FallCon 2015: 15mm Tomorrow's War. RESD vs Cyber Threat

This was a refresher game using two equivalent sides.  TL2, standard troops

Rigel II:  New Mohi

A fledgling colony established on the edge of known space.  Colonists establishing the first settlements stumbled across an artifact of unknown origin and technology.  It's importance was clear and a FTL message dispatch was sent to Terra.

A small force of the Royal Exo-planetary Strike and Defense was sent to hold the position.  Unfortunately the transmission was intercepted by the Cyber Threat, a race of intelligent robots who have decided the tech should belong to them.

The small unit of RESD troopers was divided into 3 fire teams.  One held the artifacts position while 2 other fire teams went out to scout the area to prevent unknown attacks.

When the Cyber Threat appeared the main colony was protected by a small force, knowing they had to survive while three squads of machines approached out of the mist.

The Colony of New Mohi, a new small colony on the fringes of human space.

RESD team 1 holds the area around the artifact while the Cyber Threat approaches the compound.

RESD Team 1 knows Team 2 and Team 3 are scheduled to return, and so hold out and stay mostly out of site while the robots approach.

RESD Team 1 takes cover expecting to be caught in the fire of the Cyber Threat soon.  On the left side RESD Team 2 returns from scouting and approached through the forest, causing the Cyber Threat to funnel their forces more down throat of the compound.  Unfortunately heavy cover makes firing lanes rare and hard to come by.

As expected the central element of the Cyber Threat comes around the corner of a colony building and opens up on Team 1.  Team 1 presses into cover and begins to return fire as one of their riflemen fall.  In the chaos their fire impacts uselessly against the compound walls, missing the robots.

During the firefight the reinforcing element of RESD Team 2 moves forward to the edge of the forest in order to be able to lay down fire, trying to hold the second element of the Cyber Threat at bay.  On the right side the robots see an opening and dash between the tanker and main colony building hoping to out flank the RESD and catch team 1 in a cross fire.

Just when it looks very bad for the humans, RESD Team 3 returns through the forest on the right, forcing the Cyber Threat to hold position and re-evaluate.

As the fire fight rages across the main colony road, the left element of Cyber Threat dashes across to lend support to their central element.

RESD Team 2 moves up and opens fire on the Cyber Threat central element with Team 1.  Their plasma rifles are strike home and knock several of the robots down, damaging some severely.

Aftermath of the firefight, 2 severly damaged robots, and one lightly damaged.  The fire from the robots falls around the troops but does no damage, the massive damage pins the robots where they are for now.

As battles ebb and flow the left element of the Cyber Threat moves up into a firing position in the trees, their combined fire down on the RESD this time cause massive damage knocking troopers into the mud.  One stays down permanently. One takes serious damage, his armor holed through the lower body.  On the right the Cyber Threat enters the main colony complex hoping to use the cover of the door to finally dislodge RESD Team 1 from the artifact's building.

From their position in the building the Cyber Threat right element exchanges fire with RESD team one, ammunition strikes true on both sides, as warriors from both factions are knocked to the ground.  RESD Team 3 moves along the forest edge and sets up a firing line, preventing the right element from crossing to the artifact.

Team 1 and the Right Cyber Threat feeling their firefight heating up and their companions knocked down with serious injuries continue to take as much cover as they can and continue to fire across the road at each other.  The damaged central element falls back, to remove the damaged units freeing them to fight more effectively.  Their left element comes down the hill and enters a colony building

The battle continues to rage.  A war of attrition on both sides.  At the point the artifact is still in the human's control, and barring a stroke of bad luck, both sides will continue to wear themselves down little by little until the colony is left a smoking battlefield with not enough men or machines to retrieve the artifact.............

Battle at the Town. The Second Battle

Tomorrow's War

Game 2

Nov 30th 2014

Human RESD vs Cyber Droid Threat

This is the second game of Tomorrow's war we have played.  We used the exact same table as last time, but tried some new ideas.  We have been "balancing" our forces based on FP dice, which doesn't produce balanced forces.  We are still working on that.  I am writing this up from memory and pictures.  It is incomplete but should give a feel for the engagement.

The RESD were stationed in a small  town that controls a road through the plains.  

Word of an approaching threat allowed them to take up defensive and hidden positions to strike out at the approaching Cyber Droids.

The majority of the troops took up positions that would allow them to control the road.  Flanks were controlled by a heavy plasma team on the right and an elite recon unit on the left.

As the Cyber droids approach their larger "power armor" robots crossed an open area.  The plasma team opened fire and unleashed a torrent of fire across the battlefield.  The plasma bolt proved largely ineffective against the robots.  This would prove to be a continuing issue. Although I rolled okay here the robots armo'r and advanced repair essentially rendered my attack useless.

A small unit of skimmers moved forward towards the town.  A fire team attempts to spot the small stealthy units, but even as they catch a glimpse of the machines and prepare to open fire the skimmers seemingly waiting for them unleash their own plasma cutting the unit down.

After the horrific onslaught the entire squad, save one trooper left with serious injuries is killed.  If you don't play Tomorrow's war.  After a unit takes casualties you roll a d6 at the end of the turn to see the result.  A 1 results in a death.  I rolled four 1s. 

On the right flank another unit of skimmers has managed to move up and lay down a round of fire wounding my gun team and seriously weakening it's offensive power.  As the skimmers bear down on the plasma team the RESD fire team comes out of hiding and moves back into the trees in an attempt to cut off the incoming skimmers.

The skimmers closed in an attempt to close assault the gun team, but before they can the team gets one more shot off destroying a single skimmer before they swarm the team and finish them off.  

The RESD fire team had also attempted to stop them with reaction fire, but with dice rolls that were consistently like these, not much happened.  The fire team was wiped out shortly afterwards allowing the Cyber Droids on the right flank to move in towards the center.

Meanwhile in the center of town light flyers had moved up with a unit of skimmers, but despite being right on the RESD positions the skimmers with their stealth tech remained hidden.  This was not the case for the first skimmer that came down the center street.  The RESD fire team carrying a heavy plasma and 4 pulse rifles opened up.  The plasma rifle managed to do nothing, bouncing harmlessly off the armor, but the pulse rifles managed to find a weak spot on the armor bringing it to the ground.

Now exposed to fire the fire team takes massive fire from the skimmers and remaining flyer.  It is essentially wiped out in a couple of turns.

This leaves a single unit.  The elite recon team.  From their stealthy position in the trees with light arms they began to inflict some damage on the enemy.  Their superior training and stealth allowed them to take out the last of the light vehicles. 

But even after that it was 5 RESD recon scouts vs a large number of heavy robots and skimmers.  It was only a matter of time. 

Eventually the position would be over run.

We called the game in favor of the droids.

We did some stuff VERY wrong.  We had it in our head that every time a unit reacted it had a -1 reaction to it's next reaction test.  In reality it is supposed to lose one FP die per reaction past the first.

We had some issues with morale, ie remembering it.  using the wrong dice etc.