Thursday, February 5, 2015

Battle in the Orchard

Here we are for Week 1 of the Wasteland Raiders campaign. For the first game I rolled the "Battle in the Orchard" scenario.


The wasteland raiders are scouting mutant territory when they find a patch of healthy trees full of fruit. The bad news: some mutants are guarding the area, leading to a battle.

The mutant party consists of Mask [Q4+ C3, mind block, hero, radiation antidote], Goro [Q3+ C3 leader, fear of fire, hth specialist, powered sword], Patch [Q4+ C3 telekinetic shield, sniper, crossbow], Snake [Q4+ C3 energy adaptation, sharpshooter] and Lizzard [Q4+ C4 clinging, ambusher, savage, herbicide].


Here is a picture of the setup. Green circles are trees, green patches are bushes that block line of sight but do not hamper movement significantly. The raiders split into two pairs, while the mutants occupied the center of the table. Note that Lizzard starts concealed in a bush. This is a simple battle, in which the goal is to defeat the other warband by killing them or making them flee. [Note: on the following paragraphs, what I called a "turn" is actually a pair of turns, taken by each warband.]



On the first turn, Jennifer approached Mask and fired an aimed shot at him but the bullet only hit his worn coat. Steve moved around the bushes to get a good view of Goro, and Kate, confident as ever, charged towards the mutants. Goro, noticing Kate's recklessness, charged her and cut her in half with his powered sword. Mask and Snake surrounded Jennifer, while Lizzard kept hiding in the bushes.


With a swift jump and roll, Jennifer moved away from the mutants and fired at Snake, who ran for cover. Claude rushed towards Goro, surprising him as he jumped from the bushes. The clash of powered swords sent sparks flying everywhere, and Claude stepped back. Steve also fired at Goro, causing him to run for cover towards the nearest tree. Lizzard decided to leave the bushes and run towards the fight. Goro locked swords against Claude, Mask went after Jennifer and Patch fired its crossbow at Steve, but missed.


Claude knocked down Goro, while Jennifer moved away from Mask. Then it was Goro's turn to stand up and knock down Claude. Mask reached Jennifer and stabbed her in the guts. Her screams distracted Claude and he was killed by Goro [due to a failed morale roll]. Now only Steve remained.


On the following turn, Steve ran away from the board, ending the game with defeat.

Conclusion
A terrible defeat, nearly wiping the original party in the first game! I will get replacements for the next game, but no new equipment or food...

The rolled mutants were not very strong overall, except for their leader. I decided to focus on him to cause morale checks but he was just too strong with the Hand to Hand Specialist ability and a powered sword. If I had sticked to online RPG strategy, i.e. kill minions before fighting the boss, things might have gone differently.

I used a random system to determine which character would act, for both sides. So for instance, when it was my turn, I would roll a die to see which character to activate (repeated numbers were re-rolled.) This increased the challenge for me and avoided having to choose activation order for the "enemy." I also used Dogui's system for enemy activations. These mechanisms were very helpful to avoid getting unfair advantages against the "enemy" warband.

That's all for now, there are four more scenarios to go in this campaign.

2 comments:

Weasel said...

Looks like a fun game but a pretty rough time for the heroes :-)

Ricardo Nakamura said...

Thanks for the comment! Yeah, the game went well mechanics-wise, not so well for the adventurers!