MDRG with Klaus: Mutant Bounty Hunting

As is almost tradition by now, Klaus found some old toys on clearance sale and shortly after got a strong itch to get them on a gaming table for some mayhem. While they are a bit above 28mm scale, they looked just fine next to the 35mm plethora of wasteman stuff I have.

The toys are of a sealed booster variety, so he ended up with a few dublicates, and to my luck I could have them to do convert and paint up as I pleased.

We then got down to business, and started the process of generating a crew for both of us. I started by rolling up a mutant, I got the doppelganger mutation and the sniper skill. I have never quite had the luck to have a doppelganger in my crew, but the option of taking on the stats and physical mutations of an other creature is pretty neat, already at this point I had plans to take on an animal for extra food, plus to have a big old mean beast my doppelgangers could mimic. My second mutation was another doppelganger this time with the hand-to-hand specialist skill. Then I rolled up a mutant animal, I went for the bear genotype meaning it was big by default. On top of that it got the tailslap and sprint mutations, so that is perfectly according to plan as I would in no way mind having three of those bastards around at once. 

I rolled up a robot just for some variety and got a civilian robot with some grenades and the gunsmith skill. And finally I picked a neo spartan as my 5th and final member since I had just the perfect guy for it. I gave the champion promotion to the mutant bear, and made the spartan my leader so he would have the iron discipline skill too. My equipment turned out to be a RPG and a powered hand weapon, and those got dolled out to my two mutants, as my bear and robot couldn't use it them, and my spartan wouldn't due to "honor code" and what nonsense.

The dumbass who refused an actual lightsaber

We rolled one of the 12 scenarios and got a mutant bounty hunt. Our crews had to scour an area going over hiding spots and tracking down a mutant with a big bounty on their head. Reward isn't even given for the kill, but rather for returning their head, so there were ample opportunity for skulldruggery. Each yellow dice below symbolizing a potential hiding spot.

Turn one was pretty by the books as we all moved into position and started searching terrain, until as luck would have it the bastard turned up right on my doorstep, and pretty much in the middle of my crew. Checking his stats on the chart he turned out to be a right bastard, high combat skill, heavy armour, a powered hand weapon and even an optic blast. So I dug in and ganged up on him with my forces. However why it was a good idea in short term, there was a big factor I had forgotten everything about.

You see, Klaus had gotten a photon grenade as part of starting equipment. They only need to score a hit in order to kill targets and well.... my bear, my doppelganger and my robot all bit the dust pretty hard. I immediately had to take a morale check as I had more injured than uninjured fighters, however my spartan kept everyone in line, that being himself and the RPG mutant, and I adapted a slightly different approach. I pulled him back to cover, while my doppelganger rained ordinance on the enemy to throw them into disarray. With some space between me and ol' Skullsnacker out there, he would have to attack the enemy instead, just maybe I could have Klaus' forces wittle him down and I could swoop in and steal the glory.

And sure enough, things pulled a bit more into my favour, Skullsnacker killed one of Klaus' flanking fighters pretty convincingly, and I caught another one with a grenade. So it was down to 2 versus 3 now, and if I could just injure another of Klaus' mutants I would force him to take a morale test too, and unlike me he didnt have that stern spartan discipline that kept your men going while their friends got blown into their own shadows. But realising he had no way to return the ordinance, Klaus was forced to forced to get into a fight with me, so he snuck up his glowing scorpion-man and had his friend rush in to help too.

My Spartan held the line, while my doppelganger soaked them with grenades. I just needed to keep them occupied until Skullsnacker would charge into their rear. In the ensuing mess, I managed to topple one of the mutants and finish him off, forcing Klaus' scorpion and chicken-shit leader to take a morale test. Which they failed! His scorpion dodged a disengaging strike and a carnivorous plant, and then darted off, as did his leader. Meaning I was left with Skullsnacker, dodging an optic blast I decided to make my retreat too. So technically it was a draw, no-one got out of it unscathed and no one claimed the bounty. So the true winner here is Skullsnacker really, braving a mutant assault from two sides and slaughtering his way through them, plants and photon grenades without a scratch.

So let that be a lesson in the powerful ThunderChild hoodoo:
 If you dont use the minis for Wasteman, they will fuck up all of your shit!

Postgame we both rolled plenty of injuries, which is gonna make the coming games difficult. I also had a food crisis, leaving my bear and hand-to-hand doppelganger unfed. I likewise didn't have the power cells to keep my robot or powered weapon running. So I had some pretty debilitating penalties going into the next game, but I had a minor plan at least. I used my campaign action to promote my spartan to a champion, making him a pretty all around badass, and while my hand to hand doppelganger has Q5,C2 in next game, he can just mimic my spartan to stabilize his stats. But I would really like to avoid a post game injury roll with Q5. Klaus on the other hand decided to go scavenging and found a forcefield. So we'll see how things turn out next time our forces clash.