DAY 5 – APRIL 22nd 2000

PRASZKA, POLAND – NIGHT

ROUND 10

[LED and DONNA exchange their initiative (they’re able to speak to each other, so they can; page 55 of the Player’s Manual)]

LED brings the PRISONER to ALEX’s position. ALEX glances at the two for a moment, quickly returning to his rifle’s sight. “There’s four more” says LED in English. “Nah, I dropped two” responds ALEX.

LED turns to the PRISONER, “We already got two, tell the others to surrender or they’re going to be buried here” he says in Russian.

The PRISONER starts yelling in Polish: “Guys it’s me, Marko. The others are dead and the captain is badly wounded. Surrender or they’ll kill you all!”.

“You better listen to him guys, it’s your last chance” quickly adds ALEX in Polish (ALEX is Polish).

OPPOSITE PERSUASION ROLL [click to expand]

Opposite PERSUASION roll for the PRISONER, who’s speaking for the players, and the fighters of GROUP 1. Modifiers applied are here:

The PRISONER gets:

• +1 for being on the side with more men (so far GROUP 1 has seen ALEX and DONNA, but now knows there must be more enemies)
• +1 for GROUP 1 having suffered damage (1 killed +1 wounded)
• +1 for ALEX supporting him (ALEX will consume his action in this round helping the PRISONER)

GROUP 1 gets:

• -1 for being outnumbered
• -1 for having suffered damage
• -1 for learning from their comrade that the others are dead and their LEADER is wounded

The PRISONER rolls[D12] = 1 SUCCESS

The GROUP rolls[D6] = 0 SUCCESSES

GROUP 1 surrenders

As with GROUP 2, I replaced the token for GROUP 1 with three separate tokens for the three fighters. One is dead by the corner, the others – both marked with 1 – are coming around the corner surrendering.

A brief silence is followed by a male voice shouting something in Polish. ALEX turns to LED, a low-key twinkle of excitement in his eyes “they’re coming out”

DONNA reloads her weapon.

NASCAR (not knowing what was yelled in Polish) keeps his overwatch

The fighters of GROUP 1 come out with their hands up and toss their hunting rifles on the ground.

This ends round 10 and THE BATTLE OF GARAGE HOTEL

AFTERMATH

The final balance of the battle of garage hotel is as follows:

• 1 enemy LEADER critically injured (torn intestines) and down to 0 hit points. [I had him mutter a few words when he should have been knocked out and senseless, I’ll adjust from here]
• 3 enemy fighters taken as prisoners with two of them wounded. One with 3 hit points left and one with 4 hit points left
• 1 enemy SCOUT killed
• 3 enemy fighters killed (two from GROUP 2 and one from GROUP 1)
• No one of the players has been wounded in the battle
• DONNA and ALEX have both used up a magazine. NASCAR has used 30 rounds and LED is down to a single bullet in his pistol mag. DONNA has used her frag grenade.

The group of prisoners is moved to the unit next to their wounded LEADER and ordered to kneel facing the wall with their hands on their heads. All the prisoners are wearing a white armband with an upside down cross traced on it in black; the LEADER’s armband has a red upside down cross.

NASCAR and LED quickly check the bodies of the enemies they dropped and retrieve all weapons and ammo. In a handful of minutes, they amass quite a booty:

• 1 P-83 pistol with 2 mags (reliability 4)
• 4 AKMs with 7 mags (two AKMs have reliability 4, and two have reliability 3)
• 3 HUNTING RIFLES with 4 reloads (one rifle has reliability 4, the other two have reliability 3)
• 6 knifes (all have reliability 4)
• 1 hand-held red flare
• 1 steel helmet

The prisoners beg ALEX and DONNA to help their LEADER; DONNA quickly checks him out.

WITH the EYES of the REFEREE [click to expand]

I house-ruled that at least 1 of LED’s bullets has hit the LEADER, while the other 5 have a 1 in a D6 chance. Final result is two bullets hit the LEADER. I had a 50% for each bullet to have entered and exited, it came out that one is still inside.

“Two GSWs, single exit wound. He’s got a g.i. perf and his temp is rising” she says after a minute.

“In English?” asks ALEX.

“It’s bad”

Waiting for the others to return, ALEX interrogates the prisoners: who are they? what was their objective?

The prisoners are the remaining members of a unit of the Polish Army, nearly wiped out in a battle with Russian forces near the Baltic coast. They have stuck together and barely survived under the command of their LEADER, trying to move south towards their home region. Two weeks ago, starving and with little ammo remaining, they met a large group of soldiers from mixed nationalities and were basically blackmailed into joining them in order to survive. So, they swore allegiance to the group calling itself THE SHEPERD’S FLOCK.

According to the prisoners, the Flock is a cult run by regional commanders who all report to a single leader of the Flock. They heard him mentioned in sermons and other occasions, but never seen him in person; he is somewhere East along with the bulk of the Flock’s army. From what they have witnessed in the past two weeks the Flock comprises a number of fanatics – or border-line psychopaths – as its leadership and soldiers and servants in its lower tiers. The Flock employes coercion and violence – unspeakable violence – to either convert people to their cause or to kill and burn everyone and everything in their path.

“Their cause?” asks ALEX.

“Go figure, they keep talking about the Third Age and the New Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. If you ask questions, you’re branded as a traitor who doesn’t believe in the Flock’s mission and…”

“And?”

“You get crucified” concludes one of the prisoners.

The prisoner’s group was part of the forces that were harassing the town during the day; they explain that the town’s people refused to surrender and join the Flock. An attack plan was devised for the night and the objective quickly changed from capturing the town and its people to burn the town and kill everyone in it.

“So, there’s a plan in motion for tonight?” asks ALEX.

“Yes, we were supposed to move through this part of the town and attack a nearby apartment complex where the townspeople have an observation post, then light a flare on the roof to signal that the building had been captured”

“How many men are involved in this operation?”

“Our group and about fifty other men”

ALEX raises his eyebrows. “You didn’t capture the observation post, so what will the others do?”

“They will attack anyway. There are three groups, ours and two more; each has its own objective. We don’t know what the others’ plans are, we were just supposed to capture the apartment complex, signal with the flare and then enter the town and meet the other groups at the church”

“What about civilians?”

The prisoners lower their heads “orders where to take no prisoners”

---

POST FACTO OBSERVATIONS

The Battle of Garage Hotel was my first combat in Twilight 2000. Despite it being 10 rounds long – roughly 100 seconds according to the rules – it took me eight to ten hours to prepare and about five hours to run over multiple sessions.

I had to frequently check the manuals, the characters’ sheets and my notes, adjust the map as the rounds progressed and write down pretty much all that happened and all the reasoning and the mechanics at play. Also, I had to find new icons for representing things that happened in the round (such as grenades and NPCs being taken prisoners or surrendering) which I did not anticipate. Writing everything down was especially useful for better learning the rules.

It was – honestly – a lot of fun. Definitely worth the time I spent on it.

After reading back the report from the battle I made some notes for myself:

• MOVEMENT: in both round 01 and round 02 GROUP 1 moves at double normal speed without any mobility rolls. This was a mistake, as I had a visual way to determine a 20 meters (2 hexes) movement on the map and I employed it incorrectly when moving GROUP 1
• HOUSE-RULING: I made a number of decisions bypassing some dice rolls. Sometimes for the sake of speed and sometimes for the sake of logic. In hindsight some of my decisions are questionable. For instance, in round 2 GROUP 2 is automatically spotted by DONNA and I stand by that decision given that DONNA was looking in their direction, they were within range, moving in a group (noisier and easier to spot) and they were not trying to move unnoticed. What I would change now though, is that I would have given GROUP 2 a recon roll to see if they could spot DONNA and therefore react to her presence. Had the roll be successful, I would have had DONNA and GROUP 1 draw an initiative card and have them in the first two places in the initiative order.
• SUPPRESSION: suppressed enemies go prone and lose both their actions in their next round. Suppressing enemies proved useful in a few rounds and is a precious lesson for future engagements. Suppressed players also suffer 1 point of stress, which I didn’t bother tracking for NPCs. In round 04 I forgot that GROUP 2, having just recovered from suppression, was supposed to be prone. I mistakenly thought they had gone back to partial cover and therefore NASCAR was able to hit them with his M240 having rolled head on the hit location die. Which brings me to the next point.
• DICE ROLLS: for the sake of convenience, I rolled all the dice needed for an attack at the same time (base dice, ammo dice and hit location die). In round 04 I had NASCAR push his roll on account of having rolled no successes on his base dice, but ‘head’ on his hit location die. The enemy head was exposed, making it convenient for him to re-roll. The rules for pushing (page 45 of the Player’s Manual) talk about re-rolling “your initial skill roll”, and the re-roll of the ammo dice is mentioned later, but there’s no mention of re-rolling the hit location die. However, at page 72 is written that the hit location die has to be rolled “when a human target is hit by a ranged attack, in close combat or by an explosion”. After re-reading this part, my best interpretation is that the hit location die has to be rolled after the attack roll – pushed or not – is concluded.
• RELOADING for NPCs: in round 06 GROUP 1 had to reload due to having rolled a 1 (actually two 1s) on their attack roll. This is incorrect, as NPCs have to reload after “any attack roll with one or more 1s on the ammo dice only” as stated in the Player’s Manual at page 67.
• GRENADES are awesome! After wasting more than half her mag in a single round without any hits, DONNA was able to suppress 4 enemies and inflict 2 damages each with a single grenade. Explosives really work wonders in tight spaces. The smoke grenade thrown by the LEADER was also useful in blocking line of sight and preventing further attacks on GROUP 2.
• ORDER OF EVENTS: in round 09 bot DONNA and ALEX have their overwatch triggered by the enemies of GROUP 1 exposing themselves. DONNA fires first and deals no damage, but manages to suppress the enemies. That means suppression takes place as soon as DONNA’s round is over and the fighters in GROUP 1 are prone when ALEX fires at them, causing a -1 to ALEX’s roll, which I forgot to apply (he missed anyway).
• LIGHT and WEATHER: having the battle being fought in a cloudy night added a layer of complication to most rolls. Luckily the players were able to secure the first 4 places in the initiative order by spotting the enemy first and their higher level of skill meant that even with the -2 penalty they could still roll with more favorable odds than the NPCs. Exceptions are DONNA who has a low skill in ranged combat, dropping her roll to a single D6, and LED, who wisely decided to get closer and raise his chances.
• BETTER LUCKY THAN GOOD: especially in the first rounds, the players had some exceptionally lucky rolls. I rolled the dice manually on my table and didn’t alter the results, so I was surprised myself. Their luck seemed to fade towards the end, but by then they had secured victory having knocked-out the LEADER and gained a prisoner to use to persuade the remaining foes, so I guess the lesson is to use luck to get momentum, so you can still push when luck fades. The players started outnumbered 2 to 1, and ended combat having killed 4 enemies, captured 3 and critically wounded 1; all without sustaining a single hit point of damage. I need to keep in mind that my rolls might not be that lucky the next time…
• URBAN COMBAT: the Battle of Garage Hotel called for the use of the new combat system introduced in the URBAN OPERATIONS module, which is specifically built for urban environments, and overall applicable to close quarters combat. This being my first battle, I wanted to use the rules I had already read and understood, rather than jumping to the new system. That being said, I have my copy of URBAN OPERATIONS and I look forward to apply its content to my campaign.

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