Cooperative Zone Raiding In The 41st Millenium

We've been talking about taking Zone Raiders out for another spin. I wanted to try the co-op mode as I've been thinking of running a co-op campaign someday. Without any real preparation we threw together a couple of 750 RU lists on the spot. I built a Zone Stalkers list around my Space Marine Scouts, trying to pick appropriate equipment:
Jaeger (Sniper Scout w/out a cloak)
- Light Exoskeleton
- Vesper Rifle
- Chaincutter
- Rangefinder Scope
Scout Stalker x3 (Sniper Scouts w/ cloaks)
- Light Exoskeleton
- Vesper Rifle
- Chaincutter
Scout Stalker (Scout w/missile launcher)
- Light Exoskeleton
- Heavy Isotope Cannon
- Chaincutter
- Ballistic Optic

Speedy built an Exanthropes list using his Infinity JSA models. Due to a misunderstanding he selected some artifact weapons, which are only supposed to be aquired during a campaign, but we didn't want to spend more time on the list building so we just allowed it.
Aspirant
- Duelist Panoply
- High-Frequency Blades
- Mico-Laser Array
- Combat Stims
Aspirant x2
- Duelist Panoply
- Allow Pilum
- Monofilament Fibres
Aspirant
- Arsenal Panoply
- Graviton Hammer
- Micro-Laser Array
Combat Automata x2
- Micro-Laser Array


Pre-Game:
We picked the first cooperative mission: Scrapheap. We scattered some terrain around, I used some Monpoc tokens as the Scrap tokens and numbered Warcaster objective tokens as the enemy groups. We used miscellaneous small Warcaster tokens as activation tokens. The deployment area was extremely small, so I just took one edge and Speedy took the other.


Early Game:
We immediately revealed the first group: two Marauder Sharpshooters (Space Marines) and three Marauder Assassins (Skitarii).

They almost immediately killed my Stalker with the Heavy Isotope Cannon and one of Speedy's Combat Automata. In contrast our models whiffed almost every attack. Seriously, it was amazing how terrible our collective dice were; despite having relatively similar stats, our 11 models took something like half the game to take out that first squad, continually missing almost every attack. By the end we were down to two enemies, each surrounded by five of our guys, and we were still struggling, missing every attack.

Mid Game:
We finally finished off the first enemy squad and started to advance on the obectives, with a Combat Automata leading the way. At this point I finally figured out where the enemy behaviour patterns were written, so we started rolling for enemy group movement. At which point one group immedately advanced and spotted the Combat Automata. They were revealed to be three Marauder Troopers (Space Marines) and two Marauder Skirmishers (Skitarii).

While the enemy didn't take long to kill the Combat Automata, they were unable to do any damage to Speedy's other units who were behind cover. Meanwhile my models were taking high ground and casually one-shotting the enemy models. I think we actually wiped out that second squad in just one turn, or maybe two at the most. It was a ridiculous reversal, largely due to the fact that the enemy squad had appeared in the open while we were in a more advantageous position. There was no cover in front of them and as far as I understood the AI rules they would not retreat to cover, but would just advance and shoot.

Late Game:
The rest of the game, the other two enemy squads just kept moving further away. We spent the next three or four turns with Speedy casually walking around picking up Scrap tokens while my guys took Overwatch from the high ground, and then we evac'ed.

Post-Mortem:
I hadn't had the chance to fully revise the rules before the game. Seeing as we've only played once before and that was over a year ago, I was very fuzzy on the rules. To make matters much worse, I hadn't actually read the co-op rules at all before we started, and could only give them a quick once-over as we prepared the table. As a result the game was quite exhausting, with constant flicking back and forth through the rulebook.

There's a lot that I like about this game, but the rules are not really laid out in a way that is easy to look things up in a hurry; the book has no glossary and there's a lot of interacting rules that are quite spread out in the rule book. For example, the mission briefing for the Scrapheap mission describes the possible enemy group compositions, in the main text on one page, but only describes the group behaviour type on the map layout on the next page. So the first couple of times I went looking I couldn't find it and we just left the group markers stationary.

The movement system was a bit cumbersome too. There's basically 6 different movement actions available, and they are all quite different, and to figure out which ones are available to a model you need to check it's armour and equipment. After a point we kind of just didn't bother worry about it and just moved. Actually after a point I didn't bother with a lot of rules; those terribly early dice did not leave me in a mood to figure out exactly how many shots each enemy had or how many to-hit bonuses it got by the time were were on the second squad. I can't tell how you glad I was there wasn't a third squad. BTW I was a little bit surprised by how long it took to grab the Scrap tokens and evac; I'm not sure how that would have played out if we were under fire at the time.

One thing I noticed this game was that the hit bonuses are VERY swingy. Cover is RIDICULOUSLY important; stepping out from behind cover can easily make a 10 point swing in the chance of getting hit; that's 50% of the roll! Speedy might have been right when he said we were using the wrong terrain for the game; I think we need much more terrain that's much smaller. Or something, I don't know; point is terrain has a huge effect on the the game.

It felt like one model couldn't do very much in a turn. That was fine in our previous games because one turn didn't take too long. But I'm starting to think that too many models might slow the game down a bit too much. It makes sense now that each mission has model limits; the rules are just too crunchy for large model count games. But maybe it won't be an issue if you understand the rules much better so you move through turns much faster? Although missions have turn limits, so... I dunno.

I completely ignored the AP rule, and will probably continue to do so; I really don't like that rule at all, and it's on far too many weapons. I might just ignore the whole "wounds can reduce how many actions you get" rule as well; it just feels too crippling. Honestly I'm tempted to try to do some homebrew just to simplify the rules a bit; I like that you have a lot of options but right now I think there's a bit too much complexity. For example, a lot of actions end your activation. Reloading does not, but you can't attack in the same activation. That's just a bit messy, you know? Too many special cases sort of thing. If I can just simplify the basic movement, action, and hit modifier options a little, that I think would go a long way to making it smoother and more streamlined to play. My goal is to run a cooperative campaign, so I'm not too worried about breaking the game's balance. But I definitely need to go over the AI rules a couple of times.

By the way even though our dice were unbelievably bad for the first half of the game (seriously it's hard to describe how silly it was), we nevertheless won every single intiative roll against the AI. Dice are weird.