For this mission, I bought a warwalker.
Soundtrack:
0:00 - 4:10
The map
(no idea why, but the screenshot with the description of the place didn't work)
This is our objective.
Autobots, roll out! As you can also see, there's a new unit in the middle of our forces.
The shooping hoax squad. They are our first aerial unit. Airborne squads are pretty useful because they have great mobility, as they don't get slowed down by harsh terrain, and can't be engaged by melee units on the ground, which makes them perfect for harrassing enemy assault squads.
Mimes find our first adversaries.
The whirlwind charges and tries to whack our scatter laser, but dies trying under fire dragon support fire.
Meanwhile, a leman russ is spotted.
We shall send the hawks to the northernmost Eldar tower.
Silly whirlwind barrages the scorpions.
So does the tank
And a squad of some new foes!
The turn ends with mysterious flames engulfing the Eldar spire. What could this be?
Here's the battle plan.
Vypers will shoot the jump marines, fire dragons, dire avengers and scorpions engage the leman russ, warwalker and other scorpions target the whirlwind.
One more new enemy squad has appeared on the battlefield. Here are both of them:
Jump marines are like a less useful version of our swooping hawks. That is because they're primarily a melee unit, which means they lose a huge advantage ranged aerial infantry has: when they attack melee ground units, they will retaliate, which means tehy can't be used for harrassment that well.
And the other squad, a generic spehs marine squad. A pretty good all-around tactical unit, with good defence, decent damage but slow movement.
UNDER HEAVY FIRE
The warwalker is pretty effective.
The whirlwind is down thanks to the scorpions, and the jump marines and tank are almost down.
Meanwhile, the hawks uncover more enemies.
And mimes finish off the leman russ.
A whirlwind appears out of nowhere (1) and fires upon the hawks. An offscreen jump marines squad (2) joins it.
Later, our scorpions are under heavy attack from scouts, tactical and jump marines. The jump marines die during their assault.
During the next turn, we get rid of the scouts and tacticals.
Sayonara
The structure here was just a flavour one, so we send the mimes southward to check the mining town.
We also evac the hawks.
But the barbaric Imperials are relentless in their pursuit.
We fall into formation and evac the hawks behind a wall of fire dragons.
So the whirlwind shoots scorpions to avoid the fire dragon support fire.
But the combined assault of warwalker + dragons in the next turn melts it.
Then we harrass sum scouts
And other scouts harrass our scorpions (the ai seriously hates those striking scorpions).
We keep attacking the scouts, but the bastards just refuse to die.
This squad, however, falls before the warwalker, warlock and scatter laser.
Jump marines leave their post at the Eldar tower and shoot the vypers.
Guardians take out the scouts. Avengers and hawks bumrush the marines, who also attack the hawks during their turn.
The mimes, having left the flavour mining town, spot more enemies on the way to the mission critical spire.
The jump marines go down, and the area seems secure.
We send the hawks to investigate the tower.
Neat.
The mimes keep scouting and find more foes at the southern tower.
We fall into position and prepare for the assault of the valley.
The tank attacks our scorpions.
Right then.
Fire dragons and scatter laser attack the tank, destroying it, although they suffer heavy losses.
Mimes and scorpions will take care of the spehs marines.
The tank falls
So do the marines.
We send the mimes ahead to scout the spire, and find a heavily entrenched regiment of space marines, with two new units.
A librarian. They are pretty tough, pack a punch in melee and are resilient to many special abilities due to their single entity status. They also count as leaders, giving +leadership to everything nearby.
Since they are the only Imperial psykers, they already have all four psyker powers unlocked. As you can see, most of them are pretty bitchin'. The flames we were seeing before are the aura of fire.
The other space bros are terminators. The Emperor's finest, they sport terminator armour which gives them excellent defence, while their storm bolters also allow them to inflict heavy casualties. They also count as leaders, just like the librarian.
Assaulting the spire should prove tricky, not only because of the elite units, but also due to the rocky terrain everywhere around it, which makes our units crawl at a pace of 1-2 hexes per turn.
Before we engage that supermob, we should get rid of the marines occupying the southern tower. I wanted to send only vypers and hawks to clear it, thinking there are only jump marines there, but a whirlwind is also present. Thus, I also sent the two fire dragons as backup.
We fall into position and end turn.
These jump marines are very brave.
Vypers may not be the best unit to attack the whirlwind, but whirlwinds are pretty sucky against warmachines.
Bye bye.
Next turn, the whirlwind faces defeat, even though it tries to boost its strength back to 15.
Dragons check the tower and get xp.
And blow up the whirlwind.
Meanwhile, jump marines engage our warwalker.
And are reduced to a crisp during our next turn. That's one less squad to worry about.
Let us advance towards the spire...
HOLY SHIT.
That's the librarian's 'armageddon' ability. While the damage done is not *that* serious, since it kills 4 at best and 0 at worst, it can quickly weaken our whole army, since it targets 7 hexes at once.
Warwalker fires upon the tacs.
Hawks encircle to whole mountain on wings of glory and attack another tac squad.
During enemy turn, one tac squad fires upon the hawks (1), while the others (2, 3) attack offscreen scorpions. When starting our turn, the hawks attack again and suffer heavy losses (4).
Time to evac the hawks.
Clusterfuck ensues.
Fire dragons and scorpions attack one tactical squad and kill it.
Meanwhile warwalker and scorpions attack the terminators
The other tacs are put to flight.
Boom.
Here, nothing short of a miracle saved our scorpions. Reduced to 2 hp after the explosion and assault of the termies, they somehow managed to survive the terminator counterattack.
Onward, mens.
That's it for the termies. Tacs survive unfortunately, although with low hp.
Libby means business.
And keeps nuking our asses.
Marines fire upon the warwalker.
Let's see how this works.
The fleeing tacs finally go down (warwalker rapid fire is p. useful).
Overwhelmed, the librarian breaks and flees.
Remaining tacticals keep holding it together, primarily because the mountain terrain gives them huge defensive bonuses.
The Imperials don't give up and still attempt to make a last stand.
The marines fail miserably trying to attack the warwalker.
After that, they're killed by the scorpions.
While the librarian suffers a heart attack.
Gotta love craven cowardice.
And the spire is ours for the taking!
Weeeeeee!
It's a miracle nothing actually died during this mission. The assault on this spire is one of the more bitchy moments of the whole game.
Derp. The warwalker got moved to the barracks.
Also, as you can see, the mimes and guardians have '+' above them. That means they're ready to upgrade to better units.
Here's the artifact we looted from the spire. Spotting invisible units will become pretty useful later on, so I'll give it to the unit with the highest spotting range (the mimes).
Mimes advance to harlequins.
Those cheeky bastards are pretty damn useful. They retain the excellent mobility and spotting range (and low armour) of the mimes, while also getting the 'lethal' and 'fearsome' abilities. Lethal makes all wounds turn into kills when attacking, while fearsome makes an attacked unit 1.5 times more likely to break or flee. Harlequins make excellent hit'n'run auxiliaries.
And the guardians can advance to 4 types of aspect warriors: Striking scorpions, dire avengers, fire dragons and swooping hawks.
Now, what do we do with them? Azira claims that later on, when we unlock more units, the guardians will be able to advance even to warp spiders or howling banshees. So we can keep them around and wait and see, but they're likely to die before we even unlock those units...
But if we choose to upgrade them now, I suggest we turn them into dire avengers. We already have 3 squads of scorpions, 2 fire dragons are plenty, one swooping hawk is enough for now too, and we'll get another pretty cool aerial squad later on, while we have only one dire avengers squad. Avengers may not seem like much for now, but the exarchs they upgrade into are AWESOME. Plus, there are two Dire Avengers-related artifacts available in the campaign, so it's a good idea to have optimal use for both of them.
DISCUSS!!!!!