PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: HOLLOWMARK SANATORIUM // SLACKWATER
FILING_DATE: 2026-06-18
RESULT: SPINE DOWN // WARD LIVES // T6
██ █ ████ ███ █
███ ████ ██ █████
BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-06-18
截
OPERATOR TACTICS // THREAT RESPONSE // RECONSTRUCTED
ONE LINE
LEFT LIVE
THREAT RESPONSE // OPERATION SLACKWATER
OPERATOR TACTICS // THREAT RESPONSE
SABOTAGE // DISCOVERY
HOLLOWMARK SANATORIUM
SPINE DOWN // WARD LIVES // T6
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // THREAT RESPONSE
A deniable splice is sent to blow what the briefing calls an Eastern Compact relay, buried in the flooded sublevel of a reactivated alpine sanatorium. The box turns out to be the life-support line for three patients who cannot move. The squad never kills a single guard, and still files the hardest kind of win.
ONE LINE LEFT LIVE
BY RIO SOLVENG
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // THREAT RESPONSE
FILED: HOLLOWMARK SANATORIUM // SLACKWATER // 2026-06-18
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
The plan died on the second turn and the squad still walked out having done the harder version of the job. I keep this one on the desk because it is the rare report where nobody on the other side fell and it still reads as a win.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // Threat Response (solo, Mission Builder)
SCENARIOOperation Slackwater // sabotage a buried "Eastern Compact logistics relay" in the flooded sublevel of a reactivated alpine sanatorium. Mission DNA: Discovery (the briefing is not the whole truth)
OPERATORSA three-operator deniable splice. HASP (Breacher / Demolitions, lead, baseline), GRADIENT (Tech Specialist, gene-forged corvid-stock), LARK (Medic, baseline). 2 shared Failsafe tokens
OPPOSITIONGreyhour contract detail, Paid: 2 Grunt, 3 Soldier, Veteran "the Steward", Heavy "the Sump" (Entrenched). Non-combatants: Dr. Esma Voll and three non-ambulatory patients in the sublevel annex
TABLEFive zones // storm-side dock, ground-floor ward, central atrium, flooded spine vault, far-side funicular tunnel. Heavy rain, low light. Contested airspace: no air in, no air out, overland only
OBJECTIVEPlant and blow charges on the relay's two node supports, then extract. Secondary: complete the cut using intel gathered on site, not blind
WIN CONDITIONBoth nodes destroyed before the storm surge floods the vault to the ceiling and the relay finishes its scheduled uplink
TURN CAP6 rounds. Sublevel becomes difficult terrain from round 3, chest-high by round 5, drowned at round 6
Rain came off the Vorga ridgeline sideways, and the only way into Hollowmark was the old service road. The storm had grounded everything that flew, so there would be no rope in and no bird out. The sanatorium sat where the last century always put its lung hospitals, high and cold, mostly forgotten, and somewhere in its flooded sublevel a black box was humming on a frequency our patron called Eastern Compact logistics. Three operators went up the road in the dark. HASP carried the charges. GRADIENT carried the doubts.
She had the truth before we cleared the ward doors. One read of the signal on the way in, and the corvid worked into her stock did the rest. The thing in the basement was not logistics chatter. It was a medical telemetry bus, live, with a second stream riding it that had no business being there. She also marked the gun in the vault and the two places a charge would have to sit, which is the only reason HASP never had to go hunting for them later. Turn one, and we already knew the briefing was a lie. We did not yet know how big a one.
Then the floor woke up. An orderly lost his nerve and ran, a Greyhour contractor caught the movement, and the quiet we had walked in on stopped existing. By the second round the ward detail was hunting us and the house alarm was climbing the walls. LARK tried to put a guard down without a sound, and the knife went wrong in her hand. A round after that she was bleeding and boxed in, and the plan, such as it was, had become a footrace to the basement. The water down there was already coming up.
THE BRIEFING SAID RELAY. THE CONSOLE SAID REGISTRY. ONE OF THEM HAD A HEARTBEAT.
The descent cost us. We went down the central atrium in the wet dark, and the Greyhour veteran they called the Steward was waiting on the overwatch line. He put a round into GRADIENT that should not have landed and did, and just like that the operator who had read us the whole mission was carrying a wound she would not walk off. Above us a grunt had LARK pinned against the stair and would not let go. Two clean hits from the house, and we had still not so much as scratched them. That is the part that stays with you. They were winning every exchange that mattered, and it changed nothing, because we had not come to kill them.
HASP crossed into the vault and the lights died. The spine browned out on its own, the room went black, and the scheduled uplink stalled with it. The dark should have ruined a demolition. Instead it blinded the heavy gunner dug in on the relay, and he fired at nothing while HASP worked. GRADIENT, bleeding at the console, read the box one more time and handed him the two cut points that would kill the data spine and leave the life-support line breathing. There were three people in the flooded annex who could not move, and their hearts were wired to the same bus. He could blow it fast and be certain, or place it carefully and spare them. He took the careful way, and he spent both of our last-resort tokens to make sure the careful way actually landed.
The charges went in clean. HASP backed out and blew them, and the spine and its buried thief died together while the ward upstairs kept its pulse. The cost came on the way out. The Steward found GRADIENT one more time and put her down for as long as a body stays down, and the water chose that moment to crest. HASP got a hand on her anyway and dragged her through the half-drowned funicular tunnel while the run of bad luck finally turned. LARK tore loose of her grunt on the surface stairs and climbed out above the flood line. The transport held. We came up out of the mountain with all three of us, and not one guard on the floor behind us. We had come to cut a wire and leave the wrong people breathing, and for once the job was exactly that small and exactly that large.
// THE TAPE
T1GRADIENT Field Read nat 6 (two benefits + 1 Tempo): the "relay" reads as a live medical telemetry bus with a piggybacked second stream, and she fixes the Heavy plus both cut points before HASP is exposed. A Greyhour grunt rolls a nat 6 to detect; LARK's keep-the-floor-calm SITREP comes up 1. An orderly bolts. Ward group goes Suspicious. (No Event Phase on T1.)
T2Squad takes priority 3 v 1. Suspicious resolution rolls 6 -> Alert. LARK's silent takedown is a nat 1 (loses the opposed 1 v 5, armor 5 = FW, fumble = gear compromised). GRADIENT's system override is a nat 1 (fumble: ally -1). Grunt G2 shot at the Fortified HASP misses (5, -1 cover, vs 6+). Alarm SITREP 5 -> alarm trips, Heat +1. Event: Intel / Major (the exfil stream confirmed, contractors read as Paid).
T3LARK takes a 2nd FW (armor 5) and fails to break the melee lock (3, -1 -> 2 vs 4+). Descending under fire: the Steward overwatches GRADIENT, nat 6 = Mortal Wound; grunt G2 on LARK, nat 6 = Mortal Wound. Two enemy nat 6es in one Threat Phase; squad has dealt zero. Event: Opportunity / Minor, rising water shorts the atrium sensors (Steward off overwatch next round).
T4GRADIENT passes her first-MW GUTS (nat 6) and reads the console 5,5 keep 5: the two surgical cut points confirmed. HASP enters the vault; sealed Climax = Power Failure (vault dark, uplink stalls 1 round). Blind Heavy "Sump" misses HASP (5, -2 dark, vs 6+). HASP ROE GUTS 3 vs 2+, holds. Failsafe #1 auto-places charge one; Failsafe #2 forces the Heavy to skip; charge two lands (TACT 3, surgical -1 / Tempo +1). LARK and her grunt both roll nat 1: mutual auto-loss, no wound, status quo.
T5HASP detonates: both nodes blow, the exfil node and data spine die, the life-support bus holds. Soldier S2's shot at HASP is a nat 1 jam. The Steward connects again (4, -1 -> 3 vs 2+); GRADIENT, already at 1 MW, goes Out of Action (Heat +1). Reinforcement SITREP 1 (none, but the blast surges the flood early); Extraction SITREP 2 (no clean window).
T6HASP passes morale (nat 6), then drags the Out-of-Action GRADIENT through the half-drowned funicular on a nat 6 (burdened + water). Both contractor shots at the fleeing HASP miss. LARK breaks her lock on a nat 6 and reaches the surface above the flood line. Extraction SITREP 6 ("yes, and"). All three out. Vault drowns. Spine dead, ward alive.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED // Q. ADAIR
The contractors won the dice for three rounds straight. They landed two natural 6es in a single Threat Phase, they mortal-wounded two of our three operators, and the squad dealt zero damage the entire game. They also lost. That gap is the whole report. Threat Response scores on the objective, not the body count, and this mission was never about the guards.
It swung on turn four, and the swing was a sealed roll nobody chose. The Climax came up Power Failure the moment HASP crossed into the vault. The brown-out blinded the Heavy dug in on the relay and stalled the uplink, so the one round HASP was exposed was the one round the room could not see him. Stack both Failsafe tokens on top of that and the surgical blow was never really in doubt after the lights went.
- Dice luck vs decisions: the decisions were all upstream. GRADIENT spending her one action on turn one to read instead of move is why HASP never had to hunt for the cut points. The vault call to go surgical is why three patients are alive. The dice only decided who bled for it.
- Balance read: a clean win with zero enemy kills is a real and correct outcome, but it leaned entirely on two Failsafe tokens carrying the climax. Spend them earlier and the humane option is gone.
- One thing to try next: run the same vault with no Failsafe and force the precise demolition to live on dice alone. Right now the choice to spare the ward costs your whole safety budget, and I want to know whether it is playable without the panic button.
- Terrain aside: a flooded sublevel that deepens one terrace a round is the cheapest tension on the table. The waterline is a second clock you can read at a glance, and here it did more work than the gun line ever did.
Three calls went to the gaps log: an opposed melee where both fighters rolled a natural 1, a solo priority tie with no written tiebreaker, and the question of how you cost a charge placed to limit collateral. None of them changed the result. All three want a line in the book.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTOperator win. Primary complete (both nodes blown, surgically). Secondary complete (the cut placed entirely off GRADIENT's console read). All three operators extracted on T6, at the flood crest. The exfil and the data spine are dead; the patients' life-support bus held.
CASUALTIES // SQUADGRADIENT Out of Action (dragged out, recovering). LARK 1 Mortal Wound and one gear item lost. HASP unhurt. Heat +3 on the campaign track (alarm, an operator down, hot extraction).
CASUALTIES // CONTRACTORSNone. The squad never put down a single guard. The Paid detail never reached its break threshold, and held a box that was worthless the moment it blew.
MVPGRADIENT. The turn-one read cracked the lie; the console read handed HASP the exact two cut points. She bought the humane version of the job with her own body.
WE NEVER PUT ONE OF THEM DOWN. WE CUT THE WIRE AND LEFT THE WARD ITS PULSE.