TNT: Hunt for the Dungerdon part 2

This is the second game in a small mini campaign of This Is Not A Test. 

You can read the first battle report here. In which the caravanner gang of Mama Stirling takes on a family of mutant cannibals. Mama Stirling has gotten a lot of clues and found the lair of the huge Dungerdon. 

In this battle the caravanners have come to take down the beast and try an recover a lot of loot from it (the Dungerdon will eat, but not digest, anything). But the crew has been followed by the Peacekeepers of the Common Order. They two have been hunting the Dungerdon - but unlike the greedy caravanners, they will not keep (all) the rescued loot for themselves. 

For this setup we decided to move from the desert border town into the real desert. Lots of cliffs in the area, some old trash. This is the Dungerdons lair. And as seen on the setup shot here, the beast is freaking huge!

This is the prize, this is what the teams are after (mostly its loot filled poop though) - but there's gonna be some good experience and caps in bringing down the monster itself.

The entire fire base of my warband setup close. All waiting to use the motivator skill of the leader, get those 2 action points, stay hidden behind the cliff (to not let the caravanners shoot at me) and start blasting the Dungerdon to meat pieces. 

Seeing as there's always new criminals (we make the law!), there's always new sacrificial lambs for the team. You get them back for free if they die. So the plan was simple. Use a single prisoner at a time, to tie up the Dungerdon in melee, while blasting it with all the other guys!

Those huge behemoth class monsters, can do a lot of damage. And this big but could vomit large blasts of half digested food at our guys and hit multiple enemies in close combat. So the tactic was to fan out the troopers, to avoid this, while staying hidden from the enemy team.

The caravanners had a lot of luck in their hunt for clues to the Dungerdon lair. Finding both a depend-o-bot and extra plasma weaponry for the team - so they were all ready for the hunt. Having spread out more evenly across the board, they start making the way towards the target.

We used small chits, to determine random actions for the behemoth. And from the start, with lots of hit points, it has a lot of actions. The big monster crashed right ahead, stomping stuff under foot and got straight into combat with one of my sacrificial lambs. 

By the start of this scenario, there's already some look on the board. Trashed, semi digested loot that has been a trip through a dungerdon. The caravanners didn't setup all members for a fight with the monster, but set people forth for looting an attacking the peace keepers in the rear.  

Being fairly safe, the caravanners where able to start blasting plasma bolts at the dungerdon, that was already occupied trying to eat and stump my guys. 

An experienced hunter, having gotten a few kills against the Wastebog Family, a caravanner sniper takes up a secure position. She'll be able to take shots at the monster and my troops equally. 

Choosing to let cover be cover Mama Stirling and the mutant envoy most into the open, the dungerdon is tied up in combat, but there's loot to be gained in the open. 

My peace keeper leader is armed with a laser carbine and he's getting support by an officer with a shotgun, they move forward staying in cover, also trying to gain some look.

A sacrificial lamb moving into combat with the behemoth. Plan is to fight, perhaps die, then blow them up and hopefully wounding the behemoth some more. It's a huge beast with tough skin and lots of armor. It's taking a lot of shots (even plasma) and simply shaking it off. It's damn hard to wound this monster.

As part of the scenario rules, the behemoth might drop even more loot during the game, all manner of stuff. Since the monster is closest to me, it's not that hard to move some troops around it and gather up these supplies for some easy and sage victory points and caps.

My guys were in combat with the behemoth for most of the game and I've never rolled more lucky for defense in my life. The behemoth simply couldn't crush my guys, despite attacking all of them each single turn. They didn't cause any wounds in return, but nevermind that. The behemoth was slowly wounded by incoming fire and the ground troopers stood their ground. 

While all my attention is on the dungerdon fight, three sneaky caravanners are getting close to my lines, taking some loot on the way. 

While moving forward, they are sticking close to the rocks and staying out of lines of fire.

After a ton of turns, we finally manage to take down the behemoth. You'll get victory points for wounding the beast, and some extra for taking it down. There's no doubt that the caravanners plasma has given it a lot of damage - but in the end the peace keepers manage to bring it down. As my guys have stayed close to the edge of the board, all warband members carrying loot quickly escape the area. 

Now, my sniper outrider has not done a lot this game. He's been hugging cover and takin pot shots at the enemy. But one of my prisoners manage to take down the big mutant envoy and a bit of revenge is in order. So running up close and personal a caravanners empties his hand guns into the outrider, taking him out.

The sacrificial lamb who had the strength to take down a mutant, he does not do as well against the depend-o-bot, but he does prevent it from taking some of the loot.

The game ends with a bang, as with the last shots fired takes out a prisoner and he explodes out in the desert. The battle is over, the dungerdon has been slain.

As the smell of burning plasma fried fur and meat fill the desert air, the winners of this encounter is clear. The common order peace keepers managed to secure far mor treasure than the caravanners, so despite doing roughly equal wound to the behemoth, they win. 

It wasn't a bad game for the caravanners. The didn't take any bad hits or losses during the game. The just didn't get rich. 

The peace keepers on the other hand get a decent amount of caps from the encounter - enough to hire on a new officer for the team. But the outrider is badly wounded and will have to sit out the next mission for the warband. 

Happy Birthday Discord and Hobby Burnout.

 It's been over a year since we got send into lock down for the first time. It's been a crazy year and my country only managed to open partially - before getting into another lock down. 

A long year and I'm craving some actual physical games with people.

One year ago I setup a Discord server in order to talk with people and try a bit to combat the isolation some of us feel. Wrote this post back then 'Staying Social Apart'. 

The Discord server have grown over the year and have become a very dear place to me. Wonderful people have joined it and there's a really creative crowd in there. As a community it's grown into a place full of support.

Wanted to take a bit of time to tell about it.

Mini blogs

For all the members who've wanted it, we've setup mini blogs. Text channels for individual members where they get moderator rights and can post and upload their projects. It's there own little playground. 

And there's some awesome stuff being uploaded here. The best thing about Discord is how easy it is to upload stuff with your phone and the pace. The pace is must less than Facebook. It feels more like the old PHPBB forums in some ways, where you would have your own thread. 

Talks

I've made good new friends in here. There's almost always some hobby people ready for a bit of hobby voice chat if wanted. Many a good hobby and game discussion going on. Often I find myself just listening in to other peoples wise words. It's great background noise when painting. 

The Discord even made of produce a podcast. Amazing how every single author we've asked to join us have just said 'Yes' and been game. It's a nice format, with Discord members throwing questions during the talk, sharing links and photos. 

All the flash

There's just some fun little things you can do with a Discord, kind off gamification like. We've got a friendly bot overlord, XP granted levels and roles, motivational quotes and so on. It's good fun without being spammy. 

And spam is the worst. One of the reasons I like Discord is the notifications I can manage myself. I've muted individual channels, and nobody can make those @Everyone tags. So despite there being a lot of activity it's not overwhelming. 

SoMe overwhelmed - stepping back.

Speaking of overwhelming. ... I got crushed under all the SoMe stuff. It came sneaking over the year. I tried a lot of stuff during lockdown. Solo gaming, streaming, youtubing, podcast and so on. And the bloggerverse grew. ... so many drafts done, photos on twitter, instagram, facebook - tons of different groups. 

And in the end it really didn't give me what I was looking for. Something was missing. It lead to something like a hobby burnout. 

At one point I need the social aspect - it's the next game that motivates me. Building terrain and painting models for the next planned game with a friend. Solo gaming couldn't do that for me, it wasn't what I was after. It didn't scratch the itch. 

And the SoMe got too much as well. I love this blog, the hobby diary. It was great fun to have the free stuff and the advanced copies. But it also (without me noticing it) made the hobby a job - it cam with (unspoken and self made) obligations. "I really should be writing a review", "remember to also check into Twitter". Something like maximizing reach.

F*** that stuff. In the end I took a long break. Ended twitter and instagram. Stopped the 'post every 4 days' cycle and all these systems I had ended up with. Nevermind the being 'someone' or what one might call being an influencer. 

This is turning into a bit of a rant. But stepping back from all the SoMe was really good. Social media growth is not important. Getting free books is cool and all - but I can afford them myself. 

Writing big battle reports or reviews might be neat. But it takes a lot of time. 

So now I'm just doing what I want, post more 'only photos, few words' post and so on. 

So what did you do? 

Facebook: I was in so many groups. Games I wanted to play, games where my terrain would fit, large groups that was cross hobby 'miniature painters', 'terrain builders' and such. Too much. I've never shared my blogs in wrong groups - always within the frames of the groups. Still I was posting in 7 groups with all blogs. 

I got out of all facebook groups, except one group for each game I actually play. No all around groups, no double groups. Like specific Hardwired group - I'm now only in Stalker7. No need for multible post apoc groups, now only in TNT. Done this all over. 

It's cleaned my feed and most porjects now only gets shared in one of two groups. 

Twitter and Instagram: Just stopped going there. Twitter is really not good for hobby work sharing. The tweet, retweet, comment thing is a mess to follow. And a maximum of 4 photos. I still post my blogs there. But don't need to post all photos and don't care about adding a million hashtags. 

Same for Instagram. It's about putting on a million hashtags. ... yeah, it's just not for me. 

Anyways.

Take care out there! 

TNT: Clearing out the prison - Pest Control

In this battle of This Is Not A Test. Two old enemy warbands clash together. The peace keepers of the common order and the khan slavers have both been hired to clear out zombie nests in an old prison. Rad zombies are a recurring problem in the wasteland. Somehow multiplying and banding together in huge underground nests. Good caps are paid for destroying nests and killing rad zombies. 

Setup

We used all the wasteland terrain to setup an old prison setup, added some zombie spawn points and a ton of scatter. All the wasteland terrain can be seen here. We put a spawn point inside the prison. This would allow a lot of zombies to spawn, and force us into nasty close quarter combat. 

A look inside the abandoned prison. 

My warband set up in two teams for the game. A strong fire team in one side, going to shoot down one spawn point and have the line breaker move in an destroy it. The outrider (sniper) was down with injuries in this game, otherwise he would have climbed the guard tower. 

On another flank the prisoners / sacrificial lambs took up position. They were left on their own to try and take out a spawn point (or get blown up for a success instead). 

The two zombie nests on the outside of the prison are potentially very dangerous - with bad rolls this will turn into a huge horde. And that'll be tough to battle through. 

This seems to be the perfect job for the old construction depend-o-bot that the slavers found in the wasteland recently. Armed with a flamer and a drill it moves in to take out the first zombie nest. It's unable to do so in one round, but he does start the wreckage well.

At the other central zombie nest my tough melee oriented line breaker has moved in. But not being good enough at breaking stuff, new rad zombies spawn. So the newest officer on the team is moved in as support, though only armed with a bayonet. 

The plan for clearing out the zombie nest farthest from me isn't going exactly to plan. The prisoners are on point quickly, but they don't succeed in breaking down the sever pipe - so new zombies will spawn and they'll have to deal with them. End plan is to just blow up all three and hoping that'll score me some victory points. 

The inside of the prison is slowly getting more zombies. They crawl out in the central room, brainless scrambling first towards the bared windows. It's some easy kills for the slavers armed with guns on the other side. 

Go for the brain! Bring it down!

My LMG trooper is in a good and covered position, with lots of fire he brings down the depend-o-bot, before it's able to finish the zombie nest. 

The slaver gang has been taking it slow. Staying in cover, shooting down zombies and taking shots at my guys. The death of the depend-o-bot force them to move closer. And that new up-armed maniac of a girl starts blasting RPGs at my peace keepers - who's too close to one another. That is quickly clear. 

This is around the turning point, where the battle starts to turn ugly and fighters start to fall. In the center, going for the points, two officers are moving towards the prison main doors - to clear some rad zombies inside. 

Nice and open, it should be no trouble to stay in cover and take out a bunch of these small ghouls.

Having taken out the first of the zombies nests, my guys get now opportunity to move towards the one where the depend-o-bot was. Because that bazooka armed slaver fires a huge rocket, that forces a couple of officers to the ground, crawling for cover.

At the far side of the mpa, the prisoners are still trying to close the zombie nest, but even being three guys, they are having trouble taking out all the spawning zombies. One prisoner is down, bassicaly a remote controlled corpse bomb - waiting to be triggered. 

On the inside of the prison, the slavers have made their the way through the prison. A line breaker, slaves with bomb collars and dogs. This is the time for them to start bringing down rad zombies and getting some victory points for the team.

The annoying blast of that RPG7 has forced my leaders supporters to the ground. And despite being a good fighter he's brought down by a rad zombie. This in turn force the guys already on the ground to take even another morale test. ...    

And they fail...  Crawling even longer away from the action, towards the table edge where the entered the board. away from the action and the enemies. 

A least the line breaker gets up in time to smash another zombie on the head. 

The rest of the battle is about getting as many victory points as possible. In the prison the sacrificial lambs fall and blow up, same goes for mine near the zombie nest. The slavers have not taken a lot of casualties, but the peace keepers has. There's only two guys left on the table by the last round. 

And this game is super close. In the end, the last dice to be rolled, a 50/50 dice will determine if the game ends as a draw or a lose for the slavers. They fail and the peace keepers steals the win. 

After battle rolls are okay for both teams. The depend-o-bot is killed in action and only saw a few battles. But money and loot are okay on both sides. As seems to be tradition my peace keepers doesn't roll too good on wasteland exploration, a couple of new injuries. But the crew does managed to rescue three small critters for the team. So time to paint up some small nasties for them to take care off. 

Zona Alfa: The first crew

I really enjoy playing Zona Alfa and I'm a couple of games in to a solo campaign. Being a huge fan of both Stalker and Metro 2033 the game really hits something with me. 

I've been eying the Lead Adventure miniaures for years, but they're also a lot over what I normally pay for models - normally going for cheap plastic and conversion work. I got these guys cheap though, second hand. They had been for sale for a long while and I made an offer. They even came all base coated and based. 

If you like Zona Alfa make sure to check out that part of the blog. And we've also had the author Patrick Todoroff on for a chat on the Discord. Give it a listen!

The team

The beginning 12 point team, consisting of a leader, veteran, 2x hardened and 2x rookies. 

For the entire team I've gone the a simple palette of browns, greys and greens. The only real spot colors on the guys are the orange AK magazines and the blue eyes on their gas masks.

Oleg - Rookie

First up is Oleg, a rookie. Simply armed with a trusted AK47, a pistol and a couple of grenades. He's wearing a red headlamp to not mess up the night vision of his friends and himself.

Sulla - Rookie

The other rookie on the team is Sulla. This guy is also armed with a couple of grenades, wearing an old coverall tank drive suit. He's armed with a shotgun and meant to get in close and personal. ... which is kind of that because he only has one action.

Piotr - Hardened

One of the important guys on the team. Piotr is armed with a light machine gun and has skills to better use it. He can lay down a lot of fire in no time, and he's been getting a lot of kills in the games I've played so far. 

Dimitri - Leader

This guy is really rocking a leader pose. He had some bad conversion work done to him, he came equipped with a chain sword. ... Well that ugly thing had to come of and i found a pointed hand from a WW2 Warlord Games Russion instead. 

I love this models, he's so damn cool.

Sasha - Veteran

The veteran soldier Sasha is armed pretty much like the leader. A good trusted assault rifle and lots of action points. Usually Sasha will be leading half the team from one flank and the leader Dimitry will be taking the other side. 

Kirsh - Hardened

This is the sawbones, the medic on the team. He has the sawbones skill and comes equipped with as many bandages and smoke grenades as he can carry. I chose this pose as the medic, because of the running stance. He's moving quickly towards some wounded comrade in need of assistance. 

Unboxing: Endure The Stars 1.5 - some kickstarter stuff

 A big part of my hobby stuff comes from cheap and lucky auctions. Either kickstarter boardgames or huge lots of used models. I've become quite good at figuring out, the rough price of reselling stuff. 

I got a super cheap deal on an Endure The Stars kickstarter pledge - like super cheap. I know nothing about the game and have zero interest in playing it. 

But it does come with a bunch of miniatures useable for both scifi, cyberpunk and horror gaming. 

Lots of duplicate models here for reselling. After resell auctions, I managed to break even on the investment. Only sold a few of the miniatures, but the boards and tokens went for a good price. So! Free models! Yeah. Love it when a plan like that comes together. 

And there's still plenty of models left to resell or give away. Gonna give away a box of miniatures for the Discord birthday in 21st March. 

Full unboxing video is below, looking a quality of the models, details comparing scale on so on.