Zona Alfa - Focused Mission 4 - Defend the Compound (prototype)

Despite the number of bullets unleashed across the board, I can't help feeling it was a sub-par game.

An enticing start to the tale?

Specifically the mission parameters were not up to scratch. The term 'turkey shoot' comes to mind... if said turkeys were locked in a reasonably small and restrictive coup... and without any protective cover.

The map was set up with the crew Compound on one side, and the opposite side divided into 3 sub-sections. And to be fair there was a bit of cover (not entirely intentional) on the hostile's edge (which was a good thing).

Sure enough, hostiles started deploying at the start of every turn (snorks. damn snorks).

But before long it became evident that the hostiles were forming a rather large hillock of corpses about 1/3 of the way from their edge. 

The mission parameters allowed multiple squads to deploy in a single turn (here we have bloodsuckers and zombies). And I even left the Control Check (roaming packs) rule in, just to try to get some additional/random hostiles on the board.

It was briefly looking like the hostiles might get a bit further across. However this pic probably still has half the crew waiting to activate (and snot all those incoming hostiles).

[ed: just as an aside - it wasn't a hassle monitoring each of the hostiles as individuals, rather than as squads of hostiles, even with more of them on the board. Given there's only Player vs Hostiles perhaps having still 2 sides works...]

A mutant (yowie) did manage to tag HUSTLE in a mutual melee takedown. But that was the extent of the damage. And if HUSTLE had been back further then the mutant wouldn't have made base to base contact at all (he was flanking for a better shot around the trees). 

And this... was as close as a hostile got to entering the compound. With the expected results.

I ended up calling the game at 7 of 9 turns, as frankly, I was bored.

Although this was intended to be a milk run to ease in the rookies it just didn't have any suspense. I was really rooting for the Control Checks to throw in extra hostiles from the sides but nope.

So what's going on this with that then?

a) The compound is meant to have nice clear firing lanes on all sides. And it did.   And I don't really want to crowd or place more trees/junk along the way because it doesn't make sense for them to have left cover for an enemy to sneak up on the stronghold.

b) The crew weren't making all their shots but there was enough fire power available to comfortably deal with the enemy safely.  There also wasn't a lot of movement required, just a wall of bullets. Again, this tactically makes sense; don't run out to engage in hand to hand if you can deal with them from afar (unless you're in a movie)?

c) The rookies didn't need to move (much) so they were hardly tested. They provided what shooting was required of them but there wasn't a lot of LEADER-ship required.  In fact during a couple of turns there were no hostiles visible or on the board so i called End of Turn early with models unactivated.

d) I limited the hostile list to 1) dogs, 2) zombies, 3) more zombies, 4) snorks, 5) bloodsuckers, 6) mutants

And the deployment per turn was 1,2,3 = one squad in the rolled sub-section, 4,5 = two squads in different sections, and 6 was no hostiles entering (and I'm glad I didn't roll that up). 

The choice of melee only hostiles I feel... conflicted about, but from a narrative perspective the idea is that there is a great horde of critters incoming; the dogs are fleeing in front of the zombies and the zombies and mutants are just... doing what they do.

I could have alternately had bandits, but then i think it would be more appropriate to have just bandits.  Why would bandits and dogs team up to attack en masse? Or bandits and mutants? etc etc

Dunno. It was a choice. I made it.

Ideally I would perfer a more homogenous hostile list, like all zombies with perhaps a single squad of snorks or bloodsuckers occasionally.  Or similar.    I diversified the list mainly due to model availability (i had intended to print up more zombies but i just ripped my last FEP, so not more printing for a while).

Hordes of bandits would have provided a far different event. The crew would have had to stay behind the walls, pop out, shoot and pop back in - a lot. And far more med-kits used Ii imagine.   Probably worth a try... however...   

I'm reluctant to throw bandits into this mix as the idea is meant to be an overwhelming horde of mutants incoming (fleeing a blowout perhaps, or for local relevance... bushfires).  In this case however, the horde was whelming... to be gracious, underwhelming to not.

As there are no Hot Spots (why would they put a compound on top of a known anomaly field?)  this mission is all about bullets and combat.

I think just getting more hostiles on the map would make things far more sporty.

Instead of rolling the Control Check once, perhaps it could be done for each board edge to up the chances of getting irregular reinforcements.

Additionally the table for the deployment roll at the start of the turn could possibly be cranking out more squads by default.

Back to the drawing board on this mission. In general the concept is ok it just need to provide some challenge and suspense.

Will run it again with some adjusted parameters and see how it goes. I'm anticipating that this shindig was just the vanguard of a far larger horde just over the horizon.

Until next time...