Five Parsecs From Home: Turn 16 - Ambushed by rivals!

The Pelican was getting crowded these days. Mao and Forgrave, after getting out of medbay decided to use the resources around them to upgrade the living quarters on board. It was a pretty basic job but when all was said and done it looked pretty good. More room for activities. 

Meanwhile in a local watering hole the crew got into a few fights! Finlay Carrick, the new guy of all people! What happened to laying low and looking for new leads to find those missing settlers? 

After sniffing around a little Sara over at Leyte thought she had another lead for the crew. When returning to The Pelican to gear up they were ambushed! Those thugs who exchanged fists with Carrick were back for round 2, but this time armed to the teeth!

As the crew approached The Pelican they noticed that the landing port was deserted. This was unusual for as much as this place was a backwater landing pad on a backwater planet there had up until this point been quite a lot of activity here. Suddenly EARL detected lifeforms incoming, moving quickly. Suspiciously quickly.

The crew split into their normal fire teams. Holmes, EARL and Baratski circled around the building intending to take up positions in and around the foliage for a clear line of fire across the entire area. Brenko, Phillips and Carrick ran to The Pelican to take up positions behind crates and engage the advancing rabble.

Almost into cover and the shadows beneath The Pelican.

Fire started incoming from the rabble of punks who were running headlong at the crew. The fire was largely inaccurate but it was high in volume and made them duck for cover, rounds kicking up sparks and dust clouds from the ground around them.

EARL fired his first grenade, hoping to dispell the crowd and cause maximun carnage. The grenade overshot, bouncing off some cargo and exploding harmlessly out of the way. 

The incoming punks continued to rush forward, firing wildly! 

Wild fire kept missing, but was still too close for comfort for Baratski!

Carrick took aim and shot one of the punks, killing him with a few well placed rounds.

Some wild firing got closer to home, causing Phillips to duck behind cover.

EARL launched another grenade, causing some disturbance! One of the enemies dove for cover. Holmes shot another while Phillips killed yet another! They were dropping like flies.

EARL and Holmes took aim...

EARL's grenade finished the job this time! Dead punks. Holmes' shot from distance took down the final punk. There were no more left.

Local security arrived right on time to investigate and protect their citizens! In the aftermath of the attack a local corporate rep, who had been hiding inside, was impressed by the speed and efficiency with which the gang were taken care of. He took the crew's information to offer them a future job. Carrick also managed to get his hand on some military grade flex armour, useful for anyone using a heavy weapon! 

Later, while resting, the comm buzzed. Sara had another lead about the missing settlers. 

"Let's gear up!" Holmes ordered and began preparing their transport.

Five Parsecs from Home: Turn 15 - Follow up the lead

When escaping the Collective invasion of The Moon of Tarnicus a number of refugees escaped aboard The Pelican. Among them was a Everlife Arms R-series loader droid who went by the name "EARL." Upon reaching Deon B most of the refugees disembarked, in order to find passage to a nicer place. Other remained. EARL decided to remain on board The Pelican and couldn't be coaxed off. As he was not posing a threat Holmes decided to let him stay and see what happened. It turned out the droid had quite the personality and many of the crew, Baratski especially came to like having him around. 

While in port Holmes managed to get in contact with the owner of an artifact they had picked up. An exchange was set and the crew found themselves the proud owners of a Nowak Weapons grenade launcher. This would be useful for clearing a crowd. 

Finlay Carrick was an old friend of Estelle Phillips. They grew up together in the undercity of Illustro's main conurbation. Fighting their way through their childhoods and adolescence Carrick started falling for Phillips. When she escaped that hell hole he followed but lost contact, until now. A fellow refugee from Tarnicus he stumbled upon our crew. With Phillips vouching for him they decided to let him tag along for a while until he found another adventure...or another skirt to chase...

After their chance meeting with Sara from Leyte Logistics and the discovery that her friends were missing, the crew decided to help. There were innumerable reasons for a small, peaceful, technically illegal community to be targeted and with help from Sara at Leyte and a little muscle and savvy, Holmes et al. thought they were up to the job. No-one wanted to fall victim to any kind of corporate/criminal/black ops shenanigans as said shenanigans usually ended up with death or worse, slavery.

The first option was to investigate the flight logs at the nearest excuse for a landing port . This could give some insight into who had been coming and going. Like most landing areas on Deon B this place was basic. A couple of pads, a control building, a fuel store. No roads, just tough vehicles. 

Taking precautions EARL advanced with Baratski and Holmes. The plan was for them to get into a good vantage point with solid cover. They would then watch the backs of Phillips, Brenko and Carrick as they advanced to the control centre to check the logs.

A handful of well armed soldiers approached the landing port, determined to prevent these strangers accessing any data. They split into three pairs, a formation designed to maximise their fields of fire.

Holmes took cover as the other team advanced in the shadows of some containers. The soldiers approached carefully, keeping in cover.

Holmes opened fire, pinning one of the soldiers down. This pair had decided to break cover and advance quickly towards the stacked cargo for cover.

The leader, armed with some kind of rocket launcher poked himself around the truck...

...pinning Holmes behind the rocks. In response Baratski and Phillips opened fire on the pair of soldiers knocking them both out of the fight! 

Carrick advanced a little and pinned another soldier with some well placed shotgun blasts. Phillips was trying to get some cover by the door of the control building. It was pretty ramshackle but it still had the data needed!

Holmes and EARL opened up, shooting bullets and grenades over at another pair of soldiers, killing them both!

The last remaining pair of soldiers stuck around. They fired over onto Carrick and Phillips, missing both.

Brenko, who had been quiet for far poked her head around the container and shot at the soldiers, taking one of them out.

Carrick then ran over to the last soldier and cut him down with some more blasts from the shotgun. Baratski ran over to the flatbed and discovered a stash of credits. Phillips entered the building to check the logs. 

After checking the logs there was nothing there. This was a complete waste of time! If they were taken off planet it was not from here. Sara would be frustrated. On the plus side EARL identified a stash of useful ship parts that could be used to upgrade The Pelican or to barter for actually desired upgrades.

While snooping around they also came across some body armour that looked like it was designed for stealth. 

Hopefully this would be useful and soon the team would be able to catch a break in terms of tracking down the missing settlers. 

Five Parsecs from Home: Turn 14 - Deon B

The war was spreading. Collective forces were spreading across the sector before the UCS could respond in force. The Pelican along with myriad other vessels found themselves fleeing across various systems in the wild hope that the war would not reach as far out onto the fringes. 

Deon B was very much on the fringes. According to what records exist there were no UCS chartered settlements. Leyte Logistics had, however, put a job on the local net calling for help to investigate an unchartered farmstead. Contact had been lost for a time. There seemed to be little of value on farmsteads like this but a job was a job. It would help keep the ship in the sky and food in their bellies. 

Baratski, Brenko, Phillips and Forgrave would escort a rep from Leyte to the farm and try to make contact. The crew was needed as muscle just in case. 

Baratski and Forgrave approached with the rep. Brenko and Phillips were delayed and might arrive later. Hopefully that wouldn't spell disaster.

In game terms the condition of the game were "small crew" meaning I could only use 4 characters, and "delayed arrival" meaning two of them had to arrive later. Each round I would roll 1D6 and if the number was below/equal the round number then they could come on. Luckily you will see that at the beginning of round 2 I rolled a 2, so they weren't delayed that much.

Two groups of unknown enemies were skulking around on the outskirts, likely waiting for relief efforts to arrive so they could ambush them.

The rest of the crew arrived and they tried to make their way straight up to the farm buildings. The quicker this job got done, the better for any missing survivors (and for the crew's wallets as there is a bonus for quick completion!)

A barrage of bullets took the crew by surprise as one of the skulking enemy opened up with some kind of rapidfire weapon! Luckily nobody was hurt. Forgrave jumped out of cover and headed over to the farm building, hoping to secure it.

Three other figures rounded the other side opening fire on Forgrave who went head over heels in a bloody mess! Getting caught in the open never pays!

Baratski pumped some rounds over in their direction, cutting one of them down. At the sight of his friend lying there one of the figures legged it as quickly and as far away as possible. It was no fun when the settlers fought back!

Brenko stimmed herself up and charged with superhuman speed over to another enemy, blade swinging! Sliced and diced her opponent fell to the ground. The last remaining enemy on this side of the farm building backed around the corner and hoped there were no more stims around. 

Brenko used the team's Booster Pills which allow for double movement or the removal of stun markers. 

Accurate fire from the auto weapon and the figure behind the farm building caused Brenko and Phillips to scurry for cover, pinned down. Baratski and the rep used this chance to run out of line of sight of what must have been a machine gun of some kind. 

While Baratski and the rep arrived at the building, intense firing broke out between the remaining enemies, and Brenko and Phillips. Both of them had to seek cover, but the enemies were taken down finally. 

The final opponent bravely engaged in shooting with Baratski, however with a sorry looking pistol he didn't stand much of a chance against Baratski's Hysys 2212 shotgun. 

With no-one left to fight it was time to find out why this farm had dropped out of contact and make sure Forgrave was okay. Luckily for him he had just been winged by a shot and just needed to spend a little time in medbay. The farmers though? Nowhere to be found. This was unsettling. The rep looked upset.

"I know these people" she explained. "I helped them relocate here a year ago, we thought it was safer, further into the jungle. I guess we were wrong."

"Who is we? Who are these people?" asked Brenko. 

"Escapees. Slaves, servants, criminals, abuse victims, deserters. They were trying to avoid problems when problems found them. It looks like even more problems have found them. We have to find them."

Chain of Command - US infantry vs Panzergrenadieren

Last night at the club (I LOVE that I can say that now) we played a pick-up game of Chain of Command. A US platoon vs a Panzergrenadier platoon. I was on the Panzergrenadier side. It was a meeting engagement where there weren't really any objectives other than to break the enemy. 

I am unfamiliar with these rules. I have seen about them and have heard good things, but because it looked like they were marketed at 28mm I didn't really bother. I neither want to collect that scale nor play in it and was unsure that if I ever found a club whether they would go for 20mm. As it stands they play a bit of every scale in loads of different rules. I might have to invest in some more rulesets...something I never thought I would do. 

I don't know what to think of these rules. I need to read them first. I think the scale is just below what I want. Two games and no vehicles so far, but even when we were chosing our support the options were only an Sdkfz 250 with MG team level of vehicle. No tanks. The US player brought no vehicles whatsoever. I would rather have a few tanks and an AT gun. Hence why I like Battlegroup so much. 

There is this initial movement phase where you move these tokens around the table, they must remain within 12' of eachother and as soon as they go within 12' of an enemy token they get locked in place. Then once all are locked down, you triangulate where the jump off points will be. Then and only then do you start bringing units on the table, but that all depends on the command dice rolls. You roll 5 and each number means something else. It is a fascinating mechanic and one I struggle to comprehend how the guys at Two Fat Lardies even came up with it. 

I think I like the rules. It makes for an interesting battle. But we do spend a lot of time checking with the rules. The QRS was like 4 pages long! FRONT AND BACK! I will probably end up buying the rules and having a peruse. 

The way the jump off points ended up we had one behind this bocage and intended to deploy and run up to the barn. Unfortunately the US had a jump off point behind the barn and got there first. We made a decision to not deploy anything there until the US squad was in the barn, then we would land a flamethrower team in the field and blast the barn. They would have no cover and we had 12 attack dice. We knew he would be exposed but thought it would be interesting. As it happened the rolls were dreadful and we had 4/12 dice hit. The US then succeeded the 4 saving rolls. No casualties, no shock. 

Luckily we also deployed a squad who had 21 attack dice. They messed the US team up, and the flamethrower team had another two attempts. We managed to wipe out the fire team in the building and kill the junior officer. In the whole game that was the only unit that got wiped out. There were no other US casualties. They had a lot of shock on this flank though. Our squad stayed behind the bocage just pouring fire into the barn and the rest of the team who were behind that low wall next to it. 

On the other flank, we deployed a full squad in the hope that they could rush up and take the US jump off point to help break their morale. We advanced under a lot of cover, dodging mortar shots. The game ended with the squad here, pretty much unable to move. They were firing into the building behind the high walls just at the top left of the photo. The US player deployed their final squad right in the middle to cover that area. We debated jumping out into the open and taking out the jump off point but decided against it. We had a squad in the middle also who we tried to run up the road to hit the rear of that large US squad in this picture, but the rolls were dreadful. 

We lost a couple of men from this squad. Our senior leader on the long rectangle base was rounded but came back into action. 

The game ended when we ran out of time. Our morale had dropped from 8 to 5. The US had dropped from 9 to 6. They were better off there. But in terms of position on the table, we had two full squads who were about to start flanking around the barn to get behind the remaining US forces. We called it a marginal German victory. The US team said that if it were a campaign game they would have started withdrawing a little while ago. 

Five Parsecs from Home - Turn 13: INVASION!

At the beginning of turn 13 I did an invasion check. In the narrative, obviously there are Collective forces on the planet meaning it has been invaded. The check is to see if you have to fight a battle to escape the planet or if you can just escape. If I really wanted I could ignore the rule that you have to try and escape an invaded planet, in order to try and complete more war adjacent missions, or join a side or something, but I felt it makes more sense to escape. Maybe the war will follow. I look forward to tracking if this place becomes unavailable though. 

I intend to play a couple of games where Collective is fighting with the planetary militia before any UCS forces arrive. I have one of the forces written up and am deciding if I want to base up and paint new miniatures entirely for it. This battle will use the Horizon Wars rule set.

Chaos! While the sector militia were desperately battling to delay the Collective advance on this sector's key landing ports, chaos ruled on the roads and transit hubs. Collective forces were rumoured to be close to cutting the grav train line and this was likely the last train out of this area. Desperate civilians, nervous scoundrels, plucky scavengers were all attempting to leave on this train. The road was riskier and blocked in many areas due to traffic, abandonned vehicles, and careless driving. 

A Collective recon squad advanced up the road in two fire teams. Each team had a plasma rifle as a squad support weapon. The Lieutenant was armed with a fury rifle - nasty business. 

The Pelican crew were looking to catch the last train out of town. They planned to fan out and fend off any attack until the last minute, then jump on board and escape. 

A few armed civilians had set up a road block but were swept away as the recon squad advanced. The left hand fire team split further and two soldiers attempted to spread out on the left flank.

Holmes ran forward to secure a shot and fired, immediately killing the squad support plasma rifleman. Lars also advanced with the intention of laying down fire down the road and turning it into a killing zone if needed. 

Baratski went right to defend against anyone coming for the train. The rest of the team hung around waiting to react to an advance and cover any flanks.

Holmes got caught out in the open and had to scurry for cover! Lars responded by advancing into some cover and shooting down another Collective recon troop. Meanwhile the right hand fire team went off road and tried to flank around the buildings. At the same time the Collective left flank advanced, while Baratski hid behind the train.

Estelle Phillips and Lars opened fire on some exposed Collective soldiers, killing one. 

The others returned fire, causing Phillips to duck around the building. They also found a good, covered place to fire from.

She was meant to become a casualty but has a luck point. It turns out I have been playing luck points wrong the entire time. I thought they got used up and were single use. I did not realise they come back each new campaign turn.

More ineffective, tentative fire was aimed at Lars and Holmes. Both well covered had nothing to worry about.

Lars managed to pop out of cover long enough to take out another Collective soldier.

Baratski advanced over the train car to take up a defensive position behind the warehouse. Forgrave ran over to provide support. Lars and Holmes were holding down the centre while Phillips and Brenko held the left flank.

Baratski took fire from the Collective soldiers, ducking behind the warehouse. Forgrave remained ready to pounce.

Disaster! Bolts of plasma emerged around the side of a building hitting Lars Nicolau square in the chest! He crumpled, unmoving. 

Collective reinforcements arrived! The train was almost ready to leave. Would there be enough time to get to the train? Would it leave safely? The soldiers facing Brenko and Phillips moved up to the opposite side of the building. All four of them now sharing the same cover basically.

There was no in game mechanic for the reinforcements. I just wanted some more badguys on the table to resemble an actual battle.

Phillips and Brenko exchanged fire with the two soldiers, killing one of them.

Baratski and the two flanking soldiers exchanged more fire, Baratski diving for cover along with one of the soldiers.

More fire was exchanged between Holmes and the squad support plasma rifleman. Neither hit, both frustrated.

Phillips got pinned down again. She had been taking a lot of fire in this engagement.

Baratski finally got the better of the Collective soldiers, taking one out in a shower of shotgun pellets as Forgrave ran around the shipping containers to get a bead on another soldier.

He then took aim at a range close enough to use his laser sight and almost guarantee a hit. This flank was secure for the moment until more reinforcements would arrive. Holmes pinned down the plasma-man at the same time.

As the Collective reinforcements spread out to outflank the crew, the driver called them over to jump on board. They were ready to go! Not a moment too late as out in the distance looming shapes were emerging. The cavalry were here. Holmes covering the rest, they each fell back onto the train which departed.

As it left it took fire from the advancing Collective force. Another transport link to the landing port cut off. It looked like the planet was going to fall soon, before the UCS could respond with their sector assets. 

The grav train ride was ropey. Brenko swore she had spotted Collective cavalry units trying to keep pace with them at one point. The sector militia stopped them a couple of time to warn about nearby fighting. It was packed with refugees and other ship crews trying to leave. They had Lars laid out on a bench not conscious, not moving, a large cauterised hole in his chest. It was not looking hopeful and the medbay on The Pelican was pretty basic. 

After pulling into the landing port and stretchering Lars onboard Baratski began takeoff proceedures. A hulking, mechanical figure appeared at the ramp as Phillips and Forgrave were hauling supplies onboard. "EARL" was all it said. Another few people followed, asking for passage off world. The journey would be uncomfortable, but it was going to beat living on a warzone. Before launch a voice came over the intercom, it was Holmes. "Lars is gone" he announced. 

As The Pelican launched and broke out of the atmosphere, the crew gathered for a drink. 

A drink to Lars Nicolau.

He belonged to the stars now.