Flaming your own guys?

[snottlebocket]

I was just trying out the first mission (suicide mission) which brought up an interesting issue.

Things started out alright, my overwatch guy was keeping a lid on the first side corridor leading to the dead end room with ease. (apparantly you need way more than 6 genestealers to rush a terminator on overwatch)

Anyway as I steamed on ahead leaving a guy here and there to go on overwatch the following situation occurred. The order in which I stacked my guys meant that the first guy to reach the objective room's door was not my flamer marine but a regular one.

This also meant the terminator at the door blocked line of sight for my flamer terminator. Which basically gave me two options. Hold the crossroads while he slowly plodded back to switch positions with the flamer guy. (not very viable considering the crossroads was surrounded by tyranids and held only by the flamer terminator. Or have the guy open the door, walk inside, activate the terminator with the flamer and burn the room with the door opening terminator still inside.

Is that permissible? I couldn't find anything in the rules about friendly fire and I can't decide whether marines are too noble for it or if they'd happily sacrifice someone to complete the cleansing. (or if terminators are bothered by fire at all)


Some other questions that came up...

-Firing the flamer costs 2 actionpoints, if I have a single command point left and a single actionpoint on the marine, can I combine the two to fire the flamer?

-Let's say I overlooked some blips and a terminator that really ought to be on overwatch isn't. Can I spend commandpoints to set him on overwatch as soon as he sees a stealer move?

-How does the flamer work exactly? From the rulebook I gather you just place the flamer template anywhere within 12 squares and the flamer blocks/hits anything on that piece of map cardboard. Does that mean if my terminator is staring down a genestealer filled corridor, he can't fry the whole lot by placing the template beyond the genestealers if the corridor happens to be made of several small map pieces instead of one large / long one?

[Dangersaurus]

Yeah, it's viable. I think it could even be where the name of Mission I comes from.

Gives me the idea for a couple of variants: one where you have to get x number of marines back out alive, or an ironman-style game where you have to do it with no casualties...

[Spirit]

Im not entirly sure if this helps, but remember you can use CP out of sequence, so you could move the flamer into position, then move the marine out of the way then use CP to fire the flame thrower.

As for your other questions


Some other questions that came up...

-Firing the flamer costs 2 actionpoints, if I have a single command point left and a single actionpoint on the marine, can I combine the two to fire the flamer?
Yes

-Let's say I overlooked some blips and a terminator that really ought to be on overwatch isn't. Can I spend commandpoints to set him on overwatch as soon as he sees a stealer move?
Yes

-How does the flamer work exactly? From the rulebook I gather you just place the flamer template anywhere within 12 squares and the flamer blocks/hits anything on that piece of map cardboard. Does that mean if my terminator is staring down a genestealer filled corridor, he can't fry the whole lot by placing the template beyond the genestealers if the corridor happens to be made of several small map pieces instead of one large / long one?
You can only affect one cardboard section of the board. Good in some cases, bad in others. Be carefull with the flamer lol.

[Ben]

I'm surprised you got to the objective room. The way suicide mission always goes when I play it is.

Genestealer player puts a 1 blip in the dead room off to the side, where you can't see it from the corridor. This means a marine has to guard the corridor. It is possible to do this so the genestealer player would need 7 APs to reach you, but ties up a stormbolter marine.

All other blips go on putting stealers behind the door on the L junction and in the cross junction by the objective room.

The marines never get past that point. They always seem to lose someone at the L junction (if you don't block it on overwatch then stealers pour round and eat everyone) and you get a max two overwatch shots off per stealer. If there are three or four then your going to end up in combat and dead. That is then pretty much game over for the marines, as you have two stormbolter guys and the flamer left to push on the objective and you have stealers coming from two directions.

How are people getting to the objective? Are you flaming sections to block stealers and then moving into them when it clears?

[snottlebocket]

Well we're both new at this so I assume the genestealer player mad some mistakes too. Basically what happened is...

- I move out of the boarding torpedo, opening and shooting the doors leading to the dead end room and leaving one guy to stare down that corridor on overwatch.

- At this point the genestealer player was amassing blips in the dead end room intending to rush the overwatch marine and come up behind the main group

- My marines steam on ahead and leave the first room, the first guy uses command points to get around the corner, giving the flamer line of sight to nuke the red crossroads (the one in a line straight down from the objective room) in order to block that path for the genestealers.

-the genestealer player, thinking he has enough blips to rush the marine overwatching the corridor to the dead end room starts putting blips into the entrance points at the bottom of the corridor directly below the objective room. The overwatch marine kills around 12 genestealers trying to rush him from the dead end room.

-The marine that already rounded the corner moves up and opens the door. The flamer also rounds the corner. The sgt. follows the flamer around the corner, leaving the last marine to overwatch the lower of the two parallel corridors.

-The first overwatch marine overlooking the dead end room is in solid control of his area, forcing the genestealers to amass blips in the other two entrance area's.

-The point marine advances on the intersection directly below the objective room, clearing line of sight for the flamer marine to advance and nuke the intersection, making sure the intersection will be clear next turn and preventing genestealers from rushing along the upper corridor. The overwatch marine in the lower of the two parallel corridors maintains his position and overwatch.

-The genestealers can't rush the flamer since he's blocked the intersection in front of him. They do a failed rush at the marine guarding the lower parallel corridor.

-Final marine turn, the fire on the intersection is cleared. The intersection is surrounded by genestealers in the adjoining corridor who moved up while the fire blocked line of sight. The point marine moves towards the objective room, opening the door and making me feel like a ***** when I realize here's blocking line of sight to the room. I use commandpoints to move the point man into the room and activate the flamer marine who promptly moves up, turns and sets fire to the room with the pointman still inside.


I'm sure some mistakes were made considering it's our first game. If it sounds like my marines moved quite fast, you're probably right. I got quite lucky with command points, averaging 4 CP's each turn. Most of the time I ended up using them to push a key marine a few squares further, often opening up line of sight for a marine behind them that I wanted to leave behind on overwatch anyway.

The key to this mission seems to be using the flamer to block the intersections, allowing you to move just fast enough to get ahead while leaving someone on overwatch behind to cover a key section before the fire clears. With luck it allows you to block the genestealers just long enough to prevent them from cutting you off.

That said with the experience gained from this game I imagine the genestealers will be much smarter next time.

[Ben]

They will be. Having a 1 stealer blip in the dead end room neutralises the overwatch terminator, basically taking him out of the game. The terminator player can't move him, or you can rush them from the back, and even one stealer getting behind a terminator group causes problems. That leave a sergeant and 2 SB marines to get the flamer to the target room.
If the stealer player uses the rest of the blips carefully he can set up an ambush on the L corridor that you can't really stop. You either flame the corner corridor section so the stealers can't get through (though the stealers will be behind the door and you won't kill them) or put a guy on overwatch. You get a maximum of two shots per stealer with this guy though, so odds are on the first or second stealer making it into combat. The ambush on the L corridor requires two blips (unless you pull a three stealer blip) and line of sight means you can take advantage of blip conversion to squeeze an extra square of movement out after the first blip gets converted.
As you have blips at the crossroads threatening the main group (and with six APs they can get to the marines by the L junction) you need to have either the sergeant or SB marine on overwatch there. The tight corridors mean marines can't cover each other, and the slower you move forward the more blips there are on the board.

Good command point picks help the marine player a bit, but even if you can block off the L junction, you'll have stealers on both sides of the crossroads waiting to ambush you. If you get that far it is worth putting a stealer inside the objective room and one in the corridor outside, with the objective room door shut. Flamer can't fire into the room, and a SB has to shoot the stealer, then the door, then get out the way so the flamer can flame the room. If they can't do this in one turn, you move the stealer out of the objective room and into the corridor and they have to bolter that stealer, or flame it and wait a turn for it to clear and then flame the room. While fighting off all the other stealers.

When I play the terminators always lose the flamer at the L junction. They have the choice to block either the L junction or crossroads, which delays the ambush by a turn, but they can't flame both every turn, or they can't win the mission as the flamer runs out of ammo.

[wilsongrahams]

I've never failed this mission as the marines.

Ignore the corridor to your right in your first turn as they can't get you. Deploy your flamer in third place. Send the sergeant first as far as possible using command points to get him ahead and turned left and around the corner as quick as possible. The next marine should go straight ahead and take the last right looking away from the objective. The third should go straight ahead and stop just past him. The flamer follows the sergeant a few aces behind. The last marine covers the first room and any stealers getting you from behind. The flamer marine can go and open the door himself and flame the room whilst the rest cover him with overwatch - no stealers should have got past them by this stage.

Marines can be flamed and killed - the mission objective always comes first - hence why the squad was deployed with little chance of returning alive as in the briefing!

[Ben]

Yup, now tried what you said and as long as the marine player uses command points to reach the door at the L section and set up overwatch, the stealer player is screwed. You can then use the flamer to block the crossroads and get to the objective room. It is based on getting enough command points to get there before the stealers though.

[wilsongrahams]

Not really, as long as you are brave and never stop the sergeant, even if you only get one each turn you can get the sergeant there but you may rely on his ability in combat and trust a little too much in close range overwatch sometimes.

The Emperor is your shield. Have faith.

[tiacapan]

Just to answer the original question, you can use the flamer to target sections containing terminators. Noth marines and genestealers are killed on the roll of a 2 or higher on the dice making it pretty likely that you will lose anyone in the section.

It is sort-of covered in the rules but not very well. The rules state that any model in the section is rolled for rather than specifying 'stealers.