Battle Report! Outer Marlboro Shootout!

LaserGun Fight at the Combat Burgers...

As some of you may have already gathered based on whats been floating around the Oldhammer Social Media and Blogosphere the last few days, a couple of us New World boys had a little get together. That's right.. THE SECOND ANNUAL NORTHERN VIRGINIA AND OTHER STATES REGIONAL GRAND OLDHAMMER TOURNAMENT!! Otherwise known as NOVAOSGROT!!!

Yes kiddies, two whole days of grown men and women devolving into their glorious 12-year old selves. Basement-dwelling nerdom at its finest.

BUT THIS IS A BATTLE REPORT! I'll write about the event later, let's talk about some fucking Rogue Trader! (I swear I live for this shit).

How to make a deal with a Space Frog...

The Outer Marlboro system in the Corregidan Sector is home to a handful of habitable but sparsely settled planets where space pirates and mercenaries have set up trading operations. Rule of law is almost non-existent, unless you want to call the thugs controlled by mining corporations "law". The habitable planets are dotted with veritable mercenary city-states where only the most foolhardy, daring, stupid or desperate dare to tread. This is the story of one of those towns on just another one of those days...

Worldburner and crew brief:

  

 No one knows who fired the first shot or even what started the shooting. All you know is everyone is shooting and you and the rest of your crew need to get out of here before the Imperials show up. Nothing jeopardizes a contract like getting caught with your hands in the wrong cookie jar. Too bad your ship is on the other side of town. Too bad the other side of town is on the other side of this firefight. You should have brought that robot with you instead of leaving on sentry mode back at the ship. Too bad the remote was just blasted off your belt just now... enough is enough...

Two Gun Jones and crew brief:

security vid of the infamous Uzi Suzi just before all hell breaks loose

That slimy talking frog  and his freak show of a crew ripped you off! You need to catch him and make him pay before word gets around that you're a sucker. One of you crew just spotted his stuntie henchmen blasting their way out of the brothel... probably upset because they weren't tall enough to reach the merchandise. Get out there and take care of business.

The Space Pirate Jhugo'D'Naragha and his alien buccaneers..... brief:

Stealing from those pink monkeys was probably one of the easiest things you've ever done! They didn't even know what they had. All you had left to do was get you and your crew to the transport and you would be off. Of course it wouldn't be that easy.. those damn abhumans just can't keep themselves out of trouble. You aren't planetside for more than half a day and the have gone and started a firefight at a brothel. Mammals.... before you knew it those maniacal strumpets and some psychotic mercenary were on the roof blasting away at you and the rest of the crew. What's worse is Jones was onto your scam. You need to get out fast.

Psycho Sam and the girls:

Those damn dwarves shorted the girls! Shoot first and ask questions later!

And just like that... there was a firefight.

And with that, the scene was set. I was the GM and I allowed the three players to choose their force. I had originally intended for Psycho Sam and the girls to be controlled by the GM, but AirborneGrove immediately jumped on that force even after I warned him that the girls had really crappy stats and almost no gear. He didn't care, so I took control of Worldburner and his crew. BlueinVT took control of he alien crew and our third player took control of Two Gun Jones and his crew. Psycho Sam and the girls began the game on the roof of the brother (Ala Sin City) The alien crew started up holed up in a dilapidated building more or less in the center of the board, and Two Gun Jones and his crew started off at the Combat Burgers. Everyone was gunning for Jhugo'D'Narangha. Fair? Nope. Alas, life is not fair.

The players rolled off to see who would take first turn, and I would have them roll at the beginning of each turn. Three player games can get nasty if the initiative order gets too predictable and I felt like rolling for turns added an element of chaos that was appropriate for the scenario. So players rolled off and the guns were a'blazin!!!!

Two Gun Jones and his crew started the game off taking pot shots at the aliens, but given the distance and the amount of hard cover, it proved almost impossible to land an effective shot, so a couple foolhardy mates tried to close the distance to the center of the board during their reserve moves.

Psycho Sam and his girls did two things 1) toss a grenade down into the building the aliens had taken shelter in and; 2) attempt to ignite a fire by shooting at the red barrels near the giant yellow generator in the middle of the board. So the grenade landed on target, killed a squat, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief as the board was not (yet) on fire.

Psycho Sam and his ladies of the night let those alien midgets have it!

The aliens return fire in all directions, with limited degrees of success. There's just too much good cover around for small arms to be effective. It's going to take something big to shift the balance...

Worldburner and his crew dash to cover

The second round of shooting was just a bit more effective than the opening round. A few models from both pirate crews took some damage, but only the one-wound henchmen were going down. More importantly, one of the angry hookers landed a lucky shot ad ignited the barrels in the center of town. The ensuing smoke cloud obscured everything from Two Gun Jones and his crew and they had to develop a new plan on the fly!

 Two Gun and his men, using strategery.

Psycho Sam's desire for wanton destruction inadvertently plays into the hands of the aliens...

With a raging chemical fire obscuring their targets, Two Gun Jones attempts a crude flanking maneuver but it takes time to get his rowdy men organized. Maneuvering is for trained soldiers.. his crew are more of the shoot-first, aim-later types. While a group gather in the Combat Burgers, a couple fool hardy pirates charge through the blazing inferno towards the aliens... and were rewarded with a swift  and gruesome death. It was about this time in the battle that the players discovered that Jhugo'D'Narangha was armed with a nasty crossbow with exploding bolts. One space pirate ended up splattered all over the street.

But it wasn't all good news for the aliens. One of Psycho Sam's girls decided to be a lover not a fighter and started seductively dancing on the rooftop in an attempt to distract a couple squats from trying to kill her. Now... any normal GM would tell his players "no, you can't do that" but of course... I have the maturity level of a ten year old, so I told Blue to roll a cool test for the two target models. One passed, one failed. One squat could do nothing for one full turn but stare and drool...

She's a lover, not a fighter

Despite being effectively screened from Two Gun Jones and his pirates, Jhugo'D'Narangha and his crew continued to take some serious punishment from Psycho Sam and the girls. A constant barrage of grenades and autogun fire was decimating the squat contingent. They could either stay where they were or try to make a break for it under the cover of the fire and smoke... also... that fire was getting uncomfortably close to the generator...

 The aliens are taking a beating!!

Of course... it was becoming obvious to the players that I was going to blow up the generator. You don't just get to shoot at red barrels in one of my games and expect nothing bad to happen. Unfortunately I didn't have any cinematic explosion markers handy, so I put together this highly sophisticated CGI video of what the explosion would have felt like on the ground....

The players luckily avoided any injury from the explosion and the aliens decided to make a run for it! Meanwhile at the brothel... two of the strumpets decided to go around investigating a curious pile of crates outside the relative safety of the brothel. One of them was brutally gunned down, but the other popped open the crate and discovered (random roll!!!!) A GRENADE LAUNCHER!!. Now, being a standard untrained human, the sultry lady (who also happened to be working her way through her PhD program) had to pass an intelligence test in order to be able to put the weapon into operation. She passed with flying colors, but still had to spend one turn getting the weapon ready to fire. 

Two strumpets investigate an ammo crate...

And one of them gets pulped by some vengeful bolter fire!!

..... high above the chaos, an imperial spy drone sends a report.....

The mad dash from the ruined building left Jhugo'D'Narangha and the remnants of his crew in a desperate position. A blue skin and a squat decided to make entry to the brothel and deal with the bikini-clad machine gunners up close and personal while Jhugo'D'Narangha and the rest of the crew made a bee line for the edge of town. Unfortunately for Jhugo'D'Narangha, Two Gun Jones had manged to move around the raging inferno and caught his nemesis in the open. A couple well placed autogun shots later and Jhugo'D'Narangha laid motionless in the street. A loud explosion was heard from inside the brothel! The strumpet with the grenade launcher channeled her inner Delta Force operator and fragged the blue skin with a grenade launcher from the rear door! Two Gun Jones heard the distant but distinct rumble of a Rhino engine and knew this was his only chance to retrieve the good from that dead frog. Two Gun Jones darted into the street and slid down next to the corpse of that wretched Space Slann.

A Blue Skin mercenary falls to a bleach blonde hooker!

Jones had just barely located the stolen goods when he heard an insane shout! He looked up at the form of a descending Psycho Sam, jumping off the roof and throwing up the horns! Before he had time to react, Jones took a pair of brass knuckle-dusters to the face!

All fights always end up on the ground... it was flurry of punches and brutal body kicks. Psycho Sam was an animal but Jones took the best of it and gave it it back just as good! Sam pulled a boot knife and it looked for sure like it was all over for Jones, but the crafty pirate captain managed to block the knife and delivered a crushing haymaker to Psycho Sam's jaw! The mohawk maniac crumpled to the ground like a pile of alcoholic bricks and Jones scooped up his bounty and made a dash for the edge of town!

It was a close fight, but Two Gun Jones came out on top!

Too bad for Jones's crew! The authorities showed up and had them at gunpoint before they knew what was going on! As much as they wanted to fight, they knew they were out-gunned. One desperate pirate took a potshot at the menacing black-armored leader and caught a bolt round to the face for his troubles. Two Gun Jones would have to come back for them later... if at all.

The Aftermath...

Two Gun Jones managed to regain his stolen property, but his crew had been locked up by Imperial authorities. He would have to spring them before things got too complicated, but first he needed to find a place to stash his hard-won plunder. He wasn't sure exactly what he had, but he knew it had to be worth something if Jhugo'D'Narangha was willing to die for it.

The surviving space pirates are rounded up by the authorities.

Worldburner managed to make it to his ship without firing a single shot, but he had to leave The Despoiler behind in order to make good his escape. Once the Imperials were otherwise occupied he would be able to come back for him.

As for Psycho Sam, well.... he recovered from his beating. He came to inside the brothel surrounded by the ladies he had fought so hard to defend. At least that's how they saw it, and Psycho Sam was not the sort of man to argue with a lady. He spent the rest of the day drinking away his bruised ego and uh.... recuperating. 

Road Warriors die hard....