Mutants and Death Ray Guns!

Dennis and I kicked the tires on MDRG Saturday evening. I had a blast; Dennis, almost. He's got two gangs he picked up in the last week - Mutant Plant Men and Wretched (Zombies with some semblance of intelligence that can use guns n stuff). I used my Gray Aliens. We put together 300-point groups without know what the other guy had. Here's my group:

4 @ Alien Warrior Q4C3 Laser Gun  36 points each

1@ Alien Rifleman Q4C4 Force Field, Laser Gun, Sharpshooter  54 points

1@ Alien Leader Q3C4 Force Field, Hero, Needler 98 points

...For a total of 296 points.

I went with a smaller, but better quality group than I normally play with. I do like playing with a horde of rabble but since I've been losing my ass in these games lately it feels, I decided to mix things up a bit.

Game 1 - A Thorny Situation

We fought the "Smoke on the Water" Scenario from the rule book first. Dennis used the Twig Clan and defended the waterhole against my Moon Men.

Board setup. Dennis got to set up about a third of the board deep from the opposite edge. I would be entering the board from the near edge in the picture.

My four basic warriors make it onto the battlefield.

While the two elites hang out "in reserve."

The Salad Bar of DOOM prepares an amBUSH.

The devious and well-equipped spacemen draw first sap and snipe the two trees on the hill by the pond. Good thing too, apparently they were armed with Pineapple Grenades! They went "TIM-BERRR" in the spots marked by the stars.

The giant broccoli things that had been hanging out under the catwalk moved forward but one was taken out right away by my marksman who is just out of frame to the lower right. 

The remaining broccoli-thing makes like a mangrove and hauls trunk toward the center of my "line."

But the alien leader and one of the warriors jump out from behind the rock and turn the monster into a side-dish. FWIW, the alien warrior on the far left with the yellow marker ran out of ammo and cannot shoot any more this game - that's what the yellow marker indicates.

The veggies on the other side of the pond shoot back and hit my leader whose Force Field burns out immediately. (Rolled a "1") Cheap Chinese crap.

The aliens form up in a raygun-line. The guy who has been nominated as the squad melee expert moves forward while the sharpshooter must reload before he can resume trimming the hedges.

"Pew-Pew" Two of the walking sticks are converted to tinder and the thirsty alien menace moves up to tidy up the rest.

At this point I was absolutely ROLLING on Dennis, I'd killed five of his models and lost NOTHING except a laser pistol in return. 

The plant leader invokes his "Powers of Telepathy" and confuses two of my guys, making them a bit less useable (Q5 now - those are the red markers). The Brown Avenger throws a pinecone or something at my hero and knocks him down.

My next activation produces the above die roll. Shozbot.

So the damn Brown Avenger runs over to my hero and kicks his head in while the leader tree unleashes a mighty psychic blast which fails to produce any results. 

A quick couple of shots later and it's off to the greenhouse for the plantmen. Hooray Moon Men!

Game 2 - A Bit of CTF, Then?

So then we reset the board and put together a Capture the Flag scenario. Dennis whipped out his wretched horde of The Wretched to do battle and steal the flag of my Moon Men who were now feeling pretty damn saucy. 

The initial setup. The yellow marker in the lower left is my flag. The blue marker in the upper right is Dennis'.

A view from the other side. Dennis moved onto his third set of dice for the evening. Hahaha.

I sent the hero and a shlub right, two shlubs more "up" and left a shlub and the marksmoonman by the flag. The only way to my flag was up the "stepped" one-story buildings so I thought I could funnel him pretty good. Turns out a giant friggin' horde of zombies is its own funnel. 

Artsy shot. Mmm. Scotch.

The rabble does its best to consolidate in the center. You can see my leader and his wingman taking up positions to snipe the wretches.

I've knocked one of his group out of the game. He's shot at and forced one of mine to the ground. To Dennis' chagrin I left him like that, prone, making him harder to shoot.

Now, what happened next was pretty dramatic and for some reason I chose not to photograph it. Some badass hand-to-hand expert zombie paid a visit to my hero. I think the first terrible thing to happen was my leader's Force Field immediately burning out again. Then he was infected my the wretched disease making his Q and C scores one point worse for the rest of the game. The alien leader managed to kill the monster and blasted another for good measure with his needler. Three kills for him this match! Yeah! My joy was short-lived as a slug from one of the Wretched knocked the alien leader down and out. His buddy was also taken down. I had lost two of my six guys very quickly.

The rest of my group gets its shit together and exterminates enough zombies to cause a panic test. The Wretched back up towards their corner.

Dennis bags another one of my Aliens also causing dissension in the ranks, but no matter. All it has really done is given my guys a chance to re-group and create some distance between we and they. A few more well-place shots (and one mistake by Dennis moving a guy into the open when he didn't notice one of my guys had a clear LOS to him) ended the game. 

The Aliens won again! Woohoo! The second game was a hell of a lot closer than the first, if for no other reason his Wretched were better and more intelligently equipped. He picked his armies off the shopping list in the back of the book whereas I built my force straight off the Ganesha website army builder. His plant guys had a lot of "fluff" stuff that was kind of a waste of points. Plus he kept his Wretched in a tight mob most of the time, around his leader. The Leader skill improves nearby teammates Q score by 1, which meant that damn near everything in his force was Q3 (needing 3 or more on the activation dice to get successful actions). Most of my guys (except my hero) are Q4. We both really enjoyed the games are are looking forward to more.

Good Gaming Ya'll!