Five Parsecs From Home: Gladiator's Campaign Turn 2

The religious artifact the crew must liberate.

I had to use the special card "Have you met my mate?" in order to scare up some help. There are five one use cards you can use in a campaign. This one in particular lets you get a crew member whenever you need one, even during a battle. Pretty powerful so I'm a little reticent to use it on the second turn. The alternative is to only get one recruit so I opted to use it so that I can recruit two new members and go into battle with four characters.

Note: I did kick Hattie and took her shotgun. She was bad luck anyhow!

Anyway, the campaign turn consisted of Katsuda and Skeet recruiting one member each (total of 6 upkeep). No enemies tracked me down so I had to do an "opportunity mission." I decided on the statue since I wanted a cavern theme.

From left to right: Katsuda, Skeet, Grenda, and Gort.

My opponents: Four vigilantes armed with rifles and the leader with an auto rifle.

The scenario: Locals have hired Katsuda's crew to root out their place of worship, a statue deep within a cavern. Vigilantes have decided to make it their base of operations. The townsfolk have little in the way of weapons, being a peaceful people. Naturally, they have to hire some muscle to take care of their problems once in a while.

Strategy: Try and keep out of sight or at least in cover and close as everyone of my people have 12" range.

The set up

Turn 1:   Quick actions went to Gort who dashed into cover. Katsuda moved into range and opened fire! She hits her man and he's stunned but being a terrifying weapon (probably super loud, especially in the cave), he has to take a morale test at the end of the turn.

Gort makes his move but is out of range with his hand gun.

Katsuda opens fire!...Even if she wasn't supposed to!

The enemy take over and run for cover. The victim of Katsuda's cling fire pistol crawls to relative safety while the leader of the vigilante group and his lackey level their rifles at the blue beauty. Being in cover, the bullets bounce harmlessly off the stalagmites. A few yards over, Gort is fired upon by a vigilante behind the statue but the he's saved by poor marksmanship.

They never said anything about collateral damage to the statue!

Grenda joins the battle with a wild shot after she too moves behind a stalagmite. Skeet dashes up behind cover.

(At this point I realized you can't shoot after dashing. As Katsuda dashed and fired, I decided it wasn't such a terrifying shot and didn't make them test morale. Oops!)

Turn 2: No quick actions this time. Things go very wrong.

Fire erupts once again inside the cave, Katsuda is injured and goes down! Grenda is targeted but the bullets miss. Gort, unfortunately, isn't so lucky. He crumples to the ground!

Uh oh...

Alien down!

The good guy's turn sees Grenda fire again but miss. She's a hacker who lived on a space station after all! Skeet makes a wild charge to one of the bridges hoping for a quick action.

Skeet's last stand.

One morale failure for the good guys!

Turn 3: One quick action goes to Skeet who moves into firing position (1" of extra movement is pretty nice!). He fires his shotgun at the woman behind the statue. One vigilante down!

Skeet caps the lady behind the statue.

Enemy take aim at Grenda and she's not very lucky! She gets shot by the boss man's auto rifle and goes down...Game over! Skeet beats feet as he lost his morale roll. If it's worth anything, the vigilantes also lose their roll. *Sigh*

Post Game:  We got paid 1 credit from the locals. A "thanks for trying" gesture, I guess.

Injuries: Katsuda was just knocked out! Grenda minor injuries and would spend one turn in the tank. Gort suffered a leg wound dropping his speed from 5" to 4.5" and missing one campaign turn.

Experience: Katsuda leveled up! I put the +0.5 into combat. Gort and Grenda each gained 1 exp. Skeet also leveled up! Decided I'd also put 0.5 into his combat score. I think combat is a good stat to dump points in for now since you add your combat score to your shooting dice.

Shopping: I spent 2 creds and got a brutal weapon.

Campaign event: An admirer! I've gained one crew member if I choose but they're unarmed and have no skill advances. I'm guessing they can still get stats from their background rolls? I'll take them as I can always dump them, I suppose.

Character event: Gort got +0.5 reactions as he was taught to always be on the lookout. He may have lost a leg but he gained in wisdom!

Well, that was campaign turn 2! Next turn will see the return of Jibril and Tereg. I can finally do some activities other than recruiting. Until next time!