Unbalanced Raid Scenario - Fighting Withdrawal

Fighting Withdrawal

The heretical betrayal bringing back some of their darkest memories, several detachments were so enraged they refused to fall back, their righteous fury lending strength of might to their arms and accuracy to their fire and allowing them to beat back their attackers. Having fallen back to their waiting landing pads, they await planetary extraction.

Your forces have fought their way free of a scathing ambush. Extraction is imminent, your transports have reported an estimated maximum ETA of 7 tics. Enemy contact expected from all fronts imminently. Prepare yourselves.

Setup

Place a skyshield landing pad (or any equivalent terrain piece) central to the board. Defender sets up all terrain. All Defender (Loyalist) forces must be deployed within 12" of the landing pad. Defender may not use any reserves (all units are already present). Attacker deploys nothing. Attacker takes the first turn. Defender may sieze the initiative normally.

Forces - Standard force organization chart

Scenario Special Rules

• The defender has successfully fallen back to their primary extraction point. Appropriate super heavy flyers are inbound to extract the detachment. The flyer is a thunderhawk if Space Marines. It can carry up to 30 marines in power armour (terminators count for 2). An entire unit must be extracted at one time.
• The thunderhawk is inbound from orbit (Modified Reserves) and will arrive on turn 3 (4+), 4 (3+), 5 (2+), 6 (auto).
• Units must be able to move within 2" of the thunderhawk to embark, which they may do according to the rules below.
• If the landing pad is shielded, the thunderhawk will not be able to land, embark, and depart in the same turn. It may do any two of these actions in a single turn on a shielded pad.
• If the landing pad is not shielded, the thunderhawk may land, embark any available units, and depart in the same movement phase.
• If the thunderhawk does not land on the pad, it will be forced to land during 1 turn, load during the following, and take off in the next turn (meaning it could land on 3, load on 4, take off on 5)
• Landing pad operates per Planetstrike Book.
• Any attacker units may enter the board from any table edge on turn 1. No more than 3 units may enter from the same edge.
• Army attacker units in reserve may outflank if desired.
• Attacker units will fall back towards the closest board edge.
• Defender units will back towards the landing pad. They automatically regroup once there.
• If a thunderhawk is destroyed or departs the board, another from the squadron will arrive the following turn automatically.

Mission Objective

This mission can be played with two mission objectives. Kill points are used for those wishing to have a detailed account of how much they "won" by. In this method, defender units extracted are worth one kill point to the defender. Defender units left on the table at the end of the game are considered destroyed by the attacker. The other method less complex. If the defender gets more than 1/2 of his units extracted, he has achieved a win, less than 1/2 but more than 0 will achieve a draw, and 0 units off will achieve an attacker victory. This method is more advantageous to the defender by making it more difficult for the attacker to achieve a victory.

Reserves - Standard reserves for all units placed in reserve. For campaigns, defender reserves should be limited to those available at the end of the previous mission.

Game Length - Non-standard game length. The game will last 7 turns or until there are no defender units left alive on the field, which ever comes first.

Design Notes - This mission was designed to follow the Ambushed and Betrayed mission in a narrative campaign setting. This mission was designed to show the forces of the defender if they achieved a draw or win in the previous mission. This mission is extremely unbalanced, and should regularly result in a win or draw for the defender. This mission places the same constraints on the defender as the Breakout mission. Additional considerations should be made to whether the super heavy transport can shoot/be shot at. In play testing this was ruled out (we found that more fun at <1500 points). If it can shoot, this mission quickly becomes too unbalanced and the points cost/benefits afforded to the attacker should be re-examined.

Creator - sunflame

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