The Martians start their attack.

Basically they just charge for the nearest humans...

The initial landing sites were very close to the outer defences of the humans.

This picture shows the Martian charge as the three swarms head for their targets.

The Martian right flank soon swarmed round the exposed human defences in this area... fire support from advancing tanks and artillery were never likely to help here!

They didn't really stand much chance...

Humans on the Martian left likewise soon got in close as the gravtanks turned to meet the threat.

One problem the humans had - lousy shooting (dice rolls). Loss of two infantry sections while the Martians suffered little in return.

Apart from poor shooting by the human forces this section of the game worked well. Starting close in, the Martian swarms meant lots of firepower on only a few targets so they were certain to cause major human casualties. Having said that, they should have taken far more casualties in reply... however, the next stage should show the weakness of the Martians. Light armour and short ranged weapons against heavy armour and long ranged weapons. It will take the Martians three moves to reach the next line, two moves before their weapons are in range - all the time while taking fire.

A short note on how 'lucky' the swarms were. I treat missile barrages from the support missile launchers quite simply - everything in the zone is hit on a dice roll of 6. For infantry and light armour there is no saving throw. So, firing on a swarm of 6 Martian war machines with 3 missile launchers gives 3 x 6 or 18 chances of a 6 - on average, 3 machines should have gone up in smoke. They lost 1! And it was like that across the board!