PLAYTEST RECORD // HOUSE RULE LIVE
FILED_FROM: CORVA BASIN LIFT STATION 4 // NAF PACIFIC COAST // GRID 11-SOUTH
FILING_DATE: 2026-07-20
RESULT: HVT DOWN // T3 // 1 KIA
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-07-20
締
OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT // RECONSTRUCTED
DON BLOOD
FALLS
SOLO OPERATOR CLOSES A 3 HP TARGET
HVT // HARD
CYBER STRIKE PREVENTION
HVT DOWN // T3
TEAM 1 KIA
HOUSE RULE // FIRST RUN
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT
Three weeks ago the desk lost Rodrigo Espinoza by a single pip because nobody on the team could set a charge. Tonight the deck finally dealt a demolition expert, the gauntlet killed her at gate four, and the man who could not touch him in June had to close it alone.
FIELD EXPEDIENT
BY RIO SOLVENG
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // HVT
FILED: CORVA BASIN LIFT STATION 4 // NAF PACIFIC COAST // GRID 11-SOUTH // 2026-07-20
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Adair proposed a fix in the June 28 workbench: on a Cyber Strike scenario, let a Hacker stand in as the target's vulnerability match. We put it on the table tonight, drew the demolition expert we spent all of June asking for, and then watched the gauntlet take her before the door. The house rule got tested the ugly way, which is the only way we trust.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // HVT (card game) // Hard difficulty: 2 operators, target 3 HP, 1 counterattack per confrontation turn
SCENARIOCyber Strike Prevention, second instance. Same coast water ledger, new node. Espinoza went to ground after Tessellate and kept writing.
STRIKE TEAMCIRCUIT (Liang Fei, Hacker, counter-hack 4+ fallback, returning from 06-28) and SHIM (Adaeze Okonkwo, Breacher / Demo Expert, Explosives 2+). No medic. Again.
HVTRodrigo "Don Blood" Espinoza, SCA cartel kingpin. 3 HP, full reset. Vulnerability: Explosives — matched on paper for the first time. Counter profile rolled: Compromised Local Assets 4+.
HOUSE RULETESTING: on a Cyber Strike scenario a Hacker counts as the vulnerability match. Matched attacks remove 2 HP instead of 1. First table run.
GAUNTLETFive vectors, left to right: Environmental Obstacles, Hostile Contact, Infrastructure Maze, Breach and Clear, Coordinated Strike.
OBJECTIVEReach the pump gallery node and put Espinoza down before the ledger rewrite commits.
WIN CONDITIONHVT to 0 HP inside three confrontation turns. Loss on all operators KIA, or the clock expiring with the target alive.
Corva Basin Lift Station 4 is a hole in the ground that moves water uphill for a hundred and forty thousand people who have never heard of it. Concrete, four decades old, a stair that spirals down past three pump halls into a gallery where the coast's oldest metering hardware still runs because nobody has been given the money to replace it. That last part is why Don Blood picked it. Old iron talks to the ledger without asking the ledger who is talking.
The desk has unfinished business here. On the twenty-eighth of June, a two-operator team walked into the Tessellate campus without a demolition expert, cleared all five gates on the hottest gauntlet we have filed this year, and lost Espinoza on the last pip because there was no one on the roster his defenses opened for. Circuit was the hacker on that job. He reached for the command node three times and got nothing three times, and he has been on our roster ever since with that in his file.
Tonight the deck dealt him what June refused. Adaeze Okonkwo, callsign Shim, a breacher who carries the charges and the training to place them, matched to Espinoza's vulnerability line at 2+. On paper the fight was solved before the fence. That is the trap the gauntlet exists to spring.
She was hurt at the first gate. The stair down to the second pump hall was half flooded and the handrail was a rumor, and she came off it wrong with the charge case still on her back, favoring an ankle she would need. Circuit took the next two gates and took them well, a security response in the upper hall that never got its shape and a run of collapsed service corridor he read by feel and instinct. Then gate four, breach and clear into the gallery vestibule, and Shim went first because that is what a breacher does, and the room was waiting, and she did not come out of it.
THE TEAM FINALLY DREW THE RIGHT ANSWER. THE GAUNTLET KILLED HER AT GATE FOUR.
Circuit cleared the last vector alone and stood in the gallery door with the charge case still lying somewhere behind him in the vestibule, which he could not set and would not have known how to. Three health on a man who does not come apart to a keyboard. Under the book he was finished. Under the rule we were testing, he was the vulnerability match, and every hit he landed would count double.
He opened on the metering node and the routing came apart under his hands the way it never had at Tessellate, two of Espinoza's three health gone in one exchange. Don Blood answered through the station's own compromised local assets, a maintenance rig turned against the man standing in its service radius, and put Circuit on a knee inside the first turn. Second turn, wounded, degraded, he reached and got nothing. The old silence. Espinoza swung back and missed him by the width of a bad roll, and the whole thing stayed alive on that one failure.
Third turn was the last turn. Circuit was hurt, working a tier down, needing a five or better to close a target that had walked out of one of these before on a single pip. He rolled a five. The rewrite stopped mid-commit with Rodrigo Espinoza face down in forty-year-old standing water, and the coast ledger stayed the shape it was, and the only operator still upright in Corva Basin was the one who could not touch him three weeks ago.
Circuit pulled the node before extraction, which was not in the brief. The rewrite was ninety-one percent committed when it stopped. It had also been mirroring, the whole time, to a second holder the packet does not name. Don Blood was writing that ledger for somebody. We do not have the somebody.
// THE TAPE
C1Environmental Obstacles (flooded gallery stair, Shim at 5+, charge case carried). Rolled 2: below threshold, cleared but state worsens, Active to Wounded.
C2Hostile Contact (station security, upper pump hall, Circuit at 4+). Rolled natural 6: critical success, cleared, stays Active.
C3Infrastructure Maze (collapsed service corridor, Circuit at 5+, his mandatory deploy). Rolled 5: meets threshold, cleared, stays Active.
C4Breach and Clear (gallery vestibule, 4+). Shim, Wounded going in, rolled natural 1: critical failure. Gate cleared by the team, Shim Wounded to KIA. Vulnerability match removed from the board before the confrontation.
C5Coordinated Strike (cartel close protection converging, Circuit alone at 4+). Rolled 4: meets threshold, cleared. Enters confrontation solo, Active.
T1HOUSE RULE LIVE: Circuit counts as vuln match on Cyber Strike, matched hits remove 2. Hack 4+ rolled 5: HIT for 2, Espinoza 3 to 1. Espinoza counter (Compromised Local Assets 4+) rolled natural 6: hit, Circuit Active to Wounded.
T2Circuit (Wounded, 4+ degraded to 5+) rolled 2: miss. Espinoza holds at 1. Counter 4+ rolled 3: miss. No change either side. One turn left.
T3Circuit (Wounded, 5+) rolled 5: HIT for 2, Espinoza 1 to 0. HVT DOWN at the buzzer. Solo operator, no medic, no demolition expert on the board.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED // Q. ADAIR
I proposed this rule three weeks ago and I am not going to pretend I am neutral about it. So let me be hard on my own idea first: this run did not prove the rule is balanced. It proved the rule is playable, which is a smaller claim.
What the table produced was a clean natural experiment. We drew the vulnerability match, then lost it at C4 to a critical failure, which put us in the exact seat as June 28 with one fewer operator. Under book rules that is a dead run — a solo Hacker at 4+ against 3 HP inside three turns needs three hits from a degrading operator and will not get them. Under the house rule it becomes a two-hit problem, and a two-hit problem is winnable while still being frightening. Circuit went hit, miss, hit and finished on the last die of the night.
The number that worries me is the T1 swing. Three health to one health in a single exchange is a lot of target gone before the counterattack has landed once. If the counter had come up cold instead of hot, this ends at T2 with an untouched operator and the whole confrontation clock unused, which is not the feeling HVT should ever give you.
- Revision I want to try: matched-Hacker attacks remove 2 only while the operator is Active, dropping to 1 when Wounded. Tonight that changes nothing at T1 and turns T3 into a genuine miss-and-lose, since Circuit was Wounded for the kill. The rule keeps a Demo-less team alive without letting a hot first turn end the night early.
- The real cost: Shim's C4 natural 1 is the second gauntlet critical failure we have logged that removed the only operator who mattered to the confrontation. Worth asking whether a crit-fail at the last gate should offer a "hurt worse instead of dead" option. I lean no. The dread is the point.
- Kit aside: built the gallery from four resin pump housings and a length of corrugated drainpipe, flooded the base with two-part gloss to about six millimetres, and dry-brushed forty years of scale onto everything above the waterline. Shim's charge case is a separate loose piece. It stays on the table where she dropped it. That is the whole battle report in one prop.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTMISSION SUCCESS. HVT down at T3, last turn of the clock. Espinoza's second and final appearance on this desk's table; the June 28 loop is closed.
CASUALTIES // TEAMSHIM (Adaeze Okonkwo) KIA at C4, critical failure on Breach and Clear. CIRCUIT (Liang Fei) Wounded from T1 onward, walks out under his own power.
CASUALTIES // HVTEspinoza 3 to 0 across two matched hits. Ledger rewrite halted at 91% commit.
MVPCIRCUIT. Three gauntlet gates solo-cleared, both confrontation hits, and the only operator in this publication's file to lose a target on one pip and come back for it.
OUTSTANDINGThe halted rewrite was mirroring to an unnamed second holder throughout. Circuit pulled the node off-brief. Desk is holding the packet.
HE CAME BACK FOR THE PIP. IT COST SOMEBODY ELSE.