Q9 + DW 9000 vs The Zombies

Gedinblackbar · #1 July 13th, 2007, 02:49 PM

Q9 + DW 9000 vs The Zombies

I had a very close game last night and I thought I would write my very first battle report on it. My friend and I drafted 800 point armies and we played on a map I created using 4 MS, 1 RttFF. It was a 20 x 20 layout bisected diagonally by two rivers (1 hex wide), which were spanned by two bridges (1 hex wide). There were 4 high points (4 levels), 2 at either end of the board, using the 7-hex pieces as bases.

We used the following armies:

Me:
Jotun..............................- 225
Nilfheim..........................- 185
Zombies of Morindan x2 - 120
Krav Maga Agents..........- 100
Microcorp Agents............- 100
Tagawa Samurai Archers - 65
Total...............................- 795

VS

Paul:
Major Q9................- 180
Deathwalker 9000.- 140
Kaemon Awa..........- 120
Airborne Elite..........- 110
Sentinels of Jandar - 110
Raelin.......................- 80
Me-Burq-Sa...............- 50
Total........................- 790

Since I am writing this report the day after, I will have to depend on my memory of what happened, so this will be a loose narrative.

First of all let me say that my biggest strategic mistake was coming to him across the board and allowing him to huddle his 5 hero army around Raelin and squatting on the highest point on the board—guaranteeing he would always have height advantage for both attack and defense.

I first went after him with Nilfheim and only managed to kill off one of his Sentinels and wounded Kaemon Awa before dying under a blaze of gunfire from Q9.

Next I sent in the Microcorp Agents, who perished without making a single hit.

It took four rounds before Paul managed to roll a 13 and got his Airborne Elite drop. Since I had mostly squads, and the Zombies, Krav Maga Agents and Tagawa Samurai Archers were still clumped at my end of the board, Paul rubbed his hands together with glee. He was worried he wouldn’t get initiative and I would wipe him out before he launched his grenade attack, but he won it. Fortunately he didn’t manage to make a single kill with grenades. Later that round he killed one of my zombies, but I used the onslaught special attack to kill on of his Airborne and my Zombie rose again. By the end of that round I managed to kill off all his Airborne.

In the 3rd quarter of the game, I sent in my Krav Maga Agents and Tagawa Samurai Archers and Jotun. Paul killed off an agent and an archer before I was able to get Jotun right up against the tower Paul’s army was squatting on. I wounded Q9 three times and killed Kaemon Awa before Juton was killed by DW 9000. My agents were able to eliminate Raelin and Me-Burq-Sa before they and the archers were decimated.

At the beginning of the last quarter all I had left were 5 zombies, while Paul had a wounded Q9, DW 9000, and one Sentinel. My zombie hoard lurched towards the hill and managed to catch up to the sentinel, kill him and regained a zombie to bring them back up to 6 again. Paul had bad luck with is rolls with Q9 and was killed in a zombie onslaught as three of them stood around the base of his hill.

Paul tried DW 9000’s Explosion special attack on the middle zombie of a pack of 3 and rolled 3 blanks. My biggest challenge at this point was that the back of the 7-hex hill was 3 levels high (2 hexs), while the section DW 9000 stood upon was 4 high (5 hex of area), which meant I had to end my zombies’ turn right up against the side of the hill before they could start to climb. He placed DW 9000 in the center hex so I had to climb in order to be adjacent to him.

To make a long story short, I managed to make 2 onslaught attacks with zombies—both failed--before he cut them down to 2. Finally I rolled one skull out of two, and he rolled no shields out of 9 dice. A very close game! If the hill had been one level higher my zombies would never had been able to reach DW 9000 and I would have had to forfeit at that point. Another challenge was that his last two heroes were large, so I couldn’t “Zombies rise again” after I killed Q9.

The game lasted 3 hours and since it was extremely close and the tide kept switching back and forth between us, we had a lot of fun. I was pretty certain he had won the game when all I had left was my pitiful zombies.

Thanks for reading!

hero79 · #2 July 13th, 2007, 10:29 PM

Can't wait till my zombies come in the mail

Gedinblackbar · #3 July 17th, 2007, 11:46 AM

I have two packs of zombies--4 squads in total--and it was the first time I ever got to try them in battle. Zombies Rise Again is a very powerful special attack. It feels more dependable than MW water cloning because you automatically raise a fallen zombie when they kill a small or medium figure, and that happened twice in my game.

killercactus · #4 July 26th, 2007, 01:59 PM

The zombies are very, very good at taking out melee squads. They're good against all squads, but very strong against the melee's, like knights, romans, etc. For a while now I've wanted to build an army whose first wave targets the ranged foes, leaving the melee's to the zombies.