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A Zero Dark Battle Report - Operation Gemini: Fight Out
🕑 Added 2021-03-01 09:24:43 +0000 UTCFor sight of the layout and mission, see the livestream videos from Friday. They split into two as we lost the feed about three-quarters of the way through, but you'll get the gist.
Playing Mission 3 from Operation Gemini, Fight Out, the heroes had to make their way across a 3'x3' table, with multiple levels of elevated terrain, from hidden deployment, to an exit point in the far corner. In retrospect, I made it far too easy for the heroes, with too may steps and ladders and not enough jumping required. Next time: more obstacles!
However, deployment was a blast. The Red Force clustered around the most distant exit point, with only a single synthetic bogey on the entry point.
The heroes were a Sapper (X-Ray), a Robot (Reaper) and an AI (SkyNet). My plan was for SkyNet to possess Reaper, dominate and possess the nearest bogey then leave Reaper to go smash face with this F6/Lethal/Explosive at the exit point before re-possessing him for a hasty exit.
My plan to dominate and possess the nearest bogey with SkyNet, though, was perpetually thwarted because the little bugger kept getting support tokens. Eventually I gave up and killed that bogey, before heading for the exit.
Things got tough, though, at the exit point (this is why it's called Fight Out after all). A complication brought on a second Boss, and so the heroes faced a withering hail of fire as they approached. SkyNet abandoned Reaper, whose explosive sorted out one of the Bosses, but left the other one untouched. The last remaining enemy synthetic on the table was caught in the blast and annihilated. But X-Ray was taking incoming fire. Thankfully, his drone, Zulu, drew most of the fire and ended up dead. And his sentry gun did fine work stripping support tokens off the remaining Boss.
But just as it looked like the heroes were home free, a complication brought a third Boss to the table! This guy immediately rushed X-Ray and although X-Ray survived the encounter, he was immediately reduced to wounded(3), making him unable to move or heal himself.
Thankfully, SkyNet re-possessed Reaper, moved up and used his superior A to heal up X-Ray enough that he could move.
An enemy EWOp had appeared at the far end of the table, moving rapidly to catch the heroes (rolled several 6s on secondary actions), and it was great to use the EWOp activations table, which nearly put the heroes in a real mess. But with the clock ticking down, they all legged it for the exit, the only permanent casualty being Zulu.
Summary Thoughts
The mission would've been tighter on a 4'x4' table, and although I made the terrain multi-layered, I didn't do a good job of making that actually impede the heroes' progress, adding too many bridges and staircases, when I should've been making them climb and jump etc.
Still, I learned a lot about possession in practice (a single bogey is hard to possess because they will keep earning support tokens, but if you use a sentry gun or other character in overwatch, you can strip these away as they are earned, leaving the target bogey exposed to a possession attempt) and I was pleased overall that Fight Out worked as I remembered.
There's a weird experience to be had, playing a mission you've not played for, well, almost two years. There were several points - especially regarding deployment and immediate reserves - when I thought "hey, this doesn't look like it works, what was I thinking?" but it did, in fact, work. Past me was smarter than I gave myself credit for.
The mission wasn't difficult to complete within time, but if I'd just charged across the table I would definitely have died. A lot. As it was, the combination of Robot and AI was really interesting. Robots using a program are both predictable and annoying as your options are very limited despite the obvious benefits of using them. Having an AI there to jump in and take the controls is awesome to create a more flexible hero, well worth the cost of activating the Red Force.
This mission is well suited to a smaller team, as the object is to get everyone off the table, along a straight line, so keeping everyone close to each other allows mutual support in medic tests etc. I only had to fudge the rules once, when a possessed Reaper needed to climb over a low wall. With M3/AV3 he technically couldn't climb it at all, as it was (just) higher than half his Cyl. Instead, he would've needed to backtrack, jump across a gap and then jump down to the ground. And although this would've been very entertaining, it would've meant X-Ray almost certainly dying to the approaching Boss. So I just said "f*** it" and let him climb over the wall.
