and the rooftop regulars.

His end movements put his peacekeeper into his front right quadrant, and his regulars into his front left.

Turn Recap Pano 1-

He made the best of his situation! My LGL was very important to me, especially after what it had done to him. And it was clearly high on his priorities list.

He has the momentum to turn the first turn around if he can leverage his regular orders and get past the 5 isolated soldiers.

Druze Turn 2-

Evo, wiggles it's butt and uploads teampro

First few orders go into reforming the link, then HMG gunning down two regulars, losing the doctor brawler in the process. No EM LGL revival :(

I then back my KHD up and fire a pitcher into range of the Peacekeeper who is suppressing my Brawler sniper team. I thought for half a second of isolating, or doing a fancy hacking thing. But instead just spotlighted, and annihilated it with a guided missile.

I reveal my Hunzkaut to FO a regular on a rooftop, and then promptly blow him to rags as well.

Brawler sniper team wiggles forward and blows another regular away.

Druze team kind of shuffles into better positions to hold the two quadrants.

Evo wiggles it's butt and overclocks, Fugazi run all over to provide AROs.

Turn Recap-

Well, I owned the midfield strip already, so I just started picking away at him. I dragged his order pool down some more and set up some nasty AROs. At this point he's down to 6ish regular orders, but they're on high point models that could still easily sway the game.

Narrative-

Sniper rounds cracked over head as the security teams overwatch caught wind of us. I shrank against the inside of a window and peered outside. Further down the street Fatima and the larger Druze had arranged themselves against a small garden wall. Firing snap shots over their heads, past them the security team was surrounding their disabled APC and trying to establish a perimeter. The larger of the two Druze had propped his Heavy machine gun, a large belt fed Russian one, on top of the low wall and was hammering their positions. Sending tracer rounds through the air, multiple members snapped and jerked around the vehicle as the short range frag rounds found their marks.

With a sudden burst of air the windows in my room blew out. Sending glass and dust flying everywhere. I thumbed my safety off and started heading downstairs.

The drone bot had shifted itself to the interior of a building to assume a firing position on the sniper team. Even as I walked down the stairs I saw their position, far out of rifle range, explode into a cloud of black smoke and shrapnel.

As I cleared the rest of the room out I noticed booker in the street outside clutching his chest. Ignoring the shouts from our attendant Wardriver I hopped through the low mud window firing from the hip as I ran to his position.

Panoceania turn 2-

Royalfork was in a tough spot at this point, but could still get one quadrant and console.

He began by moving the Guarda up and spitfiring away Valerya with a nasty angle. And then moved Scylla up to her quadrant/Console with little resistance from me.

A suppression fire order went out on all remaining models.

Panoceania Turn Recap 2-

Not much he could do. He eliminated one of his main threats, and a specialist of mine. Chipping away at my midfield control.

Druze Turn 3-

My Hunzkaut Surprise FO's his Guarda. Poomf, he's blasted to bits as well. I shuffle about and touch consoles. My Druze HMG, throws his Hmg on it's sling, quick draws his viral pistol, peeks the corner, aims, and downs the Engineer with a double tap to the chest.

We call it at this point, with Royalfork running Scylla up to touch a console, narrowly dodging my Brawler MSV MSR shot.

Narrative-

The roaring was building in my ears as high velocity rounds flew over head. The counter on my rifle reading down to <30% ammunition. Bookers mouth was slurring something at me, but the roaring was over whelming. The compression took hold on his chest, I grabbed him by the rear of his collar and swung the morphine syringe into his thigh. I looked up to see his eyes glazing over and losing focus.

The world seemed to slow down.

Rain ran into my eyes blurring my vision, everything backlit red by the flames. Booms sounded over head as UN scram jets broke atmosphere in their snake fights above. A nearby mounted 50 was chug, chug, chugging away. Spilling brass every where, tinkling on broken glass and concrete. Abrams body was heavy as I dragged him through the street, my gun clicking empty over and over again, comms roaring in my ear. His breathing somehow reaching me over the sound of hell around me. I was blinded, a spot light filling my eyes. Only Abrams breathing, and the rain beating down on my face. The spot light passed, revealing a gunship chassis over head. A large emblem emblazoned on the side reading in Cyrillic "Dzerorgave".

I gasped as the cold water poured across my face. Blinking rapidly I awoke to see the hideous smile of the larger Druze. His face ritually scarred and studded was splattered with blood. I sat up, looking around at the inside of the drop ship. With a plop, the Druze tossed a wet bag at my feet revealing a pair of beautiful grey eyes peering out of it. I rubbed my eyes, pulse rate quickening. The bag resolved to be our target, the security team leaders head still twisted into a surprised look. I scrambled up and away from it, sitting myself in the nearest canvas seat. My eyes closed to the sounds of Arabic being spoken.

Final score.

9-1 Me. (At some point I scanned his HVT)

Wew, that was more hacking than when I played Nomads! Really feel like Druze play like...they would in the fluff? Good synergy and problem picking.

Royalfork was put in a bad spot right off the bad, my aggressive mid field push and liberal application of Isolation via EM neutered his order pool. While by second turn he had a chance, especially with me down the EM, and his guarda being a hefty points amount. The damage was already done. Anything he had left wasn't strong enough to deal with my B team (Brawler sniper team and Hunzkaut). And the objective orientation really demanded a strong core.

Thoughts on Druze-

I really, really, dig them. The ability to cross map support via EM, and Missiles is huge. Not only can I apply pressure from one side with a strong MI link team with a big gun. But I can use very small elements, Hunzkaut, repeaters, pathfinders, to apply that GML pressure on the other side. Fluff wise this operated like I imagined, with the Brawler team providing overwatch as the core advances up and er, cleans up.

Thoughts on Gameplay-

I played sloppy. Walking into a few AROs, and leaving my link team members to DLBs. Holding down the middle was easy when I knew what was coming, but I'd be TERRIFIED vs JSA, or something with healthy AD/TO. Teampro was an awesome program that I knew would come in handy. Especially with my sloppy play. With the only real hacker threat blown to pieces right off the bat, I was rather free to move about, just avoiding Scyllas smaller threat range.

EVO was nice, definitely could use see myself using it more often. The Satlock bonus is just too big to ignore. The EMLGL was amazing, can't wait to use it more often and against HI and such. The versatility of it is astounding, no one can hide. Especially LI LT's and the ilk on rooftops.

Further testing required with Druze, need to try a Taglist.

Until then, fly safe.