MEST :: Mythos ~ A Fungi from Yuggoth

Overview

Lord Malik is Defender. Prince Anton is Attacker.

This is a 1000 BP MEST 2.x scenario I played recently with my nephew and my brother. It is part of
the Mythos genre with a scenario name "A Fungi from Yuggoth". There's 10 models on each side, and so this qualifies as a "Large Battle" per the terminology used in the game. It resolved in about 2 hours, which isn't too bad for three players and that many minis.

The scenario is available for download at the MEST Tactics Google Site here;
https://sites.google.com/site/mesttactics/downloads/8.5x11.mythos.migi-yuggo.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

The Situation

This is from the scenario background;

In the upper heights of Cairo, Lord Malik, wanted for murder, and his noviatiate cultists are at the Temple of Charon. They are attempting to signal a Mi-Go emmisary in order to establish a base within the area. Unbeknownst to them, one former cult member, very concerned by the turn of events after witnessing human sacrifice by Lord Malik, has warned the local constable. News got out to action-hero Prince Anton. He plus a reputable field scout from Britain by the name of Neil Dunsany the Third take with them 8 Ruga-ruga to investigate.

After Action Report

I'd say this was a very interesting turn of events. Neil Dunsany and 4 Ruga-ruga were controlled by my brother, and Prince Anton with the other 4 Ruga-ruga were controlled by my nephew. They split their forces at the frontage road before the Temple of Charon and started down the precarious terrain towards the Fountain where a Cultist with a Prayer Book is summoning the Mi-Go.

Visibility was 8" because it is Sunset, Clear. A model in Wait status allows LOS to be traced up to 24".

Lord Malik tried to stay away from Line-of-Sight but near the Fountain in order to control long-term Situational Awareness. His two Cultists with Shotguns took a high vantage behind some trees at either side of the corners near their battlefield edge in order to cover the lanes of fire coming towards the Temple grounds.

Four of the eager Cultists rushed towards a Ruined House in order to try and halt the on-coming Ruga-ruga. Two got KO'd. One of the Cultists, armed with a Semi-automatic Pistol, took to the partition wall near the Ruined House and the other went into a Tree Cluster across the way. 

Prince Anton rushed to the blind alley before the Ruined House and took some Reaction Fire from the Cultist at the Ruined House. He successfully ignored the Suppression marker and KO'd the Cultists in the Cluster.

At the other side of the battlefield, Neil and his Ruga-ruga made some way past the frontage road beyond the row of parked vehicles. There's ever so-little room for maneuver except across a large patch of Rough-going terrain. Across two precious Turns they moved towards a large outcropping of boulders while maintaining Hidden status.

Three Turns have passed, and there are two KO'd Cultists, and two Eliminated. One of the Ruga-ruga under control of Prince Anton got bloodthirsty. The constable will hear of this; it cost the Attacker about 90 BP. Not good. At this time, all of the Attackers have crossed the mid-line of the battlefield garnering them 1 VP, plus another for having downed the most BP worth of Opposing models.

However, the Defenders have completed their ritual and the Mi-go known as F4G2 arrives and sets up within 8" of the Defender's battlefield edge. It has Flight and Fear 2, plus it is armed with a Beam pistol. The arrvial of the Mi-go awards the Defender 1 VP. 

Now it is Attacker 2 VP vs. Defender 1 VP.

At the start of Turn 4, the Attackers have lost their Situational Awareness because they've divided their forces too much. The Defender's Lord Malik still maintains LOS to at least half his forces, and so wins the Initiative Test with 4 Initiative Points to Lord Anton's zero. Ouch.

As a result, there's an amazing firefight exchange with Lord Anton, and two Ruga-ruga near the Ruined house against two Cultists. Lord Anton goes KO'd and so does one of the Ruga-ruga. This awards the Defender 1 VP for the KO'd Grizzled Hero and another 1 VP for having the most Opposing models KO'd or Eliminated; Lord Anton is 260 BP ... so that was a big win.

Now it is Attacker 2 VP vs. Defender 3 VP.  My nephew was wailing at this point (he's just 10) but my brother insisted giving it a chance.

The only way for the Attacker to win is to either force Lord Malik's forces to Bottle (unlikely) or to take out the Mi-go. Unfortunately, the Defender still had one last remaining Initiative Point to spend and maneuvered the Flying Mi-go into range of Neil and two of his Ruga-ruga; all were in Hidden status. As a result, they repositioned out of Fear range though becoming Revealed. 

And here's the mistake. As its last Action Point, the Mi-go decided to gain some distance from them instead of using its feeble Beam Pistol (Damage is 2 + 2 Modifier dice). When the Initiative passed to Neil Dunsany, he rolled an amazing Range Hit Test with the Mi-go scoring zero successes. The same occurred for the Damage Test; the Grizzled Scout's Rifle does 5 Damage and the Mi-go became KO'd and fell from the sky.

Per the Victory Conditions, the Mi-go when KO'd awards the Attacker +1 VP. So it is 3 VP vs. 3 VP. However, the Mi-go is itself worth 285 BP which flipped the award for having the most Opposing models KO'd or Eliminated to the Attacker.

Final Score; Attacker 4 VP vs. Defender 2 VP.

It was a close game. Ended in 4 Turns.

The Photos

Alas, I forgot to take many pictures during the game-play but my brother did snap a few good overlooks on the battlefield.

View from the Neil Dunsany's perspective. That's a smoke beacon billowing at the left. There's a Cultist with a Shotgun in Wait status at the top-right tree. Neil and his fireteam needed to maneuver sharp-right across the Rough terrain because anything from the storm-cellar doors to the wall is in the LOF.

View from Lord Malik's perspective. This is one of two hills guarding the Fountain.

Mid-battlefield. The Ruined House has a lot of activity, with one the Cultists KO'd at the Tree Cluster. A Cultist with a prayer book is busy and needs two more Turns at summoning the Mi-go. He's got help, but they are falling quickly to the Ruga-ruga Soldiers coming down the side of the Temple.

Download

Direct download here

Scenarios Page here

MEST 2.x :: Play-test Fire and Smoke

This is a play-test of the Fire and Smoke rules I've been working on. I played against my daughter who is just 6 but very crafty. She plays the Heroes.

Mission Size

500 BP.
Total of 5 models.

Sides

Heroes are:

• Axela (Martialist Sneaky Leader, Stun Blaster 2, IR Googles, Bulletproof Armor 2 )
• Hot Head (Average Flying Flame Blaster 3, Fire Armor {Fireproof Bulletproof Bombproof Armor 3})

New Orthodox Republic:

• Officer (Elite Tactician, Auto-rifle, Psi-helm + UVGoggles, Firefighter Armor 4)
• 2 x Tac-Ops (Average, Auto-rifle, Psi-helm + UV Goggles, Firefighter Armor 4)

Mission

The Mission takes place on a 24x24-inch battlefield on the outskirts of Phnom-pen, an ancient temple ruins in Cambodia. The jungle entrance to the danger zone has been set on fire by Hot Head, but the NOR troopers are equipped with Firefighter Armor courtesy of Power Surge Enterprises.

Axela is a dangerous Psyker Ninja.

• NOR needs to capture Axela. When she is KO'd she gives up and remains In-play as a Captive. She needs to be escorted back to the NOR entry edge. 
• Heroes need to KO'd or Eliminate all of the NOR.

Simple Battle Report

• Turn 1
  The NOR Officer wins Initiative and calls in 4 Smoke generators to provide Cover. NOR moves to behind each of the Smoke (2-inch diameter) to hide from Hot Head and LOS from Axela who can see through Smoke (but not Fire).
  
  Alas, Hot Head takes to the top of the highest point upon the battlefield and lays down three Fire markers against one of the Tac-Ops troopers setting him on fire with 2 Burn markers.
  
  Alas, Axela sprints (moves twice) into position and pushes herself to psionically Stun-blast the NOR Officer assigning him 2 Stun tokens. As her Bonus Action, she goes into Hidden status behind the Cover of the Smoke.
  
• Turn 2
  The NOR Officer wins Initiative again and does a Group Attack against Hot Head and hit him with a hail of bullets from the two ROF 3 attacks. However, the bullets melt (the Attackers rolled poorly for the Damage Test).
  
  The third NOR trooper is busy on fire with Burn markers but managers to get away from the Fire markers towards Cover and extinguish them with a Concentrated Fiddle action.
  
  Hot Head then performs a Concentrate attack against the first trooper and issues a single Burn marker after surrounded it with three Fire markers.
  
  Axela tries a Concentrated attack against the NOR Officer and issues three Stun damage resulting in a Wound. After the Fear Test, the Officer becomes Nervous with a Fear token.
  
• Turn 3The Heroes win the Initiative at this time. Axela targets the NOR Officer again, but it shrugged off by the Psi-helm.
  
  Hot Head does a direct attack against the NOR Officer. Nothing. So he attacks the NOR trooper already on fire and issues 3 more Fire markers which results in 3 more Burn markers; total of 4.
  
  The NOR Officer moves into LOS of Axela, but she was Hidden and repositions away from harm though still in LOS. The NOR Officer decides to let loose on the Auto-rifle and KO's her. She remains standing as a Captive. For the Bonus Action, the NOR Officer moves into base-contact.
  
  The trooper with 4 Burn markers gets 2 Wounds. And spends his AP to remove the Burn markers, reducing them down to 1 again.
  
  The other trooper attempts to shoot Axela but misses. For his last action, moves into base-contact with his comrade to possibly help with extinguishing the Burn markers.
  
• Turn 4
  The Heroes win Initiative again. Hot Head decides to lay down Fire markers near his team-mate Axela as well as the Officer. (Damn, my 6 year-old thought of this, crazy). Officer goes down, and Axela becomes Free and no longer a Captive.  Axela doesn't get Burned (rolled lucky).
  
  None of the Tac-Ops figures were within Cohesion, and so they weren't affected. The Smoke here helped with that.
  
  The troopers perform a Concentrated Fiddle Action to remove the Burn markers. I really shouldn't have tried this twice; I wasted opportunities to attack Hot Head. Fail. Fail.
  
• Turn 5
  The Heroes win Initiative again with 3 Initiative points. Easily because the NOR Officer was KO'd.
  
  With this, the game is essentially over. Axela moved into LOS and Concentrated Stun-blast against trooper one; a Wound and a Fear token.  Hot Head layed down Concentrated Fire markers against trooper two; 3 Burn markers.
  
  We called it after that. It was dinner time anyways. 

The Photos

Here's the aftermath. I will need to tweak the Fire and Burn rules a little; I think that there are too many Burn markers needed to track effects. Maybe having them behave like Stun damage where after the first couple the rest are Wounds. 

Hot Head at the roost.

Axela and the fallen NOR Officer.

Sorry; blurry! This is the wall of Fire set up by Hot Head against the two NOR Troopers.

Retropocalypse at DundraCon

Aggro and myself ran the Retropocalypse scenario at DundraCon just yesterday. Our first session ran for nearly three hours and we had 6 attendees. The second session ran for 1.5 hours and we had a repeat attendee and a new intrepid player. Our attendees demonstrated mastery of the basic rules very quickly. We did not expect such a large audience for the first session and it required the doting care of the both of us to ensure our guests experienced maximum enjoyment. Something had to give and we soon forgot to get enough sequential pictures to build a proper AAR.  However, in all cases our intrepid gamers did express to us that their time was well spent.

The six players in the first ran one team each of the various available factions issued at random.  The Red Army was not selected. The second session was two mini-games with two players each  (me + one, Aggro + one) at different ends of the battlefield.

At the start of each session I laid out the rules booklets with gamer card attached.

Booklets removed.

Those yellow stars are the Objective Markers. We didn't have time to build a thematic set.

Sometime around Turn 2?

Pa just took down a Scavenger.  "Get off my lawn!"

Sort of blurry.  You can see Herr Maske at the left with the She-wolves moving up towards the middle.

Done and Distracted.

Deep in the mix.  Those little bowls helped us corral the numerous dice.

From the second session, my one-on-one game.  Princess is Hidden and Ready.

A little blurry. 

Leroy about to move a bit closer to Princess and Onyx.

Ben is protecting the Object Marker.

Leroy by his lonesome.

Pa and kin Hidden.  Pa looks a bit Distracted.

Leroy caint really be hidin past them barrels.

Long view of the situation.

I think here my game was called.  Leroy took out Onyx, Princess looks out of it, and Moondog has no ranged weapons.

VSF Battle Revisited

Overview

Wee Aggro, Aggro84, and myself had a chance to re-run an earlier battle from last year.  The time we've had has been spare and so this was a welcome match-up!  Aggro84 decided to mentor Wee Aggro and I was the opposition.

Here's the previous AAR:
http://matter-energy-space-time.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-10th-2013-vsf-game.html

Assemblies

Aggro's Assembly included many Beasts with Elites, Marksmen, and a Heroic.  My assembly had many Average with Melee weapons and my Elite and Heroic were given Pistols and Heavy Armor.

Battlefield

We used the same rosters for our assemblies but we decided to go urban this time. Gamekastle in San Jose had a decent street board that we overlayed our terrain. Our mission was the Treasure Hunt one found in the full-color MEST Basic Rules .  We deployed 9 Objective Markers [ OM ] and placed them hovering within 8" near the center of the 48"x48" battlefield and no closer than 3" to each other.  Afterwards we deployed our assemblies at opposite edges.

Resource Cards

For every Objective Marker retrieved a player can draw from the Resource Cards deck which is an Advanced Rule feature.  Each card might award additional bonus Resource Points [ RPs ] to augment the collection of the OM or have some game effect that can be good or bad.

Victory Conditions

The player with the most RPs is given 1 Victory Point [ VP ]. The player that KO'd or Eliminates the greater number of enemy is given 1 VP.  The player that crosses the mid-line of the battlefield with the greater number of models is given 1 VP. The player that forces the other to bottle-out is given 1 VP.  These incentives shaped our game-play strategy.

Aggro's starting line-up. There's four OMs within view.

The starting line-up had three Beasts.  You can see
 in the back one of the OMs near those quick models.

Those little black/purplish tokens identify the models
 as being Hidden.  Hidden models receive many
 benefits, one of which is that they can't be
 targeted for Range Combat unless first detected.

Here's some of my forces.  My Elite is that all-black
 steam-punk guy with dual Pistols from LAF minis.
There is an OM nearby.

A high shot of the starting conditions.  My forces are
 way in the back near the top. 

This is one of my blurry smartphone pics. Sorry. 

One of the Beasts makes a run to carve out a
 tactical position near the skull-pile OM; it goes into Wait.
 Another Beast runs to the barrel OM.  The two other
 OMs are taken by a third Beast at the jalopy and by a
Marksman near the south-west wall at the street-lamp.

From this angle you can see that Wee Aggro
 has secured 1 VP for most objective markers, and one
 more for crossing the center with at least one model.
 At the left his quick beast is fighting my Turk Marksman
 for the bone-pile OM.  My forces at the right are bit slow
 but they have been moving into position.  The Elite
 with the pistols is in Wait to cover the skull-pile OM.

Here's my Turk Marksman and the Beast.  It doesn't look
 good; he's been Wounded and is already Nervous. 

Aaargh! Turkman down! Apparently the Beast is
 now Distracted and this may slow it down.

Meanwhile across that particular wall you can see
 that I've got another shooter in position and Hidden.

Across the street in the courtyard I've bean able to
 maneuver several of my characters into position.
This particular area becomes a critical choke-point because it
 is also at the mid-line of the battlefield.  The Beast
 already took the other OM and so I'm stuck trying to
 acquire VPs by other means.

Back near the Turkman I've been able to bring into my
Elite and Heroic to acquire the bone-pile OM.
Another Beast was fielded to prevent that and
 also Wee Aggro decided to bring in one of his shooters.
 I got the OM for myself when I brought in the Heroic.

You can see that my Heroic with the Sword and the
 Elite really kicked some butt.  Though it looks bad
for my Elite this little Scrum was mine to own.

OK. This is back at the other courtyard.  You can see
 that I've been able to bring about my Leader and
 begun getting closer towards the mid-line.

Here is my last picture.  I've been
 doing mop-up work in that courtyard.
At this point Wee Aggro forfeits
 knowing that it is a matter of time.
I win with achieving the most KO'd and
 Eliminated, and with the most
 models crossing the mid-line.

November 10th, 2013 VSF Game

Kitrok and I met for a game at Game Kastle in Santa Clara CA last night.
It had been a while since my Lead Adventure minis saw some action some I brought them along to game with.

My group, I couldn't help slipping in some mummies.I figured my Leader, the chap with the umbrella, was an Egyptian Mystic who could control the Undead. I also took two dogs the help sniff out Kitrok's Hidden troops and tie him up.

Robert's group. Sort of a hodgepodge. The lovely lady with the rifle was his Leader.

A view from my side of the board. Normally, I wouldn't have used the cars for this genre, but I forgot to bring more items of terrain along. I had left my walls in another box from Pacificon a few months ago.

A view from Kitrok's side of the table.

Early on in the game I was the first to engage one of Kitrok's Elite models.

I engaged one of Kitrok's Hero's and one of Kitrok's  Brawlers rushed to the Hero's aid.

Another view.

The mummy failed it's Fear Test after being wounded and ran off. Yes, the Mummy took a Fear test. We used the basic rules with basic archetypes. The mummies were all the "Beast" archetype. It would be nice to stat mummies up though.

A overhead view at the end of Turn 1. In a rush to collect Objective Markers, many of out troops overextended ourselves.

This chap of Kitrok's captured an Objective Marker (the crate), however; he drew a booby trap card that managed to wound him.

One of my mummies quickly finished him off.

This fellow chased after the mummy he had wounded and finished him off.

This chap started raining bullets down on Kitrok's men.After rolling an "out of ammo" result during Turn 1 that had forced him to reload.

The first of Kitrok's troops to fall to the portable Gatling gun. The fellow with the spear was also wounded.

So of my hounds finished him off.

Another one of my mummies falls to one of Kitrok's Elites.

The second kill from my portable Gatling gunner. This fellow had been Hidden, but he had spotted by one of my dogs.

The Gatling gunner then paused to admire his handiwork.

One of my dogs falls in close combat to pistol fire.

I swarmed this Kitrok's Elite with a heavy shield and took him out. We ended the game after this. It was a close fought battle me tied for Objectives but I won by one victory point for the most KO's