Remember To Take Your Rad-Pills.

Who is stalking who?

It has been far too long it seems but finally the stars aligned where I was able to play a game at the Hobbytown Game Night in Johnson City. The Bob was available, so we agreed to play Kill Team (and yes, we're hopeful for the new edition). I arrived with the Celestial Lions and Bob brought his Skitarii.

The Skitarii had their Radium Carbines and they were led by an Alpha with a Taser Goad and a Phosphor Pistol. The special weapon guy had a Plasma Caliver. The Iron Strider was equipped with a Taser Lance. I feared the Iron Strider the most, because the previous time I encountered one of these things it proved to be quite challenging to defeat.

Quite challenging indeed.

Bob won the roll-off to choose sides, deploy and go first.

Skitarii deployment. 

This time I decided to try out, for the first time on the table-top, my Land Speeder. This particular load-out features two muti-meltas.
But it chewed up enough points to reduce the infantry marines down to six.

Celestial Lions deployment. 

Despite having the Leadership Ability called Quick Thinker, which bestowed my leader with the ability to Steal The Initiative on a 4+, the Skitarii would go first. I was saying to Bob (and Michael, our only spectator) prior to deployment that for me this is the worst Leadership Ability. If I roll this one up it is guaranteed that I will botch the roll!

The field of battle and both 

Turn 1

Skitarii advance, taking the first objective and getting really close to another. They were not close enough, or had no opportunities, to fire upon the Celestial Lions so they ran forward and secured their positions.

Turn 1 advance!

The Lions advanced also but my weapons have better range. My first shots were declared by the Land Speeder upon the skitarii creeping up toward the unclaimed objective outside the ruins. I rolled two 1's. A lot of my other shots were a little better but these skitarii made their saves. I eventually took out a guy in the ruins with a lucky shot who happened to be a specialist. First Blood goes to the Celestial Lions, but it was going to be a tough fight...

Iron Strider strides forth. 

Turn 2

Powering up the Radium Carbines it was time  to unleash the radioactive death. Two of the Celestial Lions were brought down by the vicious Skitarii onslaught.

Death Dealers with Radium Carbines take objective 2.

Celestial Lions turn 2 and I had to get aggressive. I sent two Marines storming into the ruins. The guy with the special weapon had to go, and I was prepared to charge him, but I managed to kill him with a Bolt pistol!

Bolt Pistol  vs Plasma Caliver. 

The Land Speeder was able to get into position to take aim at the Iron Strider with both Multi Meltas. With a blinding blast, the machine was brought down!

Land Speeder claims it's first kill.

Turn 3

The Lions proved to be more fierce than before, but that only meant the Skitarii would need to roll up their sleeves and start slitting throats. Both of the Marines in the ruins were laid low by the Skitarii within, with the last Marine killed by the Alpha in close combat. The Alpha, much to his annoyance, took a wound during the encounter.

The Celestial Lion learns what an apex predator really is . 

The Celestial Lions are now officially broken due to their losses. On Turn 3 they have a Plasma Gunner, the Vet Sgt and the Land Speeder left. Thankfully no one bottles out. The Land Speeder shoots another Skitarii, melting him. The Land Speeder breaks the Skitarii. Things get dire however when the Plasma Gunner shoots twice with one hit killing a Skitarii Ranger but the other shot instead gets hot and he fries himself leaving just the Vet Sgt as my one infantry model.

Turn 4,

The high leadership value of the Skitarii Alpha, with his Leadership Ability extending his range for Leadership tests out to 12" instead of the usual 6", should've been a good thing. But Bob's dice wanted to roll high, resulting in the Alpha  and two other Rangers pulling out and leaving the other Skitarii behind! This left him in a position of outnumbering the Lions with superior firepower to having just two models left! The Vet Sgt was able save against the Radium blasts, much to tbe Skitarii's annoyance.

The Celestial Lions had to gamble to pull out a win as technically the Skitarri could still win with objectives. The Land Speeder hopped the wall and entered the ruins, with both Multi-meltas aimed at the last Ranger within.

"Hi there!"

The Vet Sgt moved up, but failed to kill the last Ranger with his Plasma Pistol.

Closing in...

As predicted the Multi-meltas on the Land Speeder reduced it's target to ash.

01001101 01111001 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101! 

The Vet Sgt, surviving the snapshots, charged the last Ranger and cut him down with his chainsword, claiming the objective.

Objective and battlefield secured. 

The Celestial Lions win the day with a tabling of the Skitarii!

That was fun! And it was way closer than I may have had you believe. The Skitarii weapons are brutal, the the Rangers are difficult to take down with their Feel No Pain rolls to protect them. It could have gone either way right up until the Skitarii botched those three break tests at the top of Turn 4. The Skitarii had the tools to bring down the Landspeeder, so I made sure to keep it out of either range or LOS of those guns. Only it and Vet Sgt survived this battle. It was refreshing to have my Leader actually lead and survive a Kill Team mission -and be the sole surviving infantry model at that!


The Bob and I chatted about it afterwords and here are some of his remarks:

"And the really fun radiation rules didn't even get used.
LOL!
Next time...
I'm thinking I'll try some of the long range guys next time or the rust stalkers."

We'll see what happens next time!