Grimdark Future: firefight. Human Defence Force versus Plague Disciples

Commander Qian was monitoring her team as they made their way towards the location of a High Value Asset she had been ordered to 'extract'. The visuals were poorer than she would have liked. The fiber optic connections had been severed and it was impractical to use drones. Telemetary from an orbitting 'merchant' ship was the best she had under the circumstances.

"Zhan Dui, you are at the correct coordinates, locate and extract the HVT" she ordered as she watched the heat signatures of her team move quickly through the urban area, their transport had stopped a few hundred yards short of the location and they had proceeded on foot. The door to the cheap apartment was effortlessly smashed by the Power Armoured Invincibles

"Command, HVT is KIA, and in an advanced state of decomposition" came the report from the Team leader.

Qian went back and checked her footage, 37 minutes ago the streets were, if not exactly packed, then certainly not empty.

"Command, multiple KIA's, all the same, it looks like they've been dead for some time" 

Qian's heart skipped a beat

"Zhan Dui, retrieve surveillance footage from these three coordinates and RTB" she sent the locations of some fixed cameras and then...she saw movement, and muzzle flashes.. 

"CONTACT, unknown enemy, am engaging"

We've played a few games of Grimdark future where I've pitted my Tau Empire Dao Union forces against Necrons Robot Legions and Eldar High Elf Fleets. Taking a break from the usual Babylon 5 themed games we decided to play a few games of OPR Firefight. I Immediately jumped at the chance to dig out my collection of Infinity miniatures that have been sat in a cupboard for several years and dust them off. OPR isn't Infinity, but I love the miniatures. I had a choice between my Haqqislam force and the Yu Jing, and on account of the Invincible army miniatures being excellent, I opted for them. Meeting me in battle will be Ginge and whatever madness he can come up with. We are simply going to play the basic mission to get more of a feel for the rules. OPR are quite consistent across the different games but there will be a big difference in the scale. we quickly (very quickly) threw together some armies and played a few games. This is the first of 3 games we played.

Invincible Army Zhan Dui (Human Defence Force Combat Team) - Sam

Company Leader, Psy-Hacker, Master Shotgun, Heavy Armour, 70pts
Storm Trooper, Storm Machine Gun, 60pts
Veteran, Shotgun, Heavy Armour, 25pts
Veteran, Drum Rifle, Heavy Armour, 30pts
Sniper. 35 pts
Infantry Squad, Drum Rifle, 45pts
Infantry Squad 35pts

Total 300 points

This was my first game of Firefight, but not Grimdark future where I have a handful of games under my belt, so I was unsure of what the tempo of the game would be and also what would be most effective. What I was certain of was I wanted to use my Invincible Army miniatures. Its been a long time since I've played Infinity, N3 being the last edition I played and our regular schedule being somewhat interrupted by the unspecified virus of unknown origin. Out of the official forces available I went for the Human Defence Force since they seemed to have the correct types of units. I also considered Machine Cult, Eternal Dynasty and Battle Brothers but none of them seemed to fit. The Yu-Jing Invincible army aren't super soldiers, they are just regular mooks with fancy gear.
The picking of the army was quite straight forward and somewhat limited by the fact that I only have a relatively small number of my Invincible army anywhere near painted. I didn't pay as much attention to the special abilities as I perhaps should have, mostly due to the fact that I had no idea whether I would need any of them.

Plague Marines (Plague Disciples) - Ginge

Chosen Plague Champion, Energy Axe, Jetpack 105pts
Plague Brother, Plague launcher, 50pts
Plague Brother, Sgt Heavy Pistol, Plague Sword 35pts
Plague Brother, Plasma Rifle 40pts
Plague Zombies. 30pts
Plague Cultists , 40pts

Total 300 points

I'll be honest, I didn't spend much time making this army list. I just added things until i reached the points limit and then tweaked things until the list was legal. I did want to have a Terminator in the force which is why I have the Chosen Plague Champion. The Jetpack  allows him to 'teleport' in, and the flying rule is essentially a big guy not really caring whats in his way. Having the scythe would have put me over the 105 point limit for a single model, so that's why it has the energy axe instead

Deployment

We used the Terrain at our local club to simulate the battlefield. The mission book recommends a lot so we put a lot on and tried to get it to follow the pattern on the playing mat, roads are actually roads. We generated 3 objectives, one placed centrally, obviously and took turns placing the others. Ginge then deployed a unit first and we proceeded like that until everything was finished. Ginge kept his Champion is ambush, and I, of course, totally forgot the reason I had taken a heavily armed Storm Trooper.

Invincibles on the left, unknown enemy on the right

Turn 1

The Invincible Army Zhan Dui moved forward to engage the new EI forces. They kept to cover and fanned out to cover as many avenues of approach as possible. Command had just given orders to recover surveillance footage from various cameras in the area, they couldn't do it remotely since the hard lines had been cut. 

The Invincible Army moves up

Hugging the walls, only the Sniper managed to get a shot at the enemy, a heavily armoured figure clambered on to a roof and a single shot slammed into it, being stopped by the heavy armour suit. a glowing ball of plasma slashed through the air near to him, but the camoflage suit he was wearing broke up his outline. They could see, but not hear, the advance of others. Heavy booted feet slamming into the ground.

Turn 2

The Zhan Dui Leader turned her head as reality seemed to tear itself apart. Demonic voices assaulted her ears, and monstrous visions seemed to be trying to slash and rip at the edges of what was real.  

A huge monstrosity tears through reality behind the Invincibles

Where before there had been nothing, now a huge figure hefting a might scythe charged forward.
'Contact rear' she managed before the figure crashed into her, a swing of its axe slashed through here armour as if it wasn't there and she could feel a massive gash opened in her abdomen. A hail of high caliber pullets bounced harmlessly off the figures armour. 

Combined fire of most of the Yu-Jing does nothing

The barrage was added to by the supporting light infantry but their efforts amounted to nothing as the figure almost laughed as the shots that did find a weakness in the massive bulky armour did little, or rather, nothing, to stop it.

On the left flank one of the Veterans moved forward to secure an objective.
A brief firefight erupted on the right flank as the other veteran found themselves face to face with a pair of unidentified troops. Accurate fire forced one of them to their knees, but a grenade exploded adjacent to the Veteran trooper and stunned her.

Turn 3

The Cultists are gunned down ina hail of bullets as the Invincible commander is terribly wounded

The Huge armoured figure continued to rain blows down upon the Zhan Dui Leader, but through luck or sheer determination she managed to stay on her feet. The Stormtrooper stopped shooting at him, and instead targeted the infantry in the open, a sustained burst put them all down, they too had been going after the video footage, probably trying to cover up what had happened. 

Shambling 'zombies' appear and bullets do nothing to them

One of the Human fireteams moved forwards trying to force the enemy on the roof into cover, but they were decimated by an accurate grenade as it scythed through them, seriously injuring or killing them.

Fire continued to be exchanged between the figures on the roofs. The snipers fire was accurate but ineffective, while the plasma fire continued to miss its shots.

Turn 4

The Zhan Dui leader was picked up off her feet by a gauntletted fist, and an axe blow hacked into her shoulder and then she was dashed into the wall. It was quite apparent that she would not be recovering from that. The Veteran Troop on the right was finally killed by a pair of heavily armoured figures. Time was running out. 

The Sniper takes aim

The duel on the roof tops ended as a sniper round found its mark, punching straight through one of the eye lenses. the figure toppling over and crashing through the building roof. 

And finally puts the figure down

The Veteran who had advanced on the left now doubled back as some horribly bloated and mutated figures shambled from behind a building. weapons fire punched into their bodies but they didn't seem to notice. Even with the team leader down they had a mission to accomplish, and stepping over enemy corpses she quickly found the surveillance access port that left only one objective, and the Storm trooper dashed past the Laughing Goliath but then came face to face with another, smaller, but still huge, figure. He didn't stop.

One last objective...

With numbers dwindling, and having retrieved some of the surveillance footage, Commander Qian gave the only order that was sensible

'Zhan Dui, fall back to the APC'

Invincible Army 1-1 Plague Marines

Draw

Conclusion

It was a quick game, and we managed 2 more in less time than it takes to set up a game of 40k for a finishing score of 1-1-1. In this particular match Ginge practically refused to fail saves or miss shots, plasma gunners inaccuracy notwithstanding which put me on the back foot. I was able to scrape a draw but its certain I need to actually look at some of the options during army selection. Warning Cry would have saved my Leader from being kept out of the fight for 2 turns and then killed. The spells would have been very useful in this game, so Warning Cry is a must going forward. Taking someone with medical training would also have been useful and might have saved a few of my troops. I'm also going to give a Biker a look for some late game objective grabbing. Time to get some more Invincible army painted. and then play some more games

I just love Infinity miniatures, time to get some more painted

Thanks to Ginge being a great opponent
Most of the miniatures were painted by me

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Thanks for reading, and I will see you next time.