Dawn of the Lead

After the devastating events of their previous mission, squad 16 was reeling. With their sergeant and heavy missing and their corporal KIA, morale was low and the atmosphere on UTP Tien Shan sombre. Pvt. Lau had started doing heavy drugs while the normally optimistic medic Evans was just shutting down. Dour Pvt. Hämäläinen’s daily verbal output had gone from four words to two. Pvt. Franz-Haugen-Ankerson had been promoted to corporal, a fact she was trying to get her head around.

The genocidal AI Hamachi had dealt the UTOPIA project its first real blow. While most squads had succeeded in their evacuation mission, the casualties were horrendous, on average around 35-40%. Squads 39 and 42 had been completely destroyed, and several of the 50 squads were at half strength.

Another squad that had suffered was the 21st. With only four survivors after the previous mission, the squad was merged into the 16th. This brought the following new faces to the table:

Sgt. Fender, a stern bastard of a career sergeant in his fifties. Fender operates on a no pain, no gain mentality. There are rumours of him once having killed one of his subordinates for poor performance. Fender is accompanied by his foul genhanced mastiff Baton.

Pvt. McSorley, a true jarhead and the squad’s new heavy weapons specialist. He enjoys his job and is more than happy to hose down enemies with his smartgun, Jane.

Pvt. Trill, a genuinely likable female tech specialist. Trill knows her way around technology, but isn’t the most socially active in the squad. She is the third tech to join the 16th, after the demise of her predecessors Bjornssen and Ghillian.

Pvt. DiGlaeser, the squads new communications specialist. While somewhat creepy, DiGlaeser is a downright wizard when it comes to communications. He has established superiority over Baton the dog by tazing him.

Sgt. Fender took over the squad very efficiently. He made a pretty distinct entrance, when the first thing his lovely little pet did was urinate on poor Pvt. Lau. Fender didn’t bother with small talk or pleasantries, instead putting the new combined squad through a couple of days of very strict training. This training was interrupted by Cpt. Jensen – it was time for a new mission.

It appeared that Hamachi was a bit more resourceful than expected, and had captured several troopers wounded in the previous mission. They were interrogated as well as used for experimentation, providing the AI with both information and a useful tool for eroding morale. The prisoners were held in POW camps around the planet Ryukyu Epsilon. Most interesting for the 16th was the fact that Sgt. Brauer was still alive! Implanted with a tracking chip like all soldiers with an undefined amount of service ahead of them, Brauer had been found to be in a camp in the ruins of the settlement of Fuji Reach. The mission was simple: get the sergeant and as many prisoners as possible out of the camp and show Hamachi what the UTOPIA squads were capable of. As a result of previous experience, the squad was supplied with two RPGs – carried by McSorley and Hämäläinen – to help deal with Hamachi’s killer cyborgs.

The sixteenth deploys. The dog insisted on being included in the photo

The 16th deployed carefully and observed the situation. The small POW camp was guarded by four cyborgs who were standing behind concrete barriers and keeping watch. The squad moved forward with caution, and prepared to open fire. Hämäläinen started towards the right and McSorley towards the left, in an attempt to get the RPGs into a flanking position. DiGlaeser activated his signal jamming device to make the squad more difficult to target.

McSorley and DiGlaeser

Wu and Trill

The squad started firing at the cyborgs but without much effect. The long range and cover meant that most fire simply pattered off the thick concrete or glanced from the cyborgs’ chrome hide. The cyborgs on the other hand were much more effective. The first shot fired by one of the guards punched into Cpl. Franz-Haugen-Ankerson and dropped her to the ground, heavily wounded. Evans the medic sprang out of cover to go to the corporal’s assistance, and was promptly gunned down with the light machinegun carried by one of the cyborgs. This was turning out to be much harder than expected.

With determination the 16th went forward. However, their firing continued to be ineffective. With the exception of a single cyborg knocked down for a moment, the massed firepower wasn’t doing much. Even the lethal sniper Wu was having a hard time getting a shot off, and McSorley’s smartgun kept jamming. A third trooper went down as the cyborgs’ bullets found Pvt. DiGlaeser, but luckily he wasn’t badly hurt, just shaken. This left the entire left flank up to McSorley. The right flank with Hämäläinen, Trill and Lau pushed on, while Wu and Sgt. Fender held the center.

The medic Evans is down, with DiGlaeser and Franz-Haugen-Ankerson in the background

The right flank started having a hard time. Hämäläinen was preparing for a shot when a lethally accurate cyborg shot exploded his head, showering Trill and Lau with blood and brain matter. While Lau lost his nerve and turned to flee, Trill kept it together and picked up Hämäläinen’s RPG. Sgt. Fender, assessing the situation, saw that third of the squad was gone with no real progress made so far. He started calling for a retreat, but the squad insisted they keep on fighting to rescue Brauer and the other prisoners. A moment later Wu dropped one of the cyborgs with a well placed shot to the head. The squad capitalized on the fallen cyborg and their shooting managed to destroy it completely.

Trill moved up the right flank with the RPG. Things were looking up, as one of the four cyborgs was down and the squad was making progress. DiGlaeser had recovered and was covering Cpl. Franz-Haugen-Ankerson while trying to get her to safety.

Suddenly there was a crack of a shot heard, and in the following silence Wu the sniper, veteran of Velasco Creek and Triton-4, slumped to the ground, the back of his head missing and smoke drifting out from his bullet-shattered scope. This was the breaking point. “ABORT MISSION!” called Sgt. Fender, and the squad went into retreat. Unfortunately this left Pvt. Trill in a very difficult situation. She was far up the right flank and had been cut off by the cyborg machinegunner keeping watch over her path of retreat. To make matters worse for the whole squad, McSorley was hit and dropped down, shaken by the close call. The same happened to Fender, who nevertheless recovered very quickly.

The retreat was going well. Pvt. Lau was experienced in this sort of thing, and was making his way quickly away from the hot zone. DiGlaeser was doing his best, crawling along with Franz-Haugen-Ankerson in tow. Meanwhile, Trill’s situation was going from bad to worse, as one of the cyborgs finally left the safety of the barriers and went to investigate the wall ruin that Trill was hiding behind. Before Trill could escape, the cyborg stepped up to her, brought up its gun and pulled the trigger.

There was nothing but a click.

Pvt. Trill was quick to react, blasting the cyborg down at close range. This prompted the machinegun-wielding cyborg to move in to investigate the disappearance of its squad mate. The third cyborg had a weapon malfunction, and it discarded the ruined assault rifle and started walking towards McSorley, who still couldn’t get up and moving. Not so for Trill, who was running as fast as her legs could carry her to put as much distance as possible between her and the machinegun cyborg.

Lau made it off the battlefield, as did Fender who was dragging the unconscious Evans with him. As the unarmed cyborg advanced on McSorley, DiGlaeser stopped his retreat, pulled out his pistol and shot it in the neck, momentarily knocking it down and buying McSorley more time. Trill was almost out, too, and in cover. There was still a chance of most of the squad escaping. Then the machinegun carried by the cyborg roared, and down went Trill, heavily wounded.

Pretty much all was lost. DiGlaeser took one look at the two approaching cyborgs, got up and carried Franz-Haugen-Ankerson away with him. McSorley was still trying to get himself moving, when the unarmed cyborg loomed over him. As Trill slowly drifted into unconsciousness, she could hear the desperate sounds of McSorley’s short, doomed struggle against his metal opponent.

The mission had been a disaster throughout the field. Reluctantly, the UTOPIA troops were pulled away from Ryukyu Epsilon, and the Union Navy moved in with their orbital bombardment ordnance. The POWs would need to be left behind.

What a game.

There are moments when you just feel sorry for your players. This was one of those games. The combination of lousy dice rolling and a dangerous enemy led to the worst beating the players have had during the campaign, with two very good veteran troopers confirmed dead, two more left behind and two heavily wounded and in need of lots of down time. All in all the squad lost most of their specialists (sniper, heavy, tech) and their NCO and medic were hospitalized, and their beloved old sergeant was left behind. A disaster indeed.

We had a chat after the game and despite the heavy losses mood wasn’t bad. The campaign has managed to do one thing that I was hoping it would: it strikes a good balance between RPG and miniature game in the way that losing characters, especially important ones, hurts, but not as much as losing an actual RPG character. After the game, the players were already picking out new minis from my collection and making up new background stories for them. It really helps to have a group of experienced role-players when you’re running a game like this, thanks guys! The survival of old characters also helps with the continuity. While only three (Pvt. Evans, Pvt. Lau, Pvt. Franz-Haugen-Ankerson) of squad 16’s original nine members are alive, it’s definitely still the Sweet Sixteenth. By the time they’re gone, the new guys will have become regulars and so on.

The Utopia campaign is still going strong, and we just played the fourth game last Tuesday. Having left the jungles of Triton-4 behind them, squad 16 travelled onwards. The mood on the UTP Tien-Shan was weird: Sgt. Anna McIntosh’s squad 20 had recently died while testing a prototype dropship, the Pelican. The 16th was coping, each in their own way. While Sgt. Brauer tried to keep the mood up by turning the tragedy into a Day of the Dead -style celebration, Pvt. Lau and Pvt. Evans were becoming very superstitious. Recently married Pvt. Haugen-Ankerson-Franz was shocked by the recent events, and the dour Pvt. Hämäläinen was keeping to himself.

The squad received news of a disturbing recent development on the planet Ryukyu Epsilon. Hamachi, the military AI developed by the Cyberdybe-Sendai corporation had become sentient, and like AIs tend to do, had launched an attack to wipe out the human inhabitants of the planet. In a week the casualty rate on Ryukyu Epsilon had soared to 90%, and in a bold and unprecedented move, all the 50 UTOPIA squads were activated in a massive operation to both attack Hamachi and it’s legions of cyborgs and to rescue the remaining civilians.

The sixteenth went in boldly – especially after liberating an RPG from Sgt. Hiroshi’s squad 12. Their mission was to retrieve a group of ten survivors. Five of the survivors were armed police officers while the rest were civilians.

Wu and Hämäläinen take up positions in the ruins

Left to right: Evans, Brauer, Jane and Wu, with Kenny in the background

Squad 16 made landfall outside the settlement of Tanaka Town and quickly established firing positions amidst the ruins. The squad came in from the south, while ten heavily armed cyborgs were entering the area from the north. The civilians were scattered on the eastern half of the battlefield in three groups.

As the civilians hunker down, two officers stand guard

Early on, the cyborgs were relentless. While the civilians were pretty much frozen to the spot, the machines steadily moved forward and made contact with the first survivor group. It was brutal. The cyborgs marched in, firing, and cut down the two fleeing civilians in short order. The two police officers failed to do anything as one of the cyborgs moved up and torched one of them with a flame thrower. This prompted the other officer to flee in panic.

Flames consume one of Ryukyu Epsilon’s finest

Meanwhile a few of the cyborgs were closing in on the troopers. They were greeted with a hail of fire, knocking a few of them down. The machines didn’t stay down for long, though, but got up and kept on coming. Pvt. Kenny had switched his flame thrower with a smartgun, and was happily hosing down the approaching machines with it.

The cyborgs didn’t have it easy. While half of them had turned their attention to the troopers, the sixteenth were being ruthlessly effective. Cyborg after cyborg went down, Pvt. Hämäläinen being especially deadly. The rest of the cyborgs weren’t doing much – although neither were the civilians. The sixteenth were winning the combat, but the civilians were still in danger. Cpl. Rodriguez and Pvt. Jane started moving towards the civilians as it started to become apparent that the survivors would not get moving on their own.

Rodriguez and Jane reached the survivors, who were finally beginning to activate. The mission was going heroically well, with half the cyborgs down, the rest standing around halfway across the field, the troopers in good positions and the civilians moving towards the evacuation zone. Then something happened.

It was as if the machines were waking up from a slumber (or probably a standby mode). All of a sudden they became a threat again. The one police who had survived the first attack was doused with flames from the flamethrower. The cyborgs that had been far away moments ago rapidly moved towards the troopers. A few that had been knocked down by gunfire got up and started firing. Pvt. Kenny, the heavy weapon specialist was hit with a spray of bullets and went down. Pvt. Wu, the trusty sniper was suddenly completely frozen and just didn’t seem to be able to get a shot off. Lead was flying all over the place, but at least the civilians were on their way towards the exit.

The officer looks on in fear…

…as the cyborg with the flamer approaches

The cyborg attack was steadily getting more dangerous. Cpl. Rodriguez was hit and knocked down while escorting the civilians. Most of them had made their escape by now, so Sgt. Brauer gave the order for a rapid retreat from the field. Privates Lau, Haugen-Ankerson-Franz, Evans and Hämäläinen complied and left the field. However, this left it up to just Brauer, Wu and Jane to rescue the fallen Kenny and Rodriguez. On top of that, Jane was stuck pretty far away, having covered the fleeing civilians.

Things didn’t go well. Despite a valiant effort by the troopers, they were overcome by the machines. Wu managed to flee the field, while Brauer went down in a hail of shots. A cyborg raked the downed Rodriguez with a machine gun, making sure he’d never get up again. Pvt. Jane, the lone survivor put up a brave fight but was finally cornered by the three remaining cyborgs. Jane fought to the last, before being brought down in hand to hand combat. The mission was over, and most of the civilians had been saved, but at a terrible cost: Cpl. Rodriguez KIA, Sgt. Brauer, Pvt. Kenny and Pvt. Jane MIA. It was the worst beating the sixteenth had taken to date. Apparently when the captain briefing the squad had said “avoid a prolonged firefight with the cyborgs”,  he’d meant it.

As the battle ends, the machines have the field

It was yet another exciting game, and filled with lots and lots of drama. Early on the troopers really had their way. With the exception of the few first turns, turn after turn the cyborgs failed to activate and those that did were cut down by some very effective firing. Unfortunately for the troopers, the civilians weren’t activating either. As the report says, something just happened suddenly, and just as the game seemed to be in the bag, the machines came to life with some odds-defying rolls and tore into the player characters. Four casualties out of a squad of nine is a pretty gruesome toll, and I’m sad to see Sgt. Brauer and Pvt. Kenny go. Man, war is hell even in 28mm.

This scenario obviously drew a lot of influence from the Terminator franchise. It was a great chance to build and paint a lot of ruined scenery (which will feature in a dedicated post) as well as some killer robots (ditto). I was also happy to see my old em4 and Copplestone cops get an outing.

Comments welcome!