=][=nquisitor
The Ragna Rock – Act 2 – “Welcome to the Jungle”
Yeah, even as pulp titles go, its a bit literal…
————
ON SCREEN TEXT “Eighteen planetary rotations earlier…”
04: ON BOARD A SMALL IMPERIAL LANDER. RED EMERGENCY LIGHTING FLASHES. A KLAXON SOUNDS REPEATEDLY. A COMPUTERISED VOICE COUNTS DOWN THE SECONDS UNTIL POWER SOURCE DETONATION AND CRITICISES ANGLE OF DESCENT. A GROUP OF THEATRICALLY DRESSED ORKS ATTEMPT TO CONTROL THE VESSELS CHAOTIC FLIGHT PATH.
ZIGGY
“I told ya this was gonna be a good one boyz! This is better than Waaaghstonbury!”
SMASH
“Did you see the face on those hyoo-mans when we stole dis heap?”
MOSHA (Smiles broadly. Holds up a blood smeared power axe of unusual configuration. A severed human face displaying a surprised expression slides bloodily down the face of the weapon)
MOSHA
“They didnt like it!”
ALL (uproarious laughter and backslapping)
EFFECT: sheets of sparks shoot in random directions from surrounding equipment. A console explodes. Everything shakes.
ZIGGY (takes fist sized pulsating green abstract sculpture from inside his squighide jacket and stares closely at it)
ZIGGY
“Frangks gonna be pleased when he sees that we got dis… what did he call it? “
SMASH
“Da Ragna Rock. Its a psychosonic amplification key of unique amplitude and unknown, ancient origin.”
MOSHA
“So’s yo’ momma!”
ALL (more uproarious laughter and backslapping)
EFFECT: More exploding consoles. A seat ignites. Ceiling ducting detaches and swings in front of the shaking camera. An entirely ablaze human runs past.
BASHA
“Any o’ you seen Tylork?
MOSHA
“Tylork jumped into an escape pod. Hes gonna get there before us.
BASHA (pushes control column forward. Sounds of acceleration increase. More consoles explode. Klaxon increases in pitch and frequency. Computerised voice criticisms become slightly more hysterical)
BASHA
“Not if I can help it…”
EXTERIOR SHOT OF AQUILA CLASS IMPERIAL LANDER IN STEEP RE-ENTRY, HEAT SHIELDING BEGINNING TO PEEL OFF AND FLY TOWARDS CAMERA.
ON SCREEN TEXT “Now…”
———-
Following on from yesterdays first act, both parties have located the region where the stolen Imperial lander crashed: in the depths of the hostile jungles of Krellborn IX. Neither party know if Warlord Frangks Kommando Laserguided Offensive Warhead Division survived the crash or if they managed to escape the Imperial Navy with their prize intact. Both Frangk and Verhoeven want the Ragna Rock very much.
For our first game we reduced the total number of miniatures available for each “League”, just so that we wouldnt get bogged down. With new confidence in the ruleset after the previous game we each used our full sized force for this scenario.
Of minor note is that Frangk the ork leader sacrificed an Ability that would make him more effective in combat so that he could have the “Commander” Ability. Commander allows that force to be expanded slightly, so the ork force visible above is on the large side for games of Pulp Alley (I just wanted to use a handful of cheap gretchin with Zodgrod)
PB changed his league quite a bit from the first iteration. He dropped the MiBs other than the rather successful and entertaining Agent C from the previous game and added a pair of “Feathren” troops, an Astropath and a combat servitor (played by Mean Machine Angel). Inquisitor Verhoeven has a history with Pat the Astropath in our games, so it was fun to bring the plucky little guy along again.
Set up for this game spreads the forces around the table, both sides searching for important clues or artifacts in the wreckage…
———-
Final Score: Imperials 1 Plot Point, Orks 0 Plot Points.
—————-
The table wide set up in this scenario led to some interesting match ups, with psychic Astropaths and birdmen assaulting goblin fireteams and lone bionic cadavers holding up entire flanks.
Initiative in Pulp Alley is determined randomly at the start of the game, but from then on Initiative shifts to players who take Plot Points or roundly trash opponents in combat. Initiative has to be wrested from a player: it is never passively given up.
The game is not IGOUGO, with the player with Initiative determining which player (not character) gets to take an action next. This is an interesting mechanism and quite a lot of fun, but that poxy servitor survived several combats more than he was statistically likely to, thereby keeping Initiative with PB and keeping the orks on the back foot for most of the game.
Again, the game was low scoring, with only one of the Plot Points captured in the end. Like last time, this doesnt really represent the scrabbling around for the various PPs that took place and in some respects in this case it was an effect of the deployment rules.
Lastly, this was the very first game that I played with the jungle terrain set that I made earlier this year. Gaming on a Deathworld jungle, including various flora and fauna as well as dense, Forbidden Planet/Star Trek foliage has been a goal for ~25 years now, so getting a fun game played in it was another minor bucket list item dealt with.
Dare you miss the final installment of The Ragna Rock: Pt 3 – The Final Countdown?
(it will be up tomorrow, or maybe a day or two later)
Filed under: Games in Progress | Tagged: 40K, 40K Skirmish, Deathworld, Inquisition, Orks, Orx, PB, Pulp Alley, Sci-fi, The Ragna Rock |
First rate stuff squire! Well done. I look forward to more.
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Thank you Conrad. The last installment will go up over the next day or two and planning is already underway for the next campaign.
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Love it! Really digging the psychedelic jungle.
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Thanks Barks 🙂
Yesterday I was looking at a beautiful tutorial for making far more authentic miniature jungles than mine. But I consoled myself with the thought that a cheesy looking spoace jungle is entirely in keeping with the source material 😀
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Great game report. I love the table, minis and text. I may be tempted to try these rules.
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Im not sure what sort of miniature gaming you enjoy Danny, but if its over the top heroic skirmish, then I couldnt recommend another ruleset more highly than PA.
Thanks for the feedback!
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Excellent. I’m really enjoying these reports. The jungle looks the business, though the man traps are my stand out favourite.
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Im glad that you are getting something out of them Mr Saturdays. Writing is something that I am uncomfortable with but I figure that if you dont attempt it, then it wont improve.
The jungle looks pretty close to how I hoped that it would. The eye line shots from the miniatures POV do give that B-movie, sci-fi TV show look that I wanted. I think that the man-traps are everyones favourite actually, they are certainly top of the polls. The cartoony, OTT sculpting and the Little Shop of Horrors colour scheme make them weirdly easy to relate to for some reason 🙂
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Perfect in every single way. This blog is pre-eminent amongst those which recently beguiled me into starting my own Sci-Fi project. Whether I should be thanking you for that is another matter entirely…
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Aaaah, Gareth the Grot is Funghy-fipps… it all starts to fall into place 🙂
Thanks very much for the very kind words Gareth, I hope that you get a lot of fun out of your new intergalactic pastures. I expect great things. Im off to have a sniff around your blog 🙂
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