TNT: Nuka Cola Plant

Played this wonderful game of TNT back in the summer. I invited over at mate from back in the day, build a warband on a theme he liked. My opponent would be playing Cult of the V8 raiders and I was bringing my Mutant Cannibals to battle for the second time.

As a good intro scenario we played 'tanks for nothing' altered to be about getting some Nuka Cola from an old plant. So I did a bunch of small scatter pieces and counters in a Nuka Cola theme.

Objective was to get in and carry out as many cannisters/barrels of Nuka Cola as possible, the more extracted the more caps and XP would be earned.

The warbands

Setup
We played the game on a 3'x4' mat with a large concrete structure in the middle. Made to look a bit like a wasted factory, with a parking lot, some fences etc. All terrain is scratch build and there's step-by-steps here. We placed a bottling machine in the middle of the ruin, this could be used to get Nuka Cola. There was also a vending machine on both side of the factory, a couple of bottles could be retracted from here as well.

The game

My family of sorry mutants set up close and ready to get into the plant. The idea would be to rush ahead with the beast, stop the enemy in their tracks and get some bottles from the machine in the ruin.

Part of the prize, the treasure to get - an unbroken vending machine from the past. Build to withstand the anger of people with no small change. A couple of flask could be gotten from both. There was a machine on the opposite site as well.

The raiders setup ready to attack as well. This is a pure melee focused force, brute strength. There's only a few machine pistols, pistols and a ton of grenades for ranged combat. The plan here was to get the angry mongrel dog forward (as it might otherwise attack its 'friends').

A photo showing the front of the factory, gates open. The raiders would be entering from this side. My mutants are coming from the parking lot in the back.

A raider elite moving forward, staying in cover behind some large scrap piles.

The factory was covered by a large chain link fence. This was a problem for my gang as there wasn't a lot of room to get through - and failing some activation checks bugged things down.

Raiders moving forward. My gang have some shooting attacks (though they are very bad), but it would be good to hurt the raiders before the inevitable melee - so the hug the cover.

The battlefield from my teams site, here my mutants have already moved up to the parking lot fence. The raiders can be seen hiding behind some trash, the other guys are behind the building.

Rank and file raiders, not the specialists. Armed with dual melee weapons and a bunch of grenades - this is maniacs.

Part of the factory is broken down, an entire corner is rubble and there's plenty of room to move towards the bottling machine in the center. I have my first born son, tiny the brute psycho and a few degenerate little brothers. Plenty of melee to take control of the factory.

The mutant cannibals are not good shots, but I'm still keeping some brothers at the road making a firing line towards the approaching raiders - not hitting a thing.

Would have been very good to put a bullet between the eyes of the raider - that didn't happen. And this is just about the range needed to plant a frag grenade in the face of my little mutant.

The first person to get to the bottling machine is the leader of the raider warband - a true beast in close combat.

And with great speed (and excellent activation roles) the raiders are also first to one of the vending machine - nobody have gone for the other one yet.

A nice view of the wasteland. Note the raider on the left, all the way up where I started the game with my mutants.

Just a nice shot of the Nuka Cola plant and the giant billboard on the roof.

A big tanker of Nuka Cola - empty though. There was no objectives to score in this tank.

Maw-maw the leader of the Mutant Cannibal warband constantly held back, shielding herself with potent mental powers. She didn't deliver much damage though, and only helped a bit with her motivator skill. I didn't want to risk her getting killed in a crazy melee.

She's also a lot slower than the rest of the warband as she's morbidly obese.

I made these bits, to add some color to the otherwise brown and grey wasteland. I think they add a lot, without breaking the bleak wasteland look I'm going for.

A brute entering the factory, ready to bash some heads with he mighty club. Things were about to get very messy around the bottling machine.

Kabooom! The raiders are not very good to hit anything from a distance, not even with grenades. It was however great fun seeing them throwing around high explosives. When it came to melee however, the small mutants didn't really have a change against the raiders. They were sliced apart.

My own family dog didn't do well in the melee fights and ran away quickly.

It turned out to be very hard capturing good photos of all the fighting inside the factory. In the end the raiders came out on top, bashing the mutant cannibal family. The elites and leader of the gang all came away with a good load of Nuka Cola canisters.

With a big chance of getting completely surrounded and killed, Maw-maw had to hide for the rest of the game. Running away from compact, putting up a mind shield with her psychic abilities. The game ended with enemy model inches away from catching up with her.

Aftermath
My mate haven't played a miniature game in 10 years and he really enjoyed this. The TNT system is easy to grasp and have some nice mechanics - it's fluent games. It's easy to keep focus as it goes back and forth.

The Raiders made some excellent roles after the battle and came away with enough caps to expand the gang with three models! So the group was joined by two Firebugs (kamikaze firebombers) and a Broiler (flamethrower guy).

My mutant cannibals for the second game in a row - lost a lot of guys. The caps earned only got enough to buy back some losses (like their first game). A few of the top tier models got some nice XP - but it's still a pretty bad team.

Excellent game though, very fun.