PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: LOW COAST // GRID 7-KILO
FILING_DATE: 2026-07-22
RESULT: PACKAGE PULLED // NO LAUNCH
██ █ ████ ███ █
███ ████ ██ █████
BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-07-22
走
OPERATOR TACTICS // RAID RACE // RECONSTRUCTED
LAUNCH
CLOCK
PACKAGE PULL // THE VANTRY DRIVE // NO DELIVERY
RAID RACE // PACKAGE PULL
LOW COAST // GANTRY 4
PACKAGE PULLED // NO LAUNCH
JUMPER // 1 GRIP LEFT
// TWO SEATS // ONE DRIVES // ONE STEALS // THE CLOCK OUTRANKS BOTH //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // RAID RACE
The desk brought a two-seat sled to a Low Coast launch event, chasing a shielded drive that walked out of the Vantry Cut receiver car on foot a day earlier and came back as an anonymous package request with a rocket already fueled under it. Vega drove the causeway she was built for and then the tunnel she was not. Cricket burned down to one GRIP slot and pulled the drive off the cradle with the launch clock inside forty seconds, and nobody at the desk got to keep the object they saved.
THE LAUNCH CLOCK
BY RIO SOLVENG
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // RAID RACE
FILED: LOW COAST, LOST ANGELES // GRID 7-KILO // 2026-07-22
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Kose here. We have been chasing a drive across three battle reports now, and it kept ending on someone walking away from us with the object in a bag. So the desk did the only honest thing and followed the object instead of the operators, which is how a boar-and-tunnel outfit ended up entering a Raid Race event in Lost Angeles. Solveng ran it straight. Adair has a scoring complaint I happen to agree with. Read them both and notice that the one question that has driven this whole thread is still the one we cannot answer.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // Raid Race (two-seat crew, single event)
SCENARIOPackage Pull. Low Coast, Lost Angeles, NAF Western Corridor. Grid 7-Kilo. Suborbital launch cradle at Gantry 4, fixed countdown.
CREWOdalys Renn, callsign Vega. Jockey, wolf-stock, rear-engine sled. Kesan Vue, callsign Cricket. Jumper, capuchin-stock climber. Spotter Circuit, remote and light-duty.
PACKAGEA shielded data drive, desk shorthand "the Vantry drive." Same object logged leaving the Vantry Cut receiver car on foot on 2026-07-21. Posted as an anonymous client request through Syndicate channels, launch-to-orbit inside the window.
FIELDTwo rival teams on the same target. A Jaguario crew out of Barricadia and one independent. Monitor Central drone net over the whole district: gel-kinetic ranged, bone-breaking melee, escalating on Security Pressure.
OBJECTIVE (DESK VARIANT)Pull the package and exfil clean. Deny the launch. The desk is not delivering to the client, which is the whole reason it played this at all.
WIN CONDITIONDrive secured and off-table before the launch window closes. Loss on crew capture, or on the drive reaching the cradle and firing.
CLOCKLaunch fires on a fixed countdown regardless of the raid. Security Pressure raises the drone response every round it climbs.
The desk has lost this drive three times. It mirrored itself out of a coast ledger and vanished. It sat in a warm cradle in a rail car at Vantry Cut and walked out the far door on somebody's back before anyone knew the car was there. Every time, the object left and the desk kept the paperwork. So this run we stopped chasing the person and chased the thing, and the thing had surfaced two thousand kilometers away on a Raid Race launch sheet with a countdown already running under it.
That is the part worth saying plainly. Nobody put the Vantry drive on a truck. Somebody sold it up a chain until it became a package request, and a package request in Lost Angeles means a fueled cradle at a Low Coast gantry and a client who will never sign anything. Win the event and the object leaves the planet inside minutes. The desk did not want to win the event. The desk wanted the object to stay on the ground, in a bag, which in this sport is not a result the rules know how to score.
Vega built the sled for the causeway. Rear-engine, weighted for the open coast straight that feeds the gantry district, and on that straight she was the fastest thing in the event by a full activation. Then the route the client chose fed everyone off the causeway and down into the Musk Tunnels, tight core ductwork where a rear-engine sled rolls at a penalty and a front-engine Jaguario machine rolls at a bonus, and the whole advantage she had built inverted in one turn.
Cricket does not care what the sled is doing. A capuchin-stock Jumper reads a secured wall the way the rest of us read a doorway, and the gantry approach was all wall. The problem was never the climb. The problem was the clock, the drones the clock kept summoning, and a Jaguario Jumper on the same cradle with the same forty seconds.
WE DID NOT WANT TO WIN. WE WANTED THE OBJECT TO STAY ON THE GROUND.
The causeway went exactly the way the build promised. Vega opened three lengths on the field on the open straight, rear-engine at plus one, and put Cricket on the tunnel mouth ahead of both rivals. Then the course did its job. The Musk Tunnels are tight terrain, her sled dropped to minus one, and the Jaguario Jockey came past her in the ductwork like she was parked. She did not fight it. She let the front-engine machine own the tunnel and saved her sled for the one stretch of open air between the tunnel exit and the gantry, because that stretch was hers again and she knew it.
Cricket went in on foot and strung it together. Three clean Raid Rolls off the run, a Flow state on a natural six that let her pick her exact landing on the cradle scaffold, and for about ten seconds she looked untouchable. Then a security drone dropped a gel burst across the scaffold, she took the landing wrong getting under it, and the first GRIP slot went. Working, minus one on everything. The Jaguario Jumper reached the cradle a beat behind her and threw a Check to shove her off the approach. Cricket lost the contest and lost the approach with it, which put the rival's hand on the drive first.
What saved the run was that the rival got greedy about the score. A Jaguario Jumper who pulls the drive wins the event by carrying it to the cradle interface and launching it, and the drones know it, and Monitor Central concentrates its whole melee response on the competitor holding the package near a live cradle. He latched the drive and went for the interface. The net closed on him. A multi-limbed security frame took him off the scaffold hard enough that we heard it through Cricket's feed, and Monitor Central processed him into the district detention stream while he was still swinging. Location and fate, per the sport, unknown.
That left the drive loose on the scaffold with the clock inside a minute and Cricket on two GRIP slots. She burned the second one on a bad reach and dropped to one, Burning, minus two on every roll, one slot from spent and forty feet of open air under her. She did not force the last climb. She waited half an activation for the drone net to chase the empty cradle interface the way it was built to, latched the loose drive on a clean six, and came off the scaffold on a line to the open stretch where Vega was already rolling. Rear-engine, open air, plus one, exactly the ground the sled was for. Cricket hit the seat, they cleared the district before Security Pressure summoned anything that could catch a sled on a straight, and the launch clock hit zero over a cradle with nothing on it.
The object is in a bag at the desk now, which is the first time in three reports that sentence has been true. We still do not know who bought the launch.
// THE TAPE
CAUSEWAYOpen terrain, rear-engine at +1. Vega Race Rolls 6 / 5 / 5, opens three lengths on the field and seats Cricket at the tunnel mouth ahead of both rivals. Jaguario Jockey 4 / 4, holds second. Security Pressure at 1.
TUNNELMusk Tunnels, tight terrain: rear-engine drops to -1, Jaguario front-engine to +1. Jaguario Race Roll 6, passes clean. Vega Race Roll 2 (net 1), does not contest, banks the sled for the gantry straight. Cricket on foot: Flow 5, Vault 5, Flow nat 6 = FLOW state, picks her landing on the cradle scaffold. Three-success string logged.
SCAFFOLDDrone gel burst forces a bad landing: Cricket Flow 3, STUCK, takes the physical loss, GRIP 3 to 2 (Working, -1). Jaguario Jumper reaches the cradle and throws Check 5 vs Cricket 3 (at -1): rival wins, Cricket shoved off the approach, loses next Raid Roll at the cradle. Rival latches the drive first. Security Pressure to 3.
CRADLERival carries the package to the interface with Pressure at 3: Monitor Central concentrates melee response on the competitor holding the package near a live cradle. Security frame takes the Jaguario Jumper off the scaffold, GUTS fails, processed to detention. Cricket reach for the loose drive 2 (at -1), fails, GRIP 2 to 1 (Burning, -2).
PULLCricket holds half an activation, lets the net chase the empty interface, then Latch on the loose drive nat 6: attached and positioned, +1 GRIP recovered to 2. Comes off the scaffold onto Vega's line. Rejoin at the open stretch, rear-engine +1. Vega Race Roll 6, clears the district. Launch clock expires over an empty cradle.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED
This is the first time the desk has run Raid Race for something other than the win it is built around, and the ruleset noticed. Package Pull scores one way: get the package to the cradle interface and launch it. The desk's whole objective was to take the package and refuse the interface, and there is no line on the sheet for a crew that possesses the target at the end of the event and declined to deliver it. We won the object and technically did not finish the event. That gap is worth a fix.
- The turn it swung: the cradle, and it swung on the rival's greed, not our skill. A Jaguario Jumper holding the package near a live cradle is the single most drone-magnetic position in the sport. He walked into it to score. Monitor Central did the removal the desk could not have done, and Cricket only had to be the second hand on a loose object. Read the Pressure track before you reach for the package.
- Front-engine, rear-engine, on the table: declaring the sled layout at build is doing real work now. Vega's rear-engine build owned the causeway and the gantry straight at plus one and got embarrassed in the tunnels at minus one, and the client picked a route that ran through all three. The layout choice is not flavor. It decides which third of the course is yours.
- GRIP as the real health bar: Cricket never took a Flesh Wound. She lost the run to GRIP twice and won it back once, and that is the whole Jumper economy. Burning at one slot with forty feet of drop under her, the correct play was to stop rolling and wait for the drone net to solve itself, then Latch on a six for the slot back. Patience is a GRIP action.
- Security Pressure is the clock that actually kills you: the launch countdown is fixed and honestly a little inert. The Pressure escalation is the timer with teeth. It went 1 to 3 in four rounds and that is what put a bone-breaking frame on the scaffold at the exact moment a rival was holding the package. Run the Pressure, not the countdown.
- One thing to try next time: a rear-engine sled should refuse the tunnel entirely if the course allows a longer outside line. Vega ate a minus-one stretch she did not have to be in. A slower, open reroute might have kept her a full activation ahead and taken the Jaguario crew out of contention at the cradle before the drones ever had to.
Rulings this run, all logged to the rules backlog. Package Pull has no result state for a crew that ends the event holding the target without delivering it, so we scored it a house result and called it a Withheld Delivery, or Scratch: package secured, event unfinished, no client payout, no launch. The interaction between the fixed launch countdown and the Security Pressure track is never defined, so we ran them as two independent clocks and let Pressure drive the drone escalation on its own. Whether a Check at minus one applies the GRIP penalty to the contest roll is undefined, so we applied it, which is what cost Cricket the approach. Three gaps, none fatal, all the kind a second printing closes in a sentence each.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTPackage pulled, launch denied. Scored as a house Withheld Delivery: the desk holds the Vantry drive off-table, the event went unfinished, no client payout, the cradle fired empty.
CASUALTIES // CREWCricket down to 1 GRIP (Burning), recovered to 2 on the final Latch. No Flesh Wounds, no capture. Vega untouched. First clean crew exfil off this thread in three tries.
CASUALTIES // FIELDJaguario Jumper processed into the Monitor Central detention stream at the cradle, holding the package when the net closed. Independent team never reached the gantry. Fate of the Jaguario runner, per the sport, unknown.
MVPThe rear-engine gamble and the patience at one GRIP. Vega's build gave up the tunnel to own the two open stretches that bracket it, and Cricket won the object by waiting out a drone net instead of forcing a Burning climb.
OPENThe client who posted the launch never signed the sheet and is still unnamed. The desk now physically holds a drive that a coast ledger, a rail cradle, and a Syndicate launch request all wanted moved. The one question that started this thread is the one it ends on.
IT LEFT ON FOOT. IT CAME BACK ON A ROCKET. THE CRADLE FIRED EMPTY.