Ground Combat Tutorial

The ground combat tutorial scenario was a lot of fun, I got to use my Bag of Clowns miniatures, and the poster making feature of my photocopier to create deckplans.

GROUND COMBAT TUTORIAL:

Scenario: defend the ship from axe-wielding clowns.

Stan Darsh:  marine with combat armor, ACR and cutlass:  (Marlon)
Rick Turtles:  army captain with combat armor, SMG  (Andrew)
Eneri Jamison:  merchant with laser pistol, combat armor  (Bob)
Bill Redbone:  other with snub auto, combat armor  (Jason)

Location: a non-functioning Subsidized Merchant parked at a star port.
Enemies: 50 Bozite cultists in mesh armor with battle axes

Summary:  Turtles was on the upper deck, Darsh, Eneri and Redbone were on the cargo deck, when the rear door and starboard cargo door were blown open and the clowns rushed in.  Eneri was alone near the bow and was surrounded by a dozen clowns.   Darsh and Redbone were almost surrounded, but withdrew to a side corridor.   Darsh put aside his ACR and switched to cutlass and made an excellent defense for himself.  Redbone stood in the corridor and brutally blew the head of one clown after another as they came down the corridor one at a time.   Turtles gets to the opposite side access hatch and drops his grenade down onto the clowns, wounding a few, but only knocking one out of the fight.  He then begins a constant barrage of SMG bullets down the ladder way, with the clowns only rarely getting an axe attempt when he had to stop to change magazines.

Things start to look bad for Eneri.   He takes 2 light wounds and 1 moderate wound, and is only 1 END for exhaustion.    He's too wounded to get any hits with his laser pistol, and is surrounded and cornered by a dozen clowns.   So, in desperation, and counting on his combat armor, he rolls his demolition charge onto the deck and activates it only a meter or two from his feet.  It kills or seriously wounds all 12 clowns, and doesn't scratch Eneri himself.  The tide has turned!

The clowns keep trying to overcome the cutlass, come down the corridor to Redbone and climb up the ladder for another 2 turns, but finally they fail morale and flee.  Only a dozen or so escaped out the rear door. 

LESSONS:  I think everyone got the point about how the penetration and wounds work,  There is still a little confusion about what numbers go for what roll, but everyone appreciates the joys of autofire, the horror of explosive rounds, and some of the melee details.  The turn sequence went pretty smoothly, except I kept wanting to skip the player's return fire phase before the melee attack, which they would quickly remind me about.

The Turn Sequence track play aid I made was crucial and kept the game flowing smoothly.  Man a Snub pistol really is just the best thing for making things dead in shipboard combat.  I was really pleasantly surprised about how the melee weapons worked.  The Battle Axe has the best penetration of all the weapons, but nevertheless, against a guy trained with a cutlass it's hard to get a hit.