[Raellus]

The deer leaps from the trees, tries to clear the road in a single bound. Grease hears an impact, but Pole Position is too sturdy to feel it. Through the driver's vision block, a brown blur, there and gone in less than a half-a-second. Honeybear has the best view. He catches movement to his right front, tracks the final phase of the deer’s suicidal lunge. Clipped on the fly by the 14.5 ton APC, the animal cartwheels through the air, lands hard on the other side of the road.

“You just hit a deer!” the team's machine gunner (and cook) calls. It’s still twitching.

Grease brakes instinctively.

“There’s our dinner,” Bird drawls, monotone.

Pole Position is parked in the road, about 10m northeast of a culvert that crosses a narrow canal running northwest-to-southeast. About 200 meters northeast of the SKOT, the road disappears behind a small cluster of ruined residential buildings, the edge of a what appears to be an abandoned village. To the west of the road is a thickly wooded area.

Everyone is standing outside the vehicle, stretching their legs. Some watch Bird put the badly injured buck out of its misery, others don’t.

“Fuck, Bird, why you gotta use a knife?” Sandy asks, looking away.

“Cuz Ivan can’t hear a knife from a mile out.”

“Are we lucky or was that deer just really un-lucky?” PR asks.

“Guess that depends on who you ask,” Grease answers.

“Oi there!”

Eight heads turn almost as one.

A man stands in the road, about 200m north of where Pole Position is parked. None of the Diamonds noticed where he came from. His cammies look vaguely American, but they're not. He wears a white brassard around his raised left arm.

“British Army! You lot Yanks?” the man calls…

The speaker is Sergeant Bill ‘Topper’ Hudnall, formerly of the BAOR’s Special Observation Post troops. He’s currently operating as part of a group of around two dozen partisans, mostly Polish. They’re loyal to the NATO-aligned Polish Free Congress but operating independently at the moment. They lost contact with the PFC about a fortnight ago, after it was pushed out of Poznan by PACT forces. The partisans’ current base of operations is in the village of Ruda, a small settlement tucked into the forest between Turek and Konin. Those two towns are currently garrisoned by troopers from the Soviet 89th Cavalry division. Topper and a detachment of his guerilla comrades were laying in ambush the major east-to-west road which doglegs through the abandoned hamlet just up the way.

Topper glances at his wristwatch. “We’re about to head back to camp. If Ivan’s not showed up by now, he won’t be coming through today. You fancy paying a visit?”

“Have you met any other Americans?” Sandy asks the question on all of the Diamonds’ minds.

“Yeah, a few, about a week ago. They was heading north, like yourselves. Had a Humvee. We tried to recruit ‘em, but they weren’t interested.” Topper answers.

The Diamonds accept the invitation, and both groups head off for the partisan camp…


NOTES:
So I’ve been struggling a bit with how to move this campaign forward. I also feel like the campaign was getting a bit repetitive. Move, encounter a village that needs help, cut a deal (fight for food), rinse, and repeat. I too like the random nature of hex crawling, but it was starting to feel "desperately random" (name the film!). With the exception of the recent fight with the Polish hunter-killer team, the last few times I’ve drawn an encounter involving combat, the party has rolled successfully to avoid it. I’ve grown somewhat protective of the PCs, so I find myself trying to duck fights whenever possible, or only fight if the PCs have the upper hand. If I was playing with or running a game for other players, this pattern of would probably get boring after a few sessions (at times, it felt a bit stale to me). I found myself feeling the need to contrive a scenario where the PCs would be forced to fight, and do so without an advantage.

I tried using the tables in the Solo rules to give me a starting point. The results weren’t particularly helpful or inspiring, so I went back to the random encounter deck. I drew Outnumbered. In order to make that scenario work, I had to find a road in the Diamond’s path that the Soviets would use to move a supply convoys. Then I needed to find a spot where the party wouldn’t be able to quickly retreat- their MO- upon meeting the Soviet convoy. I spent a lot of time studying the Google Map satellite images of Poland to find a location that fit the bill (this is a downside to using Google Maps instead of 4e travel and combat maps). It was taking so long to find a spot that meet all of above criteria that I almost gave up and shut down the campaign until next summer. Instead, I went back to the Solo tables and drew some playing cards. Again, the results (Animal, Active) seemed unhelpful. But then inspiration struck. I imagined the SKOT hitting a deer and that gave me a reason to stop Pole Position and get all of the PCs out of the vehicle. Combined with the map location I found, this situation would have forced the party to engage in at least a few rounds of combat against a superior force.

I started the fight and the Soviets dew first initiative. The engagement opened at 200m. The BTR exchanged fire with Pole Position; the enemy’s BTR missed, rolling two 1s- the rules state that this means running out of ammo (already?), but I ruled it a jam instead, believing that to be more realistic (also, the net effect is the same- in either case, the NPC gunner has to spend the next round of combat not shooting). Honeybear missed the BTR with his first burst of Dishka fire. Originally, I had the partisans appear at that point and ambush the convoy. The Diamonds basically waited and watched before making contact with the partisans after the firefight was over (I was dictating that the Soviets lost). That felt a little too Deus Ex Machina to me so I stopped the combat and did a little Retcon.

I introduced the partisans because I want to give the PCs a purpose other than just getting to Bremerhaven in the hopes of going home. The partisans are going to try to persuade the party that the right thing to do is help the people of Poland eject the Soviet occupiers and overthrow the puppet Polish government, bringing freedom and democracy back to Poland. Even if they don’t persuade the PCs to join them long-term, the Diamonds will agree to help the partisans ambush a large Soviet convoy. I might have to improvise some rules for mass combat or come up with a reason to split the groups, as a 30 v 40 battle is going to be too unwieldy to handle.

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