[kcdusk]

After discovering tracks that likely belonged to the Scud launcher, the players headed off in search of the mobile unit.

Despite being cautious in their pursuit, the Commando vehicle and its crew was completely unaware some hours later when they passed within 600m of the Scud but failed to see it (Refs note: the players rolled a “20” and failed to spot the Scud).

The Scuds protective guard DID see the Commando vehicle pass close by and were stopped from firing on the vehicle by their Veteran leader. The Commando was never driving directly towards the Scud launcher and eventually passed out of sight completely. By not firing on the enemy Commando vehicle, the Scud was able to continue unmolested towards its launch site.

Having lost the scent of the Scud, the players were required to make a difficult “tracking” skill check, which they passed. Further, they made a successful “observation” roll and located the Scud 1,000m in the distance.

From that distance the players were able to confirm it was a Scud launcher with a protective guard assigned to it. And the scud itself was aimed upwards, in a launch position, however the players were not able to determine how far away from being ready to launch the crew were (Refs note: the players made a successful observation roll but the quality of the roll was not good enough to give them all the information that might have been available to them. Due to the amount of lost time because of failed tracking or observation rolls, the Scud had a higher chance of being ready to fire but a middling roll meant the Scud was at the right location to fire from and was physically set up but there were still electrical and procedural processes to be run through before launch would be possible. The players did not know this.).

The players now had to decide how to approach the scud and render it out of action.

Unknown to the players they had been seen as well. The Scuds protective guard was about to board their vehicle and close down on the players position to allow the scud to fire when ready. The NPCs were in 2 open-backed 4WDs with HMG mounts in the back (technicals). They started to drive towards the PCs position before being spotted at a range of 800m by the players.

Having been sprung behind enemy lines, the players decided to “charge” the on-coming technicals and close as quickly as possible to the Scuds position and hopefully kill/capture the Scuds technical support team and prevent the unit from firing.

As the Commando began to move forward, one of the players realised they would be firing “on the move” and suffer to hit penalties. Also, with only HMG on the approaching technical the Commando was almost bullet proof. So the players decided to come to a halt when the range had closed to 400m.

Due to driving off-road, under combat conditions and needing to come to some sort of stop that put the vehicle in the best position to tackle the approaching vehicles, I made the decision that the driver of the Commando would have to make a wheeled vehicle check to accomplish all of this successfully.

The driver had a skill of “15”. I did not apply any difficulty modifiers to the skill check, believing the task to be a normal action (drive and come to a stop at a suitable position) under somewhat stressful but not unusually difficult circumstances (really the only reason the check was being made was because the task had to be completed “in combat conditions” and potentially “under fire”, which I considered reasonably “normal” conditions considering the players occupations). The player rolled a “7” and passed the skill check easily. (Refs note: I decided prior to the roll that a result of 16, 17 or 18 would have seen the characters unable to fire on the approaching technical due to poor placement of their position when they came to a halt (ie when they stopped a sandhill or wadi would have been in the way, allowing the technical to close closer before coming into the Commandoes field of view. On a roll of 19 I would have ruled hitting a ditch or sand berm at speed and there being a 50% chance of a roll over and on a roll of a 20 there would have been some incident that resulted in a random “major damage” roll on the vehicle damage table).

The 25mm opens fire at the lead technical. 3 hits each resulting in 2 minor damage outcomes being to the Hull (radio and passenger hit), Turrent (windscreen and passenger hit) and Hull again (radio and 2 passengers hit) – I ruled that the combination of these results would have put the technical out of action and everyone on board dead.

(Refs note: at this point I realised having the 25mm bushmaster cutting down the opposition and essentially being “bullet proof” inside their APC, the characters were always going to be hard to kill. I hoped the majority of this scenario would come down to non-combat activities and the time factor would help make it exciting, and just the finding the scud and closing it down has the players excited. But its something I will need to keep in mind with their next scenario, making sure theres more challenge about making potentially life and death decisions).

The 25mm scores two hits in the next action round against the second vehicle with the outcomes being suspension hit (immobilisation, driver skill check to control the gun truck fails therefore 50% chance to roll vehicle but the driver prevents it- the 4WD is simply immobile) and turrent hit (gun operator hit (dead) and HMG itself hit (broken)).

Not wasting any time, the players take the opportunity to drive around the immobile 4WD and approach the Scud. There is still a small team of armed guards taking cover and some technical personnel making final preparations for firing (Refs note: at this point I looked at how many delays the players had incurred, and took into account how quickly some other tasks were completed and said they had done pretty well so there was only a 15% chance of the scud launching. The roll was a 2! Gut Punch! I felt so bad for them, I really felt they had done almost everything right and there was only a small chance the scud would be in a position to fire, but rolling a 2 meant the scud was launched with the players within shouting distance of it and closing in fast!)

The players took the scud launch pretty well, before the roll they understood the logic behind there being a 15% chance and didn’t give allot of thought to the die roll being successful. Players were talking about the best and fastest way to prevent the launch and then there was just silence as everyone realised the die roll meant they were too late.

With the missile disappearing into the distance the players destroyed the scud launcher and cleaned up the armed guards, taking 2 technicians as prisoners.

At this point I suggested gaming out the players escape back over the border, with the understanding that their attack at the border crossing when they entered has potentially tipped off a search, followed up by the scud launcher now not responding to any further radio calls. The players were still a bit shocked at the scud launch die roll and no decision has been made yet re what to do next (escape back over to the friendly side of the border with the 2 prisoners or jump straight into a new scenario).

Part of me was glad the characters were all still alive, yet the mission was a “failure”. The final outcome felt realistic. I was worried for a while that if the characters all survived and the scud launcher was destroyed then it might have appeared too easy. The players could see the importance of getting some of the earlier tasks done quicker would have given them a greater chance for success later in the game. And that even as the “heros” in the game, it didn’t always guarantee success or a happy ending.