Caravan Trouble

The Emberville Five Klicks Campaign - Turn 3

Preliminaries

After their previous foray into the wasteland, our heroes have a chance to recuperate. They try to gather some scrap but fail. They decide to wait for the trade caravan, but it never arrives.

Concerned by the caravan's disappearance, the settlement sends out our heroes to investigate.

Game Note - I got "caravan ambushed" as the random event for this game turn. Sounds like a perfect motivation to venture into the waste.

Set Up

Random set up resulted in a hill in the center, impassable terrain to the bottom left, and a lot of cover. I did some quickie terrain - a brown gorge for the impassable terrain, scraps of construction paper for brush, and a wood rectangle for a wagon.

Instead of Meeples, I picked up some wood circles and drew some crude top down figures - black for the enemy and red for the heroes. 

I numbered the heroes as follows:

1. Ash
2. Jazz
3. Rock
4. Spike

The party started on a small hill at bottom center. The enemy will appear randomly on the board.

The Approach

The party heads down the road used by the caravan. They see vultures circling a distant hill. As they get closer, they see an abandoned wagon. It must be the caravan; but why is it abandoned?

"Wait!" says Rock as he trains his eye on the wagon. "I think I see bodies."

Then the party notices a snarler beast in the brush beyond the hill to their right.

From the Fallout wiki. You get the idea.

Game Note: Sorry, forgot to take a photo.

The Fight

The party spots a beast in the brush on the right. Spike flanks to get a good shot while the rest of the party moves into some scrub closer to the wagon.

But the beast moves towards the wagon. And suddenly, another one appears on their left and approaches the wagon.

Ash and Rock shoot at the beast on the left. Ash misses but Rock's shot glances off the beast's thick hide.

Both beasts charge Rock. He manages to wound one. Spike takes up a position on the flank and shoots. Again, the beast's hide deflects the bullet.

Rock gets mauled!

The beasts attack Jazz and Ash. Jazz manages to avoid damage while Ash takes down a beast!

The remaining beast continues to attack but Spike puts it down with a well-aimed shot.

Aftermath

Ash rushes over to Rock. Fortunately, he is fine - just knocked unconscious. His armor took a few hard knocks but they easily fix it.

Note - a "lucky break" on the casualty roll and a good result on the durability check. Whew!

The party checks the caravan. There are a number of bodies torn to shreds and partially devoured. Probably the work of the snarlers. Fortunately, the cargo is mostly intact, and they find some burner ammo.

The party returns home. The settlement is now safer (I raise Security to 1). In addition, our heroes become more adept (they all level up). I think Jazz and Rock will improve their combat skill while Ash and Spike increase their toughness.

Game Notes

That was a tough fight. The beast's hide served well as armor. Fortunately, most of our heroes managed to dodge any damage (the beasts rolled low for damage). And Rock got a lucky break on the casualty roll and emerges unscathed.

I played the game pretty much using the 5K rules. I figured it was easier than trying to convert to MicroBattle. The 5K system is actually pretty easy.