Bloodbath in the Nanotech Dustbowl

Last week we gathered to play a few more games of Nuclear Renaissance. I wanted to get more experience with the game's close combat, so I crafted a scenario to push opponents in that direction. The game takes place in our home brew sci-fi setting called the Galactic Frontier.

I came up with a new planet for this game -- Fornasis II, a barely habitable desert rock that orbits very close to the sun in the Fornacis system. The surface is hollowed out and barren from decades of mining and prospecting, battered by gale-force winds and scourged by high temperatures. Remains of mining camps and processing stations dot the landscape, though, still stocked with raw ore, valuable equipment and other, more mysterious bits of scrap.

At some point in the not-too-distant past, an industrial accident at one of these mines unleashed a horde of mining nanobots into the atmosphere, and this hazy death cloud now infests most of the abandoned facilities on the planet's surface. Exploration and salvage is only possible for the best equipped (or most insane) prospecting teams.

Our game took place in one such ruined industrial site. Captain Endarson, leader of a Maersk-Tesla Corporation survey team, met a space prospector who implied that one particular abandoned mining camp seemed ripe for the picking -- if the raid could be accomplished quickly. Captain Endarson decided to pull his team off their scheduled route to make a fortune in black market plastrium. Unfortunately, he was not the only person gunning for a quick score...

Greybeard's scavenging team traveled the outskirts of the galaxy looking for tech to trade. When they heard the rumor about Fornasis II, the team hoped this would finally be the last score that made them rich beyond their wildest imaginations. 

But Fornacis II was not entirely uninhabited. Years ago a starship carrying a group of mysterious mechanical creatures crashed onto the planet. They have been scouring the industrial sites on the planet, seeking plastrium and spare parts to repair their ship, and will suffer no competition in this regard.

This was basically a deathmatch scenario. We doubled the move distances in Nuclear Renaissance to represent the terrifying time crunch, and halved the shooting distances to represent the deadly fog of sand and nanobots.

The first turn of the game was uneventful as forces moved slowly into position.

The mechanical warriors crept through the abandoned ruins toward the survey team.

Here, a member of the survey team lines up a shot on a scavenger.

A robot warrior moves into a defensive position. 

Bob Kneely, the scavenger sniper, prepares to fire, while Dr. Bewm looks in two directions at once.

Steve Dave managed to kill a dude with his steely glare. Don't look into his eyes!

Uh oh. Steve Dave is in trouble. 

After a few turns, Captain Endarson and his men were decimated. The Maersk-Tesla Corporation will need to muster a search party to investigate their last known coordinates in order to to recover the corporation's gear and property. 

The robots and scavengers fought bravely for a few more turns until we had to call the game at the end of the evening. The mechs were not consumed by the nanobots, but the tech introduced a virus into their systems which deactivated them. They stand motionless on the sand-pitted surface of Fornacis II, their metal skin slowly corroding in the swirling sand and grit. There were no survivors. 

All in all, this was a fun scenario. I think we need to adjust the starting locations to keep everyone equidistant. Mike and I ended up ganging up on Karl's survey team. The doubled move rates certainly helped us get into close combat faster, but the halved shooting range did not make an appreciable difference. I enjoyed the frantic, bloody pace of this game. Nuclear Renaissance plays very well without any vehicles, and I hope to try additional scenarios in this vein in the future.

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member