Warfighter: Into the Frying Pan

Castle Frankenstein Mission 2

Sgt Charlie McD listened as the mission brief droned on. The documents he’d retrieved with the Maquis’ help had been decoded and translated. Jerry had been working on some strange crap in the Fortress. Something called the Thule Society were the main honchos behind Jerry’s activity.

Some tightly wound OSS Major was ordering us out on another raid. At least this time he’d have some Joes with him for support. Of course the resistance dame Rika wanted back in too. Her country I guess...

Charlie’s attention drifted to the new tin man suit he was getting for the mission. Supposedly even better than his last one. He hoped it burned less fuel! He feared being busted back to Private if he lost this one.

Charlie’s attention snapped back when he heard the Major yell “Move your ass! NOW!”

The Brass was not happy that we failed to clear out the Fortress, and ordered us back in to complete the job.

We made our way to the jump off point. No surprise to us, Jerry had funneled in reinforcements. Elite bastards too. Getting off the dime was a tough row.

Charlie tested out his new rocket launcher. A nice touch, but a tad underwhelming too. He’d hoped for a bigger blast zone than it packed.

Charlie and Rika used their prior experiences to hold of the enemy while the newbies began pushing deeper into the complex.

A stray round punched a hole in a drum above Pvt Scott. Whatever the hell was in there poured on Scott. Terror gripped the newcomers as the skin melted from his face. Fortunately death quickly claimed him (failed Chemical roll)(hmmm 1 health troopers may have been a poor choice).

Charlie used his braced MG to wear down the enemy. Progress is slow.

Charlie’s firepower was making him the target of choice. It was all that permitted the squad to make any progress. It’s cost was that Jerry had effectively cornered the main threat to the jump off point. 

He used his rockets to prevent harassing forces and an enemy machine guns from pressuring the clock.

Rika used her lone grenade on a rifle team. The forward element lacked sufficient firepower to make consistent progress towards the objective. This accelerated the clock countdown. 

A wrong turn saw Rika lead the team into a laboratory. Loaded with bad men. Very bad men. A savage burst hit Pvt G Orwell. 2 wounds and he went down. (Even a 3 wound Squad soldier couldn’t make it in Frankenstein’s Fortress)

With time against them, Rika began to fallback towards Firebase Charlie. Sapphire took a burst on her way out. She was able to lash out with 3 EKIAs before succumbing to her wounds. ( her Sacrifice  skill was the biggest contribution made during the mission).

With only one turn remaining, Charlie and Rika exited the mission. Major Fail.

AAR
Charlie and the Mech gobble up a ton of the available RPs. Trying to mix in some Maquis for flavor and shifting to all Elite Hostiles was too much. This team really had no chance at succeeding.

Next, the three of us will move onto a different Objective. Probably keep Rika on the team, but with a weapon having range 1 capabilities. We ran lite on cards to as most needed discards to support movement. On this mission, every turn a location wasn’t played advanced the turn marker. Add that to a lack of firepower and a stream of harassing forces occasionally costing a turn marker advance, and the hole we dug got deeper and deeper.

Since we enjoy connecting missions, we decide to save what we could. Being Rika and Charlie.

Next time we’ll look for maybe having 3 player Soldiers with some better gear. And helmets. And candy bars. And canteens. Did we mention grenades. Lots of grenades.

Enjoy your games fellow WarFighters!