Original Draft 2021-04-06Last weekend was the super-long Easter weekend. 4 days. Soooooo good.
Assembled a board on Sunday and played out two games.
World Buildings
Definitely rating in as one of the funest parts of the process... assembling the map.... a blank canvas and a big ol box of terrain. Wanted to get some of the newer pieces on the board. The swamp pieces, the new trees, and the distribution warehouse seemed appropriate.
Was a very 'nature' setting as it turned out. Put the river/ship on there so the swamp made sense. Transitioning to forest in the middle. Sparse industrial on the other end. Quite happy with the result and hard to be disappointed when you have no particular plan.
Placed the new globe anomaly up between the depot offices as the first game's Mission Objective. 6 hotspots. Was a full 6x4 board just, cos, why not?!
The ship/river takes up a good foot of playable area so really a 5x4' board. I made some scatter terrain 'bare rock faces' or 'mud pools' which were added to the swamp. This was a lino floor tile I picked up at bunnings and cut into random blobby shapes during the first couple of days of this weekend (and not worth documenting).
Didn't realize i'd picked up quite this many d10s! Ooups!
Game 1
In game 1 the crew has to get SCIENTIST up to the globe anomaly intact. SCIENTIST then needed to perform 2 successful investigates and that's it. The team arrives in their now (at least semi-)functional ship and unloads on a rustic, creaky dock.
The team was the current/standard new rookies line up.
The crew sets up a presence in the middle of the board, and SCIENTIST bolts ahead. The SCIENTIST is a unarmed, entirely player-controlled character (i.e. not moving set distances automatically etc).
Someone triggers the Hot Spot near the office and some mutants pop out.
Fortunately they are dealt with quickly before they doing any major harm (i.e. ganking SCIENTIST for example), though one reached base contact with one of the rookies.
HUSTLE keeps a watch while SCIENTIST starts the investigation. I remember this: twice in a row he fails the Search action, but then passes the armour test and the will test.[I treat this as a pass, it means that while doing the Search/Investigate processes they trigger the anomaly's attack but shake it off and successfully take the reading or whatever (2nd Will check pass). The initial roll is to 'engage' the anomaly, and if they pass then smooth sailing, otherwise they get attacked but can still 'succeed'. Failing the second will check gives them a pinned and fails.]
A roaming patrol of dogs appears down toward the swamps. Quite far from the crew so they start off just moving edge-to-edge across the board unless there's some noise or commotion that attracts them. This is from the homebrew 'control check' rules.
Another Hot Spot is triggered and produces some more dogs.
The roaming patrol is triggered by the attack and it's dogs from both sides.
The Hot Spot also reveals an anomaly.
The crew is running out of time and makes for the Exfil point at the side of the board. They have further tasks to achieve in an adjacent area.
On the way out they trigger a final Hot Spot. Bandits! Despite overwatch HUSTLE is hit and quickly med-kits, but is hit again, going Out of Action [ed: in hind-sight he actually had 2 med-kits, oh well]. LEADER dashes in and finishes off the remaining bandit and patches up HUSTLE. That's a lot of pinned markers (max allowed is 4).
...And the crew boots off the board.
Thus endeth Game 1. The wide open boards really give the crew an advantage setting overwatch and picking long firing lanes. The extensive movement required to get around is a hinderance however so it's not all one way - conversely it does provide a buffer against melee hostiles so another advantage there.
This game I was on top of the rules, including some clarifications and stuff that had previously been nebulous. Fairly confident that the way things were done was now 'the correct way'.
I did however find myself spending 2/3 of the time just writing up the play-by-play in the book. Good for knowing precisely what went down and checking things were right, but felt like I wasn't really watching the board/story and just moved the pieces in response to the paperwork.
The main reason I'd been writing the play-by-play was to kind of confirm that the rules were being done correctly, the appropriate number of actions being done, not over using med-kits/eJuice and recording loot taken. I was now fairly confident that I was handling all of this fairly well so next game would be different.
Game 2
In Game 2 the rookies were sent back from the adjacent zone early. Scouting ahead, they spot a number of bandits gathering, possibly intent on stealing the ship.
The crew for this mission was just 4 veterans (subbing in KNIFE from the old crew, and dropping all three Rookies). There are 3 waves of bandits incoming from the opposite side of the board and if they make it to the ship the mission fails (seasoned with Hot Spots to taste).
The bandits start up near the warehouses and arrive at the start of turns 1, 4 and 7.
[ed: in hind-sight i might have had two bandit entry points (top left and top right) and have 2 squads (of 4 models) coming on each wave.]
The crew starts at the previous Exfil point, and head again to the centre of the board to prepare an ambush. As the bandits approach the ship-side bounds of the distro centre the crew uses overwatch to neutralize them. With 2 turns before the next wave of bandits arrive they trigger a Hot Spot to clear the area and boost their loots. Mutants.
The next wave of bandits arrive.
The centre turns into a killing ground.
Zombies from a second Hot Spot.
Third wave of bandits.
HUSTLE weathers three rounds of melee and prevails like a champion.
Rats from another Hot Spot and the last of the bandits. Plus an anomaly.
With the last wave of bandits disposed of the crew makes for the dock ASAP.
And sails off into the sunset.
Not overly challenging. Again, the space allowed fairly tight control over how the combat process went down. This is planned of course, I didn't blithely charge in, but the hostiles didn't really pose too much of a treat. They were able to make base contact (i.e. zombies) so it wasn't entirely safe but... yeah...
I think i could have also used the 'Hot Spots have a chance of automatically triggering' rule to help increase the potential threat.
Anyway, I was pretty much just playing on the board for Game 2 and at the end of the turn writing down a quick summary of the important actions that happened, plus loot etc. Felt far more narrative.
The Wash Up
Next time I'll probably look at playing on a fairly small board to keep the action focused/concentrated/intense. Probably a 3x3'.
I'd also like to make one more set of 4 bandits [ed: underway]. Either to run 2x6 or 3x4. I subbed in the rookies and my new STALKERS as the final set of bandits in game 2, so there's probably room for just a couple more. I have some incomplete models already printed so will see what's there.
And that's about it - an enjoyable day/session.
Update 2021-04-09
4 extra non-descript bandit types. Added a couple of shotguns into the bandit arsenal.
Until next time...
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