Back with some more adventures of the Azure Dawn, having gotten some breathing space at work, painted up a *ton* of terrain (not just for 5 Parsecs but not not for 5 Parsecs), and clearing off the dining room table. Flush from their victory over the corporate security firm from their last mission, Estelle takes a contract from a similarly ambitious member of the local government, hoping that ingratiating herself to them might open some doors.
The problem is some of those doors have Sabertooth Tigers behind them.
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The Setup
With the upkeep of the Azure Dawn offset once more by selling fresh water to the locals, Estelle continues to aggressively pay down the loan on her ship – she’d like to be out from under the bank as soon as she can. Paying five credits, she brings the balance of her loan down to twenty.
Estelle sets out to do some trading, picking up five credits worth of fuel, which will come in handy for keeping costs down in the future. Trouble, meanwhile, repairs some of the gear the crew picked up from the last mission, resulting in a freshly repaired and newly deadly Boarding Saber for Felix. Viv goes out exploring, as she is wont to do, but doesn’t come back with much of anything. Wanting to make sure she delivers for the Lycinis Merchant Combine in hopes of future missions, Estelle tasks the rest of the grew with keeping their alarming number of rivals at bay. Which is good – once more, the crew barely stays ahead of them.
The job is a delivery mission – there’s an old settlement dating back from the very early days of the planet’s settlement, that’s fallen to ruin. Estelle can’t quite get a full story as to why it fell into ruin, but infers its a combination of war and economic abandonment, the former possibly caused by the latter. Regardless, there’s an old communications repeating station out there that, despite the rest of the settlement not being worth trying to maintain, is important enough for the local government to want it maintained. In this case, they need someone to go out there and install a new firmware update for the communications array. It’s not a lucrative job, but it might lead to more in the future, and besides, they let Estelle borrow a Dragonfly-class Dropship to get her out to the array (model by Dragon’s Rest using their Outposts: Origins vehicle kit).
Originally designed by Haldash Fleet Systems to serve as a dropship for the Union Marine Corps, the Dragonfly has room enough to transport a full squad of Union Marines in Battledress, plus support equipment, robots, cargo, etc. The spacious, open cockpit design made navigating the otherwise unwieldily craft a breeze, however the Union Marine Corps procurement office rated the design as “Unacceptable”, owing to a 37% chance of the pilot being “Killed or rendered unable to perform their duties” in the face of hostile ground fire, “Likely resulting in the complete loss of the aircraft as well as any embarked passengers and cargo.”
Hoping to recoup their investment, Haldash lobbied the Union government extensively to let them sell the Dragonfly to governments in the Fringe. Eventually, the Union agreed, and while several people have argued that this represents clear evidence of corruption and the influence of lobbyists, it is hard to argue with Rear Admiral Kirov’s testimony during hearings on the subject:
If anyone on the fringe wants to come after Union troops in that deathtrap, they’re more than welcome to.
Estelle, of course, cares about none of this – she just very much wants her hands on a vehicle with the amount of thrust the Dragonfly can provide. And she’s deeply intrigued by rumors of a smaller vessel built off the same lines meant for forward air observation, light transport and other duties.
An easy job and a fast ride sounds great – there is however one problem. A group of Sand Runners, a predatory, felinoid species that has managed to proliferate across a number of systems in the region, has claimed the ruins as their nest, and is unlikely to take kindly to tinkering around with the outpost in the center of it. Hence sending armed mercenaries instead of a technician.
The Miniatures
Besides the dropship above, we’ve got both some new miniatures, and two updates!
First, we need some Sand Runners. I had just picked up the One Page Rules Beastmen Hounds, and they seemed perfect for the role of the Sand Runners – fast looking, definitely predatory, and those teeth are a credible +1 damage weapon.
I was also not super locked-in to the models I was using for Alexis or Trouble, and Print Minis just released their Night Market set, which is a shift from Diesel Punk to Cyberpunk in terms of a look, and I absolutely love it. Alexis is developing in the campaign as more of a hacker/information broker type, and “Kimiko the Tech Sage” looked perfect for her.
Similarly, they have a set of robotic Cyberpunk Police, one of which I thought would look great for Trouble – it definitely has echoes of the Soulless/Geth imagery from the main rulebook, comes with a really intimidating looking gun, and overall just felt less…”Renegade Killbot” than my previous pick.
In particular, I’m using the one in the upper left of the image.
Finally, we have some terrain. The outpost itself is from Terrain Machine and was designed as a quick and dirty structure I could print on the Lulzbot Sidekick 289. I approached in in a somewhat “intentionally shabby” way – heavy washing, not actually avoiding layer lines, and giving it a sort of spotty coat of a texture paste I’ve been using a lot (more on that in a later post). Basically, I wanted it to look functional but unloved, and is if may have been 3d printed.
Finally, the ruins come from the Arvalon-8 Ruins set. I had originally picked these up for a 40K board, and that’s one of the reasons I like the set so much – it definitely makes things feel like a ruined city, but is reasonably setting agnostic in a way where I think it will feel at home on a number of different boards, and provide nice chunky barricade and scatter terrain.
Like I said, a lot of new models for this one. I’d expect to be reusing a lot of this in the future, so I’m anticipating the next big push is going to be a bunch of generic sci-fi city terrain.
The Battle
Putting the Dragonfly down at the edge of the board (the ramp counts as the board edge, as my 30″ x 44″ map is slightly too long to be proper), our team deploys out of it, and is immediately greeted by a pack of seven Sand Runners, led by a black-furred pack leader, that have been nesting in the ruins.
There’s also a “Really Shiny” objective off to one corner, but we’re not going to worry about that for now. Viv and Alexis remain near the dropship, both because there’s good cover there and because if things go south they can get back inside and raise the boarding ramp. Estelle and Garret secure the other flank, where two Sand Runners cagily lurk behind some terrain, while the combat heavy hitters, Trouble and Felix, deploy in the middle with the intent to push toward the outpost, with Trouble, the most durable of the group, carrying the drive needed for the software update.
We once more manage to barely seize the initiative thanks to a couple high Savvy characters and being outnumbered. Felix, Estelle and Trouble, all of whom have dangerous but short-ranged guns, move up, while Viv, Alexis and Garret all take shots at the Sand Runners, but needing 6’s they all fail.
Turn One
Turn one is…not great. We roll poorly for Reactions, meaning only Viv gets to go before the Sand Runners do. Despite aiming she misses her shot, and the Sand Runners promptly come barreling forward en masse. Alexis manages to hit one with her Colony Rifle but only stuns it, while everyone else, in a truly embarrassing display, miss, putting the crew rather closer to rather more Sand Runners than had been “The Plan”.
Turn Two
Turn Two offers a chance for redemption, as our Reaction rolls are much better, and some of the crew getting a second shot off before the Sand Runners get their turn. Alexis and Viv both kill one of the charging predators, which helps even the odds. Which is good, because two of the fast moving predators close on Felix, who stuns the large pack leader, but is wounded in return and is taken out as a casualty. The other flank does considerably better, with two Sand Runners charging Estelle, and both of them being cut down by her glimmer sword, cementing her reputation (in her own mind at least) as a terribly dangerous duelist.
This is the Sand Runner’s home tuft though, and their morale holds.
Turn Three
This is another disastrous turn of Reactions for the crew, and no one gets to go in the Fast Reactions phase. Two Sand Runners close on Trouble, and both he and the attacking Sand Runner roll 6’s, meaning they each take two hits – but rather surprisingly, no one is wounded and taken out as a casualty. That melee is now the bulk of the combat, and while Garret tries to see if he can take a shot, he fails his roll to do so and decides not to risk hitting Trouble. Estelle, seeing the supposedly easy mission in jeopardy, vaults over the rubble she was taking cover in and moves to try to help Trouble in the next turn or two – or at the very least, recover the data.
Turn Four
Reactions continue to be a problem – the Sand Runners go first, and one of them stuns Trouble. The Souless can however take a combat action, and opens fire with his Needle Gun, riddling one of the Sand Runners that have carved furrows all over his chassis with flechette rounds. Garret takes a carefully aimed shot and puts down the last of them, ending the mission with the crew of the Azure Dawn holding the field.
Payday
The bit of shiny loot Alexis is able to retrieve after the battle and sell off on the aftermarket nets the crew two credits, and the same is true for the mission payment – it is, as was warned, a modestly paying errand that falls in the “Paying your Dues” category. Fortunately, the Sand Runners that limp away to lick their wounds don’t want another taste of things and wandering threats can’t become Rivals, so we don’t need to worry about some sort of The Ghost and The Darkness shenanigans.
While cleaning up after the mission, making sure the software updates are installed, etc. the crew finds a personal trinket, likely belonging to someone who has long since fled the system. They also find a pristine set of Combat Armor in one of the crates, presumably from whatever befell this place. The insignia and markings aren’t familiar to anyone, and are easily removed – the armor itself being promptly claimed by Felix. Who, speaking of which, rolls a 100 for his Injury Roll, and thus gains +1 XP for “School of Hard Knocks”. The man comes out of wrestling with a Sand Runner and finding himself on the business end of those teeth with nothing more than some bruises and a really good story.
The flight back is fast, thanks to it being a flight, and that leaves the crew to do a little wandering – Estelle and Alexis both take rolls on the Exploration table. Estelle gets contacted by an arms dealer, but she passes on the opportunity – the crew doesn’t seem to be hurting for firepower, and she wants to save the three credits to pay down debt. Alexis, who is rapidly becoming Estelle’s favorite member of the crew, manages to find some leads on new jobs – ones that don’t need a patron, and promise to be lucrative.
Viv, meanwhile, is growing more confident, and is rather enjoying the Warrior-Poet concept. She raises her Combat Skill by one.
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