Sunday, April 22, 2012

Data Retrieval Mission

I've been building a bunch of terrain lately so I took some time today to use it for a quick game. In this scenario, a group of three adventurers: Alex, Bill and Cherry, have just landed their scout ship in a corporation-controlled neighborhood. Their contact has hidden corporation secrets in a safe box, and now they must retrieve it and get away while avoiding the corporation security patrols.

I used FUBAR 4th Edition for this game. My unit has three veteran figures. Alex is armed with pistols and wears light armor, Bill has a shotgun and medium armor and Cherry has a flamethrower and light armor.


There are two enemy units, both of them with seasoned status. They carry assault rifles and use medium armor.

Here are the crates that mark the objective. You can see them on the first picture near the bottom left. My unit must spend one turn of activation in contact with them to retrieve the information.

Battle Report

Here's a detailed report of the game. As I was writing this post I noticed that I forgot to take pictures of a few game turns...

Turn 1: The enemy won the initiative. It activated the closest unit, moving it to ambush my unit [I rolled a die to decide between a a straight-on attack (1-3) or an ambush (4-6), getting the ambush result]. As I activated the second unit, assuming now that the enemy plan was to ambush me, I moved them around the back of the building. Lastly, I moved my unit across the street, towards my objective.

Turn 2: I won the initiative. My unit moved to the alley and the guy with the pistols fired at the visible enemy, missing. The attacked unit decided to move back from the alley and cover the other corner of the building [I rolled to decide if they would try to assault (1-2) or move back (3-6) getting the second result]. The other enemy unit failed to activate.

Turn 3: I went first again, moving to the corner of the building. The nearest enemy failed activation and the second unit ran from the back of the building to prepare their part of the ambush.

Turn 4: I moved to attack the enemy unit but since they were on guard, they were able to shoot first. They suppressed Cherry, and my unit also suppressed one of them.

Turn 5: I went first again and successfully activated my unit, so Cherry was not suppressed anymore. I attacked again, getting two unsaved hits, resulting in one suppression and one casualty. The suppressed enemy unit failed to activate. The other unit activated and moved towards the firefight [I rolled to check if they would stay on guard (1-2), move towards the other unit (3-4) or move towards the ship (5-6), getting a 4].

Turn 6: The enemies went first. They activated the nearest unit, missed their shots and moved back. The other unit activated but remained on guard to be able to fire if my unit tried to advance. I moved out of cover. The enemy unit on guard attacked but missed all shots! I scored three hits against the closest unit, resulting in another casualty and one suppression.

Turn 7: The enemy went first again but failed activation of the unit with three men. I also failed activation but the one-man enemy unit activated, fired at my unit and scored a suppression!

Turn 8: I went first, and decided to duck and weave across the street. Regardless, the enemy fired and scored one hit, that I took as suppression of Alex. The one-man enemy unit failed to activate and ran to the alley. The other unit advanced, attacking and scoring another suppression on my unit.

Turn 9: The enemy won initiative, activated the nearest group, fired and scored two unsaved hits, killing Alex and causing one suppression. The other enemy unit activated and decided to remain on guard [I rolled a die to see if they would stay on guard (1-3) or join the first unit (4-6)]. (note: in the following picture I forgot to apply the suppression result.)

Turn 10: Everyone failed activations, but this still allowed me to recover from suppression.

Turn 11: The enemy went first, scoring three unsaved hits against my unit, so Bill died and Cherry was suppressed. The one-man enemy unit activated and remained on guard. Cherry succeeded activation and ran to the boxes.

Turn 12: I won the initiative, activated Cherry and used this turn to grab the box contents. The enemy activated the three-men unit and rushed into the alley [I rolled to see if it would move around the corner (1-4) or into the alley (5-6)].

Turn 13: The enemies went first, activating and firing at Cherry. They scored a hit (despite the soft cover from the boxes) but she succeeded on her armor save! She ran away from the alley, as now she "just" had to reach the ship...

Turn 14: The enemies won the initiative and activated the nearest unit. The soldiers ran back out of the alley, shot Cherry and scored two unsaved hits, killing her. Game over.

Conclusion

I mostly wanted a quick match to use my new terrain, and this turned into a very fun solo game. Since the enemy had weapons with much longer ranges, I had to be more careful when moving and this somewhat compensated their predictability. At the same time, their lower troop quality reduced the risk of having me trapped at long range by multiple units. I think that the use of better armor on the enemy was also helpful. Lastly, rolling to choose between multiple enemy actions helped reduce the decision bias (pretty much like using Mythic or other decision systems.)

As for the terrain, it's curious how some street tiles appear very different from the others on the pictures. The difference isn't as sharp just looking at them on the table. Anyway, at some point I might replace them but they're still useful for now. 

1 comment:

Sean said...

Nice battle report. The Terrain looks good. Which manufacturer and did you do this in 15mm?