Pandora's Cargo

More from my w/e at Mark's.  On Friday night after a couple of beers we played the introductory game of Pandora's Cargo (Mantic, I think).  TBH I wasn't keen.  I just seemed to be clunky and a pale version of Legions of Steel or Space Hulk (1st ed).

The background of Pandora's Cargo is that mutant rats emerge from the bowels of a cargo ship and the corporate troopers have to clean them out.  So, the next morning Mark dug out his Dwarven Forge sci-fi corridors and we set up the ship to give it another go...

Spaceship Pandora

The top separate section is the lower cargo hold, accessed via a lift or ladders.  this is where the rats emerge.  The lower section is the upper deck crew cryo chambers

 The Bridge

 Central hold with access to the lower cargo hold, the lift is down here

 Lower cargo hold

 Upper cryo chambers

 Engine control room with access to the engines (hatch)

 Mutant rat-men emerge (the marker is the objective marker for the crew).  The crew have to capture the hold.  The rats have to survive

 Rats swarm up the access ladders only to be blocked by energy barrier doors

 Crew scramble from cryo-pods

 Rats 'Dark' the cargo hold.  Any rats that are killed in the light are dead, in the dark they respawn.

 Rats blow down an energy door, making the zone radioactive in the process

 Rats breach a duct and scurry towards the engine room.  My plan is to kill the power in the engine room, making the whole ship 'dark', denying the crew chem-flares (from dispensers), and opening all energy doors.

The marker is a  flare, meaning that section of the corridor is lit.

Frozen bodies move slowly from cryosleep

 Rats make another hole in a duct near engineering (the chance and location of holes were randomly rolled at the beginning of the turn).  This enables them to rush the skeleton crew there

 Blammo! Rats dead (see that flare)

 Phew, engineering is secure

 Not so for Control, rats advance

 More rats spawn

 CRUNCH!, the rat leader assaults a corporate soldier

 More rats pour into engineering

 Squeak!  Rats in engineering draw first blood

 And more...

 While at the other end, the control room is threatened

 Errr, I forgot something...

 We come in Peace, let us in!

 Mmmmmm, strategery

 Mmmm, crunchy crunchy

 The door is down, in we go!

 Where should I go?, Here?

 No, Here?

 No, Here, ah that's better

 DOH!
The rats capture Engineering

 And access to the cryo chambers

 Yum Yum!

  Rats enter the control room corridor

 And quickly finish off the command crew

 Leaving just one crewman left

 He legs it for Engineering, hoping to get the power up again

 Pity the Boss-Rat is still near Engineering

 Splat! The Boss-Rat easily defeats the crewman

The Rats now have the run of the ship.  If only they knew how it worked and how to turn the power on... ...after all that effort its a pity they are doomed to either freeze or asphyxiate

This may appear one-sided, it was not: the Corporation nearly flipped the result several times.  In addition, this was very unlike the training mission, it was tense with a clear need for tactical decision making.  The nature of the order-driven events does make this game stand out from the more typical battle-oriented sci-fi dungeon crawls.  If I were going to recommend these rules again I think I'd only suggest playing 'bigger' games.  Of course, it doesn't hurt to be able to set up an entire space-ship to play on, thanks Mark!

Hammered and Slammed

Went to visit my friend Mark and played a bunch of games. One of our goals was to play a couple of Hammer's Slammers: The Crucible games.  The first day we kicked off with a smaller, intro game of two Slammer's detachments: a blower and a light combat car group versus a couple of Division Legere detachments (medium and light tanks, plus mechanized infantry) and a couple of local militia units.  the objective for the Slammers is to capture the crossroads in town, the defenders have to repulse the Slammers.

Peaceful Oyster Vally, not for long...

 The Valley Militia hold the city center against the onrush of off-world mercenaries

 Supertanks!  The Slammers roll in

 With a Phalanx of Combat Cars in Support (Slammers are Ainsty models painted by Mark)

 View from the militia positions

 The Combat Cars draw first blood, gunning down a buzz-bomb team

 Quickly followed by another

 And more

 Slammers gut the militia and surge forwards

Division Legere is tasked with holding back the Slammers, they begin pouring troops onto the battle area

 Undeterred the Blowers grind forwards

 More Legere forces enter

 And finally tanks arrive

 Legere armour ready to teach the Slammers a lesson

Or perhaps not, Slammers fillet the Legere tanks

 While only losing the skirts of one blower

 Slammers pound on the Legere APCs

 While the combat cars continue the job on the Legere light tanks

 A lucky shot from the light tanks takes out one Combat Car

 The combat cars also managed to clear the key buildings of infantry

 The Slammers take the win!  They caapture all objectives and break the Legere unit completely

Well fought Mark!

Wow, while that was very one sided, it was fun and completely fitting with the books.  This was a great chance to refresh out memories of the rules and play with some new toys. 

OK, onto the next game - Pandora's Cargo.

The rare and elusive lesser wargamer

A mega X-wing with the boy...

The 'goodies' lined up on one side, their job was to protect the shuttle

 Are there enough ships?

 Maybe not, the 'Baddies' line up

 And the carnage begins

I stepped back and let him have at it.  Getting photos was tough.  Eventually the shuttle barely squeaked through, the 'baddies' nearly pulled it off.