Black Ops: Data Theft

"Ok folks, all we need to do is to enter the building, copy those files and move out." Even when keeping her voice down, Kate could put energy in her words. The rest of the team nodded. Jamie had checked her machine gun twice. Bill and Eric had their automatic shotguns ready. For a stealth mission, this was a lot of noisy hardware, but that's how they played: if the plan went wrong, would you rather have a silenced pistol or a heavy machine gun at your side?

This was a stealth mission played using Black Ops. The special ops team (pictured left) are Kate (leader), Jamie (heavy), Bill and Eric (soldiers). The opposition is a mercenary commander and six soldiers. Each side is just below 50 points.

The opposing forces, roughly 50 points per side.

The operatives must enter the building closest to the center, then spend two activations inside to steal the data files. Then they must leave through the same edge they entered. There are two mercenaries on patrol, and the rest are in buildings.The ones in the buildings will only leave on a reaction roll of 7+. This is similar to the espionage scenario in a city board, from the game rules.

Starting board. The spec ops enter from the bottom edge; the mercenaries are spread around.

A Treasure Hunt

I recently bought the Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes book. While the core rules remain the same, there are some new options for activation, as well as special rules for weapons and an expanded magic system.

In order to try the new activation, I played a battle between dwarves and orcs, using profiles given in the book. Note that now the standard force size is 400 points (up from 300) with more allowance for personalities.

The dwarf warband was composed of Captain Tormak (Leader Swordsman w/shield), Brelik (Hero Swordsman w/shield), 2x Trained Heavy Axeman, 2x Veteran Heavy Axeman, and 2x Veteran Crossbow Wielder.

The orcs had Warchief Krakk (War-Leader), 4x Armored Spearman and 4x Chosen Bowman.

The new book does not include scenarios so I used the Treasure Hunt scenario from the "basic" Song of Blades and Heroes. There are three treasure markers and both warbands compete to find the treasure and take it away through their starting edge of the map. This is the initial board setup. The treasure chests mark the possible locations of the treasure.

For some reason, the short movement stick was not included in the exported screenshot.

The plan for the dwarves was to have their leader activating as a group with the trained axemen, going for the treasure marker in the distant forest patch. The hero would go for the marker in the ruins, covered by the crossbowmen, and the two veterans would move to the closest marker.

The orcs split in three groups, with the leader and two spearmen going for the farthest marker, and two teams of spearman and bowmen going for the other two markers.

Battle for Zorpel: the Sensor Array

This is report #10 in the Battle for Zorpel.

The human soldiers had to retrieve components from a sensor array in the ruins of another outpost. The robots had the mission to destroy the same sensors.

Board setup. The sensor array is the blue box near the ruins.

The humans started in a patch of woods. James moved first but one of the robots spotted him and fired. The laser shots nearly hit him and, being in the open, he ran away. Then Mack had the idea of tossing a smoke grenade at the robots. He moved out of the woods, avoided enemy fire and tossed the grenade at the enemies, blocking their sight [the grenade impact point is marked with the red slime]. Igor then rushed to the ruins. The robots then dashed into the nearby patch of woods and Mack took cover in the ruins.

The grenade landed on the perfect spot. Too bad it was too late to make much of a difference.

The robots then moved out of the woods. Mack fired at them with no effect. One robot took down Mack, the other took down Igor. Karl fled before he suffered the same fate.

A terrifying sight: the robot team storms out of the woods firing their lasers.

Conclusion
A terrible defeat for the humans, and campaign progress is back to 0. Karl raised to level 2 rifleman, and James remained a level 1 Scout.

I did not remember to use the smoke grenade until James suffered a bail result from reaction fire. If I had, the humans might have been able to win.

Soldiers for MapTool

I have created a simple pack of top-down tokens of sci-fi soldiers in light armor, suitable for colonial forces or scout squads. These include soldiers with rifles, a heavy repeating laser and sergeants with submachine guns, all in four skin tones. Here is the preview:

The compressed file with all tokens and the Inkscape file used to build them can be obtained clicking here. The files are shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Battle for Zorpel: Medical supplies

This is report #9 in the Battle for Zorpel.

In this mission, James, Karl and Leon must recover medical supplies in an abandoned outpost, while a robot team must complete their patrol. [Human objective is the yellow marker with a cross, robot objectives are the three blue ones.]

Game setup

The human soldiers crossed the patch of woods to approach the abandoned buildings. Karl saw the robot patrol approaching and ran into the woods. James moved ahead and got the supplies, while the robots advanced. Leon moved out of the woods and shot one of the robots down.

"But I saw the human enter the woods!"... "Surprise!" BOOM

One robot entered the patch of woods while the other set an ambush on the corner of a nearby building. However, Karl rushed to provide cover for James. As James moved out of the building, a quick exchange of fire ensued, with the humans taking down the ambushing robot.

Ok, now let's get out of here before anyone gets hurt by a bad die roll...

Before the remaining robot managed to get out of the woods, the human trio dashed out of the outpost. A laser blast burned a mark on Karl's helmet but he was not hurt.

Conclusion
The mission was a success and Karl was promoted to rifleman. Campaign progress advanced to +2.

Leon was reassigned to another platoon, but Mack (level 1 Support) arrived [I rolled the campaign events Recruit and Reassigned].

The next mission will be a standard military mission in 4 campaign days, so Igor will join the team.