Test game: Osprey's "Ronin"

 I had some free time this afternoon so I decided to squeeze in another game before the weekend ended. I've painted a fair few samurai and other Feudal Japanese miniatures this year, and I've been itching to get them on the table for a proper samurai game. I had a pair of 100-point "Buntai" lists drawn up for Osprey's "Ronin," and decided today was the day.

 A pretty simple meeting engagement to get a feel for the mechanics of the game - a Takeda Clan samurai and his ashigaru bodyguards are waylaid at a river crossing by a gang of bandits. 

 The Takeda won priority, and one of the spear-armed ashigaru moved forward; the bandit archer snapped off a shot, stunning him. Both buntai moved forward, the bandit and ashigaru musketmen exchanging ineffectual shots. During the action phase, the bandit archer fired a second shot, putting a light wound on the ashigaru he'd previously stunned. 

 The bandit second-in-command charged forward, and the two ashigaru spearmen moved forward to meet him. The melee was on!

 Here's where I got a taste of the "combat pool" mechanic - each figure has a combat pool, and when melee begins draws any combination of Attack and Defense tokens up to that number. They then use these to attack, enhance their attacks or improve their defense. Normally, you'd be playing against someone and you'd keep what you were drawing for your pool a secret, resulting in there being a bit of a gamble to each combat - you have to wager on what your opponent has in mind and how aggressive or conservative you want to be. Some of that's missing trying to play it solo, unfortunately, but them's the breaks.

Unfortunately for the bandit second in command, he gambled poorly.

 At that point, both buntai were fully committed; the spearmen moved on to engage other low-ranking bandits, while the Takeda samurai faced off with the bandit leader.

 The more heavily armored samurai buntai made pretty short work of the bandits, with the ashigaru archer and musketmen finishing off their counterparts and the spearmen carving their way through the other bandits with ease, receiving only light wounds in return. 

 With a final sweep of his sword, the samurai cut the bandit leader down, and was free to continue on his way.

 

It was a pretty quick game, only about an hour, maybe an hour and twenty minutes, and that's with double-checking the rulebook every few minutes. I feel like I got the hang of the mechanics pretty quickly, especially melee combat and the system of enhancing rolls, which are potentially not the most intuitive since it's not the same across initiative, attack and defense.

I did realize right at the end that I'd forgotten that musketfire largely ignores armor, which may or may not have made that big of a difference in this game, but will be something to keep in mind next time. 

I should get some terrain rolling for the next time I want to play Ronin as well. I do have an MDF temple from Things From The Basement to work on one of these days... Possibly in September, since I really should spend Augut focused on getting things ready for Zombie RV at Wargames Among the Warplanes next month.

Zombie RV: Game 2 "Enter the Ninja"

Following Sandra's death at the cabin, Hector, Mark and Dave soon picked up a new survivor. A man dressed in a white ninja outfit with a sword slung across his back. The man refused to speak, communicating his needs solely through gestures. Mark soon gave him the name "Dudikoff" in reference to the ninja gear. Dudikoff's silence soon proved frustrating however, and before long Mark was shouting at the ninja to say something, anything. 

As the crew pulled on to a city street that looked promising for supplies, Mark and Dudikoff were keeping their distance from one another.

 

The group began to fan out, with Mark scaling the OTB and Dudikoff entering and climbing the stairs to the roof of the dispensary. Dave lined up a few lingering zombies and squeezed the trigger on his shotgun - and discovered he was out of ammo.

 More zombies were soon congregating, and Dave and Hector were in the middle of it - at least until Dave ducked into the dispensary and out the back door, leaving Hector to fend his way down the street alone.

 Mark and Dudikoff investigated two possible supply caches and came up empty, while Dave worked his way around and up on to the roof of the liquor store, finding a small cache of supplies there. 

 As Hector fought his way towards the last supply cache (in the bed of a crashed pickup truck), Dudikoff leapt across rooftops and jumped down, katana at the ready, on to one of the zombies that threatened him.

 Not to be outdone, Mark jumped down to start swinging his wrench at zombies as well.

 Leaping over a crashed car, Hector checked the pickup truck and found...nothing! 

"Let's get out of here," he said, eyeing the growing zombie horde. Dudikoff nodded, cutting his way free from a swarm of the undead.

 Dave was already running for the RV.

 Dudikoff jumped over zombies, and Mark and Hector tried to make it, but the swarm was just too densely packed; for every zombie they killed, two more shambled in.

The two survivors ducked into the RV and threw it into gear. "Looks like it's just you and me, Dudikoff," Dave said.

"You know, Michael Dudikoff wore a black ninja suit in the American Ninja movies," the ninja replied gruffly. "The white ninja look comes from Franco Nero in the movie Enter the Ninja."

"You could talk this whole time?" 

"Hai." 

"Should... I start calling you Franco?"

"No, Dudikoff is fine." 

Majestic 13: Operation Wrong Turn

 The morning was silent save for the lapping of water against the bow of the boat and the creak of the wooden oars as Hank guided them across the river. Even the insects were still and quiet. A family of campers had gone missing on this isolated spit of land, and Majestic suspected the machinations of FORCE behind it. 

The Lieutenant reviewed the mission briefing on the tablet.

"Initial satellite imagery suggests we're up against a 'Poisoned Lasher' today," he said quietly. "Big toad-looking thing that'll grab you with its tongue and retreat someplace quiet to eat you. We're short Maria today, so we need to really be on our A-game if we want to gig this frog."

The tiny drone in Becky's hands whirred to life, lifting off gently and bobbing as if politely acknowledging the Lieutenant's statement.

"I think with this little baby we'll be just fine," Becky said, allowing herself a smile. "A little extra firepower never hurt."

"We're here," Hank said, even as the Lieutenant and Sarah-Jane stood to drag the boat on to shore.

*** 

 The Lieutenant prodded the tattered remains of the campsite with the barrel of his rifle.

"Something's not right here," he muttered. "There's no mucus. Dossier says the Poisoned Lasher's handiwork is immediately recognizable by the quantity of mucus it produces."

"Boss...?" Becky hazarded as a hissing chitter echoed from the nearby woods.

 "Shit!" The Lieutenant barked. "That's not a Lasher! We were given bad intel! Spread out!"

 With a shriek, the Warping Crawler shimmered out of existence, rematerializing right on top of the Lieutenant. He fired blindly into its abdomen and took off running. 

 "I'm on it," Hank barked, moving into position and squeezing the trigger on his M249 SAW, not worrying about trying to stabilize the heavy gun. Ichor spurted as round after round punctured the creature's exoskeleton. 

"Alright little fella," Becky cooed to the drone even as she made a mad dash north towards the woods. "Show us what you've got."

The remote in her hands chirped as the drone locked on to the monster. With a smile she pressed the "fire" button. The targeting drone swooped out of the way as its larger cousin arrived, dropping an incendiary munitions bundle down the Crawler's back before returning to its launch pad.

 Snarling in pain and fury, the Crawler dematerialized, reappearing between the Lieutenant and Hank - close enough to drive a pointed claw at each of them. Hank rolled out of the way but the razor-edged limb sank into the Lieutenant's shoulder.

 Sitting calmly, almost meditatively atop the riverside billboard, Sarah-Jane lined up her shot; the sniper bullet tore a hole through the creature's elongated, flanged skull, causing it to squeal and flail. The monster teleported away, carrying the Lieutenant with it; rematerializing atop a nearby ridge, it began to gnaw on him. As he tried to wriggle out of its grip, it speared him with another spiky limb, keeping him pinned. He managed to fire into the creature's belly, but couldn't escape.

 Hank fired a burst into the creature's back and took off running towards the dilapidated cabin. From the woods, Becky smiled and thumbed a request into the burner phone. A second drone streaked across the sky with a fiery payload.

 Chemical fire sprayed across the monster's back, its bulk shielding the restrained Lieutenant from burns. The creature squealed and teleported again. 

[The first Drone Strike was courtesy the team's new "Drone Control Pod" addition to their base, the second was their usual 1/mission "Call For Aid."]

Reappearing at the river's edge, the monster continued to try and stuff the Lieutenant into its bladed mandibles. 

"Oh no you don't," Sarah-Jane said flatly, squeezing the trigger and sending another round deep into the monster's chest cavity. Oozing ichor, the creature teleported again, reappearing in a nearby copse of trees. The variety of bullet-holes in the monster's body were actively spilling steaming fluids as the creature entered Extremis. Enraged and in agony, it finally managed to cram the Lieutenant down its gullet before teleporting again and seizing Becky.

 The Crawler tried to teleport away with her to consume, but the exertion was too much for its overtaxed systems. It rematerialized atop the bluff overlooking the river, sank its fangs into Becky and promptly collapsed, tumbling over the cliff into the swirling water below.

 ***

Wow, this game took me by surprise today. The monster died at the top of turn 3. That has never happened for me before. I know there's extra XP given if you accomplish it, but I didn't know it was really doable. Having the second drone strike made a huge difference, plus Sarah-Jane scored a critical hit both times she activated. Because the Crawler is classed as a "Monstrosity," It activates again whenever it's hit with a critical hit. So both hits caused it to take an extra action and technically resulted in the Lieutenant getting eaten, but the second hit also caused it to take bonus Extremis damage. 

Rolling into the post-game...

The Lieutenant died of his injuries. After 13 missions, the old sunovagun bit the big one. Fortunately, Majestic was able to decant a fresh clone of him, so he'll be back for the next game, all shiny and scrubbed-pink looking. 

Hank had enough XP banked to raise both Acuity and Fortitude, while Sarah-Jane and Becky each raised their Combat ability. The Lieutenant, being a fresh clone, did not garner any XP. 

The team's requisition for a prosthetic arm for Maria has finally gone through and been approved! And additionally...

***

The Lieutenant - the new Lieutenant, he supposed - walked towards the Last Liner's hideout, his stride a little firmer than it had been in the past few months. Clonal vigor; it would wear off in a day or two, the scientists said, but for now he'd enjoy it. He pushed open the door.

"Hey, it's the Lieutenant!" Maria cheered, a beer in each hand. "Or is your rank now '2nd Lieutenant'?"

Hank groaned, and Maria shook her head. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay! I'm allowed to make clone jokes!" 

"Yeah, but can you make good ones?" Hank replied as he tossed a beer to the Lieutenant. "How's it feel to have a first beer all over again, boss?"

Even Sarah-Jane, normally so taciturn, had to laugh. The Lieutenant bit the cap off the bottle and raised it in toast. Everyone raised theirs as well. 

"The higher-ups are real happy with us right now," he said. "Let's keep that momentum going, and keep kicking alien ass, all right?" 

The team cheered. 

"In fact," the Lieutenant continued, "I sweet-talked them into a little present for the team. Hank, son, your arms getting tired lugging that SAW around?"

"What you got, some ultralight Retech'd version?" Hank asked, leaning forward excitedly. 

"Step outside and see," the Lieutenant said, gesturing out the door. An unmarked truck was backing up towards the hideout. The Lieutenant stepped up and pulled open the loading doors.

"Wow," Becky said, staring into the dimly-lit interior. 

"What is that?" Maria asked, eyes gleaming in excitement.

"It's beautiful," Hank added.

"Brand new, top of the line powered hardsuit," The Lieutenant said. "Complete with attachment point for anything up to and including light artillery. Slip this bad boy on like a set of long johns and it'll carry your gun for you, son."

"I GET A MECH SUIT!?!" Hank exclaimed.  

Zombie RV, First Playthrough - "A Cabin in the Woods"

 It has been a hell of a week here at Casa De Adcock, with an emergency trip to the veterinary hospital on Tuesday for my cat Poppy overwhelming my brain and my ability to do anything painting- or game-related for several days. Poppy is home and doing well and it's time to burn off some of this nervous energy with a game. 

Time to take Zombie RV for a test-spin. I used Mike Demana's unofficial campaign supplement to give my survivors a bit more differentiation as well. Recognizing that I had everything exactly called for, terrain-wise, I laid things out for the second scenario in the rulebook, "Cabin in the Woods." Our survivors are paying a visit to Uncle Bob's survivalist cabin in the woods to see how he's holding up and maybe see if he's got some spare gear for them.

Left to Right: Mark, Hector (in back, with rifle), Dave, and Sandra

 There were four search tokens (the cabin itself, the port-a-john, the broken-down car and the boat) and two zombie spawn points, in the northwest and southeast corners. Our crew cautiously fanned out, no zombies in sight, and began to make their approach, with Dave reaching the broken-down car, though not having time to search it before the zombies began to wander in.

 Dave pulled an old bug-out bag from the car and started sneaking towards the boat to see if there was anything to find there. Mark opened the door to the port-a-john and closed it just as quick. "What died in there?" He asked. 

 Things started to go to hell when Hector kicked in the cabin's door, finding four zombies milling around - including Uncle Bob.

 The four zombies converged, but managed to do little more than get in each other's way, with Hector managing to wriggle out of any sort of meaningful injury from this encounter. Instead, he managed to drive his knife deep into Uncle Bob's forehead and make a run for it.

 Mark started swinging at the zombies shambling his way, while Dave came up empty with the rowboat.

 As the zombies began to shamble out of the cabin in pursuit of Hector, Sandra started shooting them as they appeared in the doorway. 

 Unfortunately, as more and more zombies converged on the scene, she was overwhelmed.

 Dave fired a shotgun blast into a cluster of zombies, as Hector signaled for the survivors to retreat towards the RV. He looked glumly at the cabin; he'd seen the floor safe but the zombie swarm was swelling by the minute and he didn't expect they'd survive opening it. Meanwhile, Sandra rose as a Nasty Zombie and quickly shambled towards him. 

 Dave ducked and rolled into the cabin, opening the safe and pulling another bug-out bag from inside. With both bags over his shoulders he stepped out on to the porch. There were a LOT of zombies between him and the RV.

 The RV engine roared to life. Mark was behind the wheel with Hector riding "shotgun." The mechanic floored it, splattering five zombies including the risen Sandra beneath its wheels, stopping in front of the cabin long enough for Dave to jump in before high-tailing it out of there.

 

***

 My big takeaway from this game is I need to get more zombies painted. I had every painted zombie I've got on the table towards the end and had to stop rolling for reinforcements because I had nothing left to reinforce with! 

It's a game that does exactly what it sets out to do - it's a beer and pretzels zombie apocalypse game, your crew rolls in, tries to find what they can before the zombies overwhelm them, and get out. With the rulebook being 10 pages (four of which are scenarios), there's plenty of room to customize as well; I 100% winged it on "running zombies down with the RV" at the end of the game there. I also fudged a bit on zombie movement - rules as written it seems if there isn't a survivor making noise within 9" the zombies just stand still, and that left a corridor that the survivors could move in without the zombies noticing them at all. On a 2'x2' board, I was fine letting the zombies hear any major noise on the table and moving in that direction. 

It played out fairly quickly - I think about an hour, maybe hour and a half at the most? - and I feel like I got the mechanics down fast. It definitely held some surprises for me - At the end of turn 1 I was feeling pretty confident, by turn 4 I was looking at 4-5 zombies shambling towards each survivor. 

Making a note here, before I forget, that rolling on the loot table, the survivors came up with Extra Ammo and food (Supplies), so while they're sad to lose Sandra, they can continue on their journey.  

Majestic 13: Operation Nightmare Fuel

 The final round of "debriefing" - interrogation, really - had barely concluded when the Lieutenant's burner phone chirped. He stared dumbfounded at the message.

"They've already got a mission lined up for us," he said incredulously. 

"Are you kidding me?" Becky whined. "I haven't even washed the antiseptic spray off me after the fourth round of 'checking me for alien implants' and they want me back in the field? My skincare regimen's totally shot!"

"What are they sending us out after?" Hank said quietly, an intense look in his eyes.

"Gzurn Shadow," the Lieutenant replied slowly. "Nasty bastards, nearly totally invisible at night. They'll blind you without even noticing you. Rumor has it these things'll eat an entire M13 squad and the only evidence it was ever there is that it leaves no trace of its presence behind."

He laughed hollowly. 

"They want us to collect tissue samples while we're at it."

"You know what this is?" Maria snapped. "This is workplace retaliation. Someone call HR."

"Whatever," Sarah-Jane said, her voice neutral and empty. "Let's kill the lousy thing and get it over with. Don't give the higher ups any more reasons to suspect us of anything."

*** 

The fireworks stand I got from Black Site Studio feels like a mandate to play a game on the July 4th weekend and have it on the table, so I set up my next game of Majestic 13. Fittingly, I rolled up a monster that looked challenging and a fairly nasty result on the mission bureaucracy table - "Amongst the Enemy," which meant the monster would be deploying after my team and within 6" of two of them. And to top it all off, I got a FUBAR result at the beginning of the first turn - "Civilians" were on the table! 

 

The Gzurn Shadow slithered out of the darkness beneath the billboard, and leapt across the alley to tackle Maria, its dark tentacles flailing and striking her blind. Striking again for good measure, it vanished into the night, reappearing in an alley across the street.

 Hank leapt across the divide from the shoe store to the TeeVee Shak, and sprayed the alley with gunfire - and missed! Maria struggled and failed to clear her blindness, feeling her way down the ladder from the roof of the pizza place and towards the street. Becky and Sarah-Jane both fired on the Shadow with minimal success. 

 With a howl, the Shadow hurled itself up on to the TeeVee Shak roof, engulfing Hank in its tentacles and blinding him.

 The Lieutenant closed in, taking a running leap from the roof of the OTB parlor on to a passing truck, before firing at the creature and missing; it retaliated with an area of effect ability, forcing the entire team to save versus blindness and damage, with the Lieutenant failing. 

 So right at this moment, three out of five agents are blind...

Maria managed to shake hers off, and raced down the street in the direction the creature was heading; Becky followed the monster as it squirted on to the roof of the Urgent Care. 

 It wasn't long, however, before the creature was on the move again. While the Lieutenant couldn't shake his blindness, Hank did and ran towards the creature's latest hiding place.

 The Shadow came boiling out at him, hitting him and unleashing its area of affect ability, blinding him and Maria.

 And the creature was off again.

 It was quickly making a nuisance of itself, as the Lieutenant continued to struggle to clear his vision. Hank and Maria cleared theirs, but couldn't find the creature.

"We're here tonight with a visiting alien monster..."

"Hey girl, you see something tall and twice as ugly as shit run by here?"

The team began to have a lot of trouble putting eyes on the Shadow, with it disappearing between buildings and blending into the shadows. Once spotted, it let loose with its area of effect, blinding Becky as she collected a tissue sample from the fireworks stand.

 The team managed to put enough hurt on it, chipping away bit by bit, that the Shadow went into Extremis, becoming far more aggressive and dangerous - and putting Maria and Hank out of action!

 At the end of the fifth turn, it all came down to Sarah-Jane. As long as she successfully hit the creature with her sniper rifle and didn't roll minimum damage, she'd kill the Shadow. 

 

She lined up the shot, and... 

 

Oh, no. The Gzurn Shadow limped off to menace another day as the Last Liners withdrew to salvage what little OPSEC they could.  

***

"Oh dear, Lieutenant, this is disappointing. But perhaps we allowed ourselves to get our hopes up too far over your past successes? After all, one's luck does run out, sooner or later, doesn't it?" The blond man pursed his lips and tapped his pen against the blotter on his desk.

"We're lucky we got off as easy as we did," the Lieutenant growled. "By all rights that should have been a meat-grinder. The damned monster was in our DZ waiting for us!"

"Yes, it is... interesting, isn't it, that you managed to escape with so little lasting harm done to your team? Other teams have, as you know, disappeared entirely when confronted with a Gzurn Shadow. And yet your team, save for Maria, escaped with only superficial injuries. Some might find that fact suspicious, Lieutenant."

"Where is Maria?" The Lieutenant demanded brusquely. 

"There were some unusual readings on her EEG. She's being held for further study for the time being; once we clear up those little discrepancies on the print-out she'll be free to go."

*** 

Well, that could have gone better, though to be fair when I saw the "Amongst the Enemy" bureaucracy result I was expecting much worse! Did I kill the monster? No. Did I complete the secondary objective? Also no. Rolling a "1" on the last shot of the game, which could have made all the difference, smarts some, for sure. 

Hank recovered from his injuries without issue, while Maria has a "Questionable Injury" and is going to miss the next game.  

Only the Lieutenant, Sarah-Jane and Becky had enough XP, between what they'd banked previously and what they earned this game, to trade in for ability score increases. The Lieutenant boosted Dexterity again, while Sarah-Jane and Becky raised their Acuity by one. 

I tried again to requisition a targeting HUD and got denied, and tried to requisition power armor for Hank now that I've got access to Phase 2 gear, and that also got denied. But I do have a drone control pod for the base now, which gives me opportunities to spot and call in drone strikes on monsters that I don't have direct LOS to, which is nice.  

So what's next for the Last Liners? Next mission's taking them out into the wilderness again...