PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: SCSF KEELHAUL YARD // DRYDOCK INTERDICTION
FILING_DATE: 2026-07-14
RESULT: HVT DOWN // 0 HP // T2
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-07-14
終
OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT // RECONSTRUCTED
THE LEDGER
CLOSES
THIRD HUNT // NO HULL LEFT TO RUN TO
HVT // MEDIUM
DRYDOCK INTERDICTION
TARGET DOWN // 0 HP
CONFRONTATION T2
TEAM 0 KIA
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT
Two hunts left Colm "The Ledger" Ashby walking on one HP, then two, and taught the desk exactly one lesson neither time it could use: draw a medic. The third pull finally handed over Rampart back off a near-miss at Tessellate, a Navigation-matched Driver-Pilot who does not miss twice, and — for the first time across three tries — somebody whose whole job is keeping the other two upright. Ashby went to ground in a refit yard to let the heat cool. It did not.
THE LEDGER CLOSES
BY TIB MARLOW
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT
FILED: SCSF KEELHAUL YARD // DRYDOCK INTERDICTION // 2026-07-14
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Third time out for Colm Ashby, and I'll admit the desk has been rooting for him a little, the way you root for anyone who's survived on one pip twice running. Two hunts taught us that a strike team without a Recover option is just gambling the confrontation on a single lucky roll. This time the draw gave us a medic, and a Driver-Pilot who'd read a hull before. It also gave Rampart a second bite at a target after Don Blood walked away from her three weeks back. The Ledger is closed. I'm only a little sorry.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // HVT (card game). Solo, Medium difficulty: 3 operators, target 3 HP, one counterattack per confrontation turn.
SCENARIODrydock Interdiction. Ashby has gone to ground in a refit yard to sit out the heat from two failed grabs, waiting on a hull that isn't seaworthy yet. The strike hits him on land, before the relaunch.
STRIKE TEAMRAMPART (Cpt. Ren Takahashi, Commando, Combat 2+, Init) // Tomas "Keel" Reyes, Driver-Pilot, Navigation 2+ // Anh Duffy, Medic, Recover 3+ (self or teammate).
TARGETColm "The Ledger" Ashby, arms distribution broker, ex-UKE Royal Phantom Corps. 3 HP. Vulnerability: Navigation (Driver-Pilot 2+). Counter profile rolled: Perimeter Security Team, 3+.
GAUNTLETFive cards, left to right: Coordinated Strike (Init), Environmental Obstacles, Rigged Entry Points, Hostile Electronics (Init), Breach and Clear.
OBJECTIVEClear the yard, then reduce Ashby to 0 HP before he reaches the hull.
WIN CONDITIONHVT to 0 HP within three confrontation turns. Loss on all operators KIA, or the clock expiring with Ashby alive.
TURN CAPFive gauntlet cards, then three confrontation turns.
Twice now a strike team has gone over a rail after Colm Ashby, and twice the water has covered for him. He knows it too. After the second grab nearly closed his book on open water, the Ledger did the sensible thing an arms broker does when two attempts on his life share a coastline: he went to ground. The desk's intel had him sitting out the season in a refit yard on the SCSF coast, waiting on a hull that would not be seaworthy for another two weeks. No moving deck to read this time. No launch idling off the stern. Just a man in a drydock, betting that a fixed address is safer than a moving one.
The team that drew the job looked, for once, like the right one. Rampart came back to the desk three weeks off a mission where she'd carried a two-operator Hard draw to within one pip of a kill and watched the clock take it anyway. This was a Medium pull and a target she'd never met, and she took it the way she takes everything, like the last one hadn't happened. Beside her: Tomas "Keel" Reyes, a Driver-Pilot who reads a hull's intentions before its captain does, drawn as the Navigation match against a target who has burned two Navigation-matched operators already. And for the first time across three hunts on this man, a Medic. Anh Duffy had never worked an Ashby file. She was about to become the reason this one had an ending.
The yard opened loud. A coordinated response scrambled off the gate the moment the team crossed the fence line, dock militia moving with more discipline than a scrap crew should have. Rampart read the formation the way she reads every formation and put it down clean, first card, no damage taken. It was the kind of opening the last two Ashby hunts never got.
The second card took it back. A flooded graving dock ran between the gate and the hull under refit, half-drained and slick with runoff, and Reyes — the operator this entire mission existed to protect — misjudged the crossing and went down hard on the concrete lip. Active to Wounded, one card in, the same shape every previous hunt on this target had taken right before it went wrong for good.
THE LAST TWO HUNTS TAUGHT THE DESK ONE THING NEITHER COULD USE: DRAW A MEDIC.
This time it did not stay broken. The third card was a scaffold rigged with tripwire, slick with the same runoff, and Duffy took it as a joint problem instead of a solo one — getting a wounded man across a booby-trapped catwalk without losing him further being, as she put it in the after-action, "the whole reason they sent me." She cleared the card and worked Reyes' leg on the way across. He came off the scaffold Active again, the first operator in three Ashby hunts to get a wound back instead of carrying it into the confrontation. The desk logged the ruling and moved on. Rampart took the yard's jamming stack on the fourth card without breaking stride, and Reyes closed the gauntlet himself on the approach to the drydock proper, reading the keel blocks and gantry lines like a street he'd walked before. All three operators entered the confrontation Active. No previous run on this target had managed that with all its people still standing.
Ashby met them at the hull with a perimeter detail and the same math that had kept him alive twice: hold the line long enough and the water solves the rest. Reyes opened on him at his matched 2-plus and connected clean, first blood of the confrontation, HP 3 to 2. Rampart didn't need the vulnerability to follow; her Combat rating doesn't care what the target is weak to, and her shot landed a beat later, HP 2 to 1. Ashby's counter went for Rampart and missed wide. For the first time on record, the Ledger was one turn from zero with a team still fully intact to finish it.
He ran anyway. The hull was up on blocks with no engine seated and a keel that had not touched water in eleven days, and Ashby went for it regardless, on the theory that has worked twice: reach anything that floats and the rest sorts itself out. It didn't sort. Reyes knows what a boat sounds like when it's ready and what it sounds like when it isn't, and this one wasn't going anywhere. He caught Ashby on the gantry stair before the broker's hand found the rail, put the second Navigation-matched hit of the confrontation into him at point-blank range, and took the Ledger's whole remaining HP off the board. Two hunts. Two survivals on a sliver of health. On the third, there was no hull left to run to.
// THE TAPE
C1Coordinated Strike (Init). Dock militia at the gate. Var 4, 4+. Rampart deploys, Init negates pressure. Rolled 6: critical success, cleared, Active.
C2Environmental Obstacles. Flooded graving dock crossing. Var 3, Reyes Good 3+. Rolled 2: below threshold, cleared but state worsens. Reyes Active to Wounded.
C3Rigged Entry Points. Tripwired scaffold, same runoff. Duffy deploys, Medic Recover-on-clear ruling in effect (desk call, see Workbench). Rolled 5: card cleared, Reyes Wounded recovers to Active.
C4Hostile Electronics (Init). Yard jamming stack. Var 3, 3+. Rampart deploys again, Init negates pressure. Rolled 4: pass, cleared, Active.
C5Breach and Clear. Final approach through the keel blocks. Reyes Good 3+. Rolled 6: critical success, cleared, Active. All three operators enter confrontation Active — first clean gauntlet on this target in three tries.
SETConfrontation. Ashby HP 3. Counter profile d6 = 2 // Perimeter Security Team, 3+, one hit per turn.
T1Reyes Navigation 2+, rolled 5: HIT, Ashby 3 to 2. Rampart Combat 2+, rolled 4: HIT, Ashby 2 to 1. Ashby counter 3+ targets Rampart, rolled 2: miss.
T2Ashby breaks for the unseated hull. Reyes Navigation 2+ (pursuit, point-blank), rolled 3: HIT, Ashby 1 to 0. Target down, confrontation ends turn 2.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED // Q. ADAIR
Three hunts on the same HVT is a good sample size, and it says something clean: the first two teams both had a single Navigation-matched operator and no way to recover one if the gauntlet touched them. This team had the same single point of failure, Reyes was still the only 2-plus against Ashby, but for the first time it also had a way to fix that operator instead of just hoping the gauntlet left them alone. It didn't. C2 wounded him exactly the way C5 killed Diop's whole run and C3 killed Czarny's in the last two tries. The difference this time was C3.
The turn it swung was the desk ruling on C3, not a die at all. Rigged Entry Points is written as a solo obstacle card, one operator, one roll. Duffy deployed on it with a teammate already Wounded and asked to treat the crossing as a combined problem: clear the card and work the injury in the same action. We ruled yes, at her Medic Recover threshold (3+) layered onto the card's own difficulty, because refusing felt like punishing the team for finally drawing the one archetype that's supposed to answer exactly this problem. Flagged for Jesse — if that's too generous, the fix is probably a dedicated Medic-only gauntlet action that costs a full card slot instead of riding along on someone else's.
- Dice vs. draw: the confrontation itself was almost boring, two clean 2-plus hits and done in two turns. That's not the story. The story is a roster with two reliable attackers and a recovery option instead of one attacker and a prayer. Medium difficulty is very winnable when the vulnerability match survives to the confrontation. Both previous hunts on this target lost their match before the cards ran out.
- Balance read: across three tries, Ashby has now gone 1 HP survived, 2 HP survived, 0 HP down. That's not a hard target. That's a target three different teams have drawn under three different amounts of bad luck. Worth remembering next time a recurring HVT reads "brutal" in the log — sometimes the desk's problem was never the target.
- One thing to try next: a formal Medic action for the gauntlet, "Field Stabilize" — spend your card slot to attempt a Recover on any Wounded teammate at a fixed threshold instead of clearing your assigned challenge, with the challenge auto-clearing at a flat cost (a resource, a turn, whatever the campaign can spare). Cleaner than the ad hoc ruling we made tonight and repeatable without a note in the margin.
- Kit aside: built the yard as a raised drydock cradle with a hull shell up on blocks, no waterline paint below the keel yet, alongside a working gantry crane arm. The unfinished hull sitting dry the whole game is the entire twist and it should look like it can't float, on purpose.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTMission successful. Ashby reduced to 0 HP on confrontation turn 2, caught on the gantry stair short of the unseated hull.
CASUALTIES // TEAMZero KIA. Reyes Wounded at C2, recovered to Active at C3 via Duffy's Recover ruling. No further damage taken.
CASUALTIES // HVT3 of 3 HP. Colm "The Ledger" Ashby, KIA, confrontation turn 2. First loss of the character across three logged appearances.
MVPTomas "Keel" Reyes. Wounded on the first obstacle he touched, recovered by C3, then landed both Navigation-matched hits that put Ashby down for good — including the last one, on a gantry stair, on a hull that was never going to float in time.
THE SEA COVERED FOR HIM TWICE. THIS TIME THERE WAS NO HULL TO REACH.