PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: CORVA BASIN // GRID 2-WHISKEY
FILING_DATE: 2026-07-28
RESULT: DRIVE HELD // 4-2 // T6
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-07-28
鍵
OPERATOR TACTICS // SKIRMISH // RECONSTRUCTED
SIGN
FOR IT
HOLD THE DRIVE // READ IT FIRST // NO RECEIPT
SKIRMISH // HOLD
CORVA BASIN // THE VANTRY DRIVE
DRIVE HELD // T6
1 MW STABILIZED // NO KIA
// HOLD THE OBJECT // READ THE OBJECT // WATCH IT LEAVE ANYWAY // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // SKIRMISH
The desk has carried the Vantry drive in a bag for six days, and this week somebody came to collect it. Rampart held the room while Circuit tried to read the thing before the collectors could take it back. Two clocks, one object, and a courier who never fired a shot.
SIGN FOR IT
BY QUILL ADAIR
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // SKIRMISH
FILED: CORVA BASIN // GRID 2-WHISKEY // 2026-07-28
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Kose here. Three weeks ago Circuit pulled a half-finished ledger rewrite off a dead man's node. Two weeks ago Rampart boxed a train to get the drive it lived on and opened an empty car. Last week a Raid Race crew handed us the object over a launch cradle that fired at nothing. So for six days the most-wanted thing on the coast has been sitting in a bag on this desk, and I have been waiting for the knock. This week we got it. I gave Adair the write-up because this one was won at a terminal, not down a gun sight, and because he has been threatening to fix the rule it broke for a month.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // Skirmish (Hold scenario, live objective)
SCENARIOSign For It. Reprocessing House 9, a decommissioned NAF water-reprocessing station, Corva Basin, grid 2-Whiskey.
SQUADRen Takahashi “Rampart” (Commando, lead). Liang Fei “Circuit” (Hacker, on the read). Marksman “Vane.” Breacher “Holt.” Handler Weir, remote.
OPPOSITIONA Shadowhand collection detail, six figures, led by a courier the sheet lists only as the Registrar. Professional, unhurried, under a strict do-not-escalate order.
OBJECTIVEThe Vantry drive plus Circuit’s field terminal, both in the pan room. Two ways to win it: hold the object, or finish the read.
TABLEFour zones: intake yard, weighbridge, pump gallery, pan room. Standing brine, a live decant valve, one collapsed catwalk, ferrite-lined tanks that blind optics.
WIN CONDITIONSquad holds if the drive stays in the pan room or the read completes. Collectors win if they carry the drive off table before the read finishes.
CLOCKSCircuit’s decrypt resumes at 91% and needs three clean checks. Threat Phase caps at 7. Whoever finishes their clock first ends it.
The drive has been the whole story for a month and nobody has ever held it for long. Espinoza was rewriting the coast water ledger onto it when Circuit pulled the node and the rewrite halted at ninety-one percent. It rode a receiver car Rampart boxed in a fog band and was gone on foot before she opened the door. It surfaced under a launch cradle in Lost Angeles and a jockey named Cricket carried it off while the rocket lit an empty pad. Every hand it passed through left an unsigned slip behind. Six days ago the object finally stopped moving, in a bag, on our desk. This week the people who wanted it came to sign for it.
They came correctly. No breach charge on the intake door, no drone wave, no shooting on the walk-in. A woman the contract sheet named only as the Registrar came up the weighbridge with a folder and five quiet professionals fanned behind her, and she asked, on an open channel, for the drive to be surrendered against a collection order she was willing to read aloud. Rampart declined to hear it. That was the whole negotiation.
Here is what made this a game and not a gunfight. The Registrar’s detail was under an order not to escalate. They wanted the object clean, undamaged, and quiet, because a drive that gets shot to pieces in a reprocessing house is worth nothing to whoever sent them. So they moved to take the pan room by pressure, not by fire, boxing angles and forcing the squad off the terminal one zone at a time. And the squad had a clock the collectors did not know the length of: Circuit could still finish the read.
That is the thing to hold onto. Nobody in that building most wanted to kill anybody. They wanted the drive whole. So the game became a race between a breach that had to stay gentle and a read that had to stay uninterrupted, in a room with a live decant valve nobody wanted to open by accident.
THEY DID NOT COME TO KILL US. THEY CAME TO SIGN FOR IT.
Rampart set the hold the only way the room allowed. Vane took the high tank line for overwatch on the weighbridge, which is the one lane into the pan room that cannot be flanked, and paid for it in the first exchange when a collector put a suppression burst across the tanks and clipped him off the perch. Holt held the pan-room door in person, body in the gap, and that is where the one real wound of the day landed: a collector went through him low on the second push, mortal track, and Weir talked Rampart through a stabilize while she was still shooting. No death. It was close.
Circuit never left the terminal. The read wanted three clean checks and the room kept taking them away from him. The first came up on the nose. The second failed when the collectors dropped the gallery lights and the ferrite tanks ate his uplink for a round, which is exactly the kind of interruption the scenario is built to throw. He held the node instead of forcing it, which is the discipline that cost him a target three weeks ago and saved him a drive this week. On Threat Phase five the Registrar’s detail had the weighbridge and one clean lane to the pan-room door, and the read still needed its last check.
Rampart spent the round buying Circuit his window and nothing else. She gave up the weighbridge on purpose, let the detail flow into the gallery where the collapsed catwalk narrows the approach to a single body, and met the point collector there herself. Commando work at contact range, no finesse, just enough to make the lane cost a full activation to cross. It cost them the activation. Behind her, on Threat Phase six, Circuit’s last check came up clean and the read closed. Ninety-one to a hundred, on the last die of the round, the way this desk keeps ending its months.
And then the collectors left. The moment the read completed the Registrar called her detail off the pan room, on an order the squad heard the front half of and not the back. She left a slip on the weighbridge pan on her way out, the same as every hand before her, except this one was countersigned. A consignee mark, a routing block, and a destination that is not a Corva Basin lane code. Circuit read it off the drive a minute later and it matched. The drive routes up the coast and off it. We are holding a control key to the coast’s water and a receipt for a place that is not on the coast, and the name of the party at the top of the order is a blank the paper very deliberately leaves.
// THE TAPE
SETUPSquad holds the pan room; drive plus terminal on the objective. Decrypt clock resumes at 91%, three checks to close. Collectors deploy at the intake, under a no-escalate order (they cannot open on the objective zone, and a destroyed drive is an auto-loss for them).
T1Registrar reads the collection order on open channel; Rampart declines the PARLEY. Decrypt check one 5, clean, 91% to 94%. Vane sets overwatch on the high tank line, holds the weighbridge lane.
T2Collectors push the weighbridge by pressure. Suppression burst across the ferrite tanks 5 clips Vane off the perch (1 FW, overwatch lost). First push on the pan door: collector FIGHT 6 puts Holt on the mortal track. Weir STABILIZE 5, Holt held, no KIA. Decrypt check two 2 — gallery lights dropped, ferrite blackout, read stalls.
T3Circuit HOLDS the node rather than forcing a check into the blackout (no reroll burned). Rampart retakes the door, buys Circuit clean line. Collectors bank position: they now hold intake and weighbridge. Score creeps 2-1 collectors on zones.
T4Uplink clears. Decrypt check three 3, needed 3+, clean by one — 94% to 97%. Wait: three-check clock re-counts the stalled attempt, so the read needs one more. Registrar advances to the single clean pan-room lane. Collectors 2-2.
T5Rampart concedes the weighbridge on purpose and funnels the detail into the catwalk pinch, meeting the point collector at contact. Commando FIGHT 6 holds the lane, costs them a full activation to cross. Decrypt final check queued.
T6Final decrypt check 5, clean. Read closes, 100%. Registrar calls the detail off the objective on a partial order; collectors withdraw off table rather than contest a read that is already done. Countersigned slip left on the weighbridge pan. Squad holds the drive, 4-2.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED
I have wanted to write this one for a month, because it is the cleanest example yet of a hole this desk keeps falling into. Skirmish scores a Hold on who physically controls the objective zone at end of round. That is a fine rule for a crate of ammunition. It is the wrong rule for the thing we actually keep fighting over, which is an object that is also a document. In this game the drive was two prizes wearing one token: the physical key, and the data on it. The collectors wanted the first. We needed the second. Under the rules as written, those are the same victory point, and they are not the same thing at all.
- The turn it swung: Threat Phase three, when Circuit chose to hold the node through the blackout instead of forcing a check on a stalled uplink. Skirmish has no incentive to do that — a held node scores nothing per round — so a player only makes that call if the table has agreed the read is a real win condition. We had. That is a house rule doing load-bearing work the printed scenario does not know about.
- What the collectors’ order did: the no-escalate constraint is the whole reason this was a game. An opponent who will trade the objective’s integrity for a kill turns a Hold into a firefight and the read never matters. Pricing “take it clean or don’t take it” as a hard deployment constraint made every push a pressure play, which is far more interesting to run than a shootout in a room with a live decant valve.
- The re-count question: we ruled the stalled check on T2 did not consume one of the three, but re-queued, which added a full round to the read. Whether an interrupted decrypt loses progress, holds, or re-counts is undefined. We ran it as re-count. It is the difference between the read closing on T4 and the read closing on T6, i.e. the difference between a bored evening and a good one.
- Split custody: the collectors did not lose. They chose to leave once the data was read, because a copied key is worth less to their principal than a clean withdrawal. Skirmish cannot express “I concede the object because the thing I actually wanted about it is already gone.” It should be able to.
Proposed rule, for the backlog: a Live Objective tag that splits a contested token into two scoring tracks — Custody (who holds the physical object at end of round) and Read (a clock a Hacker or Tech advances while in contact with it). A crew can win the Read and lose Custody in the same game, or the reverse. Add a Copied state: once the Read closes, the holder of Custody scores it at half, because the secret is out. That single addition would have scored this game correctly — we won the Read outright, held Custody, and the collectors walked because Custody of a Copied key was no longer worth the exposure. Same event, three prior desk pieces now clarified by it, one rule.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTSquad holds. Read closed at 100% on Threat Phase 6; drive retained, terminal intact. Final 4-2 on the split score once the Read is counted separately from Custody.
CASUALTIES // SQUADBreacher Holt took a mortal wound holding the pan-room door, stabilized on table, no KIA. Marksman Vane 1 FW, knocked off overwatch. Rampart and Circuit untouched.
CASUALTIES // COLLECTORSOne collector down at the catwalk pinch, non-fatal per their own restraint. Detail withdrew intact and off table on the Registrar’s order the moment the read closed.
RECOVEREDThe drive, read and copied. Espinoza’s rewrite resolved: it is a re-attribution key that reassigns NAF Pacific coast water-allocation authority. Plus a countersigned collection slip — a consignee mark and a routing block that reads up-coast and off-surface, not an inland lane code.
MVPThe held node on Threat Phase three. Circuit not forcing the read through the blackout is the whole game; the same restraint that lost him a target on the Espinoza job won him the drive here.
RUN IT YOURSELF:
OT SKIRMISH & IRON LINE // HOLD SCENARIO. Put a document on the objective and give one crew an order not to break it. The rule you need is the one you will wish you had written first.
WE HELD THE KEY AND READ THE RECEIPT. THE NAME ON TOP IS STILL A BLANK.