Player: Matthew Fullmer
Opponent: Mike Cunningham
Date: 17 Feb 18
Mission: Demolition
Mission Result: Stalin smiles (Win), Destroyed Mike's objective while preserving my own
Units destroyed: 3 to 2:
Mike started with 4 dice (2 crazy tricked out vet commando squads, a vet HQ, and a vet sniper. By the end of turn 6, when I had then contacted his objective, he was reduced to a ~75 point sniper squad and a bunch of cooling bodies in silly hats.
I lost my LMG squad and HQ.
Lesson to be learned, a small regular LMG squad in a building is insufficient to daunt a squad of crazies commanded by Mike. The HQ was actually a sacrificial diversion to try and persuade Mike into range of my flamethrower (plus several other support units. Mike's HQ squad almost saved the day for him and almost secured at least a draw on its own with a Cunningham-esque bold charge up the board to support the hammered and heavily pinned assault commandos.
Overall Result - Well, now this is a weird one that might be highlighting the weakness in the scoring system. As I understand it, despite losing 160 points worth of troops to Mike's ultimately ~425 and having 6 order dice left in the pool to Mike's 1, this is still a draw because the kill points are only +1 in my favor (3:2). It seems like having tiny super elite forces will sometimes make it hard to win outright if they are too small to have enough activations. But on the flip side, it will be hard to wipe the table against them and still have a 2+ unit killed disparity. So, commandoes for semi-perpetual draws?
MVP votes - Mike and I did not actually discuss this. Looking back at it, I think the flamethrower is the choice for me. It caused Mike the most vexation in unit activation and movement decisions and ultimately crisped his maneuver squad to cinders over multiple flame attacks. If Mike had won or drawn then I would probably have voted for his bold HQ squad as they would have been the difference.
Logistics - I should count as a +1 in both categories.