Wednesday 27 April 2016

Story League: Episode 4!

Welcome to the final episode of our Story League. Thanks again to those of you who submitted results for the previous mission as it resulted in a major victory for the attackers!

I've also now uploaded a PDF of all the missions for easier reading.

In the last episode an unmarked interplanetary transport vessel carrying Amelia Khan and Snowfall's cube suffered a "terrible accident" following a routine stop-and-search by a Yu Jing customs vessel.

They never stood a chance. With the generators destroyed and security forces routed the stricken transport ship was left drifting. A few demolition charges placed in key areas of the hull were sufficient to break the vessel up. There were no survivors. 

The formal report suggests an engineering failure in the starboard engine as the cause of the explosion and the blame has been laid at the feet of the port technicians, many of whom are now facing trials for negligence. 

Whilst the conflict continued in space, the Yu Jing judiciary revoked PanOceania's diplomatic status and demanded that any information pertaining to Snowfall be turned over immediately. Naturally, this request was denied. 

Ariadnan mercenary forces storm the grounds of the PanOceanian embassy.

Mission 04 - Embassy Raid


Players should roll for Initiative normally with the winner choosing to be the Attacker or Defender in addition to controlling either turn order or deployment.


Attacker Briefing:

"This isn't going to be a normal operation against some secretive target in the middle of nowhere. We're going to be hitting an embassy and half the planet is going to know its happening. Despite a blackout being put in place the media is going to be watching us closely. You can't suppress this stuff forever and things find a way of leaking out into the net.

Your mission is to enter the embassy, find their data centres and acquire as much data as you can before they can wipe it. We have viruses that are designed to scan and upload vast quantities of information on encrypted channels to our receivers. These are coded to bypass the signal blackout we have in place. 

This is a legal operation so get in, stay professional and do your jobs. Don't do anything that might arouse suspicion or get turned against us later, at least while anyone is looking..."

Attacker Forces:
300 points. Due to the room-to-room fighting and intense media scrutiny, TAGs may not be fielded during this battle.

Attacker Deployment:
All deployment is done as normal.



Defender Briefing:


"The Yu Jing authorities are only going to have one shot at us before this ruling is overturned through legal pressure and sanctions. They know that as much as we do so they are going to come at us hard while they have the chance.

We can't let our data fall into their hands. The signal blackout they've put in place prevents us from encrypting and sending data to a new, secure environment and we can't risk creating any further digital backups. Everything has to be locked down or corrupted.

We've isolated each data access point to our data centre from the wider network which means they can't access all our info from a single console but we also can't co-ordinate firewall responses. Instead, you'll need to manually execute anti-viral and data scrambling programs on infected consoles until we can force them to disengage."

Defender Forces:
300 points. Due to the room-to-room fighting and lack of heavy duty military equipment available, TAGs may not be fielded during this battle.

Defender Deployment:
All deployment is done as normal.


Table Set-up and Rules:

The table should be set up with 9 Console objectives as below. This is the same as the ITS pre-set layout 'N' - The Grid.

Layout for Episode 04 - Embassy Raid

Game Duration
This scenario has a limited time frame, so it will automatically finish at the end of the third Game Round.

If one of the players starts his active turn in a Retreat! state the game will end at the end of that Turn.

Consoles
There are nine Consoles on the battlefield.

To Control a Console it is necessary that a Specialist Troop be in base contact with the Console, spend one Short Skill and succeed at a Normal WIP Roll. If the roll is failed then it can be repeated as many times as necessary, each time spending the corresponding Short Skill and making the roll.

A Controlled Console can be Controlled again by another player applying the same procedure. In such a situation, the Console is no longer considered as Controlled by the adversary.

At the end of every game round players receive 1 Objective Point for each Console they Control.

Specialist Troops
For the purposes of this scenario only Doctors, Engineers, Forward Observers, Hackers, Paramedics and troops possessing the Chain of Command or Specialist Operative Special Skills are considered Specialist Troops.

Doctors, Engineers and Hackers cannot make use of Repeaters or G: Servant models to perform tasks reserved for Specialist Troops.

Hacker Bonus
Troops possessing the Hacker Special Skill have a MOD of +3 to the WIP Rolls necessary to Control the Consoles.

Reporters
Each player must have a Reporter as part of their army at no additional cost.

Reporters are Irregular and may not give orders to or receive orders from any order pools of their controller's army. They are not considered to be in a combat group with any other model.

Reporters may not attack, nor be attacked and are considered to be Friendly to both players so cannot be Engaged. If a Reporter is somehow put into a Null state (through the Explode Special Skill, for example) then the opponent of the player who was responsible automatically claims a Major Victory and the game immediately ends.

Reporters have the Infiltration Special Skill, 4-4 MOV, PH 8, ARM and BTS 0 and 1 Wound.

Any troop with the Journalist Special Skill is also considered to be a Reporter, except that it retains its troop profile and can attack/be attacked normally and without penalty.

Concilium Convention
Various weapons are banned under the Concilium Convention including those that disable Cubes, cause unnecessary collateral damage or employ chemical or viral payloads. The convention was set up to ensure that military actions are carried out with the least possible loss of life and damage to infrastructure. Flouting these rules is, of course, strongly discouraged and is a good way of garnering international condemnation. 

The table below contains a full list of Illegal weapons and ammunition types. Any weapon profile using an Illegal ammunition type (e.g. a Heavy Rocket Launcher) is considered to be Illegal itself.

Weapons with multiple profiles such as MULTI Rifles may be considered to be Illegal or not depending on which ammunition type they are using for a particular attack.

A list of Illegal weapons and ammunition types.

If a player declares an attack using an Illegal weapon when either the attacking troop or any of its targets are within Line of Fire of a Reporter then that player must subtract 3 Objective Points from their score.

If an Illegal piece of automatic equipment (such as a Mine) activates when either it or any of its targets are within Line of Fire of a Reporter then the owning player must subtract 3 Objective Points from their score.

Use of the Explode skill is also considered to be Illegal. If a trooper Explodes and a Reporter has Line of Fire to either it or any other affected trooper then the owning player must subtract 3 Objective Points from their score.

Use of the Marksmanship Special Skill to confer Shock ammunition on weapons is not Illegal as this is a property of the model and not of the weapon. They just have particularly good aim!


Victory Conditions


Attacker Major Victory - The Attacker has at least 5 more Objective Points than the Defender.

Attacker Minor Victory - The Attacker has more Objective Points than the Defender.

Defender Minor Victory - The Defender has more Objective Points than the Attacker.

Defender Major Victory - The Defender has at least 5 more Objective Points than the Attacker.


Contact Details

If you have any results, questions, concerns or feedback then contact me by replying to this post, via email (LeadRisingBlog@gmail.com) or sending a message through the Infinity in Bristol and Bath Facebook page.

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