Everyone donned their wetsuits as it was time to take to the water in an Operation Thunderball game at Miniature Market Rock Hill this Thursday. The scenario harkened back to some 1960s TV and Movie dramas as we saw the notorious Spectre vs the Men from U.N.C.L.E. in a multi part mission in this episode titles Operation Deep Wire.
A vital undersea communications cable junction has been located in a narrow reef basin. U.N.C.L.E. has learned that SPECTRE agents plan to plant a sabotage device at the junction and use the disruption to cover the transfer of sensitive intelligence from a concealed seabed cache hidden previously by the notorious quadruple (or more) agent and Hollywood make up artist Maxx Facktor. An U.N.C.L.E. diving team is inserted to intercept the saboteurs, secure the junction, and recover the cache before the area is destroyed or reinforced.
Jay gives us the rundown……
“Maxx Facktor was enjoying a lunch made even more enjoyable by the fact his secret bank account would be getting a lot fatter when some of his “business associates” paid him millions to cook up a virus disguised as a cosmetic. That the cosmetic was a knock off of a competitor who would get blamed made it even better. All that was left was for them to make the pick up at the arranged site they had specified. Several decoys had been deployed as well per instructions.”
“The Thursday semi-retired gang got together again in yet another confrontation between UNCLE and SPECTRE in an underwater setting. This follows the last adventure that was done on July 9th. (Hey, its summer and who doesn’t like to take a nice swim?). Kevin did the GM work using the THUNDERBALL rules for underwater combat. This time UNCLE has gotten wind of a SPECTRE operation to sabotage a underwater communications node and that they would also be trying to retrieve containers of something that had been dropped in the area. UNCLE didn’t have much information on that part of the operation unfortunately, but then keeping anything away from SPECTRE was generally a good practice. “
“Steve L, Mark J, and Chris formed up as the SPECTRE squad with Steve once again having the big spy in charge of the team (super spy gets an extra die for action/attack). DJ, Jay and Perry teamed up to represent UNCLE with DJ having the super spy leader for UNCLE. Each player had 2-3 divers and all were armed with spear guns (with 3 spears) and knives”.”
“The early going sees UNCLE doing much better at locating the secret chests with 1 found by Perry and 2 found by Jay while Mark finds 1 for SPECTRE. With the chests found so close to the edge of the map, the other team really doesn’t have much of a chance of stopping the chests from getting off, but it will take 3 of UNCLE’s divers out for awhile compared to 1 for SPECTRE. The rest of the divers converge towards the middle of the map.”
“Steve gets some explosives set on the junction point while some early spear gun shots are exchanged with no effect. Jay gets the first container off and rushes back to help out. As DJ moves up to try to stop Steve, Mark moves up to support Steve and some of their divers wound each other in early combat. Steve gets another bomb set, which turns out to be good for SPECTRE as DJ rushes a diver in and successfully defuses the first bomb before it can go off. Unfortunately for DJ, Steve and Chris make short work of the diver and kill him.”
“Having dropped off their containers, Mark, Perry and Jay have their divers move back to join the action. DJ’s super spy goes down but not before dealing out several wounds. Jay manages to wound one of Chris’s divers with a speargun shot from longish range. At the end of the round, the score stands at SPECTURE 1, UNCLE 2 in terms of casualties. (Each team started with 8 divers). “
“The next round sees a lot of heavy action as Steve’s second bomb explodes and does enough damage to allow water into the junction. In the meantime, DJ’s last guy goes down, but not before inflicting some more wounds. Jay follows up the spear gun attack with a knife attack with more spear gun attacks from divers returning from dropping off the containers. Chris takes the worst of it as his divers had been engaged with both Jay and DJ. It didn’t help when Jay missed an intended target and hit another SPECTRE agent since there was a melee scrum going on. (Jay swears he was really aiming at the guy he hit). In the meantime, his bombing mission complete, Steve moves over to help Chris and promptly misses one of Jay’s guys and hits another diver of Chris. (It was in the script guys.. really). In the meantime, Mark and Perry are exchanging pleasantries on the other side of the board and both wind up wounding each other’s team. At the end of the round, UNCLE is down 4 while SPECTRE is down 3 divers.”
“The next round doesn’t start well as Steve’s super spy guy comes over and finishes off one of Jay’s divers with a knife after he had been wounded by Chris. However, the effort leaves both exhausted and Jays other two divers take advantage (of good dice) and managed to shoot Steve’s super spy twice (3 wounds) in revenge for the agent he just killed. Chris’s remaining diver is also wounded. Mark breaks off the action with Perry and swims for the edge of his side with some wounded divers but not before finishing off one of Perry’s divers. The total stands at UNCLE being down 5 and SPECTRE still at 3″.”
“The last round features a faceoff of Jay’s two remaining divers vs Steve and Chris. Fortunately the script had the two UNCLE divers rolling well for action points compared to the wounded SPECTRE agents (you subtract 2 for each wound off what you roll, so Steve had to subtract 6 while Chris had to subtract 2 and both rolled poorly anyway). Jay manages to finish off both before they can do anything with some hot combat dice. (Again, according to the script). End of the round is both sides had lost 5 divers each including their super spy. “
“Kevin declared both sides winners since there was no clear edge in combat and the communications node had been blown up by SPECTRE while UNCLE prevented the cosmetic virus from being released in the world. The SPECTRE team conceded that the boss with the cat (reference to Ernst Stavro Blofeld played by Donald Pleasence who always seemed to be petting a cat) would not be happy at all despite the partial success.”
“Everyone appeared to have a good time and the map and terran were great as well for this.”
Thanks to Jay for the great gaming report from our A Thank You to all the players who came out and our continued appreciation to Miniature Market Rock Hill for their continued support.
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