Xenos Rampant

The Enforces got unlucky and failed an early activation on turn 1 and again on turn 2.  This held them up.  Meanwhile my free movement meant I was making excellent ground between the buildings toward the objective.

Here you see the objective immediately below the tower – my units ar coming in from the top right corner of the market place.  The Assault squad are ahead and plan to overshoot the objective to screen the main cultist double strength unit who will come in behind them and pick up the objective.

Here we see the table from the Enforcer’s side.  They have one elite unit in a good place in the market area near the objective.  Their main double unit spent time climbing the house but is now well placed to provide covering fire.  The leader and elite unit started in the central courtyard (where the goats are) and have moved around behind the building below that to see into the market place.  The heavy infantry unit with the AP weapons are on the battlements at the bottom of the screen.

The next shot shows the positions at the end of turn 4.  The Enforcer AP unit has been hit by the Cultist heavy support unit but passed the courage test to hold position.  In the centre the Cultist Assault squad are in position to screen the main unit behind from the elite Enforcers.  The main unit has picked up the objective broken robot and is moving back.  An unfortunate failed test to shoot meant the Enforcers again failed to do much this turn.

The position at the end of turn 5.  The main Cultist unit makes their escape.  The screening Assault squad charged and were mauled by the elite Enforcers but further shooting attacks failed to finish them.  On the battlements out of the bottom of shot the Cultist Heavy support has routed the AP unit.

The final turn saw the Cultists lose the rest of the assault squad and the heavy support unit to shooting from both elite Enforcer units.  The main Cultist unit has made it back to their deployment zone and will exit at the start of the next turn.  Ending the game.

Final scores.  Enforcers 2VP (for the 2 units destroyed), Cultists 5VP for getting the objective off the table.  Cultists win.

Takeaways:

We learnt that this version of the rules has a lot of units with Free movement or shooting that don’t require an activation roll.  To maximise each turn you really need to complete all of your free activations prior to starting to do the ones that need a roll.  It is amazing how often you’ll fail a roll even when the odds are that you should pass.  7 may be the average score on 2D6 but that doesn’t come up as often as you want or need it to unfortunately.

It was a fun game and played very quickly.  We’ll definitely play again soon.