PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: THE BRIGHT PAN // KOKARAL SALT SHELF
FILING_DATE: 2026-08-17
RESULT: DRAW // 900 ALL // T5
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-08-17
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OPERATOR TACTICS // IRON LINE // RECONSTRUCTED
NINE HUNDRED
ALL
KILL RATIO ON A SALT PAN // TEN OF EIGHTEEN UNITS BROKEN // NOBODY WON
OT IRON LINE // KILL RATIO
THE BRIGHT PAN // KOKARAL SALT SHELF
DRAW // 900 ALL // T5
BOTH COMMANDERS DEAD // 10 OF 18 UNITS BROKEN
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // IRON LINE
Two armies the rulebook prints as equals walked onto a dead solar field 325 points apart, killed both commanders and ten of eighteen units in five rounds, and finished the afternoon exactly level. The last ten dice of the game needed one six and did not produce one.
NINE HUNDRED ALL
BY RIO SOLVENG
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // IRON LINE
FILED: THE BRIGHT PAN // KOKARAL SALT SHELF // 2026-08-17
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Two commanders spent five rounds arguing about what things are worth and arrived at the same number. I have never enjoyed a draw this much, and I would enjoy it less if the two armies had actually started with the same points, which they did not.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics: Iron Line, the mass battle game in Part II of the Skirmish reader. Units on trays instead of models, Strain instead of wounds, Signal instead of Heat. Nine units a side at the start, five rounds, no extensions.
SCENARIOKill Ratio, rolled on the 2D6 victory table. No objectives, no markers, no ground worth holding. At the end of round five each commander totals the points value of everything still on the table and the higher number wins. Chaos of War was rolled three times and came up Standard, Standard, No Twist, so this was the naked engine with nothing bolted on.
ATTACKERTHE BRIGHT COMPANY, an Eastern Compact bear-lineage autonomous group running the Burning Glass suite under the Predator Protocol. Assault Walker VESSEL OF THE SIXTH HOUR as Commander, two Strike Vehicles, two Drone Skirmisher gun teams, two Drone Infantry, and an immobile Artillery Rig called THE LONG SERMON. Printed as a 3,000 point doctrine list. Its line items actually total 3,075.
DEFENDERTHE GREEN LEDGER, a South China Alliance cartel bio-mech swarm running Ghostwire under the Ghost Network. Siege Walker THE UNDERWRITER as Commander, held off the table by Sneaky, four Beast-Mechs, two Scout Swarms and two Drone Infantry. Printed as a 3,000 point doctrine list. Its line items actually total 2,750.
TABLETHE BRIGHT PAN, thirty six inches square. A dead concentrated-solar field on the Kokaral salt shelf, built on seabed that stopped being seabed a long time ago. Collapsed receiver tower dead centre, blocking and impassable. Two heliostat ranks, obscuring and rough. Two salt blooms, grim and obscuring, where cartel growth has taken the old wreck fields. A coolant trench, a pump house, and a brine pan in the southwest corner.
OBJECTIVEHave more points left than the other commander. Nothing else scores.
WIN CONDITIONHighest surviving point total at the end of round five. Equal totals means nobody wins.
TURN CAPFive rounds. First Player token decided on a D6 at setup and contested every round after.
The pan is white and it is flat and there is nothing on it that was not put there. Two hundred heliostat stalks stand in ranks with their mirrors long gone, and the receiver tower came down years ago into a heap of its own housing that neither army could shoot through or walk around quickly. Everything else is salt.
The Bright Company came onto it from the south with a gun line and a plan to not move much. The Green Ledger came from the north with four Beast-Mechs, two drone clouds, and a Siege Walker that was not on the table at all, because the Ghost Network keeps its commander in reserve and drops it where it wants on the second round.
Nothing scored on this table. There was no relay to burn and no ground to hold. Both commanders had been handed a mission that only counts what is still standing at the end, which meant the whole engagement was a slow argument about what things are worth.
It went badly for the Compact immediately, and quietly. Their centre gun team, LOW PSALM, deployed at the mouth of the corridor with a clean twenty four inch lane and discovered on the first shooting phase that the tower stump ate every line it had. Not some of them. All of them. The gun sat in the middle of the Compact position for a full round with nothing to shoot at, and the only shot the Company fired that turn was the artillery, reaching past the tower on the eastern side to put two Strain into a Beast-Mech called TALLYMAN.
The Ledger walked its pack down the eastern lane toward the artillery and lost control of two of them on the way. Beast-Mechs run Autonomous, which means they check for a friendly officer within four inches at the start of every activation and go berserk without one, and the cartel commander had cut that leash on purpose to buy freedom of movement. Berserk sends a unit at the nearest enemy, and by the time those two activated the nearest enemy was not the artillery they had been aimed at. It was the Compact commander, a seven hundred point Assault Walker with twelve attack dice and the Predator Protocol on it, standing in the open where it wanted them.
Two of them arrived. Neither of them wanted to be there.
THE GUN SAT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE POSITION WITH NOTHING TO SHOOT AT
What happened next set the shape of the whole afternoon. The Compact commander was carrying Hardened plate off its own signal net and both Beast-Mechs decided a fight at six-plus was not worth having, so they broke contact instead. Disengaging in Iron Line is not free. The unit you walk away from gets a punishment attack at half its dice, and half of twelve is six, and six dice at two-plus with Brutal doubling every natural six is not half of anything. TALLYMAN took seven hits walking away. It should have died in the scrap phase that followed and it did not, because it happened to be standing inside two overlapping command auras at once, one from the Ledger commander and one from its relay drone, and the two of them stack into a single extra point of Integrity. It survived on eleven of twelve. One inch of spacing.
It lasted another round. The artillery needed one hit out of five dice through cover to finish it and got exactly one.
Then the Ledger dropped its Siege Walker in, and the Compact commander tried to leave.
The cartel had spent its entire signal pool on a Bloom Drift, a void field that turns everything within six inches into perilous ground, and had laid it directly over the corridor. Perilous charges one attack per movement point spent inside it. A retreat costs two points per inch. The Compact commander backed up three inches and paid six attacks for the privilege, took four Strain out of its own withdrawal, and then did not get away regardless, because engagement in this game happens at one inch and not at zero. The Siege Walker only had to close nine and three quarter inches of a gap the Compact had measured at eleven.
They traded. The Assault Walker struck first and put five hits into the Siege Walker. The Siege Walker answered with twelve dice at two-plus, rolled eight hits through two points of hardened plate, and the Compact commander came apart on fourteen of twelve. Its remaining Strike Vehicle, left standing deliberately, was flanked by two Beast-Mechs, lost two points of Integrity to being outmanoeuvred, and broke on a fragile hull that only ever needed five.
The scrap phase then did more damage than either army had managed. Every broken unit cascades a point of Strain into everything friendly within eight inches, and the salt blooms cascade the same way into both sides forever. Four wrecks and two terrain pieces went off in the same phase. The cartel lost a Beast-Mech that no enemy had touched all round, standing on nine Strain in its own rear area.
Round four is where it stopped being a battle and started being arithmetic. The Compact gun line, finally repositioned, broke two units in one shooting phase and took five hundred and fifty points off the board. The Compact then flew its last Strike Vehicle twelve and a half inches over the whole table on a Solar Lance and landed it on the Siege Walker with Devastating Charge live. It should have been ten dice at three-plus. It was four, because the cartel had charged two already-broken wrecks into the same fight and the rule that forces a minimum of three dice into every engaged enemy meant six of the Bell's ten Strikes went into corpses. Two dead Beast-Mechs soaked six dice.
Four dice at three-plus. Five, one, five, four. Three hits, and three was the number. The Siege Walker went down on twelve of twelve and killed the Bell on the way.
The scrap phase that followed removed six more units and left the score at nine hundred points each.
What was left was three drone teams a side and one round to play. The cartel had a Scout Swarm called MOTH LEDGER sitting on nine Strain of ten inside a salt bloom, which meant the terrain was going to kill it at the end of the round and hand the Compact the game. It faced north, it had fourteen inches of speed, and a straight run of thirteen and a half would put it clear of every grim radius on the pan.
The Compact shot first. Both guns, everything, ten dice at six-plus through the bloom's cover, looking for one hit.
Five, three, four, five, three. Five, five, two, five, two.
Not a single six. The swarm turned and ran and did not stop until it was out, and the pan finished with three drone teams facing three drone teams across eleven wrecks, nine hundred points against nine hundred points, and nothing decided at all.
// THE TAPE
SETUPVictory 2D6 = 7, Kill Ratio. Chaos of War D66 rolls 16 / 16 / 12 = Standard, Standard, No Twist. First Player D6 = 6, PCU takes the token and the south half. Both sides deploy the book's printed sample doctrine lists. Line items total PCU 3,075 and SCA 2,750, a 325 point gap on a mission scored entirely on points.
T1LOW PSALM has no line of sight to anything. Sited at (17,10) it sits dead behind the tower stump and the shadow covers the whole enemy zone. GLASS PSALM misses at 6+ (3,4,5,3,5). LONG SERMON reaches past the stump into TALLYMAN at 3+ (2,2,4,6,1) for 2. Both Berserk Beast-Mechs get dragged onto the VESSEL rather than the artillery. Grim cascade catches 13 of 16 units.
T2SCA queue SPORE SHROUD onto the VESSEL and lose it to phase order: First Player broadcasts first and PCU's DIRECTED ENERGY had already made it EW-immune. PCU guns put 8 into BROKER'S DOG (3 hits at 3+, then five for five at 4+), leaving it on 9 of 10. TALLYMAN and SHORT COUNT both disengage rather than fight a Hardened target and eat Punishments at 6 dice, TN 2+, BRUTAL: 7 hits and 5 hits. TALLYMAN hits 10, then 11 on the Grim tick, and lives only because two stacked Command auras make it Integrity 12. SCA spend the refunded Pulse shrouding their OWN wounded Beast-Mech off the table.
T3LONG SERMON needs one hit in five at 4+ to finish TALLYMAN (3,1,2,3,4). Gets it. SCA answer with their whole pool on BLOOM DRIFT, laying a perilous field over the corridor. The VESSEL retreats 3 inches, pays 6 movement points, takes 4 self-inflicted Strain (1,5,6,1,4,4), and still does not escape: engagement is at 1 inch, so the Speed 10 Siege Walker only had to close 9.75 of an 11 inch gap. VESSEL hits first for 5. THE UNDERWRITER answers with 12 dice at 2+ for 8 hits, 6 through Hardened, VESSEL BROKEN on 14 of 12. KEENING, outmanoeuvred by two, breaks SHORT COUNT and then dies to INTEREST (three natural 6s in ten). Scrap phase: four wrecks plus two Grim pieces cascade at once and BROKER'S DOG dies untouched in its own rear area. SCA lead 2,150 to 1,975.
T4PCU's shooting phase breaks PAPER WASP and INTEREST in one go, 550 points. SCA's SPORE SHROUD on their own Commander is refused: ESCROW is their only Relay, it sits at (19.5,24) with the stump square in front of it, and it can draw line of sight to exactly one friendly unit in the army. The terrain blinded an entire EW suite. SEVENTH BELL flies 12.7 inches on a Solar Lance into THE UNDERWRITER, but the two Broken wrecks charge in behind it and the minimum-3-dice-per-enemy rule leaves it 4 of its 10 Strikes for the target. Four dice at 3+: 5,1,5,4. Three hits, THE UNDERWRITER BROKEN on 12 of 12. It kills the Bell on the reply. CANTOR pays 8 perilous attacks escaping the double bloom, survives on 10 of 11, and dies to the Scrap tick anyway. Six units removed. 900 all.
T5SCA fail the seize again (needed a natural 6, rolled 2): PCU held the First Player token all five rounds, the seize rolls being 1, 3, 2, 2. MOTH LEDGER sits on 9 of 10 inside a salt bloom and the Scrap tick will kill it. PCU put both guns on it, ten dice at 6+ hunting one hit: 5,3,4,5,3 and 5,5,2,5,2. Zero sixes. The swarm runs 13.5 inches north, clears every Grim radius, and the game ends level.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED
Start with the thing that decided this game before a die was rolled. The four sample doctrine lists in chapter 18 are all labelled 3,000 points and none of them are. Add up the printed line items and you get NAF 3,100, EO 2,800, SCA 2,750 and PCU 3,075. That is a spread of 350 points between armies the book presents as equivalent. On five of the eleven victory conditions it does not matter much. On Kill Ratio, which is scored purely on surviving points, it is the entire game: the cartel started 325 points down and had to win by that much before it won anything. It finished exactly level. Take the 325 back out and the cartel wins this comfortably.
The keyword cost multiplier is the reason. It is applied correctly in most entries and skipped in two, so the Assault Walker plus Elite is priced at 550 when the x2 multiplier makes it 650, and the Artillery Rig plus Short-Ranged is priced at 375 when the multiplier on a negative cost makes it 350. Worth a pass with a calculator before the next printing.
The dice were not the story. 148 attack dice, 19 natural sixes and 24 natural ones, which is close enough to flat that neither commander can blame the bag. Three things that were not dice decided this instead.
- The tower stump. One impassable eight inch block in the centre of a thirty six inch table blinded the Compact's best gun for a full round, and then in round four it blinded the cartel's entire electronic warfare suite. Line of sight in Iron Line is drawn from the centre of the front edge, and the cartel's only Relay drone was parked just north of the stump facing south, which meant it could see exactly one friendly unit on the board. Their Commander was 6.7 inches away and invisible. If you take a Relay, walk its arcs at deployment the way you would walk a gun's.
- Grim terrain is enormously stronger than it reads. Each Grim piece acts as a broken friendly unit in every scrap phase, dealing a point of Strain to everything within eight inches. Two pieces on a three foot table put 13 of 16 units on a permanent clock, and by round four the terrain had killed more units than either gun line. The Compact's immobile artillery deployed inside one and could never leave it; it died on schedule and both commanders knew the exact round from turn one. That is an interesting pressure, but eight inches from the edge of the piece is a very large circle at this scale, and I would try four before I tried anything else.
- Wide footprints do not fit. Both commanders issued movement orders in round one that were physically illegal, with five overlapping footprints on one side and eight on the other. It kept happening. In round three the cartel's third and fourth chargers could not reach either target because their own Commander and their own Beast-Mechs were standing in every contact face, and 700 points of Scout Swarm did nothing at all that round. If you are running a swarm list, count your frontage before you count your dice.
The turn it swung, twice. Round three took the Compact's Commander and a Strike Vehicle, 1,100 points, and handed the lead to the cartel. Round four took the cartel's Commander and two units, 1,250, and handed it straight back. What made round four work was not the Solar Lance, it was the cartel charging two already-broken wrecks into the same fight. Broken units are not removed until the scrap phase and nothing in the rules stops them fighting, so two corpses soaked six of the Bell's ten Strikes through the minimum-assignment rule. That is the best play either commander made all game and it very nearly saved a 700 point model.
Balance read. The engine is fine. The scoring is not: on a five round game with cascade this savage, Kill Ratio rewards the army that starts with more points and then refuses contact, and both commanders spent the back half correctly playing the clock rather than each other. The disengage-and-punish loop is well judged, Implacable does real work protecting Close and Free order units from massed shooting, and the Command aura stacking quietly decides more than it looks like it does. Perilous is the one number I would look at hard: it charges per movement point, and since a Retreat costs two points per inch and an Advance costs one, backing out of a void field is exactly twice as lethal as walking forward through it. That cost the Compact commander four Strain and probably its life.
One thing to try next time. Run Kill Ratio with both lists corrected to the same actual total and see whether the cartel's swarm still has to gamble. And put the Relay somewhere it can see its own army.
On the table. The pan builds itself out of a white bedsheet, a heap of card offcuts for the tower stump, and cocktail sticks in rows for the heliostat ranks. The salt blooms were two circles of green scouring pad. Nothing on this board cost anything and the terrain still won more fights than the artillery did.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTDRAW. 900 points against 900 points at the end of round five. Kill Ratio awards the win to the higher surviving total and the totals were identical, so neither commander takes it. Ten of the eighteen units on the table were destroyed. The Bright Company finished with three drone teams at 300 points each; the Green Ledger finished with a Scout Swarm at 350 and two Drone Infantry at 275 each.
CASUALTIES // BRIGHT COMPANYVESSEL OF THE SIXTH HOUR (Assault Walker, Commander, 700) broken round three by the Siege Walker. KEENING (Strike Vehicle, 400) round three, outmanoeuvred by two. SEVENTH BELL (Strike Vehicle, 400) round four, killed by the Commander it had just killed. CANTOR (Drone Infantry, 300) round four, to the Grim clock after surviving eight perilous attacks. THE LONG SERMON (Artillery Rig, 375) round four, to the Grim clock, immobile from the moment it deployed. Survivors LAMPLIGHTER on 8 of 11, LOW PSALM 8 of 11, GLASS PSALM 6 of 11.
CASUALTIES // GREEN LEDGERTHE UNDERWRITER (Siege Walker, Commander, 700) broken round four on four enemy dice. TALLYMAN (Beast-Mech, 200) round three, to a single artillery hit. SHORT COUNT (Beast-Mech, 200) round three, killed by the Strike Vehicle it had flanked. BROKER'S DOG (Beast-Mech, 200) round three, to cascade and a Grim tick with no enemy in contact. PAPER WASP (Scout Swarm, 350) and INTEREST (Beast-Mech, 200) both round four, to one shooting phase. Survivors MOTH LEDGER on 9 of 10, ESCROW 6 of 11, LIEN 5 of 11.
MVPMOTH LEDGER, Scout Swarm, Green Ledger. It fired once all game and the shot was out of range. It spent a whole activation turning around. It ended the afternoon on nine Strain of ten, one point from dead, standing in terrain that was going to finish it, and then ten enemy dice at six-plus failed to find a single six and it walked thirteen and a half inches into clean salt. The cartel did not draw this game by fighting. It drew it because the cheapest thing left on the board ran the right direction at the right time.
DICE148 attack dice generated, 19 natural sixes and 24 natural ones. Every roll made in the open with python3. The single most expensive roll of the game was ten dice at 6+ in the last shooting phase that produced nothing.
RUN IT YOURSELF:
OT SKIRMISH & IRON LINE, Part II for the Iron Line rules, the unit roster and the Kill Ratio victory table, and the Iron Line battle maps in chapter 17a for the salvage-field layout this pan was built from.
TEN DICE, ONE SIX NEEDED, AND THE PAN KEPT ITS SALT.