MIB vs the Fallers part 2

While Agent P and his fellow Men in Black were getting their asses kicked by the Fallers trying to secure the egg (read all about it here), another MiB team set up a roadblock to stop the Fallers trying to get the abducted politician to the egg to be eggsumed.

This MiB team consisted of a leader with an SMG (Agent V), specialist (medic, Agent I) with a pistol and three regulars (Agent Y with shotgun, Agent Z with an SMG, Agent R with a pistol).

The Fallers had a leader with two pistols, a specialist with an SMG, two regulars with shotguns and four grunts with pistols. All are tough as nails. They are transporting the abducted politician in the camper van.

Upon spotting the MiB roadblock, the Fallers stop, exit their vehicles and enter the woods, leaving one grunt in the camper van to guard the politician.

MiB agents V, Y and R also enter the woods to intercept the Fallers. Agents Z and I keep their positions at the roadblock.

Both sides make their way at half speed through the woods.

Until they are almost close enough to see each other.

It is at this moment that agents Z and I seize the opportunity and dash towards the Faller vehicles in their black MiB vehicle, betting on the woods and agents V, Y and R to slow the Fallers enough for them to get in and out again with the politician.

Agent Z gets out of the car and covers the front of the camper van on overwatch. The Faller grunt coming to see what's up is put out of action by a burst of fire from Z.

Agent Z cries: "get out of the van with your hands where I can see 'em!" 

A terrified politician sticks his cuffed hands out of the door and slowly gets down.

While agent Z pushes the politician towards the MiB vehicle, Agents V and R are firing at the Fallers, taking little damage themselves but putting both shotgun wielding Fallers out of action.

Agent Y is covering the approach of the Faller grunts and puts one of them out of action.

Agent I has done a quick health check on the politician and turns the car around while Z covers the edge of the forest with his SMG. 

The Fallers put agent Y out of action. Agent V, discovering he is out of ammo, down one agent and about to be surrounded by Fallers calls to agent R: "get to the car, we are leaving!".

While struggling through the undergrowth, agent R is shot in the back by the Fallers and is immediately out of action.

Agent V makes it to the car and they leave the table with the politician.

MiB managed to foil the Faller plans, but the Fallers control the egg and may hold one or more MiB agents that are out of action but possibly not dead yet.......

Project Star Wars part 14: Nearing the end of the project

I still have a few spaceships and a few miniatures to paint, but the end of the Star Wars painting queue is in sight. 

I'm pretty satisfied about the progress on this project. Regularly posting on the blog and on the Leadadventure forum has helped keeping me focused on finishing things (instead of halfway starting a new unfinished project). I'll definitely continue this for future projects.

Everything (painted that is) together on the table:

MIB vs the Fallers part 1

I'm a great fan of Peter F Hamilton's books, and ever since I read The Chronicle of the Fallers I've been wanting to use it as the setting for a game.

In the book, large eggs regularly fall down from space on a planet. After landing on the planet, the eggs exert a strong attractive force on the creatures living on the planet. When a creature is drawn towards the egg and touches it, it is stuck. The trapped creature is then "eggsumed". It is slowly absorbed by the egg and transforms into a perfect copy (a Faller), which is under the control of the Faller hive mind and is much stronger than the original.

The people inhabiting the planet try to destroy an egg as soon as it lands, but of course they sometimes are too late. Society is slowly infiltrated by the Fallers who try to have influential people eggsumed in order to help taking over the planet.

Back to the game: These Faller eggs also occasionally drop down on Earth. Fortunately the Men in Black are aware of this and are always on the lookout for Faller eggs and Faller covens. The trajectory of an egg has been tracked to a remote countryside location. An MiB team which happened to be in the area is dispatched to secure the egg before it eggsumes someone or a Faller coven can get to it. It will then later be collected by a special egg recovery team for further research. A nearby Faller coven is however also en route to the egg and plans to have an influential politician, who was abducted by another faller coven, eggsumed.

We used Fistful of Lead rules. The Fallers can move anywhere, but if MiB move within 7" of the egg, they are attracted by the egg and must move towards it until touching it and being eggsumed.

MiB squad consisting of a leader with an SMG (agent P), two regulars with shotguns (agents B & C), a regular with pistol (agent L) and a specialist (Medic) with pistol (Agent S).

The Faller coven has a leader with two pistols, a specialist with two MAC-10s, two regulars with shotguns and four grunts with pistols. All are tough as nails.

All is quiet and the egg lies undisturbed in the middle of the table.

The Faller coven enters the board on the dirt road.

MiB arrives in black cars on the road and move towards the egg on foot.

They veer off into the woods when they become aware of the Fallers.

The Fallers try to envelop them except for bikini clad Daisy, who is sent to cover the egg.

Agent P crashes through the undergrowth and drops the Faller leader with a shot from his SMG. The Fallers shoot their shotguns at Agent C who has just killed one of the Faller grunts, also inflicting a wound.

Meanwhile the joker card is drawn which triggers an event: a civilian vehicle is moving down the road towards the egg. When it gets within 7" the driver will come under the egg's influence and stop the car to get out to touch the egg. Neither side wants this to happen as it interferes with their plans and (in the case of MiB) their mission to protect the public from harm.

Agent C's recovery roll lets him get up, but Agent S fails his medic task roll to remove the wound and they are both put out of action by a hail of bullets from the Fallers.

The Faller leader meanwhile also got up and put both Agent P and L out of action.

Daisy arrives in time to stop the car before it gets near the egg.

A sound victory for the Fallers. But will they succeed in getting the abducted politician to the egg to be eggsumed? All will be revealed in MiB vs the Fallers part 2.

The game went quite smooth with the Fistful of Lead rules, although I think we forgot to apply the out of ammo rule when rolling a one when shooting. Also the Faller specialist might have been a bit overpowered with two MAC-10's counting as SMGs. Maybe counting them as pistols with 2 shots would be better.

Combat with FFoL is quite unforgiving in our experience. Each model has three wounds but once a model is hit (shock or wound) the chances of being put out of action rapidly increase: with 1 wound, rolling an 8+ on a D10 will put the model out of action immediately despite the number of wounds remaining. We might be reading the rules wrong though.

 

 

Project Star Wars part 13: Speeder bikes and civilians

With the Legion core set containing Imperial scout troopers on speeder bikes, I wanted to have some rebel/scum bikes for them to chase (or the other way around) . I couldn't find any (the swoop bike riders now available for pre-order weren't around yet) so decided to try and build two bikes from bits.

Red bikes go faster!

In pursuit of the Imperial scout troopers from the core set(s).

I also found two air speeders in an acceptable scale for use as terrain items or objectives.

Here they are next to an Imperial Assault Luke:

By now I really have enough (famous last words) of Star Wars miniatures in fighting poses. What was missing were suitable civilians for scenario's or just to enliven the tabletop. I liked the look of the Kroglogg miniatures so I bought a couple of unarmed ones.

For the rest I used surplus models from other game systems and the occasional Star Wars model I was able to find.

The blue guys (top row) are GW Tau heads on GW Bretonnian archer bodies (with Tau feet) except the first which is a Tau tank commander body. The blue guy(?) and the first figure in the last picture are from Mantic. The droid is from Pig Iron and the middle guy is an old GW Lizardmen Saurus model.

The Jawa's are converted GW Night Goblins.