An AAR from Dave Murvihill’s Wednesday Night Space Pirates game at Fantasy Books & Games in O’Fallon, IL.
From: Vice President of Acquisitions, Universal Energy Corporation
To: President, Johnray Security Corporation
Subj: Completion of Contract 345672
1. Our laboratory has certified the 15 black holes delivered and entered them into inventory. Accordingly, 15,000,000 credits have been deposited into your account at Beezle 7 Planetary Bank and Trust.
2. UEC is disappointed that JSC did not deliver more black holes. Your reports of ‘shiny silver robots’ and ‘space-worthy trash cans’ do not fill us with confidence. All said, 15 black holes are minimally adequate to fill the contract.
UEC will not be providing compensation for those JSC employees wounded and imprisoned by the galactic government for misusing a lifepod station. Such compensation is not in the contract and UEC bluntly denies hiding any information about other interlopers. Frankly, we wanted you to succeed. Any further veiled threats attempting extortion will result in blacklisting. In filling this contract you’ve earned a plus sign in the UEC vendor list, don’t change that to a minus…
Signed
Egor Undigestible,
VPA,
UEC.
Gamemasters’ notes:
Great game guys. Hopefully it moved fast enough for all of you, there were a lot of players. The Cybermen leveraged their position adjoining each other to gang up on Dave’s Daleks and Matthew had really hot dice. When we quit the score was:
Mercenaries: 15 Black holes
Cybermen: 15(?) Black holes
Pirates: 5 Black holes
Daleks: 1(?) Black hole
There were 36 total (8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1), let us know if these numbers are wrong.
Three factions weren’t finished fighting on the command deck, but we ran out of time. The results could have been interesting.
The only change I’ll be making to the rules is that the melee bonus for additional figures in contact will only extend to one squad (IOW, +3 max).
I will raise the Dalek’s penetration to 3 and wings will get a d4 number of figures instead of only one (once I find more figures).
I’ve included the scenario introduction below, no need to read if you were at the game.
Thanks, Dave M.
Space Station Invasion
The most valuable resource in the entire universe is the micro-black hole. One cannot say they are worth their weight in gold because anything that absorbs gravity cannot be weighed, but they are worth a lot. The most successful company that seeks micro-black holes is the ACME Mining Corporation, where it is said their president, Mr. William C. Yote can sniff out black holes from a parsec away.
The company’s most lucrative mine was in the Doeceedoe Asteroid Belt, which for a time produced 40% of their profits. The lode dried up suddenly 10 years ago and the corporation shut down operations, laying off all the employees that worked there.
Rather than scrap the space station that serviced the mining operation, ACME sold it to the galactic government for scrap value. The government converted the station to an emergency lifepod haven, keeping it equipped with enough food, oxygen and power to sustain stranded spacers until rescue vehicles could arrive.
For the next ten years the space station sat unoccupied other than annual maintenance visits and three times when lifepods used it for the intended purpose. This all ended when a disgruntled former ACME employee on his deathbed confessed to his priest that he had hidden a bunch of micro-black holes around the station, hoping to recover them later.
After the man passed the naïve priest let the cat out of the bag and the race was on for various factions to steal the micro-black holes.
You are in one of four factions robbing the station. Your goal is to find and take more of the black holes off the station with you than any other faction. The black holes are in transit chests that may require more than one person to move. Your sensors have detected several anomalies on the station that may be black holes, you will have to check each location until you find the chests. Be careful though, rumor has it there are others seeking black holes as well…
