Flying Steel, Raptor Raiders from Outer Space. Cops vs Space Raptors. Here be cows.

Flying Lead “Sheriff, them there Southpaws's back-”

A while ago I gave some thoughts on designing aliens. Looking at the Space Raptors Tony and I have made up a sort of backstory that suits us. And a name, as we and the Raptors are all natural Southpaws-. So, we have a social carnivore that is organised in loose social organisations based on the “family business”, living in towers come factories/warehouses. The bottom floors look like a drive-in carpark but are in fact for fast food deliveries.

 We wanted something different than the usual Kzin/Samurai clones. What we came up with was more Italian Renaissance.

Can you imagine the equivalent to a chicken franchise? All the mums, youngsters running all over the place. Then the food is delivered and the place is full of flying feathers. After a while the sprinklers come on. Mums (older sisters? Nannies?) are happy, youngsters have had fun, socialised and she doesn't have to get someone to tidy up.

Now lets move on to any other fast food merchant. They have found cows, samples have been taken and audience response is positive. The only problem is that they aren't quite fast enough. Now the family could go through legitimate channels, buy breeding stock. But that doesn't make a very interesting game does it?

So a bunch of good ol' Raptors come-a-calling one quiet day. But they are seen. It's bad enough an alien landing and not digging, at least they have the common sense to park some miles away.

The Game.

This is Flying Lead, all designed here http://www.ganeshagames.net/army_builders/Warband%20Builder%20v1.0.0%20for%20Flashing%20Steel.htm.

Sheriff has set up a road block by the old man Kent's place just outside of Southpark. This basically left me with nothing to do until something came within range. All my stats can be found in Cops, coats and aliens post dated

Tony had, but note that these are not combat troops, they're the equivalent of armed sailors. Think the crew in King Kong:

Herders (unarmed Raptor specialists, the taser = cattle prod)

Points 59 Quality 4+ Combat 2 Special Rules -Taser, Acrobat, Dashing, Green, Light/Bushwacker, Long Move, Specialist

Security detatchment, 4 armed Raptors

Points 89 Quality 4+ Combat 2 Special Rules -Assault Rifle, Acrobat, Dashing, Light/Bushwacker, Long Move

Leader armed Raptor

Points 148 Quality 3+ Combat 2 Special Rules -Assault Rifle, Acrobat, Dashing, Leader, Light/Bushwacker, Long Move

We changed the normal reaction moves into a cow-moovment phase. We have experience in our rural youth of moving cows along a road, so can call on this experience. Would a cow be more troubled by a Raptor than a Human? Probably not, until they moved very fast-. Buffalo aren't too bothered by Komodo dragons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-NxMONuJQA.

A cow(s) reacted to loss of control (missed activations) or Raptor movement (movement designed to control). This was done by common sense and consent. Proper Job.

So Tony gets the moos-a-moving slowly down the road like so many cats. My sniper, well he bottles it. Three times he shoots, all he does is get the leader aggravated. Meanstwhile, the dog* is straining to go, I've been rolling Q check for him. Eventually he fails and goes off. The handler makes his way along the hedge and manages to shoot one down, but not out. The dog starts threatening the leader. A Raptor comes out of the herd and takes out the dog. The leader's getting fed up with being shot at, so he shoots the dog handler dead. A 6:1 gory death (head explodes in a gory spray).

Morale check. The 2 specialists get 3 fails, so I work out that they take a car (an American on foot? Come on!) and retreat to update their facebook status. Four others (including the Sheriff) head 2 moves (morale fails) backwards, just by the rear car.

The Raptor leader gets the cows herded into a convenient field, then its hunting time. Raptors have a natural affinity with car bonnets. Not sure why?
 

Rallying his troopers** back to the barricade, but its too late. One jumps up and he's down and dead. That sends the remaining guys running. One female trooper jumps into the car (2 fail, right beside it-yes?) and goes into reverse. She recovers, and attempts to run over the 2 in front of her, one gets out of the way, the other is knocked aside, but otherwise uninjured. He hops onto the bonnet (again!) attacking the windscreen. His mate comes in from the other side. Windscreen gone, bullets peppering the doors, she goes into reverse all the way home.

I lose again, but a good game, good game.

I think more body-armoured raptors should lose the acrobat and have long-medium-medium move.

The weapon looks the equivalent of a modern rifle, possibly caseless rounds using a binary propellant. The optics suggest good sights compensating for poor shots. The shape suggests an intregal axe as opposed to a bayonet. Larger versions similar to an LMG, possibly stabilised.

Tony's initial selection is similar in size to my UNSC LI collection, so I'm happy to say that this is the contingent of a CL or similar, low on heavy weapons but high in specialists and special forces.

 

 

Watch this space for Harder Than Steel, when these come out again facing my Pan African Union troops in the ultramodern test.

*Another thing I decided to test. A dog is essentially a biological drone. See my post May14.

He can disrupt the leader by attacking him or threatening by barking a lot, thus disrupting communication or causing loss of activation. Yes? I thought this worked quite well.

**These are small town cops, not super troopers.  The stats for these can be found in my post Feb14.