Across the Dead Earth - Murder in the Midlands Tournament - Part 1

Sunday past I and a few others descended on the leafy suburb of Stourbridge for the inaugural Across the Dead Earth Tournament. You can see in my previous post that I was taking a gang made up of Post Apocalyptic Alice in Wonderland characters.

Arriving extreamly early as I thought the motorways might be busy even on a sunday and having a long two hour journey, I wanted to give myself time for any holdups. Anyway I arrived first and eventually everyone else turned up.  Everyone introduced themselves and I was especially pleased to finally meet Simon from Brummies Wargaming Blog.

After everyone had had a good chat, getting to know each other, we set up the tables in the church hall we would be using and got ready to throw down Across the Dead Earth.

Tables



Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

Table 4

Table 5

Table 6



First Game - vs Simon and his Alpha Squad

So after finally getting to meet Simon I drew him first to play. Simon had designed his gang around the GI Joe theme and his miniatures looked great. We set up on table 2 which over the day was nicknamed the Death Bunker. Loot counters were placed and deployment areas sorted and gangs deployed.

First turn was taken up with mostly tentative moves towards cover and especially towards the large amount of loot housed inside the death bunker. My Alice and Whyte Rabbit scooted off left where Alice was after loot and Rabbit gained a vantage point on some large ruins. Mad Hatter ran right towards more loot and Dee and Dum stayed central backed up by the White Knight. Simons crew had Shockwave run towards the trees on his left and Sgt Slaughter hugged the corner of the bunker whilst his leader Beachhead and the others headed towards the bunker.

As the game progressed I scooped up a few close by loots and Rabbit tried to shoot Spirit but failed miserably. Beachhead stormed into the bunker just as Dee entered the other side. In the ensuing melee Dee went down but not out. Shockwave advanced further through the wooded area but came face to face with the Mad Hatter who at point blank range shotgunned him to death! almost immediately the White Knight charged into Sgt Slaughter who was sneaking up on the Mad Hatter.

Slaughter went down in a flurry of blows but just as it looked like Alpha Squad would lose another Joe there was a huge bang! Slaughter had sacrificed himself and took out the Knight at the same time! Beachhead finally took out Dee in the bunker after the Wonderland medic had already healed himself once and Spirit managed to down Whyte Rabbit in the ruins.

Both gangs backtracked slightly after losing two people each and made off with as much loot available.

At the end of the game points were totalled up and I had won 70pts to 45pts

Second Game - vs Jon and his Juno Squad

Juno Squad were based on the State and considering the back story I had come up with for my Wonderland Gang, this was a very thematic match up. Playing on Table 5 for this battle, we would be contesting a T-Junction at the edge of town. Again the loot counters were placed and bath gangs set up in their respective deployment areas. I chose to deply just by the bottom corner of the large ruins at the bottom centre of the table and Jon deployed at the end of the road in the right hand corner.

With such a lot of hard cover, both our first moves were to gain as much loot as possible quickly and then move onto the harder to grasp loot whilst direct action was imminent. Jons Juno Squad were solid, with 3 medics and nearly all his guys dual Class they would be really tough opposition.

Jons dog was extreamly obidient all game and ran about causing havoc whilst his hard hitters tried to flank my gang. For most of the game both sides were cagey loosing off the occasional long range shot but not causing much damage, although Dee was downed, he quickly healed himself to return to the fight.

Throwing caution to the wind I advanced with my whole gang with Mad Hatter and the White Knight going after the guys in the ruins. Dee and Dum stayed central with Alice scooting right and Whyte Rabbit as long range back up stayed high in the ruins and waited for opportunity shots.

This proved the wrong decision for rabbit as he was almost always out of range as Juno Squad members moved away to take on Mad Hatter. They were sorry they did as Hatter slammed a couple of shells into his shotgun and unloaded them directly into Mi'Lady's face taking her out. The White Knight gave Deadeye a damn good thumping and then put in the Coup de Grace taking the State Sharpshooter out.

Seeing their comrades fall quite easily the rest of Juno Squad retreated with their loot.

With the Game over I had managed to gain 75pts beating Jon.

Games 3 and 4 will be covered in Part 2.