Operation Last Train: Day 2

Drop 3: Quarantine

Aden Subatai sat behind the desk in his ready room, staring blankly at the holographic image of a waterfall from his homeworld. Less than thirty minutes before, he’d recalled a drop mid-flight. It was unclear if it was just bad timing, or if the survivors had gotten excited and made a mistake. Either way, the bridge crew watched helpless from over a hundred miles above as those luckless people were overrun. Slaughtered. So close…

            The door chime sounded, and the executive officer stepped in.

            ‘Good news?’ asked Subatai.

            ‘Strange, at least. We’ve established broken communication with a group of holdouts. They are in the basement of a giant medical research facility. It seems that when things got really bad, they hit the quarantine alarms and sealed themselves in. Apparently they’ve survived by eating their test stock.’         

            ‘Desperate times, X.O.’

            ‘Indeed. Here’s the clincher though. Apparently, they can’t unlock the door. The whole system is designed so that no one on the inside can end the quarantine, and thus risk infecting others. Only agents on the outside can open it. Agents with the proper code. We are going to have to send someone in who can crack the door lock. And, just to make it all the more fun, while we’ve got a layout of the building, it has suffered some pretty extensive damage. There is no way of telling which pathways are open and which are going to be blocked.

            ‘The volunteers love a challenge’.

            ‘They express it with interesting vocabulary, Sir.’

            Aden smiled and nodded. ‘Okay, send it all the Colonel. Tell him to let me know when he is ready to drop.’

Set-Up

This scenario is played on a 2.5 x 2.5 table. The table should be divided into a several large corridors. One corridor, around 2” wide, should run around the entire outline of the table. Five more corridors, approximately 4” wide should criss-cross the table, so that the form a number sign (#) but with three, equally spaced vertical lines.

            Designate one side of the table with the ends of the three vertical corridors as the volunteer edge. The opposite edge is the survivor edge. Place three door on the edge of the table on the survivor side so that they line up with the three vertical corridors. Place another three doors in the exact middle of the three vertical corridors. Place an ammo token behind a random middle door.

            Place 6 numbered spawn points on the edge of the table. Place four of them along the two unnamed table edges so that they align with either end of the horizontal corridors. Place the other two in random corners of the table.

            Place the 6 volunteers within 2” of the volunteer table edge.

            Place 4 blip markers next to 4 different random spawn points.

[Players wishing to up the challenge level should add more random doorways blocking corridors.]

Special Rules

This mission uses blip markers, which can be any little token. Blip markers move just like bugs. As soon as they are in the line of sight of a volunteer or survivor, the blip maker is converted into bugs. Roll a d6 on the Blip Table below and replace the marker with the designated number of bugs.

Blip Table
D6	Bugs
1	0
2-4	1
5	2
6	3

All of the bugs should be placed side-by-side if they will fit. If the blip was moving when it was converted, the bugs may continue to move using whatever movement the blip had remaining.

            The doors in the middle of the table opened automatically as soon as any figure or blip moves adjacent to them. Once opened, a door may not be shut. Whenever a volunteer reaches one of the three doorways on the survivor table edge, they should roll a die. On a 7+ they have found the door that accesses the survivors. On any other roll the way is blocked. If two doors have been checked and both were blocked, the third will automatically access the survivors.

            When the access door has been found, the volunteers must unlock it. Any volunteer in contact with the door may sacrifice either their move or shoot action (but not both) to attempt to unlock it. Roll one die, on a 10 the door is unlocked. This is reduced to a 5+ if the figure is a tech wizard. The player may reroll this die by playing the ‘Clear Transmission’ Heroic Action card.

            Once the access door is opened, place 9 survivors adjacent to it.

            To escape, the volunteers and survivors must exit the table at any point along the volunteer edge. Treat that edge as the dropship for determining survivor movement.

            In this scenario, bugs or blips will always move towards the closest volunteer or survivor if it is within 16”, even if it is not in line of sight. Otherwise they move randomly.

            At the end of every turn roll 2 six-sided dice. Place a blip marker next to the spawn points indicated on the dice. If you roll doubles, place one blip marker next to the indicated spawn point, and also compare the doubles rolled to the Unexpected Event Table below.

Unexpected Event
Doubles Rolled	Event
1	Ammo. One random player gains an ammo token.
2	Blinding Flash. Select a random volunteer. This volunteer is momentary blinded by a flash of light. Their Shoot is increased by 1 for the rest of the scenario (so Shoot 7+ becomes 8+)
3	Ceiling Collapse. A big chunk of ceiling collapses and squashes one bug of the player’s choice. Remove that bug from the table. If there are no bugs, it squashes a random blip instead.
4	Adrenaline. One random player may draw an extra Heroic Action card.
5	Sprinklers. Something sets off the sprinkler system. Maximum line of sight is reduced to 12” for the rest of the scenario.
6	Armoured Bug. Place an armoured bug next to a random spawn point.