Shattergrounds

Welcome back to our series of articles where we break down the contested locations and their accompanying missions for Phase 1 of the Shattergrounds Campaign. How has the campaign been going for you, is your faction winning in any of the contested locations?

Let's take a look at the next mission in Location 7: Desalination Plant.

The Wu Yán industrial district and its all important Desalination Plant provides the Rhodan Spaceport with a constant supply of salt-free water to replenish the supplies of the various ships that dock there. This desalinated water is not just used as potable water for crewmembers and passagers, it is also used as reaction mass and as a large thermal mass for heat management of spacecraft.

Recently, it has been subject to some technical difficulties related to the Quantum Anomaly Zones which have damanged its reverse osmosis filtration systems. Every day that the supply remains unavailable is another day that crew potentially go without water.

Yu Jing technicians have been attempting to access the site to adminster critical repairs but have been unable to, due to inexplicable aggression from PanOceanian forces. "We're not a charity," commented one PanOceanian commander not authorized to discuss the subject on the record. "We simply cannot allow just anyone to have access to the salt here at Wu Yán. To do so would amount to a slap in the collective faces of all of PanOceanian. We need our salt!"

Cinder Carla, a Nomad Clockmaker in the RaD unit, had the following to say: "I'm really concerned about those RO filters. You can't overpressure them, to do so might irrevocably repair the containment vessels and then we're looking at probably another 3 months just to get new ones fabricated, not to mention validated and up to spec. Those Yu Jing Mech-Engineers have their work cut out for them. Hopefully the PanO Tech-Bees and Machinists have enough willpower to solve the issue. We just need clean water, and we're not picky about which Hyperpower they come from."

Faction Goals and Starting Influence

PanOceania are seeking to secure a stable supply of salt for their war effort.

Yu Jing is attempting to restore the supply of fresh drinking water to the Rhodan Spaceport by repairing the Reverse Osmosis filters.

PanOceania start with the advantage in this area with Yu Jing 2nd and all other factions 3rd. 

Mission Overview

This one is a bit complicated, so here’s a plain English explanation. The player who has the first turn or the Yu Jing player if there is one (Defender) is defending a damaged reverse osmisis filter and will score points for repairing it. The player with the second turn or the PanO player if there is one (Attacker) is attempting to take the reverse osmosis filter offline and will score points for damaging it. The Filter has 2 structure to start and has a max of 4 structure, so if nothing happens both players will score 2 points. I wanted to explore a little bit of asymmetric scoring here, to see if that would work well in Infinity.

Both players want to get into the Filtration Room (Armory building) early to secure the area so they can accomplish their mission, so you get points for dominating the armory building at the end of each player turn for the first two game rounds (first 4 turns of the game).

Of course, a Filtration Room has safety interlocks (two additional objectives on the centerline). Both interlocks must be controlled (base to base touching) before the doors open, and players can disable the interlocks to prevent them from being used, but they can be repaired.

It’s going to be a bloody fight in the center, and left unrepaired, the reverse osmosis releases dangerous levels of salt. This is modeled by biotechvore zones inside the Armory building. The damage of the salt is weaker the more structure the Reverse Osmosis Filter has. Best of luck!

Mission Objectives

Points	Timing	Objective
1	End of Player Turn	Dominate the Filtration Room Last two game rounds only (max 4).
1	End of Game	Defender Player scores 1 point for each remaining Reverse Osmosis Filter STR point (max 4).
1	End of Game	Attacker Player scores 1 point for each lost Reverse Osmosis Filter STR point (max 4).
1	End of Game	Disable a Safety Interlock (1 Point per each)

Forces and Deployment

Exclusion Zone

The Exclusion Zone is the area covering the Reactor Room Zone of Operations. Any Special Skill with the Airborne Deployment (AD) or Superior Deployment Labels cannot be used to deploy inside this area.

Scenario Special Rules

Asymmetric Scoring

The player with First Turn (or the Yu Jing player) is the Defender player and the player with Second Turn (or the PanO player) is the Attacker player.

Filtration Room (ZO)

In this scenario the Filtration Room is a Zone of Operations (ZO).

Placed in the center of the table, it covers an area of 8 by 8 inches.

To represent the Filtration Room, we recommend using the Objective Room by Micro Art Studio, the Command Bunker by Warsenal, or the Panic Room by Customeeple.

In game terms it is considered to have walls of infinite height that completely block Line of Fire. It has four Gates, one in the middle of each wall (See map). The Gates of the Filtration Room are closed at the start of the game. The Filtration Room Gates must be represented by a Wide Gate Token or a scenery piece with the same size.

Opening the Filtration Room Doors

The Filtration Room Doors start the game closed. To open them, at least one of the following conditions must be met. If applicable, the door(s) will open as part of the order resolution step. If during the resolution of an order, none of the conditions are met, the doors are considered to be closed. A successful Dodge skill declaration and PH roll in the active turn or in ARO will allow you to get through an opening or closing door, assuming you have the movement.

• All Doors - Both Safety Interlocks are controlled and not disabled.
• Specific Door - The Door’s STR has been reduced to 0

Reactor Core Door
ARM	BTS	STR
8	9	2

A Reactor Core Door can only be damaged by BS or CC Weapons possessing the Anti-materiel Trait, or by placing D-Charges.

Safety Interlocks

Safety interlocks start the game enabled. A Safety Interlock is Controlled by a player as long as that player is the only one with at least one Trooper (as a Model, not a Marker) in Silhouette contact with it. So there cannot be any enemy Troopers in Silhouette contact with the Safety Interlock. Models in a Null State cannot do either.

A Safety Interlock is Disabled by the following skill:

Disable Safety Interlock (Short Skill, Attack)

Requirements

• Only Specialist Troops can declare this Skill
• The Specialist Troop must be in Silhouette Contact with the Safety Interlock

Effects

• Allows the Specialist Troop to make a Normal WIP Roll to Disable a Safety Interlock
• Hackers and Engineers gain +1 Burst and +3 WIP when making the WIP roll.
• If the roll is failed, this can be repeated as many times as necessary, each time spending the corresponding Short Skill and making the roll.
• A Disabled Safety Interlock cannot be disabled again until repaired.

Repair Safety Interlock (Short Skill, Attack)

Requirements

• Only Specialist Troops can declare this Skill
• The Specialist Troop must be in Silhouette Contact with the Safety Interlock

Effects

• Allows the Specialist Troop to make a Normal WIP Roll to Repair a Safety Interlock
• Hackers and Engineers gain +1 Burst and +3 WIP when making the WIP roll.
• If the roll is failed, this can be repeated as many times as necessary, each time spending the corresponding Short Skill and making the roll.
• A Repaired Safety Interlock cannot be repaired again until disabled.

Reverse Osmosis Filter

The Reverse Osmosis Filter is placed in the center of the Reactor Room and may be represented by a S5 model. In this scenario the Reverse Osmosis Filter may be targeted. However, the Reverse Osmosis Filter may not be chosen as the target of an attack that would also affect troopers, be the enemy or allied.

Reactor Core
ARM	BTS	STR	S
8	9	2, max 4 2	5
Gizmokit (PH=10)

• The Reverse Osmosis Filter starts the game at 2 STR and may be repaired to a max of 4.
• The Reverse Osmosis Filter cannot be reduced below a STR of 0 and will always remain on the game table.

Extreme Salt

At the end of each Active Player turn, all Troopers in the Filtration Room Zone of Operations suffer a hit from the following weapon, with the ammo type depending on their attributes:

Attribute	DAM	Ammo	Traits
Wounds	18-(3*STR)	DA	BTS
Structure	18-(3*STR)	Normal	ARM+BTS

This is to represent the lethal salt cascading out from the Reverse Osmosis Filter. The Reverse Osmosis Filter starts at 2 STR and may be repaired or damaged. For each structure repaired, the damage of the attack is reduced by 3. For simplicity:

Reactor Core STR	DAM
0	18
1	15
2	12
3	9
4	6

Damage and Repair the Reverse Osmosis Filter

A Reverse Osmosis Filter can only be damaged by CC Weapons possessing the Anti-materiel Trait, or by placing D-Charges.

Reverse Osmosis Filter may not be chosen as the target of an attack that would also affect troopers, be the enemy or allied.

A Reverse Osmosis Filter’s Structure Attribute cannot be reduced below 0. It will always remain on the game table.

The Reverse Osmosis Filter can be the target of the Engineer Special Skill or the GizmoKit piece of Equipment.

Armored Fury

In this scenario, TAGs apply the Anti-materiel Trait to their CC Weapons when making a CC Attack against a Reverse Osmosis Filter.

Dominate ZO

A Zone of Operations (ZO) is Dominated by a player if they have more Victory Points than the adversary inside the area. Only Troopers represented by Models or Markers (Camouflaged, Shasvastii-Embryo, Seed-Embryo…) count, as well as Proxies and Peripheral Troops. Troops in a Null State do not count. Tokens representing weapons or pieces of equipment (like Mines or Deployable Repeaters), fake Holoechoes, and any Token that does not represent a Trooper does not count either.

Trooper is inside a Zone of Operations when more than half the Trooper’s base is inside that ZO.

Shasvastii

Troopers possessing the Shasvastii Special Skill that are inside a Zone of Operations count while they are in the Shasvastii-Embryo State or any non-Null State.

Baggage

Troopers possessing the Baggage piece of Equipment that are inside a Zone of Operations and in a non-Null State provide an additional 20 Victory Points for Dominating the ZO.

Master Breacher

The Master Breacher is an operative with a wide expertise in breaching accesses during a space boarding action.

At the end of the Deployment Phase, in Initiative order, players must declare which Trooper from their Army List is their Master Breacher. The Trooper chosen must be always one of the models deployed on the game table. Players are not allowed to choose Troopers in Hidden Deployment or in Marker state. This Trooper must always be on the game table as a Model and not as a Marker (Camouflaged, TO, Holoecho…). Also, Irregular Troops and those whose Troop Type is REM are not eligible to be Master Breachers.

The Master Breacher possesses the Terrain (Zero-G) Special Skill and also D-Charges, even if those are not listed on their Unit Profile. The Master Breacher also gains +3 BTS.

End of the Mission

This scenario has a limited time frame, so it will automatically finish at the end of the third Game Round.

If one of the players starts their Active Turn in a Retreat! situation, the game will end at the end of that Turn.

That’s 7 mission briefings down and one to go for Phase 1, have these articles been useful to you in your Shattergrounds Campaign games and can you think of any tactics for this mission that I’ve not considered? If so feel free to share them in the comments below.

Check in soon for the end of Shattergrounds Phase 1.