Battle for Zorpel: Ford's Mission

This is report #5 on the Battle for Zorpel.

Ford marched out of the hospital, a forced smile on his face as he grasped his side. He still had a couple of days before returning to his team, but the beds were needed by arriving soldiers. The days laying down had given him a lot of time to think about his fate. That's why he went to recover his cache of smuggled liquor outside the base.

[In this scenario, Ford must search three spots for his hidden cache, in the woods. There might be someone stalking the area, represented by the three question marks. On visual contact, they are resolved rolling one die: 1 = bandits, 6 = skelebots. The bandits may be reasoned with. Only one of them may turn into baddies.]

The board setup, with static markers for possible enemies. A little bit of rules mixing between Chain Reaction and Five Core.

Ford moved cautiously in the woods, rifle in his hands. It had been a while since he hid the ammo box with the bottles and now the trees looked all alike. As he made a turn around a group of tangled trees, something made a noise in a nearby large bush. [I rolled a 1 for the first question mark, then used the displacement rules to place the bandits.]

Surprise! I might as well adopt displacement in Chain Reaction games.

The soldier leveled his rifle, advancing cautiously, and then spotted two humans. They seemed as surprised by Ford as much as he was. One of them carried a hunting rifle. Ford asked them what they were doing outside of the settlements, suspecting something foul. Still, he wasn't about to go shooting other colonists, so he just confiscated their rifle and let them go. [I used the system for persuasion to have Ford intimidate the bandits, successfully.]

A few minutes later, Ford found the spot where he buried his treasure. As he passed a ruined warehouse on his way back to the base, he dropped the hunting rifle.

Conclusion
This was a quick and easy personal mission, thanks to some lucky rolls. The next mission in the campaign will be a priority mission. Two new grunts have been recruited, Igor and James.