[5150] Gaea's Worst Versus the Greys
I've talked about GM-less role-playing games. I've gone on at length about GM-full games. I've done a good chunk of character generation. I've even brought Christmas to the battlefield.
But now we go one step beyond.
We're going to actually play a few rounds of combat at the tip of the spear! Well, okay, maybe that sensitive bit just down from the tip, the bulbous head of the spear. Our enemy, the hideous Hishen, war-mongering bastards out for slaves and suffering to grow their mighty star empire upon.
The Setup
Introduction
Anyone can be the strapping big-balled heroes that fights the good fight and leaves when the getting is good, girl in tow. But what about the average schlub who signed up with the Troopers because they had some slots and driving tanks looks cool.
He has to fit in somewhere.
That "somewhere" is the Planetary Defense Force for the planet designated with a pile of numbers and letters, but which mainly gets called "Steinler" when the locals bitch about it. It's a special place, covered in mud, drenched in booze, and the kind of place more sensible Gaea Prime commanders know to stay clear of.
Commander Daimler, though -- he was never one for common sense. Or staying sober. Or staying out of the brothel. Or command.
On this particular occasion, accompanied by his bully-boys of 1st Platoon, Daimler fell into a fight with the wrong guys when he stiffed a pimp for the use of his woman. Many things can be allowed, but not cutting into a pimp's edge. Sadly, the whore in question was a casualty in the assault, too, but good news!
You're up on the promotion list!
Congratulations, you've just been promoted to platoon leader of Charlie Company, first platoon – C-1/1, part of the armored support force for the largely conscript army which Gaea Prime has stationed on Steinler to "keep the peace."
Considering that your particular regiment is locally known as "Gaea's Worst," it's probably a good thing that this crappy backwater is a long way from the front lines.
Just because you're a long way from the front lines doesn't keep you off the front lines, however. A deep-strike expeditionary force of Hishen has moved into the area on an extremely pressured "slave recruitment" drive to try and fuel those front lines you're nowhere near.
Needless to say, this is going to ruin your day.
Chargen
Turn with me now to page 3 in 5150: Hammer & Anvil, and we'll start going through putting together the poor bastards who'll be facing the Hishen threat this fine day.
Spectacular Craptacular
Every game starts with a vehicle and every vehicle has a crew. We'll be commanding a recon platoon of Thunder 1B treaded light tanks going out for a simple reconnaissance patrol and probably running into at least one unpleasant thing.
Each vehicle has a Tank Commander, Driver, Gunner, and Loader -- though since the GP vehicles are armed with beam cannons instead of projectile guns, the Loader spends his time manning the LMG and cross-training to take over in case of any losses.
Since TDR-01 ("Spectacular Craptacular") is our "hero tank," the one that the notional "we" are riding in and which we care about seeing cool things happen to, we'll detail her crew and give the TC Star Power, mechanics that effectively let us control him more directly with less influence from being crappy PDF guys.
The only Star in the ride will be the Tank Commander, LT Henri Lloyd, late of C-2/1, and generally not happy with the state of affairs.
Because Henri is a Star, he starts with a star power of 5d6 and can use that SP to ignore damage that would normally disable him, keep anyone with a lower Reputation from actually being able to kill him, and if both of those things fail – he can cheat death and declare that he is removed from the table but immediately loses a point of Reputation. He also gains Free Will, which for our purposes just means that he can choose his response on any of the Vehicle Reaction Tests.
The rest of the guys in Spectacular Craptacular? Just Grunts, which means that their reactions are run by the system. This could end poorly.
Henri has a Rap of 5 because he's our man, which gives him a pretty solid advantage, thankfully. We'll roll for the Reputations of the rest of the crew of 01.
Gunner SGT Roger Moorish gets a 5 on the d6, modified by -1 for being in the PDF and cross-referenced to the table on p47, he has a Rep of 4.
Driver CPL Donny Wight rolls a fat 6, modified down to a 5, and still ends up with a Rep 5. Awesomely impressive.
Loader Ace Wiggo rolls a 3, modified to a 2, so ends up being Rep 4.
That could have been much worse.
Now we need to select Attributes, which are little custom bits about the character which allows them to do their job better or forces them to do their job worse. Luckily, at least for the Star we only randomly roll one Attribute and get to pick the other one. For the rest of the crew, being Grunts, they just get one randomly assigned.
Life is hard when you're not the star of the show.
Let's start with Henri.
We roll 3,1 and check what 4 is on the Attributes Table:
Agile: Counts Rep at one level higher when taking the Loading Test.
You wouldn't think it, but that's actually a pretty good trait to have. What do you do when your Loader is out of commission and you need to keep things moving? You want to be good at taking that Loading Test.
Of course, you want to be in a vehicle that actually requires a loader to load the main gun, but no one wants to be in a Thunder 1B forever!
Because Henri is the Tank Commander, we'll pick an Attribute which will do some good.
Quick Reflexes: Counts Rep at one level higher when taking the Vehicle In Sight Test.
This is how you keep your crew out of harm's way and the enemy in harm's way as often as you can. The In Sight Test is one of the big drivers of this game system, so you're going to see that it is very, very important.
The rest of the crew runs thus:
- Donny Wight gets a 4,5 for 9:
Marksman: Counts Rep at one level higher when firing Main Gun, Machine Gun, or Grenade Launcher.
Pity he's not the Gunner, right?
- Roger Moorish pulls a 6,4 for 10:
Quick Reflexes: Counts Rep at one level higher when taking the Vehicle In Sight Test.
That's actually handy in case the TC goes out at an inopportune time.
- Ace Wiggom, private, newbie, and loader, gets 9,1 -- and this is the third 10 in a row I rolled for him alone, so he too gets Quick Reflexes. It's like the dice want a tank full of potential future TCs.
The Other Guys
That leaves us two more tanks in the platoon, but rather than detail their crews, we'll just fill them with Generic Guys and roll for their overall Reputation. It'll be faster, the numbers will still work out, and if something amazing happens later and one of them turns out to be staffed by heroes, we'll go back and add Attributes and names.
TDR-02 "Chicken Scratch" has an overall REP of 4.
TDR-03 "Drop That Baby!" has an overall REP of 3, and that's going to be ugly when stuff starts rolling downhill.
Revving the Engine
And that's it for character generation and prep. The enemy forces will be chosen at random from the mission tables so we could go ahead and pre-load those in actual play, but because you don't have to watch me generate this stuff up, there's no real reason to. We have a map already that we can play on, we have a situation ...
I think it's time to get out there and get bloody.
Flip to page 29 in 5150: Hammer & Anvil and look at Mission 1.0 Trip Wire. We're going to be using that for our guide here.
Turn-By-Turn
Deployment
A quick note about the map.
I happened to have this terrain still set up from one of my previous games, running After the Horsemen, but it should work perfectly well for our purposes here. In fact, because line of sight is broken by several things, including hills and thick trees, this may be better than the map which is included with Trip Wire, which I find to be a bit open.
Just imagine that there is a 3 x 3 grid imposed over the map, numbered sections 1 through 9, and you're absolutely golden.
This is our map:
I really like 15 mm gaming, so this map is scaled appropriately to that – except for one thing. Pretty much the entirety of the THW wargaming line suggests that your battle maps be 3' x 3' in size. I always end up re-translating that into centimeters, turning it into 90 cm x 90 cm. This particular map, for whatever reason I had in mind when I originally set it up, is about 60 units by 60 units – which might feel a little weird. No matter, we'll go with that and things will be just fine.
The tokens are roughly 1 cm x 1 cm to give you a sense of scale.
The green elevation lines indicate a height at least equal to one vehicle, so the hills in the middle actually break line of sight fairly well.
Because driving straight through the trees requires a Driver Test, there may be some legitimate concern about the best way to approach this problem.
We come in from the south edge of the board, sections 7, 8, and 9. We can roll up anywhere along that edge within a couple inches.
I decide that our best bet is to come in to the south-southwest, using the middle island Hill to block line of sight to most of the board until we get a better handle on things. Henri anchors the southern edge as Chicken Scratch and Baby push a little deeper, planning to move into the area between the hills for cover, just in case.As long as we stay within four units of each other, we can all activate together at Henri's REP of 5. This should work out okay.
PEF Placement
Here's where it starts getting dangerous. Three enemy PEFs get placed on the map randomly. We roll 3d6 and place one PEF in each section, preferably in a location which does not have line of sight from any of our units.
Potential Enemy Forces markers can be very, very bad news for everybody. You don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. It could be a lightweight APC or it could be a heavy duty tank destroyer.
Let's find out.
Two in section 3, and one in section 2. This could go very, very badly because two PEFs in a single section will probably resolve at or about the same time, potentially doubling the number of elements that will be taking fire from.
Regardless, let's get those put out on the table and see what it looks like.
The two PEFs in section 2 are out of line of sight of our forces, blocked either by the hill or by more than one unit of woods between them and us. Likewise, the PEF in section 3 is blocked by hilly terrain. This may give us a chance – but not much of one.
Mission Statement
Our job is "easy." Spend at least one turn of activation within 6 units of the edge of the table in sections 1, 2, and 3. That means that we have to hang out at the far side of the map in an ongoing way in order to complete the mission.
Looking at the disposition of the PEFs, it's fairly obvious that we'll probably either be destroyed by or destroy the enemy before we can actually accomplish the straightforward mission objectives.
This is a recon mission, but it's one that could turn ugly really quickly. By some measures, it's already turned quite ugly.
Turn #1
At the start of every turn, each side rolls and Activation Die. We are going to use the red die here because I never get tired of being REDFOR and the Hishen will be represented by the blue die.
(If you're wondering what kind of dice these are, they are Ako dice
Activation
After rolling, Activation comes up 4 for us and 1 for the Hishen. Since only groups with a Leader whose REP is equal to or higher than the activation die are allowed to activate, and all PEFs are assumed to have a REP of 4, the Hishen can activate their PEFs this turn. Likewise, since our only group has a Leader with an REP of 5, which is higher than our roll of 4, we can also activate.
We rolled higher, so the planetary defense force will move first.
Our Move
We activate and consider our options.
Our Thunders move 18 units in clear terrain, which is where we're at. That's plenty of movement to bring us up to the near side of the southern hill, which gives us excellent cover and concealment for at least another turn, and if we really want to we can push our way up into the trees at the hill crest and make use of some good hold down positions there if we are willing to risk getting stuck in the trees.
I think that's a pretty good risk and Henri believes that's a pretty good risk, so we push up at normal movement speed to the foot of that hill just to the crest. We'll take the chance of blowing a Driving Test along the way in order to resolve that Eastern PEF early while the other two can't actually see us.
We also need to make Driving Tests for going into the woods with tanks. This will count as a Running Over Driver Test with appropriate modifiers.
That table actually lives on page 12 as well as the collection in the back of the book.
Each of our Thunders has a forward armor rating of 9, and the trees have a defensive rating of – 0. Even for our worst driver who has an REP of 3, that gives us a modified target of 12 to roll under on a d6.
Not even I can roll that badly.
(To actually fail a Run Over Test into trees, you would have to be the worst possible driver (REP 3) driving a vehicle with 3 or less frontal armor. I suppose you could get hung up if you were driving a light APC or transport vehicle, but that's all. If we were driving into buildings, it would be a very different matter.)
Being sensible sorts, and knowing that the In Sight Test triggers immediately upon line of sight being established – though allowing you an extra two units of movement before resolution truly begins – we stop the tanks at the top of the hill and see what that Eastern PEF really is.
We roll 1d6 on the PEF Resolution Table for the mission and get the worst possible result – a 6.
"Enemy force equal to your force +3."
I don't think anybody is coming home today.
Now that we've resolved it, let's find out what's in that enemy group. There's 3 of us so there's 6 of them.
We roll 2d6 6 times and come up with the following:
9, 9, 9, 9, 6, 3
RNGesus hates us.
That's 4x HE 3 Medium Tanks, 1x HE 6 Heavy Tank, and -- another HE 6 Heavy Tank.
Basically, it may be the worst possible outcome for us on the first round of engagement, facing at least two platoons of Hishen armor in a terrible location.
Sometimes you eat the bear…
Now I need to go dig around and pull out a whole bunch of Hishen tokens. This might take a minute.
Right, now that we know what they are, we need to know how good they are.
If you're in a hurry, or if you are working with an even larger force (God help you) you can just safely assume that everything on the table against you is REP 4, go on with your game, and have a great time. I'm going to roll to see what the rep of each of these vehicles is on the Hishen crew tables, but if I really felt like being down to the man I could certainly roll individually for each of the four crew members in each of these vehicles.
I'm going to be honest with you, I don't feel that motivated.
Let me work out how things are going here.
As long as the units that are deployed as a result of resolving the PEF are within 4 inches of that center, things are laid out properly. I decided that the sensible way to do it was to make two platoons, each with two mediums and one heavy.
They have line of sight to our forces but are absolutely out in the open. We are at a stop in a tree line behind the crest of a hill, giving us both cover and concealment.
That might be the only saving grace that we have, and it might not last for long.
I've placed a cobalt d6 behind each of the Hishen units to mark what their REP is. The only thing that's working out in our favor here is that the Hishen don't really have good crew and several of these units are pretty terrible. Unfortunately for us, several of these units are better-than-average – and all of them have some pretty aggressive guns on them. In fact, the medium tanks all have dual mounted main guns.
At least they have to load theirs!
In Sight
Now – just for the sake of argument, I should point out that we could have used our 2 units of additional movement to back up down the hill out of the woods and out of line of sight, not triggering that In Sight Test because we broke line of sight in the process. But that enemy force would still be there, and worse – they would be coming at us.
We might as well try to get some kind of advantageous result as best we can.
The In Sight Test is generally pretty ugly.
Since we decided that the Hishen PEF represents two platoons, I'm going to go ahead and resolve them as two separate groups, with the platoon leader being at the HE 6 in each one. Since it's the platoon leader that makes the In Sight Test, we get a little bit of a break there. The trade-off is that there are two groups which will be making the test.
Henri has Quick Reflexes, which we absolutely need at this point. That gives him a total of 6 dice at base to throw in the In Sight Test. We didn't specify whether the vehicles involved were buttoned up or not on either side, but let's go ahead and assume that everybody involved is in fact buttoned up. (It would be just as valid to roll a d6 and just assume that 1-3 was buttoned up and 4-6 was open.)
Our forces are concealed, which is going to come into play right here because that takes a d6 from the enemy's check. That pushes them down to rolling only two die per group for their In Sight.
Right, let's throw some dice. 6d6 for the planetary defense force, 2d6 each for the attacking Hishen.
Damn.
We are looking for dice rolls of 1-3 which count as successes.
The planetary defense forces literally had every single die come up a success. The leftmost group of Hishen forces had one success, while the rightmost group of Hishen forces had no successes.
In the case of the In Sight Test, it doesn't matter how many successes you got but only who got the most successes. There is no question that the planetary defense forces got the jump on the Hishen in this particular engagement.
(On later reflection, because the PDF tanks were both concealed and the Hishen were buttoned up, the enemy forces should have really only been rolling 1d6 in that In Sight. Not that it makes a difference in this particular situation, not even nearly, but for future reference.)
Now that we know what's going on, we can move forward with the In Sight. There are a list of things that we could do, but the only thing that we need to do is open fire. All 3 tanks on the ridge have open line of sight to every single one of the Hishen forces, range is simply not an issue – though if we felt like being sticklers for the rules we might say that the clump of trees that run down the center of the ridgeline toward the Hishen block the line of sight across it, making Baby unable to fire on the rightmost group from their perspective and our other two tanks unable to fire on the leftmost group from their perspective.
Hell, let's say that.
Let's start this cavalcade of joy by noting that we will have a lot better luck opening up on the medium tanks than we will the heavy tanks. Therefore, Spectacular and Chicken Scratch will open up on the two mediums in the right group while Baby fires on the left most medium in the left group.
The gunner on Spectacular is REP 4, and going to the Gunnery Table, we see that the only applicable circumstance is that our forces definitely moved at over 12 units to get into position here. That takes our effective REP to 3.
If we throw 2d6 versus the Gunners modified REP, we get 5, 3 which translates to passing one success.
On the Gunnery Table, one pass gives us a list of things to check – the target is not in cover or hull down, but we are firing at frontal or rear armor so we have scored a glancing hit – so off to the Penetration Table we go with a -1 to APR.
The Armor Penetration Rating of our Thunder is 10, modified down to 9 for being a glancing hit. The frontal armor of the HE 3 is 8. Our target number is the APR minus the Armor Resistance which gives us a 1 as a target.
This might not be terribly effective.
We throw two dice and are looking for 1s.
We get 6, 2. No good – the round does not penetrate. We did not miss, however, so that tank does not fire back! That's good for us!
Chicken Scratch is up next, sporting a gunner who also has an REP of 4. Again, the only applicable circumstances that we moved over 12 units to get into the trees so we are firing at an effective REP of 3 again.
The dice turn up a 4, 3 – and again that is a single passing success.
Again, we go to the Penetration Table with a -1 to APR, just like before.
We are looking for 1s again – and this time we get one!
We have actually done some penetration damage. Now we need to roll a D6 to see what kind of effect we have. We get a 4 and that is…
Vehicle totally disabled! The crew abandons the vehicle and leaves the battlefield!
We are not dead yet!
Now it's Baby's turn.
Baby's gunner's REP is 3 – and this is not looking good. Modified for having moved more than 12 units, that takes the REP to 2, and things are now looking quite dicey.
2d6 come up 6, 3 – and that is a miss with no successes on a miss, the target might shoot back. First we need to figure out if they are undergunned.
The twin gun mount on the HE 3 is 7/7. The frontal armor on the Thunder is 9. As such, the HE 3 can't penetrate that frontal armor on our light tanks and counts as undergunned. There is a (1-2) chance of that tank making a Hands of Fate shot, hoping for a miracle where they hit a weak point – but they roll a 5, so they totally won't.
Instead they will Duck Back which would involve moving to the nearest cover or concealment within 12 units – which there really isn't any of. The closest thing that they can do is to break line of sight by hiding behind one of the other tanks, probably the heavy tank behind him.
Things are starting to look up!
Now that the In Sight is over, we need to work out what Reaction Tests the Hishen need to pull off as a result of our actions.
Every Hishen within 4 units of the destroyed vehicle has to take the Friend Brewed Up Test to see how they feel about that. That table is back in page 46, broken down by available faction – because different groups respond in different ways.
Amusingly, the only Hishen tank not in 4 units of the destroyed one is the tank that was so terrified it hid behind its big brother. If that's not irony…
So we'll start running the checks from the medium tank in the upper left and work our way around.
Unfortunately for all of these guys, their platoon leaders are terrible, and they'll be rolling checks against that platoon leader's REP of 3, which is actually worse than some of these tanks would do on their own.
First check results in a 4, 1, which is one success. For the Hishen that will suffice to allow them to carry on with no effect. In fact, looking at this table, the only way to have any other effect would be to pass no dice. That will make the rest of these checks much faster.
The second tank gets a 5, 1 and that's good enough for no effect.
The third tank gets 3, 2 which is carry on.
The fourth tank gets 3, 2 and carries on.
I'm making a note here – huge success for the morale of the grays.
Of course, now the Hishen get to shoot.
Hishen Move
This is the state of affairs after the PDF pulled up into the tree line on a ridge and opened up on a much larger, better armed group of Hishen tanks. One destroyed, one in active Duck Back hiding behind its big brother.
Of course…
… There are two more unidentified enemy forces on the field and neither of them has moved.
Since the Hishen rolled a 1 in Activation, they can move all of their groups, but groups activate in the order of highest to lowest REP. The remains of the two Hishen platoons on the field are both led by leaders with an REP of 3, and the unresolved PEFs are assumed to have REPs of 4.
The PEFs move first.
Lucky for us, that takes us back to page 25 and we just make a 2d6 test against the REP of 4. Since we move PEFs from the most distant one from player forces to the nearest, we know which one needs to move.
The dice come up 4, 5 which means we have one pass and that PEF moves 4 units directly towards the player, ending in cover if possible – which is totally possible given the amount of woodland going on here.
The second PEF gets a die role of 3, 1, which means it has passed 2 dice and will move 8 units toward player forces, ending up in cover if possible. Because that hill still blocks line of sight, nothing much has to be done there.
Now we have the two Hishen platoons – or the remains of them.
We'll start with the Hishen platoon with the member and Duck Back because he gets a chance to make a recovery test in order to get himself back together. Unfortunately for him, his Leader is the guy he's hiding behind who is even less competent than he is.
That gives us 2d6 against a target of 3, while the dice give us 6, 4. That is passing nothing, and as a result that tank hauls ass off the battlefield. He's had enough.
One more medium tank gone!
Now for the NP Enemy Movement Table, making a check against a target number of 3 for the REP of their leader. This is a patrol mission, so we will use the appropriate section once we resolve.
The dice come up 4, 3 which is one pass, and it tells us that if they are in cover and in range they'll fire, otherwise they'll move it half maximum speed down the road or over open terrain towards us. It's a medium and heavy, so we'll use the much slower speed of the heavy in the open which means they're going to move 6 units toward our forces.
The second group is in an equally crappy position, completely exposed on the top of the hill and without any sort of tree concealment nearby. The dice come up 6, 2 for them and they make exactly the same decision with exactly the same distance, 6 units.
End Turn
At the end of the first turn, here's our disposition. Our tanks are still hiding in the trees behind the crest of that hill, but they've acquitted themselves well – taking out one tank with direct fire and driving another from the table with a glancing shot.
However, the enemy is not dissuaded and despite losing to medium tanks, the heavy force that we have observed is moving toward our position inexorably. On top of that, sensor contacts put two additional forces of unknown composition or size directly north of us – if they come over that hill at the wrong angle, we may find ourselves without the cover of the hillside.
We have the advantage of better trained and motivated soldiers, but the grays are no friends of ours and they tend to enjoy showing up to the party with more than just plus one.
The next turn is going to hinge on what those heavy tanks into to our much lighter vehicles.
Clean Up
I think that's enough for me at the moment. Making these sort of gameplay reports is a lot more work than they look. Even when you cut a few corners and make use of all the tools at your disposal, it is really hard to play these things out in a way that truly conveys how intense the game feels.
Hopefully some of that came across in the writing, and I'm really fascinated to find out exactly what happens next turn to Henri and the rest of Gaea's Worst. Are they going to get ripped apart by the larger number of guns coming down the way? Is Drop That Baby going to be such a hero, despite the lack of solid training, that we are going to be forced to actually create their crew? Is one of the Hishen going to perform such that we feel the need to make them a special character so that they recur on a regular basis?
I frankly have no idea.
I do hope that you are interested in following me along the way as we find out what happens to this motley crew of misbegotten losers. Who knows, maybe they can win the whole war by themselves?
(I wouldn't bet on it.)
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the IPFS.Pictures project for rolling in at the right time for me to use your service as a repository.
Ed from Two-Hour Wargames as usual for building great games across the board.
The Operation BSU krewe for not having lost their freakin' minds yet.
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