PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: SECTOR GRAY // PACKAGE RUN
FILING_DATE: 2026-06-04
RESULT: IRON TITHE 6-0
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-06-04
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OPERATOR TACTICS // SKIRMISH // RECONSTRUCTED
KILL
BOX
FOUR GUNS, ONE CRATE, NO CLEAN EXIT
SKIRMISH
SMASH & GRAB
400 PTS // 4 v 4
RESULT: 6-0
5 ROUNDS
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // SKIRMISH // SMASH & GRAB
A grab-and-run splice tried to lift a crate out of Sector Gray without being seen. Two failed rolls later it was a firefight, and a firepower splice does not lose firefights. Here is how the heist came apart, and the one tackle that made the other side earn it.
THE KILL BOX
BY RIO SOLVENG
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // SKIRMISH
FILED: SECTOR GRAY // PACKAGE RUN // 2026-06-04
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Two splices, one crate, and a plan that did not survive contact with a single dice roll. GREEN RATIO came to steal quiet and left loud, and the only thing that worked all afternoon was a man holding onto a problem so the rest of us could watch it get worse. Read it and stop trusting one die to carry your whole game.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // Skirmish
SCENARIOSmash & Grab // Central Package Run
FORMATStandard, 400 points, four operators a side, 24 by 24 inch table
GREEN RATIOVesper (Infiltrator), Halloway (Commando), Mosk (Tech), Pell (Medic). A grab-and-run outfit: hidden grabber, smoke, a gun to buy time.
IRON TITHEDray (Marksman), Brace and Toll (Commandos), Wend (Medic). Raw firepower, built to tax every inch of open ground.
TABLESector Gray ruin. Two center blocks screen the package; four flank ruins make interception lanes.
OBJECTIVEGrab the central package (TACT 4+). The carrier loses 2 MOBI and cannot Sprint. Extract off your own edge.
WIN+5 to extract the package, +1 per enemy Out of Action. Pressure Clock at 3 triggers the Climax.
Sector Gray does not keep score. The ruin sits in the dead band between two water authorities, close enough to a working rail spur that someone always wants a crate moved through it, and far enough from anyone official that the moving gets done with rifles. The crate this time was the size of a footlocker, and nobody on either side asked what was in it. GREEN RATIO took the contract to lift it clean. IRON TITHE took the contract to make sure they did not.
GREEN RATIO is a grab outfit. Vesper walks in unseen, picks the lock on the problem, and is three streets away before anyone files a report. Halloway carries the rifle that buys her the time. Mosk and Pell carry smoke, because the whole plan is built on the enemy never getting a clean look. On paper it is elegant. The first round held to the script: Vesper drifted up to the crate behind the center blocks, still a rumor, while the others crept the southern lane and Dray climbed to a perch with the whole table in his sights.
Then the plan met the dice. Vesper put her hands on the crate and the catch would not give. She tried again, with the splice spending its saved luck on the second attempt, and it still would not give. The fumble cost her the one thing she had, which was being invisible. She came up out of cover in the middle of the table with four rifles already turning her way, and not a wisp of smoke in the air, because Mosk's first canister had coughed off a misfire and rolled back between his own feet.
A STEALTH PLAN IS ONE DIE WIDE. THEY ROLLED A TWO, THEN A THREE.
What happened next had a name before the game started. IRON TITHE calls it the kill box, and it is not complicated: let the grab happen, then shoot the slow thing that results. Brace was already close. He put two bursts into Vesper before she reached the ruin wall, and when Pell threw smoke to hide her, Toll simply turned and emptied a magazine into Mosk instead, the last shot a clean maximum that went straight through to a mortal wound. One round in, and GREEN RATIO had a tech bleeding out and a grabber with no package and no cover left.
So the crate went to the other side. Toll walked onto it, made the catch on the first try, and turned north with the contract in his arms. That should have been the report. It was not, because Halloway did the only thing left to do, which was run at the carrier and refuse to let go. He hit Toll, glanced off the plate, and held on anyway. A locked man cannot run.
For two rounds the package sat exactly where it was while Halloway took everything IRON TITHE could bring to a wrestling match, and IRON TITHE brought a lot. Brace came in on the flank. The hammer landed on the third exchange, a clean maximum roll that turned a flesh wound into something Halloway was not getting up from. He went down still holding a fistful of the carrier's webbing.
After that it was arithmetic. The crate went north under two rifles. Vesper crawled off the table on two mortal wounds and the dignity of not being worth a third bullet. Pell never got a patient to stand back up. IRON TITHE filed the package at their own edge and counted the body. Six to nothing, and it was not as close as the number looks, except for the ninety seconds it was the closest thing in the world.
// THE TAPE
R1GREEN RATIO wins priority (6 vs 2). Vesper ghosts to the crate and holds the grab; Mosk and Pell work the south lane; Halloway takes the east. Dray climbs to his perch. No shots fired.
R2IRON TITHE wins priority (6 vs 3) and elects to go second, baiting the reveal. Mosk's screening smoke comes up a natural 1 and scatters home. Vesper's grab fails on a 2; the Edge reroll fails on a 3; the second fumble breaks her stealth in the open. Brace Rapid Fire (4, 4) lands two flesh wounds. Toll answers Pell's late smoke by gutting Mosk, second shot a natural 6 (mortal wound). Halloway's return fire jams on a natural 1.
R3IRON TITHE wins the reroll (6 vs 2). Dray's banked Steady Aim shot ignores cover and connects; a Breach Token escalates it to a mortal wound on Vesper. Toll grabs the crate on a 6 and turns for home. Halloway charges the carrier, ties the melee on a 6 (attacker wins ties) and locks him in place. Objective contested // Pressure Clock 1.
R4GREEN RATIO finally takes priority (6 vs 5). Halloway knifes the carrier (flesh wound) and holds the lock; Toll's break attempt fails on a 3 and costs him another wound. Brace gang-charges Halloway and rolls a natural 6: mortal wound. Dray's shot at the fleeing Vesper misses on a 2. The package has not moved in two rounds.
R5Halloway's last stand ends. Brace and Toll finish him (Brace a natural 6 again); first casualty of the match. The Pressure Clock crosses the threshold and the Climax fires (desk ruling, a 6: an exfil window). The freed carrier sprints the crate north. IRON TITHE extracts.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED
The dice told this story more than the plans did, and they told it early. GREEN RATIO needed one roll to go right, the grab, and it went wrong twice: a 2, then a 3 on the Edge reroll. Add Mosk's natural 1 on the screening smoke and the whole stealth approach was dead before the second round ended. IRON TITHE, meanwhile, found a 6 for the counter-grab and a natural 6 for the melee that mattered, twice. Cold dice and hot dice in the same fifteen minutes.
The turn it swung was round two, and the swing was structural, not just unlucky. Three things to take to your own table:
- Insure the grab. GREEN RATIO's entire plan rides on Vesper's single Interact, a flat TACT 4+ with no fallback, and a miss in line of sight strips her stealth. One operator, one die, no backup. Hold both Edge for it, set up Call the Target first, or send a second body to the crate so the contract survives a fumble. A plan that only works on a 4-plus is a plan you are renting from the dice.
- Screen the round you run. Smoke clears in the End Phase, so a cloud thrown to cover a future move is gone before the move happens. GREEN RATIO had the smoke to win this and spent it a beat early and a canister short. Throw it the same activation the carrier breaks cover.
- Lock the carrier. Halloway grabbing Toll and refusing the break did more to stall extraction than any amount of GREEN RATIO shooting. Against a grab you cannot out-shoot, melee the carrier and pin them in place. Tackling the problem is underrated. File it.
On balance, the carrier penalty did exactly what it should. A slowed model with no Sprint is a target, and a firepower splice in good cover will charge rent on every inch of open ground. The terrain held up its end too: the two center blocks denied the clean firing lane into the crate, which is the only reason Vesper reached it unseen at all. Honest table.
One honest note for the rulebook, Jesse. The Skirmish reader lists each scenario's Climax Variable as roll D6 but does not print the per-scenario result table, so the desk applied a house ruling and disclosed it here: on a 6, an exfil window opened and let the freed carrier ignore the slow penalty for one round. It did not change the winner, but the Smash & Grab Climax table is the one gap we hit all game. Worth a line in the next pass.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTIRON TITHE wins, 6 to 0. Package extracted at the north edge on Round 5.
VICTORY POINTSIRON TITHE 6 (extraction +5, Halloway Out of Action +1). GREEN RATIO 0.
CASUALTIES // GREEN RATIOHalloway Out of Action. Vesper evacuated on 2 mortal wounds. Mosk 1 mortal wound. Pell unhurt.
CASUALTIES // IRON TITHEToll (the carrier) 2 flesh wounds. Brace, Dray, Wend unhurt.
MVPBrace (IRON TITHE). Two flesh wounds on the grabber in round two, then the natural 6 that broke the lock.
HONORSHalloway (GREEN RATIO), for a two-round tackle that stalled a finished steal and made the other side pay for it.
THE CRATE WENT NORTH. THE PLAN STAYED ON THE TABLE.