Game 4 Suffield
It’s been a long time in the writing but I finally got Part 2 of the Suffield Raid completed.
I’ve already introduced Donovan’s team and in spite of what the Mad Lord said, Donovan’s just had a run of bad luck in the actions he’s taken part in, hopefully this one will break his duck.
His briefing is short and sweet. “We don’t have permission to be here, the Canadians don’t know we’re here and we need to keep it that way”. “I’ve no idea what we’ll find, I’m hoping it’ll just be the couple who caretake the wild life sanctuary but if our recent experience is anything to go on, that’s unlikely”.
Gabrielle and Roxanne were wondering if they should re-negotiate their contract with Freddie but he didn’t look in the mood so they let it slide.
“What about the guns” asked Gabrielle? “Don’t use your weapons unless it’s essential” Donovan commanded, “I don’t want to be involved in an international incident with the Canuks, you know how tetchy they can get”.
“This is the only photo we have of the site, satellite images are greyed out on Google Earth and because we’re below the radar I can’t get anything official” he continued. “It’s an old promo shot, the tyre barricade is from the time of the demo’s against them taking the land to form the sanctuary but this is the way we’re going in” and he pointed at an indistinct track on the photo.
“The objective is the cabin in the centre”. “All we have to do is get Liam and Billy into contact for them to conduct the interview and take a few photos and we then can get out - quietly”. “Any questions”? Liam shook his head, Billy had a sip from his hip flask and the rest just looked bored.
“OK let’s go”.
For this scenario I’ve got 13 counters or Possible Enemy Forces – PEF’s on the board, placed in a ring around the cabin but not on the entry track. Each turn they will make a D6” move in a random direction. When they come in sight of the team they will be resolved. The Spade suit from a deck of cards is shuffled and 1 card turned over for each counter, 10, J, Q, K and Ace represent a specific contact and the rest are nothing. Once any loud noise is made, specifically shots then the counters will all move towards that sound but still at a random speed. Counters don’t resolve counters only the team does that. Each contact generates a random number of enemy or friendly individuals.
I’m using my own activation sequence but still sticking with the ZA number of combat actions, 2 each as all the team are Hard and it’s a level 2ish threat scenario.
Gabrielle makes a move forward and spots the first Possible Enemy Force – PEF.
It’s a small bunch of ghoulish looking creatures, who all decide to charge forward, some faster than others. The team are sharp and all conveniently ignore Donovan’s instructions about using their weapons, including Donovan and they all open fire. This is pretty effective and some of the Ghouls go down under a hail of lead and buckshot.
Billy snaps away happily with his camera and thinks about Press Photographer of the Year Awards, the whisky he’s sipping is obviously having a calming influence on him.
Two Ghouls made it into contact but were swiftly despatched by Donovan and Gabrielle and then the team see the next PEF, behind the recently dead Ghouls….in cover behind the rocks. It’s the army!
Roxanne didn’t have a line of sight to the Ghouls and has moved to cover behind the tyres; she’s obviously taking the Snapcase defensive/attack gambit.
There’s another PEF that’s moved behind her but as I don’t agree with 360’ vision she doesn’t see it and failed her awareness test, so isn’t aware of it either. Fortunately it turned out to be nothing, just a breeze passing through the trees or she would have been in serious trouble.
Decisions, decisions, decisions. What to do next. There’s a small army patrol, just 2 of them, they must have been tracking the Ghouls and waiting for the right opportunity to - ‘take them out’ - is I think current parlance.
Most of my games are solo and at some point there are decisions to be made by both sides and I try and make these decisions impartially so every figure has a stats card. If you’re not interested skip the next bit.
For every decision apart from shoot, brawl, attack, or defend the number shown represent the target number. To pass then they need to roll equal to or less than that number, on a D6 or sometimes 2D6.
In this case the patrol won the initiative, what would they do. Pass 2D6 - shout “weapons down hands up”, pass 1 D6 – ‘dither’, pass 0 D6 – ‘Start shooting’. The patrol leader rolled both dice and they are under his Brains number and so he agreed with me that the sensible thing to do was shout “weapons down, hands up”.
Donovan doesn’t want a shoot out with the Canadian army so their options are a - comply, b - ambivalent, wait and see, c - don’t comply.
Donovan wants to comply; he can see the implications of any other action. Big Freddie is ambivalent about the order, but Liam tells the troopers to “F off, I’m the Press, you can’t take that line with me”. Billy Diamond agrees with Freddie and starts taking pictures.
OK, we have an impasse so Liam now has a choice, and the most sensible thing to do is to pull out his Press Pass and walk over to the Troopers and try and bluff his way out of the situation (that would be an opposed Brains roll with the trooper to see if he could pull it off).
However first things first, Liam has Brains 5, rolls 2D6, 5’s or less and that’s what he’ll do. He rolled double 6 so he’s going to do something really, really stupid. Instead of the Press Pass he pulls his gun and fires, missing with a critical, whoops he’s dropped his gun and it went off; at least that’s what it will say in Donovan’s report.Then the sh*t hit the fan and everyone went for the shot.
OK back to the story, sorry.
Dan Barry the lead trooper fired first and hit Gabrielle, she goes down, Roxanne missed her shot and then the other trooper Stephanie Kowalski fired and shot Billy the camera man, he’s down then she shot Freddie as well. Bugger! That’s half the team down and we haven’t started yet.
Donovan fired last, boosh he hits Kowalski and then Barry, both down and bleeding bad. This isn’t the place to get a quick ride on an ambulance, especially if no one is going to call it for you. Things look bleak for the Army.
Freddie and Gabrielle apply medipacks to themselves, who needs a 911 call when you have these life savers.
Donovan moves quickly to apply his medipack to Billy as Freddie and Gabrielle start to recover.
Roxanne has taken things into her own hands and moved quickly to the cabin door, she tries the handle but it’s locked and she can’t open it. 5 of the PEF’s are resolved in the same turn, 2 are just someone’s imagination but 3 are someone else’s reality.
A Grizzly Bear emerges out from the thick woodland and glares malevolently at Liam but doesn’t immediately charge in his direction.
A group of Zombies appear and move towards Roxanne but behind them…..
Are a group of looting Scum and they have the edge on the Zombies so open fire.
The fire is pretty effective and Zombies start dropping like cherry blossom in April. This has a galvanising effect on Roxanne.
She starts kicking the door trying to get in but as she isn’t a heavyweight she doesn’t cause enough damage to achieve this immediately. the Looting scum meanwhile have killed all the Zombies and are starting to move towards her.
This is going to get real ugly, real soon.
The Grizzly finally makes its mind up and charges at Donovan’s group. Big Freddie sees is coming and stands his ground. Well he is Big Freddie, what the hell do you think he’d do…..run away!!
The Grizzly fails his attack and Freddie hits twice in defence killing the bear.
I don’t really understand armour, Dog is 2 Zombie 6, Ghoul 4 Human 1 I gave the bear 5, anyway he failed it twice and died.
Just a bit of an overview, the looting scum have killed all the zombies and are almost certain to move towards Roxanne and the cabin. Donovan, Freddie and Gabrielle have taken up a position behind the log wall in support of her and are shouting encouraging things like “Kick harder” “Kick faster” you know the sort of thing.
On the far side of the cabin you can probably see a small mound of PEF markers and the other thing of note is that she’s finally taken their advice and kicked in the cabin door.
And discovers that the old couple caretaking the reserve, have both succumbed to the virus, they are now Zombies and are waiting with bared teeth for their next meal to come knocking at their front door.
Don’t ask why a pair of Zombies was trapped inside a locked cabin. I didn’t know they were zombies until the door was kicked in. 1,2 they are zombies 3,4,5 and 6 they are two caretakers waiting to be rescued and interviewed. I rolled a 2!
They attacked Roxanne and she manfully fought them off.
Activation sequence for the next turn was critical; Roxanne and Donovan were equal 1st, then Scum, then Billy Diamond then Zombies.
Roxanne and Donovan ran away, as fast as they could, which was a bit of a relief; I didn’t want Roxanne as the meat in the Scum and Zombie sandwich.
The Scum hate Zombies and attacked the 2 in the log cabin. They killed one but lost one scum doing it. Not to be deterred, the Scum carried on the fight.
And one of the Scum and the final Zombie both killed each other, so that would be a loosing draw I guess.
Billy Diamond is still taking photos of the Ghouls as Roxanne runs past him.
Donovan leads the retreat from the wall. Big Freddie eyes up the dead bear, thinking about rugs and fireplaces but mentally shrugs, no one would believe he wrestled a Grizzley and won.
Anyway, the peppering of 9mm bullet holes might be a bit of a give away, they’re a bit big for moth holes.
Well that was it, the team made it out of the vicinity of the Suffield Exclusion Zone and back across the border into the U.S. and down to Arizona.
Ok so Donovan has led another unsuccessful raid into an exclusion zone but they all got back alive so that’s some consolation. They also have Billy Diamond’s photos of the Ghouls but none of the Zombies. A small measure of success – maybe? Of course they are no closer to finding out what the hell is going on, what caused the zones to be created only some speculation and that’s not sufficient to go public with the story yet.
Will the Canadian army discover their missing patrol; possibly, unless they’ve been eaten by the inhabitants of the zone first. Anyway I imagine the Scum will get the blame for killing them, so that’s going to let Donovan off the hook.
The Scum are left licking their wounds and wondering when they will be called on to take the part of “The Scum” again, probably in the next excursion into an Exclusion Zone coming to a cinema near you soon.
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