This turned into an interesting little op, if a bit easy based on dumb luck. Our mission was to get into place to ambush a convoy, then destroy at least half the vehicles and bail out. We also had the opportunity to earn an intel point (campaign progression currency) by rescuing a hostage from a building on the board.

We drew our INFIL and SUPPORT cards, which left us with an interesting decision to start the game:

We could start on the board in tactical vehicles, or we could give up our body armor and start in civilian clothing. We went back and forth on this—the vehicles would give us access to more machine guns, so we could have started by positioning the guns and just owning the board until the convoy showed up. We opted instead to go quiet, mapping out a plan by which we could come onto the board and leverage a mix of silenced pistols and good positioning to avoid detection.

After taking out the men in the yard, we positioned at the doors and windows and took out the guards inside the building. This was technically risky—on a one, we would hit the civilian and kill our intel point… er… hostage… er… totally innocent person we needed to save. Surely.

We managed this with silenced pistols and without raising the alarm, which left us in a weird situation: we had not alerted enemies and we were inside a walled courtyard where we could perfectly hide from being spotted. The convoy arrives after you draw two Fog of War cards, which you roll for at the end of each turn. It could be up to ten turns before we drew the second card. So uh… we just accelerated things along and moved the enemies around a bunch before drawing two cards. This is a place where the randomness of the game can run roughshod over the execution of the rules. It’s a coop/solo game, so this doesn’t bother me too much, but I’m sure there’s folks out there who would find this moment quite annoying.

Anyway, we drew two Fog of War cards: the fog rolling in (all shots are Hard for everyone) and the car alarm next to us going off. This caused all enemies to orient on our position, which would cause problems for us when we went hot.

We rolled for where the convoy would arrive and got a very convenient result. It’s funny, I did not place those broken walls knowingly, but they turned out to be essential in our plan. I managed the shot with my AT Specialist against the lead vehicle, and my son used a combination of rifles and a sniper to disable the trailing vehicle. We found ourselves with a complete mission and only needed to weather a single round of enemy fire before getting off the board. To help us along, my son repositioned his LMG and suppressed a group of enemies, while we got everyone else into position to overwatch sightlines and wait.

The end result was that we took two injuries, but managed to get everyone off the board. In our post game, we spent extra logistics points to get as many people into medical bays as possible. We started this mission with five injured men on roster, healed two, and threw two more onto the pile. It feels like we just can’t win—which is great. I love having to improvise. We currently have no AT Specialists at all for our next mission.

And what mission is that? Er… well… I’ve hit a weird snag. We’ve triggered a retaliation operation:

And it’s stupid. I’m sorry, it just is. You only have to kill four enemies and the penalty for not doing the mission is that you will see no civilians for the rest of the campaign. Civilians are, notably, a big risk. You don’t want to kill them. Having them just… disappear for the rest of the campaign? That’s a benefit, not a penalty, as best as I can discern. I hope I’m missing something. This Op is actually required. It triggers when you gather 4 Intel Points. You will always do this, because the campaign end phase is triggered by collecting 6 Intel Points. So, uh… I guess we’ll just bang this one out? It’s not difficult. Shoot four dudes without rolling a 1, or just wait a bit until the civilians have fled and then shoot them. I fail to see the point, but I might be playing something wrong.

“Haphazard” is the word that comes to mind. In a ruleset this expensive, this is a little annoying. I might just rule it completed and move on. It does not feel worth setting up the board just to kill four enemies models.

Well, the mission we just played was fun. We’ll see what our next mission is when I get to setting up our next board. I’m having fun with the campaign despite the issues, but I’d be remiss in not mentioning them. I think it’s worthwhile in exchange for the variety that you get: there’s a lot of moving parts and sometimes they can trivialize each other. I can imagine this mission being more interesting with Tier 1 Operators who can execute in more creative ways, like sneaking undercover agents into position and then getting the drop on the guards. I’ve intentionally limited us to Tier 2 operators for simplicity, but with the sheer width of options and possible support options, I suppose I should be a touch more forgiving.

Especially so, when again, the mission we just played was a lot of fun. My son really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed the conversations we hand planning each part of our mission execution. They’ve got something right and I’m darn well enjoying it. Onto the next mission!