#operationhungrywalrus

I had a great time playing against LouisXIV at the Rustbelt Ruckus, which was an Infinity tournament out in Michigan.

Although my performance overall was not the best, the experience was lovely. I got to see friends I rarely see (in person!) and had a nice time rolling lots of dice. I even ended up doing a little teaching on the side, due to some low placements. 😅

The four rounds were all challenging and interesting, and the prize support, meals, and chats were all a delight. Well worth the time and effort.

As a part of the tournament, I was challenged by someone interested in contributing to Operation Hungry Walrus, LouisXIV, for the 1st-round. (Players can have challenges, but only for the first round pairings.) This worked out, since the mission we were set to play - Frontline - was the first mission of the tournament, allowing us to contribute thematically while also playing the standard rules of the Rustbelt Ruckus.

So, without further ado, our battle report and contribution to the online fan campaign! 

THE RUCKUS

LOCATION: WEST HYPATIA COASTLINE SITREP: Hypatia’s western coastline is home to a number of interesting locales, not the least of which is a former Silk Lord’s estate. After being booted out of the Akua Leisure District, the former eccentric billionaire Battho’ Ubelin built a sprawling estate to the west of the main city. 

The Black Hand believes that Ubelin’s fall is part of a multi-phase cover operation, in which the former silk lord would slowly transition into a life of debauchery and eventually move to VaudeVille. All of this, presumably, is just a long-term plant operation, with Ubelin having been psychologically groomed to be utterly loyal to his Haqqislamite paymasters after decades of loyalty before his social downfall. Their goal is to seize his compound and plant quantronic tracking devices to observe him, and confirm if Ubelin has any such issues with loyalty.

Haqqislam Special Operations has deployed a multi-tier task force to Ubelin’s estate. This is not “protection,” but instead the desire to secure it and destroy the building to prevent any evidence of Haqqislamite deep-cover techniques. Ubelin is expendable. 

The Haqqislamite team was going second, and the Nomad team from Bakunin going first. 

The Bakunians had a number of aggressive morlocks in their own specialized unit, primarily kept in line by a taskmaster.

The Haqqislamite team had very few defenses in place, save for a few hackers placed up front and an impersonator pretending to be Ubelin. 

A somewhat painful turn 1 for Haqqislam, the pupniks and Morlocks advanced quite far. They even managed to discover the hidden impersonator. Things were looking a bit dire, but the elite Asawira Unit , alongside hired operative Knauf, cleared out much of the chaff - including the Taskmaster. 

A Red Fury Mukhtar, placed far up, only activated too late (if only he’d had earlier initiative!) and absolutely decimated the Morlocks and Pupniks. By the time it happened, many rear-line units were in peril. 

TURN 2

Turn 2 continued apace, with a renewed focus on the Riot Grrl team and the Asawira. The Asawira and nearby Mukhtar did clear out quite a few, but the 2 wounds on the Riot Grrls were unable to be broken. 

Making matters worse, the Impersonator fell dead without having accomplished anything due to some bad rolls adn the Riot Grrl’s MSV preventing smoke-throwing. 

TURN 3 

Horror upon horrors! A Prowler (well-painted by LouisXIV) appeared out of nowhere to eliminate Knauf and the Barid hacker who had been providing support from afar. although Knauf survived, the Prowler was able to steal a cube, accomplishing a classified and removing two orders as well as my hacking support. A well-placed Prowler can make all the difference in the world, especially when nobody is watching down the way! 

DeDespite a decent number of points in the middle and back, I’m unable to really outwit the Riot Grrls and prowler together. Although my opponent has lost the vast majority of his orders, it’s not enough; he still has a few chunky ones touching the right spots, and I'm not. An honorable game, played well by him and decently by me.

OUTCOME

As the Azure Dragon circled the deck of the Ariadnan mega-freighter, roiling smoke clouds revealed that someone had deliberately re-ignited the engine fires that had been carefully extinguished on the Durian Inspector’s last visit to the Agile Chipmunk. Even the Pan Oceanian forces had seemed to want the fires out, so it seemed some other crisis actor must want to reverse our work, fanning the flames and pushing the fecund Hypatian Megalobsters back into a breeding frenzy. The optical system’s of Yue Fei’s visor let him scan for clues amongst the cargo strewn across the deck, even through the thick smoke clouds. Adult lobsters were still present in their hundreds and fresh smears of white eggs were plastered near the engine fires, continuing to hatch small, slimy, lobster larvae in the heat.

They weren’t the only local fauna in evidence, two blubbery Hypatian Walruses had managed to get onto the ship and were greedily gulping down lobsters, larvae and clumps of eggs as fast as they could. Despite the huge amounts the walruses could eat, it looked like there were now so many lobsters it would hardly made a difference.

Where the young lobsters could find food they were already growing fast. The side of a shipping container marked with a cartoon hamburger had been torn open somehow and the floor inside was a writhing mass of orange shells, claws and legs amongst empty food packaging.

Elsewhere on the deck, what appeared to be the skeleton of a huge bear had been picked completely clean. Dirty white bones propped up a few armor plates, twitching creepily as two adolescent lobsters almost a foot long tried to untangle themselves from shreds of bloodied camo fatigues. The Ariadnans had been here, for sure, but crazy as they were they wouldn’t want to destroy their own ship. Then, as he scanned over to the far side of the huge ship, he spotted something. The giant, hulking silhouette of an old model Maghariba Guard TAG was jutting out behind a tower. Strange — Haqqislam command had assured him they wouldn’t be anywhere near Dock #619. A couple of Brawler lookouts on a nearby building provided the answer: these were mercenaries. Dahshat Company most likely, and almost certainly one of the groups on Brutus’s payroll. If anyone was going to start fires and profit from the chaos rather than put them out, it was these guys.

Dahshat brought some very heavy armament with formidable visor-equipped shooting power in the form of the Brawler link and Rui Shi. Fiddler looked more than capable of zooming into the midfield and causing trouble with the engines. The tendency for retired Invincible Army units to freelance as mercenaries is disturbing, though it is official policy of the ISS to always track down and cancel their military pensions if they’re caught fighting against us. Bad news for this Hulang, almost certainly.

Invincible Army liason Daoying Li handled a quick debarkation of the Yu Jing forces onto the ship. Crossing the Agile Chipmunk and getting through the smoke to the fires had proved that sniper rifles and multispectral visors were a winning combination, so every mercenary sniper in the DIU’s books had been packed into this task force.

The DIU’s new Su Jian was sent to escort Krit and keep walruses off his back as he put out the fires. Le Muet and Knauf staked out a building on the right flank with some long firelanes across the battlefield and Lunah concealed herself close to a Long Ya, trying her best to look like a mine. A Haidao took the left flank, keeping an eye through the smoke on a Rui Shi, which would obviously cause trouble if it could close to an effective Spitfire range.

[Dahshat chose first turn. Yu Jing set up four snipers, three of them threading angles across the table to force them to be dealt with before putting out engine fires. Knauf was kept prone for now.]

He doesn’t talk much, but 5% of the time, Le Muet earns 1000% of his fee, and this was one of those days. The engagement opened with the Brawler sniper lining up a shot against him. He calmly responded by putting an explosive Double Action round right between their eyes. [“Game got hard”, commented Dahshat’s general.]

The unexpected death of the Brawler Sniper threw the Dahshat plans into some disarray. Le Muet commanded a long firelane across the table and could prevent Fiddler and the Hulang from making it forward to their objectives. A Ghulam fired some smoke grenades to cover off a Long Ya’s sightline, then with a clunking gait, the crablike form of the Maghariba Guard started to cross the table, confident that it could survive some shooting from Le Muet while getting to an angle to engage the Haidao.

[Moving the Maghariba seemed reasonable, but the “mine” in front of the central Long Ya was actually another sniper...] The Maghariba hadn’t reckoned on a second visor sniper - Lunah revealed herself and damaged it with a viral shot.The crab tank was now effectively pinned down between two master snipers and unable to effectively shoot back through the smoke.

Trying to find a way to unlock the deadly sniper overwatch, the Evo Pangguling set Assisted Fire on the Rui Shi and it stepped out to engage the Haidao at bad range. The first shot was reasonably lucky, putting a wound on the Haidao.

Breaking cover to get to closer range turned out to be another unlucky move though, as the Haidao made his second shot and knocked the Rui Shi out of action. The Maghariba pulled back to cover and Lunah damaged it again. Valerya shot a pitcher into the backfield and Fiddler repositioned. [The game had been hard with the Brawler gone, but with the Rui Shi down and the Maghariba pinned in place, it was looking pretty impossible. To make matters worse, the Rui Shi’s unconscious body blocked the path forwards for the Maghariba. The Maghariba had one STR remaining and couldn’t get to a spot out of LoF of the snipers. MSV snipers also covered all the alleys for enginees to get to the TAG. First turn passed to Yu Jing.]

Le Muet quickly garnished his reputation by wrecking the Maghariba Guard through the smoke, putting it well past the point where an engineer could repair it. Listening carefully to Daoying Li, Krit and the Su Jian ran out bravely in front of the Walruses and extinguished two of the fires. 

The Su Jian found a nice angle to fire a Panzerfaust into Valerya Gromoz and made sure the Rui Shi was not going to get repaired, then the two of them ran back to a fairly safe spot behind the sniper curtain. Knauf decided there weren’t enough long range threats to cower prone and took up position on the roof of Le Muet’s tower. [Yu Jing turn one ended in a stupidly strong position, with 4 snipers and two Long Ya criss crossing the table with AROs and all the Dahshat snipers and hmgs dead. 3 points were locked in for the mission.]

Dahshat thought out an impressive sequence of hail mary saves, then started working through them one by one. One of the diggers ran forward impetuously and was extremely lucky to survive a critical hit from the Su Jian’s last panzerfaust shot. Miranda Ashcroft decided to catwalk through Knauf’s line of fire, and got shot for her fashion choices. Probably not for the first time. The Rafiq then spent quite some time lining up a triangulated fire shot at extreme range on one of the Long Ya remotes only for both of them to find out that it was over the maximum range on their weapons. Realizing the Long Ya didn’t have it pinned down gave the Rafiq a chance to reposition and shoot at the Su Jian, which was armored heavily enough not to care and simply repositioned out of sight. [Dahshat weren’t able to turn the tables back much in turn 2]

[Yu Jing turn 2] The Haidao moved forwards and shot a Ghulam and the EVO Pangguling, then got a line to put a wound on the rogue Hulang. Unfortunately, that last rather aggressive positioning put him in the line of fire of Fiddler’s two jackbots, who managed to gun him down. A Kuang Shi moved up and knocked out the Rafiq. The Shang Ji set up in suppressive fire, to make approaching the Yu Jing console almost impossible. [Dahshat turn 3] Without many options to get to the Yu Jing console, Fiddler made her way forwards, carefully, and dodged through fire onto the Dahshat console. The Hulang killed the Kuang Shi threatening it and fiddler repaired the Rafiq.

[YJ Turn 3]

Lunah and Knauf were able to shoot Fiddler off the Dahshat console and Krit had a brief conversation with a High Value Target. Victory went to Yu Jing, and Le Muet received a hefty performance related bonus. My Liu Xing dropped into my own deployment zone. [Le Muet’s unreasonable good luck at the start of this game put it on a very unequal footing that snowballed fast. IceCream is a fantastic general though, hanging in there and attempting to wring everything out of her models to stop me from scoring. We both think the mission would be more fun if the exclusion zone was a lot smaller, it pretty much cripples the normal midfield game and reduces options for countering snipers]

Yu Jing 10 - Dahshat 0 Yu Jing 365 VP remaining Dahshat 133 VP remaining

The Agile Chipmunk once more under Yu Jing control, Hsien Yue Fei took a moment to inspect the surly Hypatian Walruses. It seemed prudent to leave them to consume as many young lobsters as they could manage, with a little luck they could limit the numbers that spread to the rest of the straits.

Yue Fei leapt the last couple of feet from the Azure Dragon's cargo bay, the boots of his Hsien armor absorbing the impact and squashing several bright, orange lobster larvae against the green steel of the Agile Chipmunk's deck. The two members of his corporate security detail followed, flanking him on each side. They were a little twitchy from the cocktail of brightly colored drugs he'd seen them discreetly swallowing on the dropship, but they still managed to avoid treading on the slimy lobster larvae with their expensive shoes.

As they'd made the final descent, he'd captured a picture of the surreal site in his mind. The Agile Chipmunk, the first of the massive Ariadnan cargo ships attempting to breach the blockade at New Hypatia's docks, billowed thick, oily smoke from its burning engines. The automated defense cannons of the blockade had unleashed incendiary fire, igniting multiple fuel fires. However, this only set the stage for the bizarre spectacle that followed. Excited Hypatian Megalobsters had swarmed around the fires, depositing thick slurries of off-white eggs in a gluey mucus that had solidified in the heat. The staff biologists had provided him with their analysis, suggesting that these alien lobsters had adapted to breeding in the presence of volcanic vents' extreme temperatures. The earliest-laid egg clusters had already begun to hatch, and thousands of soft-shelled larvae, measuring only an inch in length, were now falling onto the deck, starting their search for food. It was evident that this would pose a significant problem.

At the best of times, the Durian Inspection Unit task force deployed on New Hypatia found Hypatian Megalobsters a nuisance. They grew incredibly quickly and a hungry, young Megalobster in a fruit shipment leaving the straits could reach adulthood in the week or so it would take for the cargo to travel through the circulars. In their adult form, they were two feet long, armed with formidable claws and an aggressive disposition. One had caused quite a scandal several years ago when it gravely injured a 53-year-old fruit packer in Tian Di Jing market on Shentang.

Ordinarily, the Durian Inspection Unit's regular schedule of draconian inspections and careful enforcement of cargo-packing rules made sure that no Megalobsters made it onto the landing pads and out of the system. Unfortunately the last few days were far from ordinary, Brutus's blockade had caused a massive backlog of colossal cargo ships outside the docks, laden with their goods. Damaged vessels had lost containers overboard, and the available food for the newly hatched brood posed a looming threat of an angry crustacean infestation within a matter of weeks. If left unchecked, all the cargo stranded by the blockade could be destroyed.

To protect the citizens of Yu Jing and the human sphere, they would have to put out these fires. Fast.

The blue silhouettes of a number of Pan Oceanian troops appeared across the superstructure of the ship. Amplified shouting carried through the smoke of the engine fires.

“Tis I, Sir John, hero of Cameliard! If you don’t leave this area forthwith, foul pirates, I shall be forced to charge you on my trusty steed and put you to the sword!”

“Sir John, this is Hsien Yue Fei. It is a pleasure to meet you again, we remain indebted to you for opening the Cameliard gates for our Durgama task force. We most respectfully ask you to stand aside as we have important duties to perform here.” The diplomatic phase of the engagement ended swiftly, as several Feuerbach shells punched large holes in a nearby wall.

Losing patience with the delay, Yue Fei stepped forward and opened fire through the smoke cloud, quickly killing a Kamau sniper and wounding the Orc with the Feuerbach, forcing him to take cover.

This opened a gap for the Lu Duan’s holo-echoes to rush forward across the ship. A confused helot delayed for a second, then chose to target a hologram with red-fury fire, giving the combat remote a chance to gun down a Fugazi. With the cover of smoke, Yue Fei dispatched the Helot, freeing the Lu Duan to advance.

The Lu Duan advanced and poured heavy flamer fire onto Patsy Garnet and her machinist colleague. Patsy’s threw a grenade in response, which landed on the Lu Duan and failed to penetrate it’s armor. The hacker in her haris failed to boot up his hacking device in time to do anything. The Lu Duan advanced further still, singing Sir John a little but failing to incapacitate him.

[Editor’s note: Hmm, the Lu Duan looks like a Rui Shi. Must be a malfunctioning holoprojector. Yu Jing turn 1 ends with five enemy dead and the Montesa, Kamau Hacker AND Orc under a heavy flamer template.]

Sir John impetuously swung his heavy bike around and onto the Lu Duan, disabling it with a crunch of servos and managing to avoid the worst of the gout of fire it shot his way. Confident in his abilities as a one man army, he pulled the data core from the Lu Duan [scoring In Extremis Recovery] and prepared to head towards the smoke clouds and Yu Jing forces.

As Sir John swerved into the open, Major Lunah broke her cover and cracked a shot in his direction. Unable to track his erratic driving, however, the shot went wide.

Then, stunned in disbelief, Lunah held her fire, as Sir John decided to help the Yu Jing cause and put out one of the engine fires.

Sir John gunned his engines and headed straight towards Hsien Yue Fei. Lunah decided to suspend her temporary ceasefire and fired off another shot, bringing Sir John down feet in front of Yue Fei, unconscious under his bike and caked in slimy eggs.

The Orc with the Feuerbach seemed upset by this, and responded with a savage volley that badly damaged Major Lunah’s LHOST. She had to sit the rest of this engagement out. With Lunah down, Fusilier Bipandra stood up and tried to fire a couple of medikit shots into brave Sir John, but missed wildly. [Varuna’s turn 1 ends. A shame about poor Lunah, but worth it to save the Hsien]

Following some speculation over comms that it might be important to maintain plausible deniability in case any war crimes were to happen, the Celestial Guard fired a smoke grenade to cover Hsien Yue Fei and Sir John. Coincidentally, stray bullets hit medic Indigo Bipandra seconds later and the unconscious Sir John flailed around haphazardly in the smoke and managed to slash himself quite badly on Yue Fei’s sword. An unfortunate accident, certainly, and definitely not the chivalric duel Sir John had been hoping for. Some suppressive fire from the Hsien’s direction was able to convince the Feuerbach Orc to drop the ground second time.

With the Pan Oceanian “hard defense” temporarily softened, the Sophotect and Su Jian both rushed forward, waded through cakes of megalobster eggs and managed to extinguish the remaining two engine fires.

Once the smoke from the leftmost engine fire disappeared, the Su Jian and Motorized bounty hunter were able to engage and kill a helot and Zulu Cobra, who had been guarding the flank.

[Varuna were pretty badly mauled heading into their turn 2, with just six orders remaining.]

To gain retribution, and with limited troops left to do so, the Orc left his vantage point and brought his fusilier team down to secure the midfield. His feuerbach was brutal in this role, and he was able to kill the Weibing remote, Su Jian, the Celestial Guard Kuang Shi controller and the Motorized Bounty Hunter. The Sophotect was able to dodge and drop the last member of the fusilier team with a combi rifle shot while the Orc’s attention was on the Su Jian.

[Yu Jing Turn 3: Ouch, watch out for Orcs with Feuerbachs!] The Orc’s shooting had left it in an extremely exposed position, leaving Hsien Yue Fei in position to attack the rest of the fireteam. The remaining fusiliers fell first, then the Orc’s heavy armor finally cracked under a barrage of HMG shots.

Hsien Yue Fei walked across the battlefield, taking up position by the bridge control console with his CSU escorts. Two Kuang Shi and the Sophotect stepped back to safeguard the other console. The remaining Kamau and Fugazi decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and hid in a pile of lobster eggs. All that remained was the chore of taking some samples for the staff biologists and harvesting some additional adult Megalobsters to go in the hotpot back at the DIU field office. 9-1 ISS Victory