AAR: Xenos Rampant

 Mark came over for a game of Xenos Rampant yesterday. It's been a couple years since I played last and he'd never played. I had a bunch of models that I finished up last summer that have never seen a tabletop that needed a chance to get out and play. We played an orbital drop mission in which my Cultists and Nightmare monsters were defending against Mark's United Planetary Federation troops. Both sides had 24 points of troops.

Commander Mark

The yellow markers are the six drop points. All three of the pre-game orbital bombardment requests failed, meaning I got away with things early. Mark's forces generally clumped up around two drop point on what's the left side of the board in these pictures. Only his heavy drone was elsewhere, coming in right atop the bunker that was the objective of the attackers.

My Greater Demon, Ol' Skinny, sets her sights on the heavy drone atop the bunker.

My Necrobeasts (the GW Ghoul models) used their infiltration ability to close with the big group of invaders appearing at the far end of the table. They were in Wild Charge range right out of the gates, just the way Daddy likes it.

Chomp chomp! The battle begins in earnest with a furious charge by the Necrobeats into the UPF light infantry. In case you're curious, the green and blue space ork fellow is just a "commander's unit" token.

After some ineffective return fire, those rampaging hordes smash into the well-equipped Swarm Infantry, the UPF's heavy infantry.

Ol' Skin-And-Bones commits crimes against IT support staff, ripping into the heavy drone.

Meanwhile, I had a unit of Biles (heavy infantry with gimpy 12-inch range guns) slogging their way over to more light infantry and some recon drones. One good round of shooting was all it took to convince the goblinoid troopers to run away!

After another round of Dancing with the Swarms, my Necrobeasts were done, content to take their fresh-off-the-bone lunch back to their cave instead of slaughtering more invaders! Dang. At least I had also run off one of the Swarm infantry units.

The slow crawl of my mechanical support unit was nearing an end, getting into a position to start blasting enemies! You can also see my cultists hanging out in the bunker atop the hill.

The mop-up grind begins. My Biles head toward the remaining Swarm and light infantry. Ms. Purple Demon had finished with the heavy drone (although she'd lost two of her five strength points in the process!).

DANCE WITH ME, MY PRETTIES!

The Biles join in, forcing the Swarm to run and hide.

Purp was compelled to attack the Swarm infantry again. She pulled the head off another as she winked out of existence, back to whatever plane of existence she calls home.

The Biles do the thing. The recon drone's communications back to the orbiting ships is nothing good.

My cultists kicking it in the bunker. They took quite a few casualties but had terrific courage results all game and simply hung in there. 

A fun outing and nice to put XR on the tabletop again. I think I need to tweak the UPF's force composition, their shooting is decidedly "meh" and don't quite pack enough of a punch. Of course the heavy drone getting laced into by the big demon right out of the gates took away one of their better shooting units in a terrible way. As always, looking forward to the next game, which should be Frostgrave Part III next Saturday. Be well and good gaming!