Space Opera Alley: Perilous Planet Campaign: Act 1

[Sinewgrab]

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far far, like way WAY far away...

BAH-DUM!!!!

The intrepid dames of The Sisters Militant, an order dedicated to Order, and good at following orders, received a message that they were the last best hope for Lady Elaine Barrow, an astro-archaeologist on the planet Hidalgo in Orion's Cluster.  They moved swiftly to send a crack squad to help her.




Elsewhere in the war-torn galaxy, war, well, war never changes. A cunning plan was being hatched by an evil mastermind from the Snake Asteroid, and he was taking his best goons with him to capture the young scientist for himself, to gain access to her father's notes, and perhaps find Planet Periloustia and strip it of it's neat stuff.




So, this weekend, my wife and I, having traveled to a friend's cabin on the coast for our 17th anniversary, split the weekend to be for both of us.  Friday night and Saturday - we went shopping (blergh), and dined out at a place we both fell in love with for the food and the view.  Saturday night and Sunday, we played the first act of Perilous Island.  She had played the first one with me before, but we were going all in.  Normally, these games should take about 1 1/2 to 2 hours, but due to various medical issues over the years, her brain makes things take a bit longer as she has trouble remembering things, and has to consult the cheatsheet I made for her quite often.

[FramFramson]

You used card templates for old Magic Vanguard cards... ha! 

[Sinewgrab]

And, at the explorer's camp... (and I apologize for the pictures' quality - this new camera is finicky as hell, and not very effective on its 'shaky hand' allowance feature)







Here we were with original deployment of Plot Points - Lady Elaine in the middle with her trusty pistol, and spotless white robes for digging in alien ruins, U-BUN-U2, the Robobrain handmaiden, the white ladies' tent, her favorite blue trunk, and a mysterious bomb-shaped artifact.  What could it possibly have been used for?



And here, we have positioned our leagues.  The Mastorks were coming in from the bottom of the screen, and the Sisters were swooping in from the top.



Skeletork immediately charged in to the trunk, and ripped it open to find the Lady's underthings, to get her DNA to make a tracking device to find her father! At least, that is what we decided after an ill-advised 'All the panties are belong to me!' being called out upon a successful Plot point challenge.



Sasha, novice of the crew, charged to the tent and found it filled with nasty bitey things.  She would spend most of the game here trying to get into the tent, and failing time and time again.



Beast-Ork came under fire from both Ivana and Nikita, and proved to be just as useless as his cartoon version.  I never could keep him from fsailing health checks - he would recover, but just could not handle that taking the punch part. 



Mer-Ork would just go grab the mini-nuke, and show these guys who was the best. 



This is Ivana gunning down Beast-Ork mere moments after acquiring Lady Elaine when Skeletork came up an inch shy of reaching her. She had also picked up U-BUN-U2 when the movement took the Robot directly into her.  Ivana was not just the Leader, but the Rock Star for my wife's League.



She then started for the edge of the table just as Sasha finally shook all the snakes out of the tent.



And then the bombs went off.





Already wounded by the bombs, young Sasha runs into a buzzsaw named Skeletork, who beats her into submission, and takes her hard won plot point. In the meantime, Mer-Ork and Masha trade blows just before the Planetary Guard moves in to calm things down.



The Sisters finish with Elaine and her bodyguard, and win this round, ferrying her out with the help of the Guard.



Skeletork and his minions finish with all of the other plot points, but lose out on the most important one. Curses!



Next time, Ivana! NEXT TIME!!!!!

[Sinewgrab]

You used card templates for old Magic Vanguard cards... ha! 

I have a free program I picked up that has a bunch of card templates in it to make your own library - I find it remarkably useful for things like this.

[Sinewgrab]

After rescuing Lady Elaine, the Sisters take her to Spaceport Blanca, and find that encroaching enemy cruisers have caused a panic among the citizens, and getting to the teleportation pad is not going to be as simple as they expected.  In the rush to get the tickets, they are separated from the erstwhile archaeologist...as a heavy dust storm rolls in to cause everything to be difficult to see.

Scenario 2: Final Flight




The Tele-Port is crowded, but the ladies force their way to the ticket counter, except for Masha, who goes shopping. The scenario random roll was 12" line of sight, so dust storm it is.



In the other corner, Skeletork looks for the box of software he sent in the day before so he can find the Ork Mechanic to insert it into the teleport pad controls, and then Skeletork will control who goes where from the pad. Muahaha!



Everyone is on their best behavior, however.  The heavily armed Marines in their Powered Armor see to that.



Ivana slaps the old lady aside, and waves her Emperor's Hand ID in the official's face, also calling him out for his feeble mustache.  Fortunately for her, both the peril and the plot challenge were not just only 1 success challenges, but both were cunning, and her 3d10 made short work of them.



After Ivana confiscates a set of tickets for herself and the crew, Sasha spots Lady Elaine looking for her blue trunk, and runs over to her.



Meanwhile, Skeletork sees his favorite little black box, and grabs the software from it...



And spots the mechanic loitering by the wall.



Ivana was going to go help talk to Elaine, but was tripped up, leaving Sasha to do the dirty work. After reducing a 2 success challenge to a single, she made that and then succeeded in getting the plot point as well!
Only to find that it wasn't Elaine after all, and Elaine is over behind the counter.



Skeletork barely manages to convince the mechanic that he is, in fact, the ork who paid him.  I made a bad joke about hoping nothing comes up roses, knowing the ones on these dice are roses, and rolled this.  




Now that Masha has collected Elaine (for real this time), the ladies move towards the pad...



As Skeletork's minions form a line to defend the goal.  Beast-Ork actually starts a fight here to tie up the Sisters, but he just gets tazered by the Marines when he rolls 0 successes with 5d6. Blegh.  After my wife played parley to stop any more fights, Skeletork moves to the pad, and completes the plot point, as she did not have any cards left to play!




And that, my friends, is called succeeding with a vengeance!




And as the Sisters move onto the pad, Ivana sees the grin on Skeletork's face too late as she realizes that Elaine appears to be teleporting somewhere else!  Skeletork has had his revenge!

[blacksoilbill]

Love the reports. Your spaceport set up is especially awesome! All the bystanders make it look that much more convincing. And congrats on seventeen years of marriage!

[baldlea]

That is fantastic work!

[religon]

A very fresh looking scenario. I like the mix of figures from many ranges and the fearless application of color. Nice.

[cheetor]

This is just great, I love the Spaceport.

[Sinewgrab]

Love the reports. Your spaceport set up is especially awesome! All the bystanders make it look that much more convincing. And congrats on seventeen years of marriage!

Thank you!  We have actually been together for 21 years, but we couldn't afford to get married for the longest time...

A very fresh looking scenario. I like the mix of figures from many ranges and the fearless application of color. Nice.

This is just great, I love the Spaceport.

And thank you guys - this was a blast! I would have had even more civilians, but this is what I was willing to pack and take with me.  I have one of my boxes of figures that is labeled 'Civilians - All Genres', and there is quite the selection in there, between VSF, WH40K, Pulp, Fallout/Post-Apoc, WH Fantasy, and years of various RPGs...

[Sinewgrab]

Our heroines rush off the next planet on their trip: to Athenaraan, where Dr Demas is found to be all beat up, and unable to chat. Just then, a Holo-Net transmission informs the inhabitants of a package awaiting pickup at the orbiting Universal Package Service depot.  Unable to gain access with their Emperor's Hand badges, they plan a daring raid on the depot.  Their chatter is picked up by Skeletork, who listens in with his Holo-Net camera, placed surreptitiously in their courier ship's shower...for no special reason, just that the plumber was who was bribable. No, really...



The depot was guarded by vicious Gonk Droids, who could spew red tape and fragile stickers at a ferocious rate.




And was overseen by BR0K3N-FR8, Robobrain Overseer.



And at one of the terminals, there was a Holotape manifest which may show the location.



Each player was given two portals to place, no closer than 12" to each other.  Being like we are, we set up across from each other.

On one edge, the mighty Beast-Ork, Mer-Ork, and Trap-Jork entered through one portal...



While Skeletork escorted their new ally, Lady Elaine, through the other.  She appeared to have developed Orkholm Syndrome while on Snake Asteroid.



Across the waresatellite, Ivana and the erstwhile acolyte Sasha plunged through one gate,



As Masha and Nikita snuck in through the other.



Masha immediately sees the holotape machine, and tries to activate it with her armored finger, touching an exposed wire, and frying herself.  She would later get through the perils I kept delaying her with, and succeeded at the plot point with Brawl, so we are pretty she sure she used percussive maintenance to get the machine to work.



As Beast-Ork suffers the humiliation of being packaged and taped by the Gonk droid.



After the next turn, where Mer-Ork successfully managed to overwhelm the Gonk, Beast-Ork moved to challenge Nikita, who had shot at him.



But she survived the first flurry, and dodged the 'it aint over' to survive, as well as passing the health check from the first fight with a card.   



Unfortunately, here is where things got very chaotic and busy as hell, and I forgot to get photos of the action. (sigh)  But, Skeletork, managed to get control of FR8, and then scrambled to the middle, where Elaine spotted the box, and snagged it before Ivana could reach it.

[Sinewgrab]

And then, back down on Athenaraan, the search for the Old Traveller went on.  Unfortunately, I took no notes and few pictures of this one.  I am posting what I have, for completeness' sake, but a few glasses of wine made this more difficult to keep track of.











I do know I won.  And I know that this guy was the most hated figure on the board.  He came up as the red herring twice, after taking out Trap-Jork with the plot point challenge, and wounding Beast-Ork with the second.   



We plan on doing Act 2 in the next couple weeks.

[blacksoilbill]

Another great couple of set-ups. Your warehouse detritus is right up there with your civilian collection. And the terrain for the last game looks lovely and Star Wars-y.

[d phipps]

Fantastic! I really like your twist on the Perilous Island campaign.

THANKS for playing and sharing Pulp Alley! I hope you are collecting lots of Phantom Agent awards from Mila -- https://store.pulpalley.com/


HAVE FUN

[FramFramson]

This campaign is just so perfectly hilarious.