My mother always told me that violence doesn’t solve anything.
Let’s bring the shambling corpse of AT-43 back to life again with another fantastic battle report!
Ahhh, AT-43. Now that my collection is out of storage I can’t get enough of this excellent sci-fi miniatures game. So when me ol’ gaming buddy Will came over for another gaming-fuelled long weekend, it was time to set up a scenario and have at it! This time we’re using two of the gaming poster that came with the ‘initiation set’ Operation Damocles, along with some walls I build myself out of foamcore. And it perfectly recreates the weird, claustrophobic interior of the Therian machine world. There’s a generator to destroy, some brave-to-the-point-of-foolhardiness marines to take on the job, and some spindly alien war machines to make sure they all end up returned to their component atoms. Let’s get started!
Stick around AT-43 fans, I have a big update for my unit cards on the horizon.
Nice to see more AT-43 – thanks a lot! Some thoughts on the battle:
I think Will played the command points a little wrong….with quite a huge impact on the game. He should have paid CPs for activating the Golems units because they had no officer/relays. With 5 CPs (Alpha + 3 Units) that would mean with a Creation he could only activate 1 other unit. Or activate units and no Creation.
UH…your TacArms have 1/1…means you should have re-rolled misses. And you would have gotten a new TacArms unit at the beginning of the next turn you lost them according to the mission. I think that would have been a win then. ^^
And I think that U.N.A. had lots against Walkers for this small size…TacArms, Toad and 2 Launchers all have the damage to get the wraith down quite fast. Go for the walker kill or the objective…splitting won’t work unless lucky roles help you. With a turn limit I would go for the objective for sure…so everthing not usable for that is a meat shield to cover whats able to score the objective.
We started playing AT-43 from day one with all 3 factions. Loved the game…although it had “french rules syndrome” (inaccurate/confusing rules) ^^. I got into the Therians. They played very different…and I found it very intresting. My 2 friends also thought that creation was too strong. But I do not think so. Not because I played them…rather because they have many drawbacks on the other hand.
Expensive Units…which means you have few infantry…which you need to score objectives. And the cost is not really making them much better. At first glance the stats look better…but for ex Steel Trooper against Assault Golem…4 faster and 1 more accuracy with better morale for 100 Points…the stats for the weapon/armor look different…but with the universal table…both +1 and -1 hit on 4s…so just show there. On the other hand…rolling more dice with more guys is most likely resulting in more hits/kills.
No indirect fire. Hugh deal…especialy with the lesser models count…area effects and grounding are devastating.
No weapon with more than 1 Damage…except for one weapon on the 675 Points walker.
Everything medic,engineer etc do for free is paid for with CPs through the routines…so managing those is not so easy. More so because of the means U.N.A and Red Block have for reducing those. The temptation of “Creation” often leaves you with no CPs to get in or help your few infantry to stay in the game for the objectives in a critical moment….losing you the game.
It is really importent to get the small things right in AT-43…target priority…the right unit for the right job…managing CPs well, etc.
Most people get way too much distracted through the Creation to realize that other targets are more important more often then not.
All in all…great game! And much more tactical then most give it credit for. Would love to play that with you guys 🙂
Oh, after reading that I would have done so many things differently! You’re right, the big problem with Will and I when we play tabletop miniatures games is that we get caught up in the game and forget all the important little rules.
Though I only just recently realised that the re-roll stat means you re-roll ALL misses, which is a huge distinction. Before I thought you only re-rolled 1 die if it was a 1 stat!
One thing I’m not sure of – perhaps you or CK can clarify it for me – does the newly created Hekat bring in a CP with it because it’s a new unit? We played that it does, but if it doesn’t that would certainly nerf the Creation ability a bit. So Will was paying CP to activate the new Hekats, but he had extra CPs to do so.
Some very interesting points on the Therians there.
I do feel like AT-43 has lots of interesting things to offer and that we’ll be playing a lot of games to discover them all. One of the reasons I like the gam so much.
(Hope you don’t mind, but I fixed a bit of spelling and punctuation in your post to make it a bit easier to read, because there is so much good stuff in it and I wanted to make it as clear as possible!)
@UH Thank you for the clean up…you are welcome to do that anytime if needed! Writing in english is something I don´t do often…so something like the post above takes me an insane amount of time to get together…still not very good due to the lack of “training”…and the auto-INcorrect does not make it more fun. And btw…this forum is the only place I am willing to spent such an amount of time for participation 🙂
Getting rules wrong or forgetting rules is only natural when you do not play on a regular basis…and even worse when you play so many different games. As long as you have fun (which I find you two seam to have all the time…and I like it a lot…makes the battle reports so much more fun to watch) it is ok. But this topic is one that looked to me like it took a bit of the fun out of that game…so I had to comment 🙂
To be more clear on the CP topic. I do not mean paying CP´s for the created units alone…yes the new unit would create a CP (next round) that it needs to activate for the following turns…but the Banes and Storm Golems do not have leaders or nodes according to the mission briefing…so they too need CP´s to activate. I re-watched the video and realised that you played with an Overseer Alpha in the Storm Golems unit…but since they explicitly wrote Alpha for the walker I would think they would do so as well for the other units if intended. I have not looked up how the other missions are structured…so pure asumption on my part. But they also did not mention a medic for the Steel Troopers…so that balances out that a bit 😉
Oh…and with all the tactics I forgot to mention two importent things: The walls add so much to the map…great stuff!! And the AT-43 summeries where the reason we discovert your site back in the days….and they where a great help…so thanks again 🙂
Awesome game, as usual, Peter and Will! That map looks GORGEOUS once you’ve got the 3D style terrain as it was meant to be. I assume you made the walls out of foam core? Looks thicker than the foam core I can get locally.
“does the newly created Hekat bring in a CP with it because it’s a new unit?”
Not in the turn it was created, but in the following round, yes.
And I’m still so jealous you actually got a Succubus Golgoth. That’s my Grail for the Therians!
+++
Question: how many LPs did Will have to play with every turn?
@Soulsorcerer I really appreciate your involvment mate, and I’m in awe of you writing complex posts about rules in another language I wish I could do that! Your comments are always very welcome.
I don’t know why there was an overseer in the storm golems unit – they’re shouldn’t have been! Will’s only officer (and CC) was the Wraith Golgoth. The steel troopers can have a medic though, as the scenario specifies 9 troopers with 2 missile launchers. A unit of that type would have 0-2 specialists, so I gave them a medic and an engineer.
Very annoyed I forgot about reinforcements! 🙂 In fact, as usual, we set up and started playing and then just about forgot all about the scenario rules!
@CK Yep, it was ages ago but I think it was some kind of thick white foamcore I found somewhere; I wish I could find it again, it was about 10mm thick. I used multiple layers of it (especially for the big blocks), then I think I painted on a light layer of textured paint before painting and drybrushing.
Yes, I looked at the rules again, and of course since CPs are calculated according to how many units you have, it would bring in a point.
Will would have started the game with 5 CPs. He had three units and the Golgoth has a LP value of 2. I must study the video again and see if he stuffed up his LP spending. 🙂
@UH Thanks for your kind words!
@CK Lai I know what you mean. We spent a small fortune on Miniature Market back then to be able to get the AT-43 stuff. And then paid another fortune for shipping and costumes…but it was worth it.
Hey Peter! Loved the battle report, like always. It’s always fun to see one of my old favorites… stirs the fire and makes me want to get my stuff back out. So much easier to get the sporadic game in and keep the rules straight with your top-notch aids 🙂
Hey Cory, it’s been a while! You know of course what’s next after I finish redoing the AT-43 cards … yes, the Confrontation cards! 🙂
Along with some more Confrontation battle reports? 🙂
Next chance, definitely.
This is a test comment done with Google Chrome.
Thanks Ralf. I don’t know what’s going on but I’d hate for people to have problems commenting.