(Planet 28) Immovable Force

With one girl completely immersed with all thing March Madness, and another completely indifferent, it was a good day break out a simple scenario and relearn Planet 28.  

Scenario:  Death Planet Iota is a junk planet, the final resting place for items sucked into various vortexes throughout the universe.  Only the strongest, the smartest, or the most resilient tend to survive.  

The Ratskins are all three.

Toughened by the planet (and thick layers of animal pelts) the Ratskins scavenge what they can find, and raid when necessary.   Tough and heavily armed, they are a force to be reckoned with, even more so when they're hired for a task.

The Ratskins

One of the local warlords has acquired a damaged aircraft which arrived on the planet.  Desperate to find techs smart enough to fix it, he has squirreled it away in a heavily guarded complex which houses a number of other valuable items.

The complex is heavily guarded from the outside, but easier to access from the underground.  The Ratskins will be paid more than most of the items they're destroying are worth.    Anyway, what would they do with a spaceship?  

The only internal guards are the Chimneysweeps, a Gnomish Police Force, currently being hired out as security by the warlord.  

The Chimneysweeps.  Disregard the heavy support gnome.

Ratskin Obejective:  Destory all the objectives (blue chips).  The Ratskins have been given demolitions charges.  It takes two actions to secure the explosives (Both actions do NOT need to be done on the same turn) and one separate action to detonate (hopefully far away).  One detonation action can explode all active bombs.  Anything detonated before the security droid (see lower left) are partial payments.  

Chimneysweeps Objective:  Keep damage to a minimum.  Three or fewer objectives destroyed is a victory, although the aircraft counts as three objectives by itself.  

The Ratskins had snuck into a building, but triggered a silent alarm, which alerted the gnomes of their actions.    They were still able to whip around the corner and unload onto the gnomes in the corridor only to completely miss.  The gnomes gained their senses and returned fire, only to... completely miss.  

The Ratskins and Gnomekind tended to avoid each other, this was their first true encounter.  While the Rastkins were tough hombres, the gnomes were a different breed.  Despite their slowness (10cm minus 1d6 cm per action) they had an iron skin.    While the gnomes shots kept missing the Ratskins, perfectly square shots to vital areas seemed to simply bounce off, sometimes with a laugh from the gnome.  

Ultimately a hail of SMG fire finally knicked and wounded one of the Raskins that they paused for a moment, only to have another shot have them headed back towards the underground.  

On the far end of the board, the gnomes had injured one Ratskin, the Ratskin's shotgun-wielding brother started to unleash Hell.  It was still difficult to wound the gnome with the blasts, but the shot sent him flying backwards multiple time.  

With the one gnome constantly getting pushed back towards the firefight in the center of the complex.  The one gnome thought valor was for another day and ran around the wall, letting the Ratskin leader set the charge unmolested.  

With his compatriot already in the sewers, the lone Ratskin in the firefight in the center of the complex, exchanged fire, only for the blasts to continue to be absorbed by gnomish physiology.  

Even a decent shot (2d8 =11) was absorbed by the gnome's armor (d8+d4).  This was the theme all game.

Finally, as the gnomes may have all been reloading. The Ratskin dashed around his corner and headed towards a communication objective.  

Obejective Two: Armed.

Meanwhile, the gnome in hiding regained some bravery, and regretted every second of it.  He engaged the Ratskin leader in a melee that would be difficult to land a wounding blow.  However the part couldn't hug each other, much less hurt each other, until the gnome, finally shoved him away and tried to escape, only to stumble between two Ratskins advancing.  

By this point the security bot was fully operational and moving through the complex, with weaponry more than capable of injuring the Ratskins.  As they fell back, the leader detonated both charges, destroying both objectives, and possibly leaving on of their kind either killed by the blast, or buried under the rubble.  A partial victory for the Ratskins, a major one for the Chimneysweeps, although no one wanted to contact the client about the two large explosions in the complex.  

The 2nd edition of the rules clear up combat and equipment, but a hot light armor die (d8) versus a poor to average damage dice (2d6 or 2d8) either mitigates or cancels out most of the damage.  The lone Ratskin who needed a break test (less than 50% of hit points) was hit five times before it happened, and didn't completely break until a sixth shot got through for a whopping four points and dropped the break test save as 1-2 on 1d10.  

Now throw in an extra d4 for the gnomes, and the Ratskins should have just outraced them while they had the chance.  

This scenario was directly inspired by "Maximum Havoc" from Preacher by Day.  and involved Chaos cultists who were a little squishier for some Lamenters.  I may revisit this scenario in the future, but I have an Easter game to plan for both girls.