[5150] Steinler Follies (Pt II of "Gaea's Worst Versus the Greys")

Or How in the World Are We Going to Get Out Of This One?

The Recap

When last we met our intrepid band of fools and miscreants, they were in a bit of a pickle. Despite having taken out two of the Hishen slaver force, two heavy tanks and two medium were bearing down on their position from the Northeast. Our boys were hunkered down behind a hill in the woods, making the best use of cover that they could, but that position is threatened by the approach of unknown forces from the north.

Anything could happen and anything probably will, as 5150: Gaea's Worst continues!

---

"Bloody fuck," muttered Henri as he lowered the light amplification goggles. "This is going to be murder."

"That's great!"

The TC applied boot-to-head for the driver. Donny made his usual puzzled-wounded-child noise. "Ow."

"Our murder, you moron."

Ace piped up from the rear deck. "Well, if those fuckin' greybacks want to eat some more coherent light we've got plenty." The hatches were closed again after a quick peek at the batteries. Nothing'd been jostled during the relatively calm advance into the trees.

Chicken Scratch's TC crackled from the radio through the jamming.

"Targets moving north through the trees. This is going to get ugly."

Henri's lips were taut as he said, "Baby. Kick it."

Turn-By-Turn

Turn #2

Activation

Now that we've completed turn one, we head back to the top and work on Activation. Again, we throw the activation nice where the redwood is ours and the blue one represents the Hishen forces.

This is a little bit more interesting that last time.

The Hishen have managed to roll 5 on Activation, which would normally make them go first – except that you can only activate groups led by a leader with REP equal to or higher than the activation die.

Both of the resolved tank platoons have a leader of REP 3 and the PEFs have a default REP of 4.

The Hishen can't activate at all this turn. But that doesn't mean that their tanks are doing nothing. Page 13 talks about "Moving When Not Active" which applies to vehicles which don't activate when their side becomes active. Since none of the four tanks on the Hishen side of the board could activate, nor were they declared to be not moving, they keep rolling forward.

Hishen Move

Last turn all of them moved 6 units forward toward our happy heroes, so that's what happens right now.

That puts them just a little bit further forward, still in the clear, and a prime target. The PEFs remain where they are, which is probably a good thing for our boys because getting hit in the side armor is no fun at all.

Our Move

With a solid 2 for Activation, it's no problem at all for us to bring our tanks online and get them moving.

But what to do with them?

We could back over the hill, keeping our armored fronts toward the oncoming forces. That would require a Run Over Driver Test against our rear armor, which could actually fail – and honestly we don't need to pull back at this point given the good luck with that so far. The PEFs are going to take at least another turn to get to a position where they can take action against us, even assuming that they activate next round, so things on that side are pretty safe.

I think we should hold position and prepare to open fire.

Because the enemy began the round in line of sight, there is no In Sight Test, not just our active firing.

(It occurs to me that last turn I completely forgot that our forces would have another round of firing available to them after the In Sight Test. We never finished with the rest of the PDF activation after the In Sight. That is a significant failure on my part and if I was at the game table with you, you would have absolutely every right to laugh at me uproariously. In fact, go ahead and do that now.

We could've had 3 more shots on those guys.)

Once again we are going to allocate our fire based on the rather dense piece of woods which splits the group, with Spectacular and Chicken Scratch firing on the Hishen heavy and medium respectively, and Baby opening up on the remaining medium on the left side of the group from our perspective.

We'll start with Spectacular, whose gunner is REP 4. There are no circumstantial modifiers because nothing moved more than 12 units and he's not a marksman, so it's a simple 2d6 looking for 4s or lower.

The dice come up 6, 3 and for the Gunnery Table a 6 is always a failure, so that's one pass.

The target is definitely not in cover or hull down but we are firing at frontal armor so we've managed to put a client on the front end. We take one off of our APR bringing it to 9 and go on over to the Penetration Table.

Roger makes his Test versus their frontal armor of 11 – which is very much not good for our boys because we are down to APR of only 9, recall. That means that we are technically undergunned – which technically entitles us to use the mechanics on page 19 for the Hands of Fate shot. Since we should have done that instead of going for a standard shot, we'll just read the same set of dice as if we had rolled them for this…

And realize that it would take snake eyes for us to actually make that happen. No such luck in hitting a vulnerable spot today.

In fact, it counts as a miss on the gunnery table – and that heavy tank, because it is not outgunned by us, fires back with its honking 13 APR cannon. -9 for our frontal armor, that means he's not going to have much trouble if he hits.

But he's rolling with target 3 because of his crappy quality.

Of course – what comes up?

There's those snake eyes we needed.

He has a big, ugly gun and he's going to be rolling looking for 4s on the Penetration Table.

2, 2 is the word of the dice. That's passing two dice.

Let me just cut-and-paste the results right out of the table:

VEHICLE EXPLODES; all inside or on are Obviously Dead.

Alas, Henri – we hardly knew ye.

But let's not forget that Henri is a Star! The other guys in the tank, well – they are chunky salsa, but Henri has a chance to get off the board relatively unscathed.

Remember back on page 3, when we were talking about Star Power? We have 6d6 of SP to call on.

1, 2, and 3 are successes. 4 just goes back into the pool and doesn't affect the damage. We had no 6s.

This is actually a pretty amazing roll. First we step the damage down from Obviously Dead to Out Of the Fight, then we step the Out Of the Fight down to Carry On, but Henri is still knocked down. And we had another success that could have eliminated a level of damage.

This is fantastic! Henri is effectively unscathed!

Well, his buddies are dead, his tank has exploded, and he is in a terrible fix without sufficient weaponry to defend himself against a multitude of tanks – but on the upside, the Hishen love to take slaves rather than kill people on the battlefield, so he's got that going for him!

I'm going to use a little brown pawn to represent Henri hiding, flat on his belly, behind that tree. He'll have to actually get up from being prone to do anything, but that's all right. He's still alive!

Since the Hishen fired their projectile gun, they have to immediately take a Loading Test, so let's get that out of the way.

REP 3 is going to make this a little challenging for them, but they've already been crazy lucky today. Let's see what happens next.

A 4, 3 gives them one success and that equates to being slow to reload – they can't fire the gun again until they're next active.

We'll put a little "unloaded" token on the marker to remind us that they're out until next Active.

(You guys miss all the excitement of watching me see that I need a token and go off into Adobe Illustrator to make one, imported into Tabletop Simulator, and then make it happen. All through the beauty of editing!)

Of course, were not done yet. Chicken Scratch and Drop That Baby just watched their platoon leader get blowed up real good so they both need to immediately take the Friend Brewed Up Test, one at REP 4 and one at REP 3.

I don't think these guys can catch a break.

Chicken Scratch at REP 4. That's a 5, 4 on the dice which leads us to – one success, cross-referencing by Gaea Prime, which brings us to if we are the last vehicle in the platoon Duck Back, otherwise carry on.

There are two vehicles left in the platoon right now, so carry on we do.

Baby at REP 3. 2, 2 which makes for passing two successes. Despite being barely trained, Drop That Baby has taken out an enemy tank and absolutely laughed in the face of danger when their platoon leader blew up a stones throw away.

Maybe we picked the wrong heroes?

Chicken Scratch is going to go next on the firing line taking a shot at the HE 3 out on the right flank. The front armor is only 8 so we are not undergunned as regards to it. Standard attack goes right ahead.

We are looking for 4s and we have 3, 1. That passes both dice, so it straight over to penetration with a target number of 1 because the APR of 9 minus the armor rating of 8 on the front leaves us with crappy penetration.

5, 2 doesn't let us do anything, which is a sad state of affairs.

Baby is going to take a shot at the medium on stage left, looking for 3s. 3, 1 is the result, and I'm starting to wonder if RNGesus likes a good comedy.

Like Scratch, Baby is looking for 1s – and comes up with dual 2s. Definitely not enough damage to get through that first plate, but at least he couldn't shoot back.

That's pretty much it for anything meaningful that we can do. We could use our movement at this point, I'm back out of the trees, hoping that we could get a better angle on the approaching PEFs when they get up to us – but that seems a little premature.

It might be smarter to try and get out of there. But whoever said smart was the right idea?

Turn #3

Activation

Back to the top of the turn we go to see what kind of terrible things befall all of us.

Let's get the Activation dice going!

6 for us, 5 for the Hishen.

Technically, we activate first – but with a roll of 6 we would need a group with a leader of at least REP 6 to go. Even if Henri was still alive we wouldn't hit that.

Nothing on the PDF side was moving, so activation passes to the Hishen. Unfortunately for them, a roll of 5 is still higher than any of the leaders or PEFs on the table, meaning that the only motion that goes on are those tanks moving toward our guys at another 6 units, just like before.

Hishen Move

Things are starting to get a little bit intense around here, even if the Hishen aren't able to engage us. They keep getting closer, to the point where they will be in various flanking positions unless we do something soon.

5150 is definitely a game where things can go sideways in a hurry, especially if you get a series of bad activations. This could have been much worse if the Hishen had gotten the jump on us this round and the only thing we could've done was react.

Turn #4

Activation

Hishen 3, PDF 2.

Well, at least we get to do something. But the Hishen activate first and they have a very significant force moving inbound – not to mention whatever we don't know about hiding in the trees.

Hishen Move

The Hishen force is thinned out enough that it makes sense for them to reassemble into one big group, still led by one of the REP 3 heavy tanks, however, but for simplicity's sake we'll take care of them as a single group from now on – unless something unusual happens!

The PEFs both have higher REPs than the already resolved tanks, so they get moved first.

As always, we start with the one that is furthest from our forces, head over to the PEF Movement Table, and throw some dice around.

5, 1 gives us a single pass, so the PEF moves 4 units directly toward our forces ending in cover if possible.

We do the same for the other PEF and it gets 3, 3 – an 8 unit move right into the woods onto that hill. This could start being very ugly indeed. If even one of those PEFs resolves as a tank destroyer, that gun could rip any of our mediums apart without even requiring much of a lucky shot at all.

Now for the reinforced armored platoon bearing down on our position. Let's find out what kind of nightmare the NP Enemy Movement Table has for us.

2, 1 – which is passing on both dice. We are still running a patrol mission, so we check and see what's going on, nobody is in cover, so what we do is move at maximum speed toward the enemy.

Maximum speed.

Assuming that they want to keep the group together, maximum speed for the heavies is 12 units. Things are starting to get really, really close combat like here.

(The slow to reload heavy also loses its unloaded token.)

It's a good thing that this is a Patrol mission or these guys would have been opening fire on us the whole way, and the heavy cannons on the big tanks are scary, scary things indeed.

When/if they get up to the tree line, all Hell is going to break loose.

Our Move

We have two functional units left. The platoon leader is without a ride.

As much as I hate it, maybe discretion is the better part of valor here. I don't want to get overrun with unknown forces from the north, and I definitely don't want to get into a knife fight with the heavy tanks approaching from the northeast. Turning tail is a terrible idea because getting shot right in the soft underbelly of the tookas would be painful and ugly indeed.

I think our best plan is to throw these things in reverse and try to back off of the board, take the loss, but save the resources.

Maybe Chicken Scratch can take one parting shot at the most stage right HE 3, just because it won't cut into our movement points and might disable an oncoming attacker. Of course, that takes the chance that dual mount APR 7 turret will fire back, but they would need to get ridiculously lucky to do damage with that thing against our front plate.

So that's the plan:

Chicken Scratch will take a shot at the HE 3, then everybody will slam it into reverse and push back out of the tree line, with Scratch picking up Henri on the way to try and ride back far enough to get away.

That sounds like a good plan. That sounds like a plan that could work.

Scratch powers up that beam gun and fires at terrifyingly close range for tanks at the Hishen medium.

The dice come up 3, 1 which is quite good and represents a full shot on the Penetration Table.

10 APR versus 8 AR means we are looking for 2s.

Holy crap! 2, 1!

That is passing both dice on the Penetration Table, and that is an instant vehicle explosion with everyone inside Obviously Dead!

Where has this shooting been the whole time?

GP tanks don't have to reload, so we don't have to do that – but that does force a reaction on the Friend Brewed Up Table for all of the enemy within 4 units of that explosion.

That is only the heavy next to him, but will take that! The heavy only has an REP of 3, so we have a good chance of having some effect.

The dice, 5, 4 which is passing 0 dice – leading to that heavy going into Duck Back.

There is one problem with that, however. The nearest cover for that heavy to duck back into? The nearest cover within 12 units?

It's the trees directly on the hill we are retreating from. All we managed to do was bounce a shell off the front of his buddy, blow him up real good, and make the heavy tank that was following along close behind put the pedal to the metal to get into the cover of the trees that we are shooting from.

On the positive side, once we pull back from the tree line, he'll have hard going to push up through it to get to us and it will act as blocking cover that breaks line of sight until he gets within the unit of the edge.

On the negative side, he's right freaking there.

At this point there's no reason not to do everything in our control to get the Hell out of there, so both Scratch and Baby are going to make Fast Move Tests in order to crank those engines up as hard as they can go.

Predictably, Chicken gets 6, 5 which is even worse than you might think because it means he's jammed up the transmission. We get that 12 units of movement, but then we come to a dead stop and from then on we only get half of our maximum speed and can't Fast Move again.

Baby gets 6, 2 which means they passed one die, letting them move up to 1.25 times the 12 units they move in clear, or taking it up to 15.

Both tanks are moving in reverse, so that cuts there cross-country speed to 1/3, or 4 for Chicken and 5 for Baby.

We'll just assume that they are backing out the same way they came into the forest and won't see if they have to do a run over test, because that seems a little silly considering the situation. Of course they're backing out exactly the way they came in.

I put a red die on Chicken Scratch to remind me that his transmission is busted, and Henri climbed up on the tank itself like an old-school Soviet tank rider.

If one of those tanks manages to push its way through the wood and over the hill and blows the tank up, Henri might have the 2nd most exciting ride of his day.

Turn #5

Activation

Things really are looking terrible right now, and if the Activation breaks the wrong way – things could be looking a whole lot worse. Forget a recon operation, we are going to have some serious problems just getting away with the knowledge that the Hishen have a real, significant force running around the region and we are going to need some bigger guns to deal with this crazy stuff.

And more guns.

Let's find out if RNGesus has decided that we are worthy this day!

The first roll is doubles. That means we throw again. In some scenarios, doubles on Activation can mean that something unusual happens, time advances, or other scenario specific thing comes about.

Second time's the charm!

The Hishen get 5, we get 3.

Sure, the Hishen tanks continue moving forward at full speed, but as long as they don't see us, they won't trigger an In Sight Test and there won't be any shooting. The heavy in the trees is going to be having a real problem pushing forward, and that's just fine with me. None of the PEFs can activate.

And then we can proceed to haul ass. Literally.

Hishen Move

Since the Hishen forces made a full move forward last round, they continue to move that far this round as well.

(Though I believe I may have made a mistake – the speeds on the chits are road speed/open speed, meaning that I had them moving at full road speed across that open area. It probably didn't make a difference, but I'm trying to be clear about when I screw up the rules in public.)

It's a bloody near thing, but we've almost moved into a situation where the enemy was far enough over the hill to actually trigger an In Sight Test.

That could be really ugly – and at least that lead to heavy might be far enough forward next turn if we can't get out of here.

Things are looking much, much worse every time we look.

Our Move

Full reverse. It's all we have left. And honestly it still might not be enough.

Chicken blue out their transmission, so he can't even consider calling for a fast move. Baby's driver ly has REP 3, so that's a risky proposition at the best of times.

What I absolutely do know is that the heavy cannon hanging out on the other side of that hill is not our friend.

Baby is going to gun it and try to get away in reverse, heading for the edge of the board.

The dice are relatively kind, coming up 4, 2 – pushing the engine again for those 15 units. Which is immediately by two thirds to become 5 units.

Chicken is still moving backwards at 4 units.

I'm not saying that things are tense, but people are camping out here.

Turn #6

Activation

One tank with a busted transmission. The other with a largely untrained crew which has had some amazing luck. A heavy tank bearing over the hill in woods and a larger force following it up.

Sometimes you don't look to eke out a win, you just want to survive.

Let's see what the Activation dice have to say about that.

That's – really complicated. The Hishen have a 4, so they go first – but none of their actual on-the-field tank groups are led by someone with sufficient REP to make use of that. Only the PEFs will get to move in an orderly way.

That's not to say that the tanks won't move – they'll move exactly as much and in the same directions as they did last turn. Which is going to be a problem for that heavy, because I think he might come out of the woods this turn.

Let's start with the PEFs, however.

Hishen Turn

The furthest PEF brings back a 4, 1, moving it 8 units closer to our escaping forces.

The next PEF pulls in a 6, 3, so it only moves for units closer to our escaping forces.

Neither one of them can be seen by any of us, so they remain unknown and just terribly threatening.

I really dread to doing these forward motions. I think I will do them starting at the elements furthest from where we are at. That means any potential In Sight Tests get done last.

Bad news, bears. Even with the reduction in movement range the Hishen heavy tank got for going through woods, it has stopped close enough to the edge to be within line of sight and thus trigger an In Sight Test. On the positive side, it is both of our tanks versus that one heavy. On the negative side – it has a really big gun.

In Sight Test

On our side is that the Hishen tank is buttoned up and has a very low REP, meaning he only gets to roll two dice. Not in our favor is that we, too, are buttoned up – and the heavy has the advantage of concealment in the woods. Despite getting to start with REP 4, that gets knocked down to a 2 – and this gets entirely too even.

The Hishen tank rolls 5, 3 for 1 success. We roll 5, 4 – which is 0 successes.

Apparently, we were too distracted by driving backwards to manage to catch a guy driving out of the woods directly ahead of us.

Big tank boy there is going to take his shot.

I'm actually quite thankful that his gunner a is complete crap, sporting a REP 3.

He's going to target the nearest tank to him, which is Chicken Scratch, of course, because Henri is riding on top of it and the transmission is broken. Why not?

Unfortunately for us, with a 5, 2, that counts as a solid – glancing hit.

The heavy's APR is 13, our frontal AR is 9, making for targets of 4 again.

The dice seemed to like him, coming back with a 6, 3 – which with one pass gives him a good chance of blowing us up utterly. Let's see what happens.

That fat 2 means that the Scratch is partially disabled and can't move but can continue to fire – for all the good it will do.

Transmission dead. Engine dead. There's really not much more that the Chicken Scratch can do other than hold a desperate rearguard.

I knew war was grim, but this is amazing.

Henri is going to hop off this newly holed wreck and start hoofing it toward the edge of the board, because it seems a lot safer.

It's probably a good idea to see if that heavy tank remains loaded once it's been fired.

6, 3 is pass one, so that cannon cannot fire until its next activation.

I'll bet this could be important!

Our Turn

This is very likely where all of the feces hits the rotating oscillator.

The first thing that happens is Henri jumps off of the Scratch and holes asked for the edge of the map so he can get away. He has plenty of movement for that, so he gets away unwounded except for a couple of very, very close calls.

He'll be able to drink for free on this battle for the rest of his life.

Baby is going to go for another Fast Move in order to try and back off of the board. We'll say that if she manages to pass one success, she has no problem getting away. (The distance is close enough so as to make no never mind, even in reverse.)

Baby comes up with 4, 2 and that's plenty to make the 5 units of movement to back off of the board, hands probably kept where people can see them.

Now the big question – does the crew of the Chicken Scratch go out like big damn heroes, or do they realize that discretion is the better part of valor and abandon their deeply disabled vehicle?

You know what, I just can't decide.

We'll let the dice make the call. 1-3, they'll go down fighting. 4-6, they'll run like scared little bitches.

RNGesus has spoken! The crew of the chicken scratch are brave, valorous men who fear no Hishen slavery!

Or they are the unluckiest crew known to man. That is also possible.

Regardless, they have a pea shooter on the front of their turret and they're willing to use it – against a heavy tank still in the woods with superior armor to their own…

It almost brings a tear to my eye.

I mean, sure, the main gun can't actually fire until it's been properly reloaded – and that does mean that firing on them won't have a chance of the crew getting shot right in the face, so maybe it's not as brave as all that.

The Chicken Scratch winds up, there's the pitch…

And it's a 6, 1!

The Scratch is undergunned compared to the HE 6, so it's up to the Hands of Fate!

Which obviously failed with a 6, 1.

Amazingly, that actually forces the heavy tank to Duck Back out of line of sight because it is unable to fire in reply!

That's right, the Chicken Scratch has held the line against the HE 6 and prevailed for the moment!

I'm not even mad, this is amazing!

Turn #7

I wasn't even going to run this turn, but now I'm invested in finding out what happens to the crew of the Scratch. There are a ton of tanks bearing down on him, and the situation at the beginning of this turn is beyond grim. It's absolutely horrible.

I'm on the edge of my seat. I don't know how you're doing on seating, but I'm excited.

Activation

PDF, 4. Hishen, 6

Dear Hell below. The Hishen don't get to activate. They roll forward first and into the ongoing In Sight Tests which will be popping every time they enter line of sight.

Truly, this is an amazing time to be alive.

Hishen Turn

The heavy gets to do nothing, because it was in Duck Back and literally cannot activate this turn. It can neither reload it's gun nor maneuver into line of sight of the Scratch.

Let's see where everyone else ends up.

One HE 3 has made its way through the rough terrain with just enough mobility to get around the currently immobilized and gone to ground heavy – and incidentally has driven into the line of sight of the Scratch. The other tanks are still concealed either by the hill or by more than one unit of woods.

I just don't know what to do with myself.

In Sight Test

Things are getting very, very bad. The Hishen medium has an REP 4 while the Scratch also has an REP 4. Both of them lose one die because they're buttoned up but the Scratch loses another because the HE 3 is in cover.

One success for the Hishen while the Scratch – gets two.

Not wasting any time, the PDF tank just opens fire with the main beam cannon and gets a 5, 1 for its trouble. APR of 10 verses the frontal AR of 8 means we're looking for 2s on the Penetration Table.

A 4, 2 is the result, which is a perfectly acceptable single pass. The ultimate result?

5! The vehicle is totally disabled and the crew abandoned the vehicle and leave the battlefield!

Our Turn

The crew of the Chicken Scratch have earned freaking medals, and I don't see any reason that they need to hang around in this busted up Thunder anymore. They literally have fought the good fight and taken on all comers in the worst possible situation, and managed to survive.

I had absolutely no expectation of that happening.

While this mission may be a complete failure, the Scratch will go down in history as one of the most tenacious combatants in the PDF.

Because they have been such heroes, I'm going to let the crew of the Scratch leap out of the vehicle and run like men, manly men, men who have fought the good fight – and are now running away to fight another day!

You deserve it, men!

Clean Up

Jesus Christ, I didn't expect all that!

The final map definitely shows the results of a recon patrol gone terribly, terribly wrong. Enemy forces were encountered to the far northeast and an early disabling shot managed to hold ground for just a little bit, but it didn't take long for the inexorable push of heavy tanks to make its way to dislodge our light recon patrol.

More enemy forces were approaching from the north and there just wasn't sufficient terrain or dead ground to make way around them to do a proper recon. While the hills in the middle did provide an excellent screen, they weren't enough to keep everyone alive.

The crew of the Spectacular Craptacular will be remembered and their memory will be celebrated. Henri Lloyd, a.k.a. the luckiest goddamn bastard in the history of the world, who managed to survive without a scratch even after two tanks were blown out from under him – one of which he was riding on the outside of, will have earned his stripes and the promotion to C-1/1.

The crew of the Chicken Scratch will be reassigned a new vehicle, though the exact nature of that vehicle remains to be seen.

The strength of the forces encountered by the PDF on this planet have been sufficient to cause the local authorities to take the next step: hiring off planet mercenaries.

Next time on 5150: Gaea's Worst – members of The Hungry guest star!

Oh yes, and we'll probably do some bookkeeping for campaign stats and stuff.

Acknowledgements

• Two-Hour Wargames for producing an amazing line of systems and games that can give rise to horrible insanity like this.

• @not-a-bird for not being a freakin' bird.

• Tabletop Simulator for making decent imagery possible.

• And Death. Because it's cool.