The Ambush that never happened...

All is not well on Pizzler-4732, a small mining/pharmaceutical manufacturing planetoid.  Bonded employees are disgruntled, sabotage, insurrection and riots have happened.  Recently, a handful of bondsmen have hatched a scheme to smuggle weapons in hidden in supplies dropped by the regular cargo drone run.

The 'Suits' in corporate espionage have found out.  They have sent their corporate ninjas in to quash the rebels efforts.  

Ninja objectives: destroy guidance-dish tracking system (LHS below), destroy generator for system (top LHS), kill insurrectionists
Rebels objectives: Survive!

Cargo-port 4; a cargo drone is off-loaded and being prepped for return to orbit.

Crew doing their stuff...

Fueling the drone/systems checks

But wait, Ninjas lurk

At least they look snappy in their suits

Ready...

...And, sneak!

Or not, BLAM! dead rebel (failed interrupt)

No subtlety for the other Ninjas, recon by fire!

Blammo, more dead rebels (rebels having awful interrupt rolls)

Crew fleeing, reinforcements pour out of the buildings

Ninjas reach the guidance dish and set charges, worker drones keep working...

Terminate with extreme prejudice

And again

More reinforcements, looks bleak for the Ninjas

or perhaps not, Ninjas spin around gunning down Rebels (more rotten interrupts)

"High five, dude!"
"High five this!"

On the flank sneaky Ninjas destroy the Dish controls

Security bots rush in from their perimeter sweep

Blam! Blam!  Ninjas disable bots

"Are we done yet?"  Ninjas gun down almost all the Rebels, security bots rush to assist

Zap! Security bots pass an interrupt and laser both ninjas

Ninjas tinker with the controls for the generator but fail to disable it

Its behind you!  Bots reactivate

Not for long, in an exchange of gunfire and laser, one dead Ninja, one destroyed bot

Ninja falls back, pinned

Zap! the other bots toast the Ninja

Game over Man!

Carnage in the station, most rebels dead

Guidance station destroyed, but the generator is OK.

 

The result, both Ninjas dead, yet I'd say its a victory for the Corporate Espionage Division.

I tried something different here, I downsized the game, instead of fire teams I wanted to test out small teams/pairs.  The Ninjas were D10QD10 morale, the Rebels D8D8, so both were pretty good troops.  As with all tests real world dice skewed things, the Ninjas just rolled spectacularly at the beginning,  once the security bots appeared that oddly stopped.  Once the dice imbalance evened out the advantage went to the more numerous troops as the small units are fragile, but that's OK with me as it makes for more 'will they make it' tension.  

Next time I'll try less evenly matched troops, I'm thinking this approach will work for heroic critical mission type games, or even the occasional video-game inspired solo romp.

The Genesis of the Clones

After the winding up of the war on NuEarth the Clavell Corporation released their covertly-developed clone program onto the military market.  The clones were an instant success, the mark 2 clone is a battle-proven and effective design.  Clad in the mk4 combat suit the mk2 clone is a highly effective combat unit at a reasonable price.

The success of the mk2 clone has spawned imitators, though none so far has proved as effective as the mk2.
Clavell Corps gene-engineers are not idle, a third-generation clone, the F-clones is in development.

The F-clone has been observed in action.  All performance analysis has been based on direct observation as no F-clone has been captured alive, or dead.  The F-clone is a leap in development of the mk2 clone, they have been deployed to date as special forces in support of mk2 clones.  Their combat skills are superior to mk2 clones and they appear to be more independent than mk2 clones as they act as leaders for mk2 clone operations.

F-clones wear an improved mk4 combat suit and use an improved mk3 clone-rifle.  In thier role as special forces F-clones have access to mission-specific equipment.

Frequently observed in support of F-clones and more recently in support of mk2 clones, is Clavell's new combat drone the 'Little Brother'

The recently developed 'Guncrab' has not been seen in combat yet.

The ramp-up of Clavell Corp's military arm has led to speculation that they intend to launch a contractor/mercenary division to challenge the dominance of units such as Hammer's Slammers.  Analysts consider the clone program a stepping-stone in this direction.

There are rumors of highly secretive black-ops clone.  An R-clone was mentioned in a leaked email,  All existence of such a program has been denied by the Clavell Corp.

The heads on the ArtCrime figs are from GZG, these are more like 1/87 than 1/100, but I like the optics and for characters in suits I can live with the size.  The robots are GZG as are the base of the guncrab, the upper came from the bits box, it is DP9 I think.

Two more pics, in development, a support unit for my clones:

 The Valkyrie suit from ArtCrime.

The Rise of The Machines!

101011010101010100110101010101010.11010110101.1111110101101101101101101101101 

Military a.i.s have run amok. Nationalist clones have deployed interdict teams to hunt down and destroy rogue units.  Nationalist Intel has identified a safe house used for machine transmissions.  The mission: advance to, and capture, the safe house.  Rules for robots as previous, they are A.I. controlled 'smart bots' so order as will, two 'wounds' (in two separate firing incidents to destroy, on one wound can reboot on 6+ on QR, second kills)

The machines launched a war which ravaged cities, the A.I.s made a mistake, it only made the humans madder...

 Interdict team ready for deployment.  Combat clones plus support drones and care-bears

 Lurking in the city, potent death machines

 The target - the machine safe-house/transmitter center (brownie points if you know the Brewery!)

 Clones enter the combat zone

 Clones deploy into the rubble of the city

 Surveillance drones circle overheard providing "god-vision" (no sneak moves!)

 Clone advance falters as the machines open fire

 Old ABC robots claim the first blood, return fire from the clones knocks them out though!

 The second clone unit falls to the same fate

 But manages some effective return fire

 Combat drones mop-up in the center

 Reinforcements move to flank the pinned clone unit

 More reinforcements pour into the combat zone

 A heavy-combat unit in the center reboots successfully

 As do the ABC unit

 Not for long, effective fire from the clones knock them out for good!

 A care-bear rushes to recover a casualty

 Another care-bear recovers a casualty

 Combat-drones advance

 Clones flanked and ambushed, more clones go down

 return fire knocks-out a couple of doids

 The clones are pinned...

 More reinforcements appear

 More care-bears, just what the clone-doctor ordered

 Still more bad news on the casualty front

 Remaining clones engage and knock-out/down the flanking droids

 Combat-drones engage a war-droid in the center

 And, BOOM!

 On the left-flank the clones are struggling, more casualties, despite a droid KO

 Care-bears race to and fro

 Good news at last! The clones recover a casualty and knock-out the threatening droid.

 The clones grab the slim window of opportunity to advance fast

 Drones mop-up as they advance knocking down another ABC droid and a heavy-droid

 However, more reinforcements appear in front of the advancing clones

 and behind them too

 and to the side of them.  Things don't look too good...

 ZAP!

 BLAMMO!

 SIZZLE, drones clean-up!  really they KO all reinforcements due to some awful interrupt rolls and some great saving rolls by the drones

 The clones dart forwards into the gap

 Victory in sight!

 Uh-Oh, may be not

 The drones advance, the lead drone is KO'd by the war-droid

 Drones reply, KO ABC droid

 KO both war-droids

 A clone unit darts forwards into the building, and falls to a deadly ambush

 The remaining clones rush to support the unit

 Meh! poor fire discipline

 A lone stalker reactivates behind the clone front

 As do the war-droids

 ZAP! the drones knock-them out for good

 Drones advance to support the clones

 Drone KO Droids

 Clones finish-off the job this time

 And we have a winner!

A close-fought game.  I thought all was up for the clones earlier, fortunately the drones were highly-effective in this game, accounting for most of the clone droid KOs.  The lack of morale and pinned/fall back to recover wounds helped the drones/droids a lot and really forced the clones to fight very differently.  In the end it came down to the machines getting a couple of rounds of low-numbers of reinforcements, if they had more I doubt the clones would have made it.