Indiana Jones and the sword of Cortes part 2

School holidays! Time for a Fistful of Lead game with my son.

The story so far:

Baron Otto von Drüben and Doctor René Belloq have escaped from Central America with the fabled sword of Cortes (read all about it here). Indiana Jones is recovering from being nearly clubbed to death by the natives protecting the temple of Hoaxcoatl, but his companion Rupert Jenkins of the British secret service has intercepted the boat carrying the Baron back to the Heimat. Rupert relieves the Baron of the sword, only to find out that he has been fooled! It's a replica.

Meanwhile Doctor Belloq has taken the real sword via a different route to Iceland. There he will meet up with the Baron and take a fast boat to Germany.

However...

British intelligence has identified the harbour basin and ship the Baron intends to use. Rupert, two fellow agents and a local asset will intercept the Baron and Belloq and attempt to steal the sword back. In order to make sure they have the real sword this time they have taken Doctor Marcus Brody with them to verifiy the authenticity of the sword.

The bad guys

The good guys

The harbour

Rupert and his team enter from the left side. Kapitän Badesalz is on the ship. Von Drüben, Belloq, Bootsmann Lautstärke and the grunts will enter from the top in a car and a lorry. 

When the sword is on the ship, two jokers are added to the deck. When a joker comes up, the ship sails and Von Drüben has won when the sword is still under his control on the vessel. If the sword leaves the table in possession of anyone of Rupert's crew, they have won. My son wanted to play the good guys this time, so the bad guys are for me.

Von Drüben arrives while Rupert's crew is advancing behind the box cars.

When the car and the lorry arrive at the quay, Belloq gets out of the car and moves towards the ship. The grunts take up covering postions.

My son sends agent Perrson forward to spray the car with submachine gun fire. The grunts and bootsmann Lautstärke return fire. Rupert, agent Bedevere and Galahad also fire at the car (I told my son that if he hit the car and would roll a natural 10 on the to wound roll, the car would explode in cinematic fashion. It took a lot of fire, but didn't explode 😀). Von Drüben exits the car, taking cover behind it.

While Belloq is running to the ship, Kapitän Badesalz appears on deck and fires his revolver at agent Persson.

People are running out of ammo, but in the hail of fire both agent Perrson and Belloq go down with a wound. Belloq drops a briefcase. He is/was carrying the sword!

Aimed shots from agent Galahad with his sniper rifle put Belloq out of action.

A succession of good cards provide Von Drüben with the opportunity to run from the safety of the car to the briefcase and subsequently onto the ship with the sword. 

Agent Galahad drops bootsmann Lautstärke with a headshot. After this Agent Bedevere bravely engages the grunts, so Rupert, Galahad and Perrson can use the distraction to reach the ship.

Sadly Bedevere does not survive.

Having reloaded below deck, Badesalz again appears with his revolver. At point blank range this time. Also the grunts have swung their rifles towards Galahad, Perrson and Jenkins.

Galahad and Perrson go down in the crossfire.

Rupert Jenkins fires his Thompson in response and Badesalz goes down.

Quickly Marcus Brody climbes on board. Von Drüben has withdrawn into the ship.

When Marcus opens the door, Von Drüben is waiting and fires his pistol at point blank range.

He misses and is out of ammo. Frustrated he jumps towards Marcus to knock the academic senseless.

Despite fighting only with a d8 (Marcus has the "green" trait) against Von Drüben's d10, Marcus wins!

He takes the briefcase from the cabin, checks the sword and turns around.

Seriously wounded, Rupert Jenkins stands his ground against the grunts that are blocking Marcus' escape. He has already dropped one and shaken another.

Marcus pulls out his revolver and fires a wild shot at one of the grunts, taking him out while Jenkins reloads!

Jenkins shreds the last grunt, Marcus gets off the ship and both escape with the sword.

Von Drüben and Belloq have their wounds treated in a local hospital and convince the Iceland police that they are the victim of a vicious robbery. Rupert Jenkins and Marcus Brody may have escaped with the sword but Von Drüben has friends working for the German Abwehr. Their network of spies have  seen Jenkins and Brody leave Iceland on a ship heading for Canada. Von Drüben is already organising a raiding crew to steal the sword back.

This isn't over yet so stay tuned for part 3!

Crystal research

At the club we played another Sharpe Power Armour game.

The mission is to retrieve the research logs from the vehicles at the centre of the board. The research team itself has disappeared while investigating strange crystal growths in a city destroyed in an apocalyptic  conflict long ago.

My opponent's force (armoured troopers supported by robots and vehicles carrying heavy weapons) enters the area.

On the opposite side, my heavy power armour units advance, supported by two armoured trooper squads and a heavy weapon team.

Units of my opponent move towards the vehilces while taking fire from my guys.

One of my power armoured units reaches a vehicle, plugs in and starts downloading (and wiping) the research logs.

Soon both sides are lobbing grenades at each other over the vehicle.

Another power armoured unit I send in to assist, runs into my opponent's "panzerknackers". They are wiped out, but the power armour is also destroyed, forcing the pilot to eject and skedaddle.

My surviving power armour is accumulating damage and two of my supporting infantry squads have been destroyed so I decide to withdraw.

The remainder of my force manages to withdraw to safety, but when we roll a die after the game to determine which vehicle contained the high value logs (the other one containing almost worthless survey data), I found out my force obtained the wrong data!