d12 Killfinity Necroteam Playtest #2: The Rescue

This time the Tau are back. After being captured last mission, the luckless Pathfinder scouts are being readied by Flayed Ones who hunger for their meat-flesh - and to use their skins as nifty suits. 

A rescue is mounted; this time with more hard hitting firepower; two stealth suits (one with plasma); a railgun scout, and two rifles swapped in for carbines to add range. A bonus two gun drones are added free (Dad wanted to test drone rules), along with a Kroot to allow some melee - and cos the kids thought it looked cool (an excellent reason.)

The drones just move along with a Tau orbiting within a base length; and add two TN5 shots; they can also be used as 'cover' - shots which miss because of the drone, hit the drone. I.e. let's say it is TN 6 to hit a Tau, but it is reduced to a TN4 for -2 cover by the drone. Any rolls of 1-4 hit the Tau, and any 5-6 (the original TN) hit the drone.

 You can see the downed scouts being guarded by scarabs and Flayed Ones in the left top building.

The Flayed Ones, ritual interrupted, make a beeline for the disgusting meat-flesh intruders.  The railgun Pathfinder smashes the first one with a critical hit - with a TN of 7 he rolled exactly a 7. The railgun has -5 to enemy saves and double damage, so the Flayed One must make 4 saves at 9 -5 = 4 or less. He only saves 3 (two for the crit of 4, plus the 3) so he is downed. As he is not overkilled, he may resurrect later...

 

The Kroot fires across the board and knocks down another Flayed One (a special kind of pin/suppression that is harder to shrug off). Another Flayed One sneaks up on him but is downed by a hail of fire by the nearby Tau warrior+gun drone. In the next turn the Kroot uses his action to permanently finish off the twitching Necron, to stop it resurrecting.

At this point, my daughter has taken over the Tau. With the pin slowing it down, the Flayed One cannot make it into melee range. In almost the exact same spot as its compatriot, the railgun scout perched on the building smashes it again. It takes crits and excess damage - beyond its formidable resurrection abilities - and is also removed.

A chittering swarm of Scarabs flies into a Stealth Suit which was flanking to the side. After a lot of ineffectual firing, the Stealth Suit finally downs its second wound (swarms get an extra wound) with a punch (despite having 1 roll to 3 in melee).  The swarm self destructs!

 

...ineffectually and anticlimatically I might add. My daughter is as lucky in her rolls as my son is unlucky. We are all a little disappointed as we thought robot exploding bugs were cinematic, but she was relieved her favoured female Tau was unhurt (I have headswapped a few token girl heads into most of my factions)...

But my daughter was yet to fully demonstrate her luck powers. Until a Stealth Suit who was moving to lay down overwatch (as denoted by the green token) near the fallen scouts stumbled into some Necron Warriors dad brought on as reinforcements (can't make it too easy for 'em)....

After downing the first Necron to move into view with an overcharged unstable plasma blast (any '12' and the damage is applied to the plasma wielder) the Stealth Suit lacked actions to defend against the second. So the Necron had two shots strike home - both crits - for double damage. She needed 4 saves of TN7 (1-7 on d12) to survive!

...She passed all the rolls and then aced (critical success) a Willpower test to avoid being pinned/suppressed!  My son, spectating, said "Come onnnn!" in disgust. "How did she survive that?"

PART 2

The game being truncated for bed-time, today my son is at tennis so the girl is at the helm of the Tau again. Her first Fire Warrors are almost arriving to rescue/check the vitals of the downed Scouts. Who knows what vile experiments the Flayed Ones had been doing with them?

With most of the threats down, she briskly moves up her forces and puts some on hold (overwatch - green token) to cover any Necrons that might emerge from the table edge. 

 Just in time, as Dad, bored by the lull, has brought on a few Necron warriors, who were summoned to deal with the meatbag intruders!

 The Stealth Suits do good work. The Plasma armed one downs its target. The minigun one opts to reposition (move up to base length/pivot) and thus gets to spool up its gun, emptying four shots through a window, pinning the second Necron. (A pin is caused by non-penetrating hits, then failing a subsequent Will test - the model then loses its free move and must either move or shoot - not both).

 

The third Necron warrior runs into a girl Tau (headswapped at my daughter's request). Accompanied by a gun drone, they unleash 2 shots each at "close quarters": (+2) range for the compact carbines. Although they do a measly -1 damage, the Necron goes down.

 A lurking Kroot spends an action to administer a autokill 'coup de grace' to the twitching automaton. However next turn Dad escalates things further. This is going to be no leisurely evac...

 Mwahahaha! A wraith appears, phases through a wall and jumps a Stealth Suit with its deadly claws.  All 3 shots hit including a crit! 5 saves required at -7! The luckless Steath Suit is dismembered with terrifying ease.

Meanwhile, the rescuers have got both Pathfinders up. One rolls a crit on their recovery roll and bounds up in time to take a shot at a Necron Warrior. (He misses - would've been cinematic though!)

 

The round ends with my daughter starting to move everyone back, while adjusting the positioning of the big damage hitters (railgun snipers -5, stealth suit plasma -8 overcharge shot) to prepare to down the Defence 12 Wraith.  She plans to create an evac point (out of Necron LoS) to pull them off the board more rapidly, and perhaps tar-pit (slow) the Wraith by sacrificing the Kroot into melee with it. 

A Fire Warrior created an evac point with its action. She prepared to rush her team through and out. 

 But first, the Pathfinder sniper from the previous game (the one who had to be revived twice, then rescued in this mission) redeemed himself. He scored a crit on the terrifying wraith and with lethal crit and double wound special traits he ripped through its exoskeleton.

 

Tau were quickly streaming out the evac point while the enemies were out of LoS (if in line of sight, evac is not automatic but requires an Agility roll).

 

 Three more Necron warriors arrived. With so many Tau having evacuated, they not longer had fire superiority. 

 My daughter forgot to finish off the wraith and to her horror I tried to resurrect it on a TN of 7. Luckily for her it was an 8. Twitching, the ghostly horror sank back, permanently inert. Whew!

 

 Unfortunately the heroic sniper now paid with his life. A Necron scored two crits! Coruscating green lightening turned him into an ashy outline on the wall. A Kroot, fading towards the exit, took a sneaky overwatch shot from cover, avenging his ally by taking down an advancing Necron.

 But the Necrons stalked forward remorselessly. The Kroot and a Pathfinder sniper were the last remaining. 

 

The sniper covered the Kroot's escape - he took out another Necron with his powerful rail sniper. Unfortunately as it is a heavy weapon it cannot move and shoot...

The heroic last stand ended as the sniper was cut down by green energy blasts.  A cinematic finale!

The game ended with one Tau being rescued, the other killed, and two other casualties being taken in the attempt. Total Necron deaths - a bit hazy, but from memory: a scarab swarm, 3 flayed ones, a handful or so Necron warriors and the luckless wraith, victim of a 1 in 12 crit. 

My daughter wasn't sure she had won - she accomplished her mission - rescue the Pathfinders - but lost one, and took some other casualties in the process. I reassured her this was pretty par for the course for military operations...

Possible Rules Changes:

1.Should pinned models be able to react? Perhaps if they pass a Will check? After all, the pin just removes the free move. Daughter suggestion.

2.Should you be able to dodge forward into melee? Currently you can't. And if you can, how does it work? (I'm working on a rule for my Khorne beserkers but should this 'counter-charge' be a universal rule or limited to certain models/factions) Daughter suggestion.

3.I may tone down the Wraith in melee: 3 x -7 hits are pretty much autokill.  In fact, review the methods used to generate melee damage. Dad musing.

4.I may also need to do a balance pass in how I convert Defence (combined toughness+armour save) from 40K. Currently I have Toughness 3 = Defence 5. Any toughness over this is +1 each level i.e. a Toughness 5 model would be Defence 5+2 = 7. Then I add armour saves - a 6 is +1, a 5-6 is +2, a 4-6 is a +3 etc.  

Finally I have a rough scale for wounds. The maximum wounds I have is 2, so 2 wounds is just the extra wound and no defence bonus. 3 wounds is +1 defence, 4 wounds is +2, 5 wounds is +3 etc. However some really big models have really big wound numbers....  It's probably just the effect that stats balanced for fighting squads of 5-10 means monsters are pretty overtuned/OP in a 1:1 melee game. Dad musing.

Next time I'd like to look at adding grenades, flamers and AoE weapons. But I am prone to distraction and my son is asking for 15mm tanks & mechs vs wizards sci fi rules - my working title is "Wizards of Mars". It's an interesting challenge as the rules have to be slick enough to easily/quickly handle vehicles and fire teams of infantry AND magic spells. So the rules will be very simple and 'pared back' so I can add another layer (magic) without slowing things down too much....