This is Not a Test - A Near Run Thing

The Flores Minor Ranger Corps carried out their sixth mission this week in our This is Not a Test campaign. Once again they took on Andrew's band of mutants - this time in a very seasonally appropriate winter wasteland setting. We played the 'Cold Vengeance' scenario with no additional frills. 

The mutants deployed within the two abandoned buildings on the left, while the bulk of the FMRC (Snake Eyes, Heavy, Buckshot, Pup, and the three hill-folk Ogg, Snogg and Frygga) deployed behind and old liquid storage tank (lower left). The three snipers started on roof tops: Sarge on the tallest building on the FMRC right flank, Hotshot in the centre of the table, and Doc on the FMRC left, above the liquid storage.

Early in the skirmish, Sarge advanced and took up a position overlooking one entire side of the table - but a side of the table with no mutants. Activating first, both Doc and Hotshot went into overwatch, while some of the front-line rangers advanced along the ground. Tiny, the hulking mutant bog boy, came through the door first and both Hotshot and Doc took the shot. Doc just missed instead of jamming for a change, but passed his bad luck onto Hotshot whose rifle misfired. The muties then sent forward Beeb-Boop their depend-o'-bot who walked into Hotshot's line of fire, scanned his presence, and took the sniper down in a single shotgun blast. The game was off to an all too familiar start... 

Tiny, Rick&Morty and Handy advanced to the centre of the table, only to skulk in the building's shelter. It was another couple of turns before Andrew realised that Handy had died of wounds in an earlier game and wasn't actually there... 

Snake Eyes and Pup took up a partially covered position to watch over what would soon become the killing ground - the open area between the liquid storage and the central building. Snake Eyes had become a hard-bitten and scarred veteran and was the perfect ranger to hold the position with Pup for back up.

Sadly, that was the last anyone ever saw of Snake Eyes, at least while he was complete. The muties surged around the corner into the killing ground. Between grenades, blunderbuss shots, acid spit and a flamethrower, the rangers and their pet hill folk dropped like flies. But it was not without cost as the rangers fought back as good as they got, and mutants too were taken out of action at a rapid rate. This was the first game in a while that we have played to the completion of eight turns. Both forces dropped well below 50% of their starting number of characters, but neither side was willing to concede defeat.

In the end, victory points for kills were even. However, the scenario penalises the warband who takes the first shot - in this case it was the FMRC opening fire at Tiny. So technically the FMRC lost again, but it was a near run thing and given the pretty big disparity in warband value at this point in the campaign, I would say they excelled themselves.

In the post game sequence it became obvious that the bits of Snake Eyes that were recovered could not be reconstructed into a living ranger. He joins the growing list of fallen rangers who have given their all for the Corps over the campaign so far. 

Everyone else survived without too many brutal injuries. Snogg, Buckshot's hill-folk pet, was sadly captured by the mutants in the confused aftermath of the fight. It is not clear whether his bright eyes and enthusiastic facial hair will be seen again. Among the mutants, Beeb-Boop sustained too much damage to function again, and another mutant, Mr White, also died of wounds recieved. 

The FMRC walked away with a tidy haul of barter script, while the mutants won a strength challenge in a local bar and recovered an LMG from an abandoned point defence system.