Monthly Archives: January 2017

MH-1 The Breeder Bombs Part 2: Ambush!

The Scenario: While the rest of the X-Men are downstairs training (see last time), Cyclops is moping around the grounds of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. What he’s brooding about we can only guess. Perhaps it’s that his girlfriend turned into an evil super-powerful cosmic entity and then died; or that he then fell in love with a clone of her that was really a demon queen; or that he has a really shitty relationship with his brother; or that his father would rather jaunt around the galaxy with a bunch of misfits rather than spend one minute with his kids; or that his own son from an alternate future timeline is a cyborg who is also a colossal douchebag; or maybe that it would be nice to take his friggin’ visor off every once in a while without blowing big holes in anything he looks at…you get the picture.

Suddenly, an attack! The Fixer and his partner Mentallo ambush the melancholy mutant!

The Vile Villains

Setup: Once again, I used a 2′ x 2′ surface, representing the landscaped garden of the X-Mansion. (The planters, for those who care, are from Jo Ann Fabrics “Bloom Room” collection. I got them super cheap on clearance.) I’ve arranged the planters and shrubs in a pleasing pattern around a central feature (like the Chinese lantern here). The villains deploy on one side of the board, while Cyclops deploys on the opposite side.

Special Rules: The odds are not in Cyclops’s favor (in fact, you could say the odds are 2-1 against him). In order to give him a chance to even things up a bit, I’ve decided that it’s a good bet the grounds of Xavier’s School have some built-in defenses, considering how often the place gets trashed by marauding Sentinels and the like. The Chinese lantern contains controls to activate two stun cannons in the garden. These stunners attack anything (other than Cyclops) in a 180° forward firing arc with the Stun power. Cyclops can activate the stunners by using a Special Action while in base contact with the lantern.

Taking Aim

ROUND 1

In order for Cyclops to survive this, he’s going to need to play it smart, and that means seeking cover and hiding so he doesn’t get shot to death by turn 3.

 

The villains gain initiative for the first round, and Fixer wastes no time. He flies 20″ directly across the board and throws a glue bomb at Cyclops, hoping to entangle him, but fails. Cyclops activates and blasts Fixer for 2 boxes of damage, then quickly takes cover and ends his movement by hiding. This will make him tougher to target next round. Mentallo moves, but is out of range for anything he could really do, so his turn ends.

ROUND 2

Cyclops gains initiative. He darts from planter to planter and fires at Mentallo, who is standing out in the open. But Cyclops misses! He ends his turn in cover, however; so he elects to hide again. But Mentallo spots him anyway and blasts him with a wave of mental energy, doing 3 boxes of Psyche damage to Cyclops! Ouch! That’s half his health! Fixer tries to spot Cyclops, but fails (lucky for the X-Man).

ROUND 3

Cyclops keeps initiative, and edges around the planter, keeping himself in cover. He uses Rapid Fire (one of the Blaster special abilities) and takes a shot at both Fixer and Mentallo. (Cyclops is looking to end this fight quickly. He can’t take another mind blast like that!) Mentallo is behind cover, so Cyclops fails to hit him; but Fixer is just floating around up there. Cyclops tags him for one box of damage, then hides.

Mentallo fails to spot Cyclops’s hiding place (one would think he would only have to follow the big red energy beam back to its source, but whatever), so for lack of anything else to do he meanders closer to the center. Fixer makes enough goals on his Perception check to spot Cyclops’s hiding place and fires a power blast his way. Unfortunately, he fails to score a single goal and misses the mutant!

ROUND 4

The villains act first. Since Fixer spotted Cyclops hiding last turn, and Cyclops hasn’t had time to hide again, he starts the round knowing where Cyclops is already (no need to check Perception again). Fixer fires at Cyclops, but the planter blocks his blast. Cyclops makes his Recharge roll and is able to use his Rapid Fire again. He wastes little time and hits both his targets: Fixer for 1 box, and Mentallo for 3 boxes! Cyclops isn’t going down easy! He hides in cover again at the end of his turn, and Mentallo can’t spot him on the villain’s activation. Mentallo can do nothing else but wander around and hope to bump into Cyclops…

Cyclops dives for the stunner controls

ROUND 5

Cyclops activates first and makes a mad dash towards the center of the board. He forgoes taking a combat action, instead using a special action to deploy the stunner cannons. Since he’s not in cover, he can’t hide; but he does end his turn by dropping prone, making himself a smaller target. It works out for him…sort of. The Fixer activates next and shoots at Cyclops, but misses. Mentallo has better luck, and mind blasts Cyclops for 2 boxes of damage. Cyclops only has one box left, and the garden starts spinning…

 

ROUND 6

Cyclops keeps initiative. He tries to recharge his Rapid Fire, but fails the roll. He fires at Mentallo, using the Blast Back special ability. He is successful, inflicting one box of damage to Mentallo. This knocks him back 2 inches, squarely in between those stunners! Cyclops moves quickly to cover and hides again. Fixer can’t spot Cyclops on his activation, so he quickly flies out of range of the stunners. The stunners activate, blasting Mentallo…but Mentallo shrugs off the effects easily! After also failing to spot Cyclops, he gets the hell out of the crossfire pretty quick. He hides on the other side of the same planter Cyclops is ducking behind.

ROUND 7

At thjis point, everyone’s pretty beat up: Fixer and Mentallo each have 2 boxes of health left, while Cyclops is barely standing with 1 box left. The round is pretty uneventful with no hits scored on anyone. Both Mentallo and Cyclops end their turns hiding in cover.

ROUND 8

The villains gain initiative. Mentallo tries to spot Cyclops, but can’t; so again he just keeps out of the view of those stunners and maintains cover. Cyclops tries to recharge Rapid Fire for the third time and fails once more, so he elects to fire at Fixer (since he doesn’t have to try and spot him first). He blasts Fixer for 3 boxes of damage, enough to drop him like a wet bag of dirt. Fixer fails his KO check and is out! This ends the round.

KA-POW!

ROUND 9

Cyclops gains initiative and spots Mentallo. Being a master tactician, Cyclops opts to charge into melee rather than fire at Mentallo. The reasons for this are twofold: first; if he fired, Mentallo would gain a bonus to defense because of the cover he’s behind. Second, Mentallo’s best ability, Mind Blast, can’t be used in close combat, so charging him effectively negates a pretty big advantage should Mentallo survive into next round. If Mentallo then tries to break out of combat to use it, Cyclops gets a free shot at him before he can.

The charge bonus pays off and he ends up inflicting a net 2 goals on Mentallo, who fails his KO check!

Victory to Cyclops!

AFTERWORD

Here are my builds for the villains:

Fixer (Blaster) Major: Archery, Minor: Flight, Armor. Quiver: Entangle, Melee Weapon, Stun

Mentallo (Mentalist) Major: Mentalism, Minor: Clever, Armor

This cat-and-mouse battle wasn’t as much fun to play as the Danger Room, but it was interesting to see how much hiding and taking cover can affect play tactically. If Cyclops had tried a straight up fight, he would have probably got creamed early on. Also, the small number of miniatures on the board meant the Rounds flew by; this game didn’t take much longer than 20 minutes to play.

I’m willing to bet on replay the villains would probably win more often than not. All it takes is one or two good shots and your Body boxes can start dropping fast. I think Cyclops got lucky.

After the battle, the X-Men interrogate the villains and discover that Magneto was hoping to take a few X-Men out of action before launching his evil plan to detonate…The Breeder Bombs! He almost succeeded in eliminating the team leader with this ambush!

The X-Men hop in the Blackbird SR-71. Destination: Alaska! The first bomb awaits!

 

MH-1: The Breeder Bombs Part One: The Danger Room

The Scenario: As stated in the adventure summary last time, most of the X-Men are in the Danger Room undergoing training. The X-Men’s objective is to rescue one of their comrades, who is imprisoned in a force field on the far side of the room. this is done by destroying or sabotaging the generators powering the force field. The Danger Room’s objective is, of course, to not let that happen. The imprisoned X-Man is not really there, it’s a holographic projection. The real “imprisoned” hero is alone, upstairs. I chose Cyclops as the imprisoned X-Man, but it could be any member of the team (which will certainly alter the difficulty of this scenario and the next one, depending on who is picked).

 

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Force field courtesy of Dunkin' Donuts

Force field courtesy of Dunkin’ Donuts

Setup: I decided to use a 2′ x 2′ surface with a few scattered terrain pieces. With this many miniatures on the board, the heroes will get “stuck in” pretty quick, making for a more fast-paced scenario. Of course, you’re free to make it a bigger board, but that just means you’ll need more terrain. The rescuing heroes deploy on one side of the room. On the far side of the room is the imprisoned hero under a force field. Two generators power the force field, positioned one on each side as shown. The Danger Room deploys one obvious defense in the middle of the board at the start of play (here represented by the huge robot in the center).

Special Rules: The Danger Room is the pinnacle of Shi’ar combat technology, and as such is extremely adaptable to whatever the X-Men attempt. To represent this (and to give the X-Men a good run for their money), the Danger Room operates under a special set of rules, listed below.

Initiative: The Danger Room rolls 5D for initiative at the start of the round.

Movement: The Danger Room is smaller than it looks, and compensates for it. All movement and ranged power effects are halved for this scenario. A Power Blast with 30″ range only has a 15″ range.  A character with a move of 6″ only moves 3″, while charging they would move 4.5″. Flight of 20″ is reduced to 10″. When Nightcrawler teleports, he ends up halfway between where he started and where he wanted to arrive. This slows things down and allows the Danger Room to bring more of its defenses into play at a faster rate than it would otherwise be able to.

Defenses: The Danger Room activates as many times as the number of X-Men (+1 if it gains initiative). During each activation, it can spawn a new defense as a free action, or simply attack with an established defense as a combat action. Ranged weapons can attack on the turn they spawn with no penalty. Other defenses may attack on the turn they spawn, but may not charge on that turn (see below). The Danger Room may only spawn one defense each turn up to a maximum of 2″ away from an X-Man, and each active defense may only attack once per round. The number in parentheses indicates the maximum number of each defense that may be on the board at once.The following is a list of defenses and any special rules associated with them:

Blaster Cannons (2): 6D Power Blast. Range 15″. Needs 7 goals to destroy, or may be sabotaged.

Tentacle Traps (2): Entangle 5D, Range 5″

Big Combat Robot (1): (Brick/Brawler) Major: Super Strength, Scrapper, Minor: Armor, Construct, Resistance, Tough

Elite Robot Henchmen (6): Minor: Melee Weapon, Resistance, Veterans

Nullifier Cannon (1): Mimic 5D, but if successful steals a power for one full turn. Needs 7 goals to destroy, or may be sabotaged.

Sabotaging Defenses/Generators: Any X-Man that can get in base contact with a defense or generator that can be sabotaged may make a sabotage attempt (TN 4) as a combat action in lieu of an attack. Success disables the generator or defense.

Spotting the Generators: The X-Men can’t attack or attempt to sabotage the generators until they realize that they’re powering the force field. Once per turn as a free action an X-Man may make a Perception check (TN 2 as it’s not that hard to spot running generators).  If successful the X-Men learn that destroying the generators is the key and all can attack them normally.

ROUND 1

The initiative roll goes to the Danger Room.

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The first thing the Danger Room does is activate the Big Combat Robot (BCR) in the center of the table, who lumbers forward 3″. That’s about all he can do this round. Storm activates, taking to the air and flying 10″. She fails her Perception roll, however, and doesn’t spot the generators, so she attacks the force field surrounding Cyclops instead. This of course does nothing. In response, the Danger Room spawns a blaster cannon near the closest generator and fires at Storm, narrowly missing her.

Wolverine activates next, and is able to close the distance with the BCR. All he manages to do is chip the paint, however; doing only 1 box of damage to the robot. The Danger Room spawns another blaster cannon near the other generator. This one also fires at Storm (since she’s the only one really out there). This time she’s not so lucky and takes 1 box of damage.

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Rogue activates, taking a moment to absorb Colossus’s Armor power. She fails her Perception check and doesn’t realize the generators should be top priority, and since Wolverine seems to have the BCR under control for now, she flies off towards that blaster cannon, hoping to remove it as a threat.

Unfortunately, she only gets about 10″ before her movement ends. The Danger Room spawns some Entangling tentacles, scoring a net 5 goals over Rogue. She’s grappled pretty good, and will need to roll 6 net goals to disengage herself from the tentacles on a future round!

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Nightcrawler activates next, teleporting 30″ towards the force field, but of course, since ranges are halved, he only winds up 15″ away, leaving him in the unenviable position of being directly in front of one of the blaster cannons. The Danger Room spawns the Nullifier Cannon, which targets Rogue. It successfully nullifies her Super Strength, which is going to make it that much harder for her to escape those tentacles in a later round.

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Kitty Pryde has nothing to do, but she moves towards the BCR, hoping to hose his electronics. A move of 3″ doesn’t get her too far, though. In response, the Danger Room spawns a group of 6 elite robotic henchmen, all directly around Colossus. They immediately attack, although without a charge bonus. Despite this, they manage to inflict 2 boxes of damage to Colossus! Colossus responds, but does no damage to the henchmen group.

ROUND 2

The initiative goes to the X-Men.

Colossus is annoyed. So he uses the special Brick maneuver called Shockwave. He attacks the ground, toppling the entire henchmen group. They’re not damaged, only knocked down…but they will have to spend valuable actions getting to their feet on their activation.

The Danger Room activates the Nullifier Cannon again, targeting Nightcrawler in the hopes of removing his Teleport power. It misses, which isn’t that surprising considering Nightcrawler is pretty tough to hit.

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For his part, Nightcrawler fails his Perception check and still doesn’t know to attack the generators. Instead he teleports behind the Nullifier Cannon and attempts to sabotage it. He only gets 3 goals and fails. The Danger Room activates the blaster cannon closest to Storm and fires at her, but misses. Storm, sick of getting shot at, activates her Force Field and returns fire, frying the blaster cannon with a bolt of lightning. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t do any damage to it, but at least she’s better protected against further fire. The BCR attacks Wolverine, but fails to hit him. Kitty Pryde easily determines the generators are the real targets (she’s a Savant after all), and after alerting the team, she charges into combat with the downed robot henchmen. She gains a total bonus of +3D to her attack (+1 for charging, +1 for a downed foe, +1 for attacking robots as per her special power). She scores a total of 7 net goals and wipes the entire henchmen group out! The Danger Room activates the other blaster cannon and fires at the entangled Rogue (not very sporting, right?), but Rogue shrugs off any damage thanks to the Armor she absorbed from Colossus. Rogue attempts to break out of the entanglement, but she fails; not surprising since she lost her Super Strength last round. Finally, Wolverine attacks the BCR, but doesn’t do any damage.

ROUND 3

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The X-Men retain initiative. Without the robotic henchmen to worry about, Colossus charges the BCR, still locked in combat with Wolverine. He gains a bonus for charging plus another bonus for teaming up on the BCR with Wolverine, so he elects to use the Brick special maneuver called “Haymaker”. He rolls 8 total dice and scores a net 5 goals, which does 5 boxes of damage to the BCR! To add insult to injury, he makes use of the “Way Outta Here” ability, which triples the knockback of any attack! After ranges are halved, the BCR is knocked back 30″, which is clear across the board. He passes his knockdown check, however, and will be able to move normally on his activation.

The Danger Room activates the Nullifier Cannon, firing at Storm. Thanks to her Force Field, she isn’t hit. Kitty Pryde activates, but only moves forward a measly 3″. She has nothing else she can really do. The Danger Room activates the blaster cannon closest to Storm and fires at her again, hitting her for 3 boxes of damage! Ouch!

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Storm decides to try and end the fight as quickly as possible, blasting the generator next to her with a bolt of lightning. It pays off and she scores a total of 7 goals, enough to reduce it to a steaming pile of slag. The Danger Room activates the other blaster cannon, firing at the still entangled Rogue for one damage. She’s wishing she wasn’t entangled anymore, so she tries once again to break free. Even with her Super Strength back, she fails to do so.

Everything happens pretty quickly from this point. The Danger Room attempts to entangle Wolverine, but he slashes through the tentacles quite easily. Wolverine moves as quickly as possible towards the other generator, but he only gets about 6″ closer. The BCR moves to defend the generator, placing itself between the generator and Wolverine. Nightcrawler teleports behind the generator and attempts to sabotage it, but fails.

ROUND 4

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Blaster Cannons on loan from the Mordian Iron Guard

The Danger Room gets initiative, and activates the blaster cannon closest to Nightcrawler. It swivels and shoots at him, but misses. Nightcrawler tries to sabotage the generator, but again fails to gain the required number of goals. The Danger Room activates the BCR, which tries to squash Nightcrawler on the charge. But  Nightcrawler proves too elusive for the robot and avoids damage.

Finally, Storm activates, flying closer to the generator and blasting it to oblivion with a lightning bolt. The scenario is ended. Victory to the X-Men!

AFTERWORD

Danger Room scenarios are a lot of fun, because you’re pretty much wide open in what you can bring to the table. I chose to decorate my board with random machinery as terrain, but there’s no reason the battle couldn’t have taken place in a jungle or on among ruins or on an alien planet. It’s the Danger Room, so it can simulate anything! This is also true of the defenses it spawns; you’re pretty much limited only by your imagination! So instead of having a Big Combat Robot, how about using some of those Tyranid beasties you haven’t played with in forever? Instead of robots, how about some skeletons? It gives you a great excuse to use some of your other miniatures that you haven’t used or that mostly collect dust. I was thrilled to finally use my Kroonbots for something, since I never got around to playing them in .45 Adventure…

If I was playing this game with friends instead of solo, I would recommend the use of a referee to control the Danger Room. Just my two cents.

So, what’s Cyclops been doing upstairs this whole time? Find out next scenario! (Hint: he wasn’t making lunch.)

 

 

MH-1: The Breeder Bombs: A Super Mission Force Campaign

With the holidays over and my Reaper Nativity project done, it’s back to Super Mission Force for some solo supers gaming. I can’t wait until the final version of these rules is available for purchase, because I’ve been having a blast with just the rough play doc versions!

Up next is my adaptation of MH-1: The Breeder Bombs, featuring the Uncanny X-Men! The plots of most of these old  TSR Marvel Super Heroes adventures are pretty ridiculous and terrible, even by comic standards, and this one is no exception. I made some changes to the plot (and some scenarios) as you will see.

As originally written, the module opens up with the majority of the X-Men training in the Danger Room while one lone X-Man is alone in the mansion, making lunch. The Fixer suddenly bursts into the mansion and attacks the lone X-Man. He’s pissed and looking for Wolverine because someone mailed him a videotape of Wolverine killing his partner, Mentallo. Of course, Wolverine is being set up, and when they investigate, the X-Men find a warehouse with robot duplicates of Wolverine and Mentallo, as well as the real Mentallo, captive and alive. He reveals that Magneto is behind the tape, and that his plan is to detonate “Breeder Bombs”, explosives that will force mutations upon all humans, thereby ushering in the age of Homo Superior. Then the X-Men travel to various spots on the globe to defuse these bombs, battling Sentinels, Soviet Super-Soldiers, and finally, Magneto himself, who reveals he’s been set up himself and he’s not behind it after all…it’s all the work of a ROBOT DUPLICATE of Magneto! The X-Men face off against this robot Magneto and his robotic Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in the climactic chapter.

Well, that’s sure a pile of crap for a plot. We are to believe Robo-neto went through all the trouble of making robot duplicates of Wolverine and Mentallo just so he could tape robot Wolverine “murdering” robot Mentallo…all to enrage The Fixer, who is hardly a real threat to anybody. The Fixer decides to get revenge by attacking the X-Men where they live. He’s supposed to be a mechanical genius, but apparently lacks basic common sense to know that he’ll definitely get his ass handed to him in short order if he takes on the whole team by himself. Also, while we’re at it, why not ask why the hell did Robo-neto do this at all? It certainly doesn’t further his Breeder Bombs agenda. Even a robot duplicate of Magneto should have enough sense to know that Fixer can’t take out the X-Men on his best day. So why poke the hornet’s nest and get their attention, which allows them to investigate and find Mentallo, who then reveals the whole plot? Why not just kill Mentallo for real while you’re at it to ensure his silence? No, the whole first 2 chapters are just plain silly. So I modified them for SMF scenario purposes, as you will soon see.

Moving on, the actual Breeder Bombs scheme isn’t bad. In fact, it’s something the real Magneto might actually do. So I decided to dispense with the entire ridiculous robot Magneto/ robot Brotherhood element and just make the real Magneto and the Brotherhood the main opposition in the adventure and modified the scenarios accordingly. The results I hope will be fairly true to the original adventure. Guess we’ll see soon enough!

Before we do that, though, I thought I’d share my Super Mission Force builds for the X-Men. Please note that these violate some of the rules of character creation and team building, but this is hardly competitive play.

Cyclops (Blaster): Major: Power Blasts, Minor: Clever, Enhancement

Colossus (Brick): Major: Super Strength, Minor: Armor, Resistance

Rogue (Brick): Major: Super Strength, Minor: Flight, Mimic

Nightcrawler (Wild Card): Minor: Multiple Limbs, Obscurement, Super Agility, Teleport

Kitty Pryde: (Wild Card): Minor: Clever, Density Decrease, Obscurement, Savant

Storm (Super): Major: Power Blasts, Minor: Flight, Force Field, Obscurement, Telekinesis

Wolverine (Powerhouse): Major: Scrapper, Minor: Melee Weapon, Rage, Regeneration, Enhanced Senses, Tough, Fast

All in all, a pretty powerful team. I considered giving Cyclops Resistance (minor) instead or Enhancement, but I think both fit him. He’s an effective leader but also tough to put down. I guess either one would work. Although he doesn’t meet the definition (i.e. he’s not one of the most powerful beings on the planet), Wolverine is a Powerhouse because of the sheer number of powers he has. I think it’s tough to see Wolverine without any of the powers I gave him. Kitty’s Density Decrease power works a little differently than in the SMF rules: while making a Density Decrease attack against anything electronic or robotic, Kitty gets an extra attack die. This represents her unique ability to screw with machinery while phased. Storm’s powers are all a result of her weather control; again, since she has so many things she can do, she falls into the Super category.

Up next, the first scenario: The Danger Room!