5C Sandbox Campaign - the Collapse Mission 2

With Mission 2 being a combat patrol, which means heavy fighting is to be expected, the question is, what made the state unleash such a treatment on a domestic neighborhood?

All seems calm...

A squad of fellow riflemen was ambushed and wiped out by some western-rumour-fuelled ad-hoc militia, which has cordoned off the area, threatening to kill all who enter...

These men were our friends! Our brothers! The hammer's coming down! And the sickle, too, I guess....

"Look: All I'm saying is if this is all a hoax, why are we wearing NBC-suits?"

-"Shut up, will you?"

We go in with our full force and fully armed - there can be no holding back when dealing with this scum! 

Not only does the squad now contain an RPK and an RPG, but I also rolled up a support level of 3, meaning I have a 50% chance of getting backup right off the bat, should I need it. This will increase if meeting a lot of resistance or taking casualties.

Aaaand on turn 1 the scout check has us reveal the first encounter, which of course is a major contact, meaning it'll spawn additional encounters close by. Damn those degenerate Western dice!

The original group of regulars...

...activates the next encounter with hardened insurgents...

...which in turn cascades into revealing a sniper. Great. Just great.

Sergeant Vladimir has a character pretty similar to mine, meaning he looked at this situation unfolding and decided that he'd have none of that.

An Artillery strike seemed in order. This is the heaviest form of support but it also is a gamble because the blasted area is variable and it means that no further support can be called in.

Thankfully the gamble paid off with me rolling a blast radius of 6" around the target point, virtually wiping out the enemy except for the sniper and a sole survivor.

All this commotion led a small group of Zom...wounded and disoriented citizens to the area. As officially there is no outbreak of anything but mass hysteria, my squad has to check if they feel threatened enough to open fire. After all we're here to help those poor and innocent people.

In the meantime, there's the very real threat of the sniper. Fortunately, he visited the Imperial Stormtrooper academy of marksmanship and eventually we manage to suppress and scare him off 

Also with the shambling Zombies getting closer, Sarge arrives at the conclusion that it's pretty damn weird to eat people and therefore shooting those cannibal lunatics is in order. With the day starting of like this - who can blame him?

"See? Virus. Zombies. Hence NBC-Gear."

-"Shut. Up. Already!"

As I rolled for Zeds everytime guns were fired, plenty of Zombie encounters entered the board in random locations. I had them move towards the closest encounter-markers or models.

Upon meeting an encounter marker, I rolled a D6 to see which group prevailed with a 4+ having the Zeds win. This didn't happen once during the game, so there were no further Zombies - those militia guys were really good at taking 'em out!

On with the mission: the remains of our comrades were inspected. Of course they were all dead...

More hostiles were encountered at the warehouse, but Vladimir gave them hell with his RPG. 

On with the mission. While there was one hell of a lot of enemy activity, my dice were on fire - no losses so far!

At the next patrol point, a group of weekend warriors tried to hold the squad of. 

As those guys weren't that motivated and with my dice still being very much biased in my favor, the group was quickly reduced to 2 shaken survivors, who quickly surrendered. Doubtlessly they will be thoroughly interrogated about how they turned innocent civilians into cannibals. And who exactly the western agents in charge are.

There was no respite, however, as a scout check revealed the next encounter - weekend warriors again. After taking some casualties, they quickly fled...

...only to be replaced by another bunch! Jeez! Thankfully, Vladimir was positioned perfectly for giving them hell with his RPG (In FiveCore you have to aim it at an obstacle and if the shot misses, which is very likely, it hits the next obstacle in its flight path. I aimed at the car, so the miss went into the fence. Brutal!).

Ouch!

On to the next Patrol Point. The encounter close by triggered another sniper. Thankfully one of my guys has a special skill allowing him to suppress snipers upon arrival, which this time actually worked and the sniper decided to get the hell out. 

The last patrol point was guarded by hardened insurgents, who immediately spawned another group.

Both were quickly dealt with thanks to - again - dice being on fire with the opposition not hitting the broad side of a barn. Had this not been a solo game, I would have felt really bad for my opponent.

In the future, I will be more weary of calling an artillery strike. While it worked like a charm, less outrageous dice in the following game would have meant, that support would've been necessary.

In the aftermath, no new skills were learned, which is fine, as I'm notoriously bad at remembering them anyway.

Needless to say, my squaddies now have some lingering doubts about the official events... or rather the lack thereof. Obviously, not being naive, they reported an attack by severely wounded and disoriented civilians. Trauma seems to have led to some cannibalistic behavior there. Better to be reprimanded for excessive use of force against unarmed citizens than to show up on the commissar's radar, I guess.

Next up is a "Repel"-mission. Normally that would be a standard attack on a checkpoint - I'll modify it, however, by using the encounter-table for presence-patrols, as it contains mainly civilians. So instead of a regular fight, we'll have to persuade frightened civilians to go home and not break quarantine. Needless to say some of them might already be infected...