“Every time you open fire, you are ringing the dinner bell. Make it worth it.” – The Forever Winter
Setup: Mission 2, target defence. Hold bottom left table quarter's centre for 6 turns against enemy waves. Secondary objective: Capture. Retrieve objective from table centre. Search tokens: 3; bizarrely, all are also in the centre of the bottom left table quarter. Even stranger, the initial wave of enemies - 4 zombies - is on top of the search tokens and the primary objective. You couldn't make this stuff up. However, I roll a 6 for hero deployment so can choose which corner they're in; let's go bottom left and get into it - I can deploy them anywhere within 6" of the corner and put them as two pairs.
City Outskirts, Z+28
The Old Man has sent them back into the city to commandeer supplies from a medical team and recover any medical personnel still alive. Morgan mentally translates this as "loot the drugs and enslave the doctors", but he's keeping that viewpoint to himself. Times are hard, and the unit is over 50% casualties and barely holding together. Decent medical care would go a long way towards keeping it intact.
Morgan leads the team forward, stacking up outside the door into the building where he expects to find the medics. The zeds move up into the inside corner; the blood in the medical supplies is attracting them. Morgan has a dentist's mirror out and uses it to see them through the door's window.
Morgan has a cunning plan: Leaving Campbell to lay down fire across the doorway if anything comes out, he will move right in front of it and shoot the zeds through the door. Unfortunately, the zeds move before he does and the one that can see him barges out, engaging him in melee; however, it fumbles its attack and gets stuck in the doorway, clawing at him ineffectually as he steps back and shoots, his short, controlled burst dropping it and the one behind it. Allen and Baker close up to cover the building's two doors.
Campbell steps into the building to clear it, and manages to miss with all three shots in the burst. Morgan and Allen are On Hold and when the zeds rush Campbell, both of them are gunned down. Luck is against them though, and the gunfire attracts a pair of gangers who also want the supplies; they run up, brandishing pistols.
Both gangers shoot at Allen, but neither is very skilled and they both miss. The zombies are all dead (again). Allen returns fire, shaking one of his opponents and missing the other entirely; Morgan and Baker both join in, and it's hard to tell who shot whom, but the gangers are all bleeding out on the ground and you can't get fairer than that. Alas, all this shooting brings three more gangers running from the northeast, and these ones have SMGs. The soldiers can't see them yet, though. Campbell, blissfully unaware of these new foes, moves up to the loot and starts rummaging, though all he finds are empty boxes.
The gangers run towards the gunfire and catch a glimpse of Baker; the leader shoots at him, killing him outright. Morgan and Allen take cover inside the building with Campbell. Morgan smashes out the window to the other door and lies in wait for the new threat, while Allen and Campbell search through the supply boxes, finding another empty box and a first aid kit.
Morgan continues to watch for threats while Allen and Campbell secure their primary objective, and start preparing it for removal. (They are now on turn three of six as someone has been within 3" of it for a while.) The gangers move into the building with the secondary objective - a surviving doctor, hiding from the zombies his former colleagues have become - and take him captive.
Both sides are holed up in their respective buildings, and nothing interferes with prepping the supplies for removal. A lone zombie wanders up and takes up residence near Morgan's building. Allen and Campbell are packing the supplies out, and Morgan can't see any hostiles, so he moves over to check on Baker; dead. Allen's route takes him past the lurking zed, which slashes at him, and the two soldiers gun it down. On hearing the gunfire, the gangers emerge and shoot at Morgan, grazing him twice.
The gangers continue to hose down the spot where Morgan is, and he responds by dropping prone and returning fire, killing them both. The surviving thug hustles the doctor away. Allen and Campbell shoot their zombie before it can act, and make for the exit point.
Once it's clear no-one will follow, Morgan stands up and jogs after his men.
GM Notes
The full GFSQ mission rules again, but on a smaller board - 24" x 24", a common size for Loke Battlemats; I was expecting that to make the game shorter, but it didn't. A 4d6 roll of 14 moves us 14 days forward, to Z+28.
A minor addition to the GFSQ rules here; the alert level is increased by one each time someone opens fire.
I enjoyed the game, although it was only a partial success for Morgan and Soaking all the Wounds left him out of Bennies; never mind, they'll refresh next time. The GFSQ AI is surprisingly good considering how simple it is.
I don't usually show the screenshots I take at the end of each turn, but this time I did; what do you think - is it helpful, or does it make the post too long?
Credits: Rules - SWADE, Grimdark Future Star Quest, ATZ Risks & Rewards Deck. Map - Loke Battlemats. Tokens - Fiery Dragon.
I enjoyed the screenshots but I also know, from experience, that recapping these with even more detail is a ton of work. I've been playing a lot lately but not writing up recaps... it is just so time consuming.
ReplyDeleteI really like the extra screenshots as it helps with following the narrative. I did not find it made the post too long.
ReplyDeleteI like the screenshots but feel free to only show them when things materially change, vs every turn.
ReplyDelete