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.