On Sunday I played a game of Incursion against Little Max while providing moral support for DJ's Space Marine construction push. Incursion is an awesome game with some really cool minis and great game play.
DJ's Ultramarines are looking really awesome because he is taking a lot of time and effort to use forgeworld bits (brass etch and vehicle doors) and press molds for the shoulder pads. It gives me hobby envy to see his Ultramarines given that I have been rushing mine so that I meet my Gamesday deadline. I often hear people complain about seeing 'another Ultramarine' army but in their defense how many have you seen that have been done up by mature experienced hobbyists? A good set of the old space smurfs look great and I cant wait to see DJ's army once he has them painted up.
Back over to incursion, I am convinced Max and I over think incursion because I find our games more mentally fatiguing than a game of chess. We keep trying (I try, Max seems to succeed as he has a nasty habbit of bidding the exact same number of points as me) to get into each others heads with turn bidding which has a massive impact on the game.
We have been playing our way through the missions in order taking turns playing as the Allies and Germans. We played mission number 5 with me commanding the Germans.
Initially reading the mission and seeing that the allies get 3 more points to buy models with as well as an additional battle card and command point per turn had me worried. Based on the mission though I decided that if I could delay Max near his entrance points and keep him from freeing the stranded trooper then that would reduce his advantage causing us to play with even points models. My thinking was that that would keep us on a more even footing and that I could then employ my favorite German tactic of flooding him with sturmzombies. This hasn't failed me in previous missions.
To this end I took:
-Hans
- 6 points worth of sturmzombies (allowing me to bring 6 on per turn)
-5 bomber zombies
I have been waiting for an opportunity to try Hans out and looking at the firing corridors on the map that i would need to get reasonably lucky with the battle cards to bring Max down with shooting.
From out last game Max discovered that Bomber Zombies are highly effective in pairs. Given that Hans removes the restriction on the number of Bomber Zombies you can take I decided to run 2 pairs of them and then had 1 point left over so took a 5th.
By deploying them where they couldnt be shot or grenaded (two squares around a corner) I had the desired effect of making Max hesitate to run forward early.
I used hans in a suicidal fashion to take out a heavy in my first turn (objective wise this put more pressure on Max) although in hindsight I should have saved him to deal with one of the Blazers.
Blazers are pricks to deal with if all you have are sturmzombies. Max ran a pair and even after I dragged his heavy down, there were several turns where i could do nothing due to corridors filled with flames.
Fortunately I caught a break and Max had some poor dice rolls allowing me to drag his apes to the ground. That said he was probably only one 4+ roll away from victory at one stage when he had my one entry point flamed and had the other blazer effectively blocking off the other half of the board. Fortunately I had enough zombies out already and he didnt kill them all, allowing me to kill the blazer flaming the entrance and then take out the Sarg.
I will post battle reports on or games from now on. Fingers crossed Ill be swapping places with him and using the Allies to play the same mission on Friday.
Incursion lessons learnt so far:
- Bomber Zombies work great in teams
- Sarge is a massive force multiplier
- Grenades can be game winning
- Flamers are really good for area denial (better than reaction fire in many circumstances)
- Sturmzombies are the core of German victory (for my tactical style anyway)
- Slugger Murphy is great for reaction fire, however dont rely on his shooting in his turn because thumpers special rule could ruin your plans leaving him and your other models horribly exposed.
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