Zona Alfa, Entering the Zone: The Airdrop

 

The mission was simple.  A faction had sent a helicopter with a crate of supplies and airdropped them onto the crossroads of a once-busy city street.  Our objective; secure the crate. Get in, get out.  But this is The Zone, tovarishch. Nothing ever stays simple for long…

Welcome to The Zone and the first adventure where my Zona Alfa team becomes blooded. This was a tutorial one-shot adventure run by the GM with another player as my active antagonists. Like I said, the mission was simple. There is a package in the middle of the map. Go get it. There is a complication however.  My smiling antagonist had access to a team of 4 veteran independents; roughly equivalent to my military crew of 3 veterans and a leader. Each veteran and leader receive three actions per activation. It would be a race to see which of us could grab the crate full of salvage and make it back to our side of the map.  Oh, and by the way, we were playing together using Foundry virtual table top.

As you can see in the first picture, I split my forces in two.  My leader and a squad member with an AK-74 on the left were nestled in an abandoned gas station with chest-high hard cover all around, and my medic and the squad member with a Squad Light Machine Gun were leaning against a bombed-out car, also hard cover.

We were informed by the GM that if we got within 3 inches of the crate, something would happen. Seizing the initiative, I had my leader order my medic (specifically what was happening is that my leader was transferring one action at a time to my medic, because my medic was within 12 inches) to approach the crate and see what would happen.  In retrospect, this was my first mistake. I should have had the medic Toss a Bolt at the Hot Spot (the supply crate) and not get out of cover!

At any rate, my medic triggered the Hot Spot that was co-located on the supply crate.  The GM gleefully had me roll 1d6 on the Zone Hostile tables (in the core book, section 8.3). I rolled a six, the maximum threat level. Fortunately, we were at Threat Level 1 Blue in this area of the Zone, so four bandits trundled out of a nearby shack and set up a perimeter, threatening me and my erstwhile opponent. However, my roll of 6 had a secondary effect. There was also an Anomaly present at the cargo drop location.

My medic had been shot at a couple times by my opponent’s half-way accurate sniper so I had him throw a smoke grenade up north to block the sniper’s annoying field of fire. Recall in my last blog post I specifically loaded up my medic with two med-kits and two smoke bombs to serve as a support unit.

After a few shots from my medic’s battle rifle, a hail of lead from my squad member’s Light Machine Gun and my opponent throwing a goddamn satchel charge very accurately into the mix, the four bandits were human jelly or toast writhing on the ground.

Even though I had thrown a couple smoke bombs, that annoying sniper had done his work.  My medic had been shot a couple times and expended two med-kits to make sure he was still in action, albeit with two Pinned tokens.  My leader in the gas station I thought would be protected from shots from the north thanks to the Hard cover that made the northern border of the gas station.  I was wrong. He had one wound (of two) left thanks to a lucky shot.

Now, among other things, Pinned tokens reduce your chance to seize initiative. What my opponent had done, as his last activation, was to move up a unit to be within base-to-base contact with the supply crate (and the Anomaly) by sneaking through the smoke I had placed as a counter to the annoying sniper.  If I won the initiative roll, I would be able to go immediately and steal the supply crate and investigate the Anomaly out from under his nose.  Keep in mind for every Pinned counter I had that was a -1 penalty to my initiative roll. The roll was tense. It was important. It was a chance for Fate to rear its ugly head. What he rolled I totally forgot because I know what I rolled. A one out of ten. Minus two for two Pinned tokens means he had to get higher than a -1 to go first. And he took advantage of it.

Seething impotently, my leader watched as the opposing unit that had snuck through the smoke, MY SMOKE, threw an additional smoke grenade down to obscure the supply crate area.  Then the opposing now robber salvaged the supply crate (rolling a 3 on 1d6, indicating a salvage value of 500 rubles, not bad) … and then he went for the Artifact. You see in The Zone, if there is an Anomaly, a location where the rules of physics as we know it break down and turn wild, then there is an Artifact within.  The only thing my opponent needed to make was a will check minus 1 from the Zone’s level. If he failed there would be a potentially fatal explosion. I held my breath.  He succeeded.  

Not only did the rat bastard succeed, he rolled a 6 on the 1d6 Artifact table. A hush grew over the table as we realized he had rolled the most expensive artifact in the game, an artifact worth half of any man’s 10,000 ruble retirement. We imagined my opponent’s independent STALKER was laughing gleefully and in shock as he rabbited crazily to the north with a 5,500 ruble shiny in his hot hands.

This I was not going to take lying down. Now, brothers, NOW is the time to fight. I mentioned in my last blog post that I had anticipated that I would need many, many actions on a given turn to try to turn a battle around or lay down a blitzkrieg of withering fire.  Now was that time. All of my units had one dose of Electric Juice, a lovely concoction of methamphetamines and Vodka that bestowed the imbibing unit with +2 actions at the penalty of only having one action on their next activation.  My leader was the unit closest to being in range of the escaping STALKER.  He downed the Electric Juice, bounded over the wall of rubble and rusting cars, and ran to within striking distance of the now-filthy rich STALKER.  He adjusted his Red Dot sight on his AK-74 and shot a three round burst two final times. 

So, what happened? Let’s slow down and zoom in on the mechanics. For every action used to shoot an AK-74, you get three 1d10 to roll to see if you roll under your Combat Ability.  This is recorded on the sheet as the weapon’s Firepower.  My leader was also within half the maximum range of the AK-74, so the Red Dot sight’s advantage was active. My leader was given +1 to his Combat Ability to shoot.  Out of 6 1d10s (I expended two actions to shoot) I hit 3 times. 

Now the Damage of my AK-74 was 1 so this forces a -1 to Armor tests.  My opponent had to make 3 1d10 rolls of 4 or less (his Armor minus one) to survive. What I didn’t anticipate was that the STALKER I was targeting was a medic and was carrying two med-kits.  Two Armor tests failed but it didn’t matter as he spent two free actions using his med-kits. He was still up and he had one wound. He had to roll 4 or less this time to avoid dying in the street like a dog. He rolled….it was a one.

A critical success? Yes! But what does that mean in Zona Alfa. According to the rules, “A Critical Success is an unmodified D10 roll of 1: Regardless of the task’s difficulty or modifiers, a roll of 1 means the Action/task attempted was automatically successful and the model gains a free, extra Action. This extra Action must be taken at the end of the model’s current activation and does not roll over into the next turn.” I had unwittingly given the STALKER with the 5,500-ruble Artifact an extra action which he used to immediately move off of the map and into the sunset.  Welcome to The Zone, tovarishch; welcome to The Zone.

There was immediate laughter and virtual high-fives at this awesome narrative and crushing defeat.  It shows you how even a simple scenario can turn into nail biting high-stakes in Zona Alfa. Actually, that feeling of you’ve got to sacrifice everything to win is something our group wants to maintain with our future Zone campaign. So, we’ve come up with a modified rule.  Instead of rolling to see how much an Artifact is worth immediately when you secure it in the Zone, we decided we would roll for Artifact value after the game had ended and a unit had successfully escaped the scenario. That way everyone would be jumpy and second-guessing about if they should track down and shoot the STALKER with the Artifact, or turn their attentions to unresolved Hot Spots in the hopes of future treasure.  

We are also considering allowing a new skill, Artifact Scientist which would allow a player to roll for an Artifact’s value once it is picked up. Anyway, hope you enjoyed that write up. I’m excited about our further Zone adventures.