Delta Green and the 1970s Part 2: Analysis of the Testimony of James Jesus Angleton (1975) and Delta Green Ideas

Testimony Analysis

So what have we learned? 

According to page 11 of the testimony (which I did not quote last blog post) something called the “Colorado Case”, referred to by Angleton, resulted in the “rupture” in the relationship between the CIA and the FBI, to the point where the CIA could no longer rely on a supply of domestic intelligence from the FBI.  It is my understanding that Mr. Hoover on behalf of the White House (Nixon) “in May of 1970 terminated the official liaison” (page 10).  I believe the Mr. Hoover referred to on page 10 is one J. Edgar Hoover. 

Pages 13, 20, and 21-22 paint a picture of a great deal of domestic unrest in the summer of 1970.  Also, individuals in counterintelligence, at least at the CIA, that suspected foreign involvement in domestic unrest appeared unable to verify these potential domestic-foreign connections because they were working with limited intelligence or just fully in the dark thanks to the rift with the FBI. I suspect this may be an overexaggeration of the situation by Angleton, since we are dealing with a spy and a bureaucrat talking, but I digress.

Excerpts from pages 26-27 describe the military’s actions to gather intelligence, specifically from citizens.  Mr. Johnson (Loch Johnson, special assistant to the chair of the Senate Select Committee House Subcommittee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1976) says specifically, “But isn’t it true that during this period the military was under sever criticism for earlier civilian surveillance programs?” and “To some degree the military was under public criticism for being in the domestic intelligence gathering field.”

On pages 33 and 34 the NSA is discussed, specifically who or what organizations could be on an NSA watch list in the early 1970s. Mr Angleton’s comment, “Every participant [intelligence agency] is a consumer of NSA product [intelligence]. And therefore they all have a an equal interest, they all had a departmental interest in enhancing the coverage by NSA,” suggests to me that thanks to the rift between the FBI and CIA, the CIA was relying more on the NSA and it’s sources for intelligence, possibly to cover the gaps that the loss of the FBI’s liaison caused.

The Delta Green Connection

So in the summer of 1970 and before, the alphabet agencies were scrambling to regain their domestic surveillance capabilities after the White House blinded them (for good reason)

In the Delta Green universe, this is very interesting. Most Mythos cults in the US (ghouls, Deep Ones, etc..) operate domestic criminal organizations of one shade or another.  Removing the FBI from domestic surveillance cripples counterintelligence.

Angleton (page 21) “And more important, -- and I think this is axiomatic -- that counter intelligence is about only as good as the relations between the FBI and the CIA are.”

One can assume that Delta Green assets in 1970 in the CIA and FBI are working with one hand behind their back, figuratively. Unless of course, DG agents take circumspect action to illegally liaise with their counterparts in other intelligence agencies. Or simply carry out illegal domestic surveillance themselves and hope they do not get caught. Likely their FBI/CIA case officer could not cover for those actions given the pressure Hoover was under from the White House.

The tighter the noose around Delta Green’s operational neck, the freer cults are to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves. 

Delta Green USA Operational History (1968 - 1975)

What are Delta Green and US Mythos antagonists up to in the years prior to and including 1975? I am going to highlight some of the major points in the Delta Green Handlers Guide (2023) from pages 64 through 68.

·         22 APR 1968: MAJESTIC recruits CIA officer Justin Kroft, its future director.

·         19 JAN 1969: In Operation LOOKING GLASS, Delta Green airdrops 68 men into southeast Colombia. Only the commander, Maj. Walter J. Greyman, escapes a cult of genital-sacrificing Shub-Niggurath worshippers.

·         19 JAN 1969: Dr. Abner Ringwood, cryptographic studies chief at the NSA, is recruited by MAJESTIC to break the still indecipherable alien signals intercepted by Project AQUARIUS 15 years earlier.  Project AQUARIUS is MAJESTIC’s UFO investigations carried out by the NSA which was initiated on 18 DEC 1952.

·         30 OCT 1969: Club Apocalypse opens in New York City.

·         23 NOV 1969, Operation OBSIDIAN: The death of 300 Marines in a temple complex behind the Cambodian border, potentially could expose Delta Green operations to the world.

·         24 JUL 1970: the Delta Green classification was officially deactivated.

·         25 DEC 1971, Operation BINGO: the disbanded Delta Green used US air strikes to hit every known Tcho-Tcho village and religious site. 

·         30 NOV 1972: “The Bucket”, the spacecraft recovered at Roswell, is briefly reactivated at Groom Lake by Project REDLIGHT. It explodes, killing four MAJESTIC personnel. Justin Kroft’s opposition to Project REDLIGHT earns him a MAJESTIC steering committee position not long after.

·         29 JUL 1975: Future MAJESTIC steering committee member, Gavin Ross is recruited from the CIA as a member of MAJESTIC’s enforcement arm, NRO DELTA.

Potential Adventure 1: Over the Moon or Mi-Go vs Moon-beast 

 Attempting to synthesize the previous information into a whole that I could work with as a scenario, I had the following ideas:

MAJESTIC’s Project AQUARIUS functionally became relevant in 1953 when it detected “odd signal noise originating from deep space.”  On July 14, 1954, “MAJESTIC’s Project AQUARIUS briefs President Eisenhower on the odd signals it has detected, having determined that they are indecipherable fragments of intelligent and systematic communications originating from the moon and aimed at sites on the Earth and in high orbit. Eisenhower increases MAJESTIC’s budget, allowing a complete reorganization,” (Handler’s Guide, page 56).

Let us fast forwards in time for a moment and focus on the ideas of the intelligent signals originating from the moon and these signals being aimed at sites on Earth.  We know in March 23, 1978 that “NSA’s Project AQUARIUS makes contact with the Greys through deep-space monitoring surveillance antennas, thanks to cryptographer Dr. Abner Ringwood,” (Handler’s Guide, page 68).  We also know that Mi-Go use the Greys as their puppets and the Mi-Go have bases on the moon as well as Yuggoth (Pluto).  Thus, let us assume that the Mi-Go are sending Earth these intelligent signals from the moon, possibly by using the moon as an amplifier for their signals from Pluto via moon bounce, or directly sending the signals from the moon to the Earth from a Mi-Go moon base.

The Mi-Go objective is to interface and control Earth governments (MAJESTIC) that are sufficiently intelligent to interpret their signal so that they can carry out alien activities on Earth with relative ease. This will culminate in Mi-Go sending Greys to meet and negotiate with MAJESTIC on October 31^st 1980 and the signing of the “Accord” treaty, where MAJESTIC sells out the USA and the human race for alien technology, (Handler’s Guide, page 68).

My idea is that the Mi-Go desire to colonize and operate on the moon will not be unopposed.  Time moves differently in the Dreamlands, but the moon is already occupied. Moon-beasts and the Men from Leng, their enslaved servants who once worshiped them, live on the Dark Side of the moon in the Dreamlands.  The Moon-beasts hunger for more slaves, tribute and worship. 

 Why or how would the Mi-Go and the Moon-beasts come into conflict? The first possibility is that it is a religious conflict. The Mi-Go worship Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath, which we know from The Whisperer in Darkness.  Moon-beasts worship Nyarlathotep. Perhaps it is a religious war between Mi-Go Shub-Niggurath worshipers and Moon-beast Nyarlathotep worshipers.  Or, an alternative I like better, Nyarlathotep pits his worshipers against each other for His own amusement.

The second possibility that occurred to me starts with the information that the Mi-Go bodies consist of a form of matter that does not occur naturally on Earth. Maybe the Mi-Go bodies are multi-dimensional and their bases on the moon partially overlap with the Dreamlands (another dimension) and thus bother the Moon-beasts.  Alternatively, we are talking about aliens, so there is no urgent reason for the Game Master to define this interaction; they can just leave it a tantalizing mystery.

At any rate, on the Earth, I was thinking that the Moon-beasts would use Men from Leng as catspaws while the Mi-Go would use human cultists or biological constructs. For biological constructs I was considering using Men In Black from ufology fame as the Mi-Go’s shadowy agents in the 1970s.

Currently, my idea for the skeleton of the adventure plot is as follows. Initially, Delta Green Agents must secure microfilm from an NSA dead drop to prevent it from falling into MAJESTIC’s hands.   They find that the location of the dead drop is in New York City’s City Hall on the roof.  This all just happens to occur on May 8^th of 1970s right in the middle of an event called the Hard Hat Riot. 

The Hard Hat Riot was a domestic upheaval in which “when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970. The students were protesting the May 4 Kent State shootings and the Vietnam War, following the April 30 announcement by President Richard Nixon of the U.S. invasion of neutral Cambodia,” (Wikipedia). 

The key points here are that New York City becomes a madhouse with 20,000 people on the streets and City Hall surrounded. There is a conflict on the roof of City Hall, in that the NY mayor ordered all City Hall flags to be flown at half-staff to honor the Kent State University student’s deaths which occurred on May 4, 1970. The counter-protestors (construction workers and office workers) who held American flags, wanted the American flag over the roof of City Hall to be flown at full mast. This resulted in a violent conflict between anti-war students and counter-protestors. 

I thought this would be an interesting environment to set a Delta Green operation in. Get in and get out; just don’t die. Into this environment will be Men from Leng Moon-beast agents who wear hard hats to hide their horns and who target the Delta Green agents because they do not want the Mi-Go signals on the NSA microfilm to be obtained by government officials, Delta Green or MAJESTIC.  Thank you Dragoleaf for the hard hat idea! 

Now what is on the NSA microfilm? As a reminder, the Mi-Go sent “indecipherable fragments of intelligent and systematic communications originating from the moon and aimed at sites on the Earth and in high orbit.”  Since the Mi-Go wanted to open communications with an official Earth government (or likely multiple governments), I think that the Earth sites that are being targeted from the moon are areas of concentrated civilization with political rivalries.  These would be Washington DC, Moscow, London, Beijing, New Delhi, Berlin, and Tokyo.

That is about as far as I have gotten with this scenario idea, but I also possibly wanted to include foreign agents, difficulties between the FBI and the other intelligence agencies, and some kinetic conflict with MAJESTIC, but we will see.

 Potential Adventure 2: Gyre and Gimble or The Great Race vs the Lloigor

The US military has used Alice and Wonderland references to discuss nuclear subjects, and I will be no different.  In October 1962, the US came very close to a nuclear war with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  But what if there was a way for the US to be protected from nuclear weapons and fallout completely?

In the realm of science fiction, Issac Asimov needs no introduction.  He wrote a short story published in 1951 called “Breeds There a Man...?" about the possibility of development of an anti-nuclear force field generator. I will not completely spoil the story for you, but for my purposes I will say that Asimov floats the idea that aliens may not want humanity to have a counter for nuclear war.  This idea fits in perfectly to Delta Green.

In the Delta Green Mythos, The Great Race and the entities known as the Lloigor are at vicious odds.  Allow me to quote my own summary from a previous blog post. 

“In the Delta Green Handlers Guide on page 149 there is described a temporal war between The Great Race and the Lloigor.  To summarize the war, these two Mythos factions want either a radioactive future earth where a species of giant beetles dominate the planet, the Great Race’s desired outcome; or a sinister future human empire called “Tsan-Chan” to rise on Earth in approximately 5000 CE, the Lloigor’s objective.   The Lloigor’s objective is seemingly in direct conflict with the Great Race’s plans for a massive human nuclear war, as the Handler’s Guide says.”

If there was a possibility for humanity to gain a preventative measure against global nuclear war then The Great Race would be against it, and immediately deploy their cultists, The Motion, to interdict it.

What is sinister Tsan-Chan? In Lovecraft’s Beyond the Wall of Sleep, there is a conversation with an undefined cosmic star-like creature and the narrator. The cosmic entity says, “we are all roamers of vast spaces and travellers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the dark Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan which is to come three thousand years hence”. 

This simple line from HPL has stimulated a great deal of imagination.  There is a Chaosium supplement for Call of Cthulhu called The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan (2010) where Tsan-Chan is detailed in terrible and desperate terms. On the old Delta Green website, David Tormsen created the fan faction “the Collectors of the Long Vaults” about time-traveling agents from Tsan-Chan that show up to capture human psychics from the past (our modern age), kill them, turn them into essential salts, and reanimate them in the future in Tsan-Chan where they are needed in the fight against Mythos creatures that threaten the cruel empire.

Dovetailing with this, author Fee Fi Fo Fin further detailed these Tsan-Chan time-traveling agents (calling them Men in Black and Grey Men) and expanded on the other resources the cruel empire has in the modern day.  Notably, Fee proposes the idea that there is a sliver of the future timeline where Tsan-Chan exists without The Great Race’s interference. This timeline sliver is called The Narrow Way Through. 

If there was a technology to fully protect a civilization from nuclear weapons then the servants of the Lloigor, the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, would strongly support it by changing the timeline to preserve or bolster the anti-nuclear technology.

My scenario idea is that there is a US mathematician, code named Gyre, who has been working on equations to generate an anti-nuclear radiation force field. These valuable equations are code named Gimble.  Delta Green (for some reason I have not figured out yet) is deployed to protect Gyre and Gimble as they move from one place to an elite mathematics conference.  At this conference the Delta Green agents will be made aware of the anti-nuclear significance of Gyre and Gimble, and the importance of this work to the USA and humanity as a whole.  Then they have to protect Gyre and Gimble (or perhaps make a decision between protecting Gyre or Gimble) from the deadly cultists of The Great Race, known as The Motion, who will stop at nothing to eliminate Gyre and Gimble from the timestream.  Time-traveling agents from Tsan-Chan will assist Delta Green, at first subtly then kinetically, with battling The Motion’s assassins.  Where this ends or how I fit in the alphabet intelligence agencies or events from the 1970s I have not identified yet.    

Since Potential Adventure 1 involved MAJESTIC, I did not want Potential Adventure 2 to involve that organization.  Variety being the spice of life and all. However, if I wanted to have an easter-egg link to MAJESTIC I could reference The Courtis Papers (Handler’s Guide, page 157) being a basis for the Gimble, the anti-nuclear radiation force field equations.  Dr Courtis wrote The Courtis Papers in 1949, derived from working on the alien craft, codenamed the Bucket (Handler’s Guide, pages 52-53).

Conclusion

So those are the ideas that have been bouncing in my head regarding the scenario contest and my three chosen themes: “Set between 1970-1989”, “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle”, and “Hook does not involve a murder or a dead body”.  I am pretty happy that both potential adventures 1 and 2 do not depend on ho-hum boring murders.  So, I am in the clear there. The second potential adventure would need more thought to place it somewhen interesting in the 1970s, and I want to add more 1970s flavor, for example relevant plot points and important encounters, to both potential adventures.  “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle” I think is represented well in both possible adventures, but I want to make sure I just don’t make one side the “good” aliens and the other the “bad” aliens. That is boring. Both sides are aliens and thus do not have humanity’s best interest in mind.  Actions and themes of both alien factions should reflect that.  Next blog posts on this subject I expect I will be sharpening hooks, building up plot skeletons and possibly be detailing NPCs. 

Delta Green and the 1970s Part 1: Testimony of James Jesus Angleton (1975) and discussion of the Church Committee (1975)

James Jesus Angleton

The Night at the Opera, Delta Green discord is hosting the 8th Annual N@TO Scenario Contest. 

 In this contest, scenarios written must choose at least three themes out of eleven. I have chosen the themes “Set between 1970-1989”, “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle”, and “Hook does not involve a murder or a dead body”.

The scenario hook should definitely not involve a murder/dead body because I strongly feel that the community should have more DG games without a starting corpse.  This was one of my heavy critiques with Call of Cthulhu adventures when I was playing in the 1990s. You couldn’t turn around in Call of Cthulhu without running into a corpse as the inciting incident.   Also, there are plenty of good fanmade DG adventures that do not start with a corpse, and I wanted to join those ranks.  So here we go. 

“Set between 1970-1989” was an interesting theme since I really did not know details about the actions of the intelligence agencies at that time, and this intrigued me. Naturally, I turned to primary sources for research.  Since the historical research community is all abuzz about declassification of JFK assassination files (originally, I was thinking of having the mother of all conspiracy theories have something to do with historical Delta Green activities, but I abandoned that idea), I stumbled into a mostly declassified secret Senate testimony of the CIA counterintelligence head, James Jesus Angleton, that was held in 1975.

It is 152 scanned pages and I have only breeched the first 40 or so of the testimony. It is a fascinating look at how the CIA, FBI, NSA and other organizations were acting in the early 1970s, before that date, and the troubles they were having. 

The Church Committee

When I posted this on the Night at the Opera discord, I was alerted by a fellow aficionado Agent Obtuse about the Church Committee which also occurred in 1975.  The Church Committee was a Senate select committee which was a blockbuster clearinghouse of information about investigations into intelligence abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI and IRS. It revealed at least five programs, including Operation MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, Family Jewels, Operation Mockingbird and Project SHAMROCK. 

I will just talk about three programs mentioned. MKULTRA was a CIA program to attempt to develop and refine protocols and drugs that could be used to force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.  Famously, LSD was used in this program. 

 Family Jewels was a group of reports on CIA programs. Among these programs discussed were funding of behavior modification research on unwitting U.S. citizens, and assassination plots against Fidel Castro and various other foreign targets, all said to be failures. 

Project SHAMROCK revealed the concrete existence of the NSA to the American public, and described its inception through an Armed Forces Security Agency (precursor to the NSA) espionage project to obtain all telegraphic information that entered the US called Project MINARET (1945). 

There is a lot here. Needless to say, in 1975 one could gently suggest that the intelligence services were on fire about what was being revealed. However, I am more interested in the early turn of the decade.  After all, in 1969 the US had the Apollo 11 moon landing, Woodstock, and the Manson Family murders.

So what state are the intelligence agencies in, during 1970? Enter the James Jesus Angleton secret Senate testimony from 1975. It is record number 157-10014-10004 from the National Archives.

Angleton (right)

Testimony of James Jesus Angleton to the Senate (1975)

Without further ado, here are excerpts from the testimony and my commentary. Brackets contain my inserts. Bolding is also mine.  

Page 6

“Mr. Johnson:  As the leading counter intelligence expert in the CIA, did you have any concrete evidence yourself that there was a foreign connection to this domestic unrest [Summer 1970]?

Mr. Angleton: The way I would comment on that is simply that the intelligence that we had gathered, fundamentally from December '61 on through, that the counter intelligence effort in the government was very important.”

Fucking amazing. Way to dodge a question and double down that your job is important.

Page 13

“Mr. Johnson: In the summer of 1970 it seems to me, then, the country and the intelligence community faced these facts of life: pronounced domestic unrest; inability to completely understand the degree of foreign connections over domestic unrest; and a severing of relationships between the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community.

Mr. Angleton: With the exception of the White House.

Mr. Johnson: With the exception of the White House.”

This establishes the milieu that the US intelligence agencies were finding themselves in during 1970. Almost sounds like a house of cards collapsed. 

Page 20

“Mr. Johnson: Is it true that Mr. Hoover underwent a kind of transportation in his attitudes toward what intelligence collection methods were feasible and acceptable in this country, and that he refused to conduct certain activities that he had conducted in the forties and fifties?

Mr. Angleton: Well, during the Johnson Administration and my facts by way of time may not be accurate -- he was being attacked in the Congress over many operational techniques. It is my understanding that he looked to the White House for some relief or approbation, and he received none.  I think his attitude was that if he was not going to have the support of the Executive, he was not going to subject the Bureau to a losing battle with politicians. Therefore he began systematically to cut back on all activities.”

Page 21-22 

“Mr. Johnson: So the upshot was for Mr. Hoover to eliminate certain collection methods he had used before?

Mr. Angleton: Gradually eliminate them.

Mr. Johnson: Now, what impact did this elimination of previous collection techniques have upon the CIA from your perspective?

Mr. Angleton: I think the basic thing was that it gradually closed sources of information and quality of information. And more important, -- and I think this is axiomatic -- that counter intelligence is about only as good as the relations between the FBI and the CIA are.

In other words, any activities we took up with the Bureau the Bureau always had constructive operational judgment to make. And I think by the same token we had a lot to say on the matter. As your data base disappeared, then your whole perceptions became cloudy, you didn't have the information. And you could not levy on the Bureau as we had prior to this requirement, targets, and other matters where we had coverage abroad. And this interplay between the external and internal is the heart of the operational task.

In other words, to us, if the Bureau is operating one part of the spectrum and we are operating the other, then we would have total coverage. But when you don't have this kind of relationship, and they can't follow up, and they are thwarted from doing many things, I would say the operational value diminishes, and eventually the final blow, banning, doing away with liaison.”

So, when the CIA and FBI had a rift as described at the time, then counterintelligence operations from the CIA just did not have as good information or any information at all. 

They were in the dark.

Rife with exploitation for Delta Green scenarios.

P26-P27

“Mr. Johnson: But isn't it true that during this period the military was under severe criticism for earlier civilian surveillance programs? 

Mr. Angleton: From where? 

Mr. Johnson: I believe the military was preparing for hearings before Sam Ervin's Committee on the subject of military surveillance over civilians. To some degree the military was under public criticism for being in the domestic intelligence gathering field.

Mr. Angleton: But I think the military took the position that they were responsible for their own security in conjunction with all other investigative agencies. 

In other words, there has always been a cardinal rule government that the head of every agency is responsible for his own security, that when the FBI develops information on any subversion, within any branch of the government, they send copies of those reports to the heads of the agency concerned for their action.

And, therefore, as far as I know no one had turned over the military prerogatives.

Mr. Johnson: Do these prerogatives extend beyond the military base itself?

Mr. Angleton: I don't know. I don't think it has anything to do with what directly affects the security of the armed forces.”

This discusses the Military gathering intelligence on civilians. Was this in the 1970’s specifically or earlier? 

P33

“Mr. Johnson: That just outlines for the NSA its mandate in monitoring the communications facilities, international communications facilities, used by American citizens. You might want to briefly glance over this section which explains it. 

[There is a white section here. Is it a redacted section?]

Communications intelligence is an activity of the NSA, as I understand it. And from reading the text it seems like NSA had primary interest here. But I wonder if the CIA was also interested in relaxing restraints in this area. 

Mr. Angleton: Every participant is a consumer of NSA product. And therefore they all have a an equal interest, they all had a departmental interest in enhancing the coverage by NSA.”

Discussion of the NSA and it’s “product” (intelligence) by Angleton. 

P34 

“Mr. Angleton. Normally [when gathering foreign intelligence] all customers [intelligence services], to my knowledge; would levy requirements on NSA.

Mr. Johnson. In the case of the CIA, what would be an example of a name that might be sent to the NSA to be placed on a watch list? You say a terrorist.

Would that be an example?

Mr. Angleton: A terrorist, an organization, intelligence individuals, political individuals, travel control.

Mr. Johnson: Would any of these names include the names of American citizens?

Mr. Angleton: As of that time I don't know. …”

Sure, Mr Angleton. Sure

Discussion of the Angleton testimony and the Delta Green angle on all of this will be included in Part 2.

Mystic Space Playtest 01 After Action Report

 About a month ago I had the opportunity to playtest, in person, the alpha version of the rules for a new wargame called Mystic Space.

Mystic Space is a scifi heroic space fantasy wargame produced and written by Ivan Sorensen, aka Nordic Weasel.  Ivan has created a plethora of solo, coop and verses wargames including 5 Parsecs from Home and 5 Leagues from the Borderlands that are both published by Modiphius Entertainment.  

With Mystic Space, think of colorfully armored armies of humans, and exalted Heroes, along with looming mecha-like Walkers, thundering across the battlefield, heeding the rallying cry and bark of their commanders to rapidly seize objectives and defend them to the last; all for the glory and expansion of their Faction.  In my view, it is a very heroic noble-bright tone with a dash of anime and giant robots, that is missing from most wargames that are focused on the gritty and grimdark.  

Full disclosure, I am on the Nordic Weasel discord and correspond with Ivan, along with playtesting some of his wargames.

I was very lucky in that my playtesting partner, Skeaze, brought two Mystic Space armies (15mm scale) that were sculpted in Blender, 3D printed and even painted, all by his own hand.  Now, how could I refuse?

If you are interested in the digital sculpts that Skeaze has made for Mystic Space, you can check out his Cults3D page, which is here.

Anyway, each side had two Infantry squads and three Heroes.  Mystic Space is a Victory Point accumulation game, and securing the Objectives in the battlespace is one way to accrue Victory Points.  

Infantry is important in Mystic Space because only Infantry squads can claim Objectives. Heroes (at the time of playtesting) could not claim Objectives, but they could contest them.  So, I viewed Heroes as support units for my Infantry.

Claiming an Objective involves an Infantry unit being within two inches of the Objective, and no opposing force being within two inches of that same Objective.

In addition to claiming Objectives, there were rules for obtaining Victory Points by wiping out opposing units.  However, since this was our very first game, and first engagement with the alpha ruleset, we decided to simplify these. 

We decided that reducing an Infantry squad to half strength would result in a gain of two Victory Points, and subsequent annihilation of the same squad would give the opponent one more Victory Point.  Thus, reducing an Infantry squad from full strength to zero members would result in a total of 3 Victory Points gained.

Similarly, the death of a Hero would result in the opponent gaining a total of 3 Victory Points. Thus, if one side was fully wiped out, the opponent would gain a total of 15 Victory Points; 9 from three Heroes and 6 from two Infantry squads.

In the particular scenario we were testing, we decided that we would have four Objectives on the board and that each Objective successfully claimed would give the claimant 1 Victory Point at the end of each turn.

Now onto the forces description.  I mentioned that each side had two Infantry squads and three Heroes.  However, each side was not identical in terms of the type of Infantry and Heroes.  My side was the Terra Hold faction and my forces consisted of 1 Light Infantry Section (eight figures), 1 Assault Infantry Section (six figures), a Leader Hero, Champion Hero, and an Ironclad Hero.  My colors were green. My opponent’s side was the Eden’s Path faction and his army contained 1 Light Infantry Section (again, eight figures), 1 Armored Infantry Section (eight figures), a Leader Hero, Rapid Hero, and Ironclad Hero.

It was not exactly a mirror match but it was close. Light Infantry Sections were sort of your basic army unit. The Assault Infantry Section had decent pistols and more importantly were all armed with melee weapons.  In contrast the Armored Infantry Section fielded by my opponent were a slower moving, but more armored than usual group of eight soldiers armed with rifles and two heavy weapons. 

Both my fellow combatant and I each had a Leader and Ironclad Hero. All Heroes, once activated in a turn, can also activate an Infantry Section within Command Range (6 inches typically).  Leader Heroes have a Command Range of 9 inches, a ranged weapon, a melee weapon, and spells; the latter of which had yet to be fleshed out in the rules so we skipped that entirely.   Ironclad Heroes were a little slower but had the most armor of any unit in the game (4), a ranged weapon that fired twice per shooting action, and a melee weapon.  Ironclad Heroes were very resistant to damage, a factor that we learned throughout the battle.

To differentiate our near identical army loadouts, I had a Champion Hero and my opponent had a Rapid Hero.  A Champion Hero was a melee specialist of sorts; armed with a pistol and a powerful melee weapon.  A Rapid Hero was the fastest Hero in the game; and I expected it to be contesting my Objectives fairly regularly.

Now, there was one additional thing my opponent and I had to consider with each of our force's loadouts. Which units were going to field Trace pistols or Trace guns? Normally in Mystic Space, when a unit shoots another unit, the shooter rolls 1d10 and adds their weapon's accuracy, then adds or subtracts additional factors and compares the result to the value of 10. A result of 10 or higher is a hit, and misses do nothing. Trace firearms function differently. They are essentially railguns and the shooter draws a straight line from the shooting unit to their target. All units that intersect that line are hit, even if friendly. No 1d10 to hit roll is required. A large piece of terrain (like a cliff face) will interrupt the line however.

The Light Infantry Sections and the Champion could field a Trace gun and Trace pistol, respectively. Although, those units that were hit by a Trace weapon will have the chance for an armor save; the way the trace weapons could target multiple figures in a squad made us both pause and consider the arrangement of the figures in our squads when they were deployed on the battlefield and when they had to squeeze into smaller corridors on the map. After all, we didn't want to give the opposing player any advantage of automatically scoring a hit on multiple figures in a single shooting action!

With these thoughts in mind, it was time for deployment of the troops. The battlemap had five major pieces of terrain on it. One piece was close to each corner and a group of ruins was present in the middle. Four Objectives were placed on the table. One Objective each, were placed near me and my opponent's deployment corners. The other two Objectives were in the middle of the map. These were the toxic barrels in the ruins you can see in the first picture (below), and a group of crates tucked away in the crook of the green-topped plateau. These middle Objectives would be the most contested areas during the conflict. 

Deployment was interesting. We used the following rules that may not reflect the final Mystic Space product. Each player placed a number of deployment markers on the battlefield equal to the number of forces they had. We numbered the deployment markers 1-5 (we each had 5 units to deploy) and took turns rolling 1d6. Depending on the number that came up on the 1d6, we would remove the deployment token with that number and place a unit of our choosing on that location on the board. If someone rolled a 6, we rerolled of course, given that we only had 5 units each.

Another note about deployment. The robot miniatures that you will see in the pictures we used as proxies to represent our Ironclad Heroes. There are giant robots in Mystic Space. They are tentatively called Walkers. At the time of the playtest, however, rules for Walkers had not been fully developed.

The first turn proceeded as expected given the layout of terrain and Objectives in the battlespace. I was lucky enough to will the initiative roll, so I went first and immediately had my Assault Infantry Section secure the Objective that was in my corner on top of a plateau. Claiming that Objective would result in production of one Victory Point per turn at the end of the turn. The rules do not require devoting a unit of Infantry to guard the Objective in order to generate Victory Points. This is great because it encourages players to advance all of their forces into the fray. My opponent executed the same plan with his units, claiming the Objective (a satellite dish) that was in the middle of a crater, in his corner of the field. 

In addition, during the first turn, I also rushed my Light Infantry Section into the ruins in the middle of the map to claim the Objective there. The Objective in the ruins was a pile of leaking toxic barrels. Perhaps that was an ill omen for what would happen to my Light Infantry in the ruins! Anyway, at the end of turn one and I was sitting pretty on two Victory Points.

Turn two arose and the shooting began in earnest. My opponent jockeyed for position, arranging his Leader and Ironclad Heroes as well as his Light Infantry within the visual arc of my Infantry squad that had holed up in the ruins, guarding the toxic barrels Objective. I suffered a withering hail of fire. The result was that five of my Infantry, out of eight soldiers, had been penetrated by lasers or burnt to a crisp by plasma fire.

Things were not looking good. However, my much-diminished Infantry squad rallied, successfully removed the panic markers caused by the decimating firefight, and were able to return fire. Shocked that my Light Infantry force was so close to destruction so soon, I moved my Champion Hero into the ruins to support them.

Another flash point was erupting. Due south of the ruins and in a narrow corridor bordered by crumbling stone and two grassy plateaus, my Assault Infantry had spied and were in range of my opponent's colorful Armored Infantry. Accompanied by an Ironclad and Leader Heroes, my Assault troopers fired enfilade into the mass of enemy troops, inflicting three casualties (denoted by the smoke tokens in the below picture). The opposing Hero, the Rapid, stood and delivered; making all of his armor saves against the firearms of my Ironclad Hero and shooting back with impunity.

Meanwhile, in the ruins, the remainder of my Light Infantry screamed and fell under the combine arms of my opponent's Light Infantry Section and Ironclad Hero. Brimming with confidence, the opposing Leader (figure with a red pistol and blue sword) engaged my Champion (pants painted in green) in close combat. He also proceeded to engage his remaining Light Infantry Section with my Champion as well, hoping to gain advantage and dominate my Champion by obtaining bonuses to hit by surrounding him.

Satisfied that his forces would wipe out my Champion, my opponent moved his Ironclad from the ruins combat to the southern narrow corridor flash point. Things looked far from great for me.

However, that is when we came face to face with how dominant a Champion's melee skills were. My Champion weathered a storm of blows from Hero and Infantry alike, and then returned blow for blow with force and honor. When the butcher's bill came due, my opponent's Leader lay dead on the ruined ground and two men of the plucky but foolish opposing Infantry squad were smashed to a pulp.

The conflict in the southern corridor was claiming lives and becoming tense. As soon as my counterpart's Ironclad came to support his diminishing number of Armored Infantry, the armor save luck of his Rapid Hero ran out. My Ironclad finally finished off the Rapid in a barrage of Injector rifle fire.

The close quarters firefight quickly turned into a muddy, bloody melee where no side was spared. My Assault Infantry engaged his Armored Infantry and slowly, painfully, the slightly superior armaments of the Assault squad ground the superior numbers of the Armored Infantry to dust. Two lone Assault squaddies stood triumphant atop of a mound of bodies, heaving with labored breaths and brandishing their Honor Blades in victory. 

In the central ruins, my Champion valiantly parried strikes and withstood blows that would crumple a lesser human, but quantity has a quality all of its own, and my Champion disappeared under the tide of the opposing Infantry's pummeling rifle-butts and thrashing fists.

All told, we tallied up the casualties and Objectives that accrued Victory Points and came to a conclusion. My opponent stood tall with pride, having claimed victory from the jaws of defeat by a single point! 

Mystic Space is shaping up to be a great game with lots of action, drama and tactical decisions on display. More current editions include rules for the giant robots called Walkers, special bonuses for Factions, and lore about the conflict and the major players within it. Even more is to come including a Spell list and rules for Faction Artifacts. I'm very excited about the developments and I can't wait to play it again.