I won the initiative roll and choose to begin. The first turn saw us both advancing in relatively quickly with two of my Marauders (medium dropships) carrying my Hunters and Reavers rushing up my left flank to gain ground rather than disgorging their cargo. The Wife fell for my aggressive move and deployed all of her anti - air on that flank which left me clear to run my Reapers up the other side of the table and move into a position to harass her Tomahawks.
Another initiative win and I launch the first fire of the game raining gouts of plasma down on her Tomahawks who are (un)fortunately saved my their shielding systems and only one of the tanks is destroyed. The Wife begins to bring down her Birdeaters in response not quite getting in range but taking the opportunity to rain fire in to the nearby building my Warriors are searching but they managed to dodge the falling debris and the building was still relatively intact. I chose to mirror her attack but with my Slayers on the larger building she's currently got her Braves in. Her troops also avoid debris but my guns being more suited to demolition almost halve the buildings structural integrity. Seeing her Coyote sitting mostly exposed to a flank attack my Marauder lands and the Hunters scream around the corner managing to get past it's heavier shielding and do some serious damage to the Shaltari command vehicle.
Again I opened up the proceedings for the turn and began by demolishing The Wife's Coyote with my Hunters. Her Birdeaters finally made it across the table and took out one of the Reapers. The remaining ship opened fire at the Birdeaters but barely made it through the flickering Shaltari shields ever the bane of my existence. The Wife quickly utilised her gates sending the Kukri over to add more anti-air on the other flank while the Eden gate withdrew to a safe distance and the Tomahawks while arriving too late to save the downed Coyote proceeded to open fire but are unable to hit my rapidly moving skimmer tanks. My Slayers take a shot at the Kukri covering them in an incandescent stream of hot plasma but as the image cleared the Shaltari tanks remained completely unscathed again thanks to their overworking shielding.
The fifth and what would end up being final turn begins with my Commander in his Desolator firing a second round into the small building containing the remaining objective bringing the structure down in a impressive display of exploding glass and flying concrete shards, dashing The Wife's hopes of some sort of last minute resurrection of today's clash with the might of the Scourge. She lashes out one last time denying the Slayer's a chance to return to their Marauder taking the opportunity opened but the now collapsed building and clear line of fire to bring the transport ship crashing to the ground. My next move is to send my further Invader into the waiting maw of it's Marauder and fly it from the table with my second Invader close enough to leave on it's own power thanks to an early turn Underground Monorail getting my Warriors safely from building to building.
We both had a great time and are intending to get some more of our unpainted stuff finished off and on the table soon.
