Two years down the line, I finally get to play a game of All That Remains against my original parter in crime and creator of the Horde, Xander!
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| The Manchester Guard deploy on a smaller that usual and somewhat unconventionally shaped battlefield |
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| The Horde forms up behind a ruined office block |
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| The Horde concentrates itself in the centre, ready to die valiantly for their Carn |
It was something of an experience coming back to my baby after almost a year.
Xanders plan was simple, drive at my forces and murder me in melee. My plan was likewise simple; gun them down before they got to me. This may be the first time that the obvious dichotomy between the two forces has been explicitly exploited, with previous players trying to set up firing lines or making extensive use of cover.
The nomads did manage to hide from the majority of my fire-power admittedly, except for the spear-men who were wiped out in pretty short order.
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| Machine-guns will do that to you... |
On my left flank, the nomad musket group approached through the wood.
In the centre, nomad melee units closed the distance fairly rapidly, dodging defence fire and slamming into the Highland Spring Water clansmen.
The clansmen fell back from the fury of the assault, taking relatively few casualties.
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| Leaving the Guard elite to handle the remainder. |
The Lancers wheeled about to face the right flank and charged the nomad assault group, driving them off.
Meanwhile the nomad musketeers exchanged shots with the Guard infantry, while the cannon sent a shot directly into the Guard machine-gun. Seizing on this, the musketeers killed the gunner before he could recover.
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| The Lancers dealt with the cannon |
On the right the Carn and his brothers hit home, annihilating the clansmen and driving them back into the woods.
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| The elite Guard fell back fire ineffectually at the remaining Horde |
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| The Carn and his command advance but go down in a hail of gunfire |
So while the rules still haven't been written we've already identified a number of changes that need to be made. As I've been thinking for a while, suppression is way too clunky. Armour should probably be rolled into one check, rather than having separate checks for different classes of weapons. And as I've been suspecting for a while, the forces we have are relatively well balanced, despite the Horde being, on paper, significantly more expensive; the price of firearms definitely needs to go up.
Anyway, it was an enjoyable afternoon, with actual positive feedback. Watch this space; I hope to get an actual ruleset finished by the end of the year.
