THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE HAMMER’S SLAMMERS THE CRUCIBLE RULES SYSTEM HANDBOOK

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Stop that ship! - a battle for the Spaceport

So there was heavy outnumbering by the attackers - five detachments versus two. They even outpointed them, and were always going to win the majority of the initiative rolls with all of that officer material flying about but the defenders were able to set up well and had the easier objective. Objectives The Slammers were defending a drop ship (cunningly built and thoughtfully loaned by my mate Roger) - all they had to do was stop the opposition blowing it up. The attackers, on the other hand, couldn't do the deed by opening fire on it. They had to park a vehicles under the drop ship for a turn and unload one of the small nuclear shaped charge devices they were all carrying to destroy the ship. So they had to rush and park, the Slammers had to discourage them. Set up The Slammers (in Red - see map) set up around the field and had to form a 360 degree perimeter as they didn't know exactly what direction that the opposition would be coming from. The Alaudae and the heavier TAS camin if from the north (Khaki and Dark Blue on the map) and the lighter TAS (Light Blue) from the south. The Drop Ship (Green) sat on a landing pad in the middle of an industrial complex of roads and buildings. Turn 1 The Alaudae and heavier TAS won initiative and pasted two of the heavier, uparmoured Blower tanks and a lighter combat car. They knew they had to get them or they'd be dead.

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The lighter TAS brought up the other flank but - although they are good vehicles and troops when facing mostly everyone else, they had their work cut out. When the Slammers made there move in turn one, alternating initiative with the TAS police units, the result was the TAS had lost one Angel heavy tank, they'd lost the gun from another, the Aluadae had taken crippling hits but were still an effective fighting force and the TAS police had lost a vehicle or two. Turn 2 The  Slammers again got their moves somewhere in the middle of the attackers and lost another Heavy Blower to a buzzbomb attack from the rear via a TAS bike mounted unit. The TAS heavies deployed their infantry into a building and started taking pot shots with buzzbombs but - that one buzzbomb attack aside - none of the missiles of lighter buzzbombs found a mark: all were defeated by the strip systems on the blowers or the tribarrels. On the later vehicles, they had the advantage of being able to use both against the missiles. Turn 3 The Slammers enveloped the TAS police units with combat cars and shooting them in their vulnerable rear areas and picking off the infantry, decimated them and forcing the rest to do morale checks (which they did and which encouraged almost all of what remained to - wisely - leave). The Alaudae had been forced to halt before they could get to the Dropship but they hadn't been stopped entirely.