Rapid Transit, Antares Day Scenario

A narrative exploration scenario for 75-125 points. 

The deadly snow and ice of a Taskarr Ice Age makes operating and installing transmat pads difficult, not to say dangerous when every pad has to be located within a shelter.  Enemy commanders have come up with the idea of reactivating the ancient rapid transit system’s suspensor bed. Your own high command has identified a weak point in the chain where the destruction of a few pylons or towers generating the suspensor bed would be a severe set-back for your opponent.

Your task force’s mission: destroy one of three towers in a critical location.

Running the Game

The game is run as normal on a 6’x4′ table with the attackers setting up on their long table edge opposite the table in half in which the towers are placed. The defenders arrive from turn 1 on the table edge closest to the towers.

The Forces

This game was originally designed for two players with 75-100 points each using breaching weapons.  We suggest that players should read the Scenario Special Rules given below for how the defender can react to elements in the attacker’s force before deployment.

Set Up

Place three towers 10″ in from the centreline towards the defender’s edge. One tower should be in the centre and two others about 12″ in from the side table edge. Set up 12 other items of terrain in the standard fashion as described in Playing the Game (see Rules Central).  To represent the planet Taskarr, the table is ideally snow, tundra or ice with terrain as snow-covered rocks, ice, crevasses, thin ice (count as deep water) or similar, ice- or snow-ridden terrain. Otherwise, any wilderness terrain is possible.

Place a tracking chit or dice to mark 30-40 points of damage by each tower (see below).

Deployment

The attacker deploys within 1M of their own, long table edge. The defender arrives from turn 1.  See Playing the Game for the standard rules governing deployments.

The defender can now use one of the four scenario cards in the download (Focused Nanosphere, Long-Range Barrage, Camo Probes or Contructors) provided their faction and the attacker’s forces match the pre-requisites on the cards. Play the card and act on it immediately. Only one card can be used per game.

Objective

For the attacker to destroy a transit tower; for the defender to save all the towers.

Game Duration

The game is played until six turns have elapsed or as soon as a tower is destroyed.

Victory

A maximum of five victory points are possible. Accumulate VPs for each outcome.

Outcome	VPs
To an attacking force for destroying a tower/pylon.	4
To the defenders for saving all the towers/pylons.	3
To the defenders for breaking the attackers (as this makes them unable to attack anywhere else along the line).	2
To the attackers for breaking the defenders (as this makes it more difficult for the defenders to block further destructive efforts).	1

Special Scenario Rules

Destroying Transit Towers

The transit towers/pylons are destroyed as for buildings and have Threshold 5 and 30 DP (See the Core Rules for rules governing damage to buildings). When shooting overhead weapons at the pylons, use the nearest edge of the tower as the aiming point and measure any deviation from there: if the blast template does not touch the tower, then the tower is not damaged.

As a reminder: Breaching weapons do their calculated damage, all the time; non-breaching weapons or Heavy Weapons with a potential to damage buildings have to match or exceed the tower’s damage threshold of 5.

Equipment

Spotters, targeters and similar probes or drones can be used as normal against the towers. Batter shields in other units can also be used to protect the towers from direct fire as normal.

Designer’s Comments

The defenders typically have to be highly proactive to try and protect the towers. Special ammunition such as Arc or Blur can be useful in limiting the attacker’s hits. One tip for the defenders is to try and get their troops close to the towers to absorb or block as much of the attacking fire as possible. The towers may be stationary, but attackers still need to roll to hit them just like any other target and damage is shared between every target hit, as normal!

A tough alternative is to set the transit towers to a much high threshold, say 10 or even 12. This means that many overhead and non-Breaching weapons will struggle to damage it at all.  However, this variation is considerably more of a challenge to attackers with the more deadly breaching weapons such as Fractal Disintegrators.

If the attacker destroys a tower too quickly, switch sides and try again. It is often the case that an army not geared up for destruction is better at defending the towers than destroying them, whilst an army focussed on destroying buildings may struggle to defend them. On the Antares Day, this was one of several scenarios each of which required a very different force to succeed, which meant players had to think about balanced forces very carefully.

Counters and Card Downloads

Record the damage to each pylon either by using 1-3 d10 or by using the special tokens provided by the Warlord Studio who have created a set of snazzy damage counters (one per tower/pylon) and a set of the defender’s cards. Download, print and use for your own games (personal use only) and please ignore any references to models that will not be produced (such as the Kahloc)

Click on the image to access a .jpg file to print, or download a PDF.