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.
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.
