UNSTABLE SIGNALS // THE CHARGE NOBODY SET

PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK

FILED_FROM: TESSELLATE CAMPUS // NAF PACIFIC COAST // CYBER STRIKE PREVENTION
FILING_DATE: 2026-06-28
RESULT: HVT SURVIVES // 1 HP // T3

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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-06-28

惜

OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT // RECONSTRUCTED DON BLOOD
STANDS HVT SURVIVES ON ONE HP // T3 CLOCK

HVT // HARD CYBER STRIKE PREVENTION HVT SURVIVES // 1 HP CLOCK EXPIRES // T3 TEAM 0 KIA

// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //

// OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT

Hard difficulty drew two operators against a cartel principal who only opens to a demolition charge, then handed them a rifle and a keyboard. They cleared all five gates of the gauntlet on a hot streak and ran the kill down to a single pip. The clock took the rest.

THE CHARGE NOBODY SET

BY RIO SOLVENG

GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT
FILED: TESSELLATE CAMPUS // NAF PACIFIC COAST // CYBER STRIKE PREVENTION // 2026-06-28
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.

// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE

Hard handed two operators a target that only opens to a demolition charge, then drew them a rifle and a keyboard. They cleared all five gates and lost the kill by one pip. The draw was the first decision of the night and, it turns out, the last one that mattered.

// DEPLOYMENT

GAMEOperator Tactics // HVT (card game) // Hard difficulty: 2 operators, target 3 HP, 1 counterattack per confrontation turn

SCENARIOCyber Strike Prevention. A live intrusion on the Tessellate Systems campus, NAF Pacific coast. Cascade risk, possible insider threat.

STRIKE TEAMRAMPART (Cpt. Ren Takahashi, Commando, Combat 2+) and CIRCUIT (Liang Fei, Hacker, counter-hack at 4+ fallback). No demo expert, no medic.

HVTRodrigo "Don Blood" Espinoza, SCA cartel kingpin. 3 HP. Vulnerability: Explosives (Demo Expert 2+), unmatched on this team. Counter profile rolled: Jungle Tunnel Networks 3+.

GAUNTLETFive vectors, left to right: Coordinated Strike, Hostile Contact, Environmental Obstacles, Infrastructure Maze, Breach and Clear.

OBJECTIVEReach the data core and put Espinoza down before the strike cascades through the coast water ledger.

WIN CONDITIONHVT to 0 HP inside three confrontation turns. Loss on all operators KIA, or the clock expiring with the target alive.

TURN CAPFive gauntlet cards, then three confrontation turns. No more.

The strike on the Tessellate campus was already live when the two of them went over the seawall fence. Somewhere four floors up, in a server core built to bill a third of the coast for its water, a man was rewriting who owed what. The intel had a name on him. Rodrigo Espinoza, the one the southern corridor calls Don Blood, a cartel principal who does not usually do his own keyboard work. He was doing it in person tonight, because the ledger he wanted bent was the kind you do not trust to a contractor.

Two operators drew the job. Rampart, a NAF strike-team captain who marks his perimeter and accepts no losses inside it. Circuit, an NCB cyber defector who knows every back door the agency ever built. A rifle and a keyboard. What the file did not say loud enough, and what mattered more than anything either of them carried, was that Don Blood does not come apart to either one. His defenses are wired for a charge on the right wall. There was no one on the team who could set it.

The campus made them earn the core anyway. First contact was a mixed security response stacking the loading approach, and Rampart read it before it set and walked the team through clean. A second wave came up early, faster than the brief promised, and he put that down too without breaking stride. Five gates between the fence and the core, and for the first two of them the captain looked unkillable.

The third gate was a barrier on the elevated tier, a deterrence rig built into the architecture, and it caught him. He came off it moving wrong, favoring one side, the first wound of the night landing on the only operator the night could not spare. Circuit took the flooded maze under the tier alone, picked a line through collapsed corridor by feel, and kept his feet where a worse roll puts him under the water. Then the last gate, a gene-forged close-protection team folded into the core vestibule and trained for exactly this kind of entry. Rampart went through them hurt and came out the far side standing straight again. Whatever the barrier took, the breach gave back.

DON BLOOD BREAKS TO A CHARGE ON THE RIGHT WALL. THEY BROUGHT A RIFLE AND A KEYBOARD.

The core was three turns of work and they had the tools for about two of them. Rampart opened on Espinoza and connected, a clean hit that should have been the first of three. Circuit reached for the command node, tried to turn Don Blood's own intrusion back on him, and got nothing. Espinoza answered the way the profile said he would, a routed strike out of the tunnel logic of the system, and it found Circuit and put him on a knee.

Second turn was the one the whole night turned on. Rampart lined up the shot that drops the target to a single pip with a full turn still in hand, and the shot was not there. Circuit, hurt, spent the turn climbing back to his feet instead of swinging, made it, and Espinoza knocked him straight back down in the same breath. The hacker recovered and lost the recovery inside one exchange. Two pips left on Don Blood, one turn left on the clock, and the math had quietly stopped adding up.

Last turn, both barrels. Rampart hit again, the second good shot of the confrontation, and Espinoza dropped to one. One health. Circuit threw his last attempt at the node and it came up empty, the way it had come up empty every time he reached for it. The lockdown clock ran out with Don Blood on his feet at a single pip, the strike on the campus already banked, two operators standing in the core with nothing left to spend. Rampart had carried two people through five gates. He could not carry the last pip alone.

// THE TAPE

C1Coordinated Strike (mixed PMC units, 4+). Rampart, both operators have Init so no Pressure. Rolled natural 6: critical success, cleared, stays Active.

C2Hostile Contact (response force arriving early, 3+). Rampart rolled natural 6: critical success, cleared, Active.

C3Environmental Obstacles (elevated barrier, deterrence rig, Rampart at 5+). Rolled 3: below threshold, cleared but state worsens, Active to Wounded.

C4Infrastructure Maze (flooded collapsed corridor, Circuit at 5+, his mandatory deploy). Rolled 5: meets threshold, cleared, stays Active.

C5Breach and Clear (gene-forged CQB, 4+). Rampart, Wounded going in, rolled natural 6: critical success, cleared and recovers to Active. Both operators enter the confrontation Active.

T1Espinoza counter profile set to Jungle Tunnel Networks 3+. Rampart Combat 2+ rolled 4: HIT, Espinoza 3 to 2. Circuit hack-fallback 4+ rolled natural 1: miss. Espinoza counter 3+ rolled 5: hit, random target Circuit, Active to Wounded.

T2Rampart Combat 2+ rolled natural 1: miss, Espinoza holds at 2. Circuit spends the turn on Recover 5+, rolled 5: back to Active. Espinoza counter 3+ rolled natural 6: hit, random target Circuit again, Active to Wounded.

T3Rampart Combat 2+ rolled 3: HIT, Espinoza 2 to 1. Circuit (Wounded, fallback degraded to 5+) rolled natural 1: miss. Three confrontation turns expire. Espinoza alive at 1 of 3 HP. Mission failed.

// WORKBENCH

// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED // Q. ADAIR

The gauntlet was a heater. Three natural sixes on Rampart, at C1, C2 and C5, dragged a two-operator Hard draw with no medic through five gates and into the core with both operators Active. That is the opposite of what Hard with no healer is supposed to produce. The dice were not the problem tonight. The problem was decided before the first card flipped.

The turn it swung was T2, Rampart's natural 1. Espinoza was sitting on 2 HP with two turns left. Land that shot and the target drops to a single pip with a full turn in hand, and the last turn only needs one swing from a 2+ gun. Miss it and you need a two-hit final turn from a team that has exactly one reliable barrel. The clock did the rest. Circuit went nothing-recover-nothing across the three turns, which is what a Hacker does to a target that only opens to Explosives.

Balance read: HVT difficulty is mostly set at the draw, not at the table. A two-operator Hard team with no vulnerability match caps out around one and a third reliable hits per turn against a 3 HP target. The gauntlet can go perfectly and you still come up a pip short, because the confrontation arithmetic was locked the moment the operator deck dealt no Demo Expert. The punish for ignoring the vuln line is real and correct. It does mean a great gauntlet can be slightly beside the point.

One thing to try next time: a field-expedient option that lets a Demo-less team route ONE confrontation attack at the vuln skill at a penalty (say 5+, off improvised charges), or let a Hacker on a Cyber Strike scenario count as the vuln match for that scenario only. Drawing zero vuln on Hard right now is close to a dead run no matter how the gauntlet goes.
Rules note: Circuit's Wounded T3 swing dropped his 4+ Fallback one tier to 5+. That is settled HVT canon (the confrontation already runs threshold-to-hit with Wounded operators attacking at degraded tier), so nothing new to flag. The book held up clean this run.
Kit aside: built the core vestibule from clear acrylic server blanks under a cyan underlight, with Don Blood's red palmprint sprayed once on the impassable wall. The whole table read as the wall you cannot open, which is the exact story the dice told.

// DISPOSITION

RESULTMISSION FAILED. HVT survives on 1 of 3 HP. Confrontation clock expires at T3 with Espinoza on his feet, the cyber strike already banked.

CASUALTIES // TEAMZero KIA. Rampart Active (wounded at C3, recovered at C5). Circuit Wounded (countered T1, recovered T2, countered again T2). Both walk out empty-handed.

CASUALTIES // HVTEspinoza loses 2 of 3 HP (Rampart hits T1 and T3). Survives on the last pip. Defenses never breached, only bled.

MVPRAMPART. Three gauntlet crits, both confrontation hits, never put down for good. The only thing on the team that worked, and still not enough alone.

RUN IT YOURSELF: OT HVT (PLAYABLE) // FULL RULES: HVT READER // HARD, 2 OPS, 3 HP TARGET, NO VULN MATCH.

ONE PIP OF DAYLIGHT. THE CLOCK TOOK THE REST.