PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: FERGHANA CORRIDOR // THE CONVOY
FILING_DATE: 2026-08-30
RESULT: PARTIAL // ASSET OUT, STRANDED // T6
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-08-30
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OPERATOR TACTICS // THREAT RESPONSE // RECONSTRUCTED
BOTH
BANKS
ONE NATURAL SIX CLOSED THE ROAD IN TWO DIRECTIONS
THREAT RESPONSE // SOLO
BROKEN WIRE 2 // THE CONVOY
6 TURNS // 107 DICE
PARTIAL // 1 OPERATOR DOWN
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // THREAT RESPONSE
A four-operator splice killed the lead vehicle on the only bridge in the valley and corked a three-vehicle convoy where it stood. Then they had to walk across their own roadblock to get to the man they came for, and the far bank turned out to be where every hostile on the table was standing.
BOTH BANKS
BY TIB MARLOW
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // THREAT RESPONSE
FILED: FERGHANA CORRIDOR // THE CONVOY // 2026-08-30
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Somebody finally took the convoy ambush out of Broken Wire off the shelf, and the interesting part is not that it worked. The single die that won this mission is the same die that lost it, and both facts arrived in the same second.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics, the Solo Rules. Broken Wire, Scenario 2: The Convoy. Run standalone at Heat 2, no campaign tokens, Scenario 1 treated as a full victory so the lead vehicle carried no extra Veteran.
SCENARIODawn in the Ferghana corridor, Eurasian Contested Zone. Three vehicles running south to north through a river valley toward a collapsed bridge that is the only crossing on the table.
ATTACKERSLOW MATCH, a disavowed four-operator freelance splice. KETCH, Marksman. DRAY, Commando. BALLAST, Breacher in Heavy Plate. SPOOL, Tech Specialist. Two Failsafe shared, one Edge each.
DEFENDERThe convoy. Armoured SUV with two Veterans, cargo truck with a driver and the Asset, rear technical with a mounted weapon, two Soldiers on motorcycles. Motivation rolled PAID, so they break at four casualties out of seven.
TABLE24in by 24in, north to south. Dirt road at x13. A deep side channel cuts the table in half at y12 and the collapsed bridge is the only way over it. Tree cover both sides, a rocky outcrop in the northwest.
OBJECTIVEPrimary: stop the convoy and recover the Asset alive, or the data package out of the cargo truck. Secondary: disable the lead SUV before it reaches the north edge.
WIN CONDITIONFull victory needs the Asset alive and out of the convoy's reach with the lead vehicle disabled. The desk ruled out of reach as north of the cut, and said so before the last two turns were played.
TURN CAPSix turns as printed. The convoy's own movement made it four.
The Ferghana road runs north through a valley that has exactly one usable feature, and everybody who works that ground knows what it is. A side channel comes down off the ridge and cuts the valley floor clean across, and the only thing over it is a bridge that has been collapsing for about thirty years without ever quite finishing the job. Vehicles that want to go north cross there or they do not go north. Slow Match set up on the west treeline the night before with four people and a shepherd's word that the convoy always stops at that crossing to look at it first.
The shepherd was right, which is the only piece of good fortune in this report that did not come out of a dice cup. He also cost them a motorcycle scout, though not in the way anybody planned. Dray had laid a handful of improvised caltrops across the deck in the first grey minutes, and the convoy's point rider went onto them at speed and came off his bike in front of a demolition charge he never saw and a Breacher lying in the trees six yards away. The rider got up, looked into the treeline where Ballast was, and did not see him. That is how the whole first half of this fight went: two forces sharing a hundred square yards of valley floor and neither of them able to find the other.
The one thing Slow Match did give away was a drone. Spool walked it up the road to look at the cargo truck and parked it a yard off the lead vehicle's windscreen, and the technical's gunner traversed onto it and put it in the dirt without breaking stride. The convoy learned that somebody was watching. It did not learn from where. Then it came up to the crossing and stopped exactly as advertised, with the armoured SUV sitting on the deck and its engine already sick from something that had nothing to do with anybody's rifle.
THEY KILLED THE ONLY ROAD OUT AND THEN HAD TO WALK DOWN IT
What happened next took about four seconds of valley time. Ballast blew the charge under the SUV's nose, which hurt it and knocked the point rider flat again. His shotgun then missed twice, including once on a rerolled die, which is the kind of thing that would matter in a different report. It did not matter here, because Dray put a burst into the same vehicle and the first round of it went exactly where a burst goes once every six times. The SUV died on the deck with its front wheels over the channel.
That is the secondary objective, banked, three turns early. It is also the moment Slow Match lost the mission they actually came to do, and nobody at the time saw it that way.
A wrecked armoured car on the only crossing does exactly what you would want it to do. Nothing behind it moves. The cargo truck came up and stacked its nose against the wreck and stayed there, and the technical stacked behind the truck, and a motorcycle scout who had abandoned the convoy specifically to come and hunt the ambushers rode ten yards up the road and found the road full of his own vehicles. The six turn clock stopped meaning anything. Nothing was leaving. The problem is that Slow Match were on the north bank and the man they were being paid for was in a truck cab on the south one, and the route between the two now had a burning wreck standing in it.
So they went across. Ballast first and alone, because he wears the heaviest plate on the squad, under a smoke cloud Spool put on the road with the last Failsafe token in the box. What nobody had priced is that smoke stops shooting and does not stop hands. Two Veterans and a dismounted rider were standing inside that cloud when the Breacher walked into it, and the protocol they run on reads Fight above Shoot, so all three of them dropped their rifles and went for him. He came out of it on the mortal wound track, locked in place, down to one action a turn, standing next to a cargo truck that turned out to be wired.
The rest was three people trying to reach one truck across a gap you have to roll for. Dray failed the crossing on a natural one and then made it. Spool made it first time and then killed a soldier with his hands, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write about a tech specialist who fights worse than the medic would. The rider swung at him, rolled a one, and Spool's return went through the man's vest on a six. That single exchange also deleted the second swing the rider had coming, and that second swing had already rolled a six of its own. Spool was one die away from being on the ground and instead he was standing over a body.
He was also the only person on that bank who could defuse a truck. He did it on the last turn, first attempt, and pulled the Asset out of the cab alive with his second action. Every objective the contract named was now sitting in the middle of the road.
And there it stayed. Ballast had already gone down. Dray, who was the man detailed to walk the Asset home, spent the final turn of the game trying to get free of a Veteran who had a fistful of his webbing, failed the first attempt on a natural one, fumbled it, and never got the second attempt off. The end phase found Slow Match with the Asset breathing, the lead vehicle dead, one operator out, two more pinned, and all of it standing on the wrong side of a channel they had spent the morning making impassable.
// THE TAPE
SETMotivation D8 1, PAID: they break at 50 percent, so four of seven. Heat 2, below the threshold that adds a drone. Sealed Climax Variable rolled face down at setup and not read until it fired.
T1Ambush Window fires before the convoy is on the table, so it bought position and nothing else. KETCH took the outcrop and searched it: D20 18, LOCAL CONTACT, SITREP 5, a straight yes. The convoy stops at the bridge every time, plus one free action on the truck driver when the truck gets there. DRAY searched the bridge marker: D20 4, TIRE SPIKES, laid on the deck. BALLAST mounted the deck on a natural 6 and set a demo charge on the southern lip. THREAT: the point motorcycle rode straight onto the caltrops. Bike wrecked, rider 1 FW, spikes spent on a motorcycle. His spot roll on BALLAST at 5.4in needed 5+ and came up 3.
T2Squad fired nothing. SPOOL walked the drone to one inch off the road and the technical's gunner killed it with a natural 6. Convoy group detection on BALLAST needed 5+, rolled 3, still blind. THREAT: the column halted on the crossing exactly as the shepherd said, SUV on the deck. EVENT card 1 of 6, MECHANICAL FAILURE, D6 2: the lead SUV loses 1 Durability to its own engine.
T3Squad takes priority for the first time. BALLAST detonates: SUV to 1 Durability, deck rifleman to 2 FW. His shotgun then rolls 3, 4, and an Edge reroll of 4. DRAY RAPID FIRE at 4+: first die natural 6, which strips 2 Durability, LEAD SUV DESTROYED ON THE SPAN. Second die natural 1, Fumble 4, Friendly Warning onto SPOOL. THREAT: the truck stacks nose to wreck, which counts as reaching the bridge, so the free action fires. KETCH spends the held Steady Aim on the driver at 2+ and rolls 4, 1 FW, the man keeps driving. Veterans bail out and shoot SPOOL, 5 hits and 3 misses. Escort clock hits 3 and the rear motorcycle abandons the convoy to hunt, then finds the road corked by its own vehicles. EVENT card 2, RADIO CHATTER: SPOOL at a net 2+ rolls a natural 6, ASSET CONFIRMED ALIVE.
T4KETCH first shot natural 1, Fumble 5, COMPROMISED GEAR, and his only field gear item is the smoke he was saving for the Asset's run home. Second shot 3, Edge reroll natural 6, Mortal Wound, deck rifleman out. DRAY moves to the lip and puts 1 FW on Veteran A. SPOOL smokes the road, last Failsafe spent to auto-pass it. BALLAST crosses on a 4 and touches the truck, which opens the CLIMAX VARIABLE: D6 2, RIGGED CARGO, OPINT 5+ to disarm, two attempts, and a detonation puts a Mortal Wound in the Asset, every operator inside 3in, and the data. THREAT: smoke blocks shooting and not melee, so all three men inside the cloud went hands on BALLAST at +2 each. He beat Veteran A. Veteran B put a Flesh Wound on him. The rider's armour check came up a natural 6, a Mortal Wound, clearing his flesh and dropping him to one action. GUTS 2+ rolled 2, held. EVENT card 3, CIVILIAN VEHICLE inbound from the north. Smoke gone in the End Phase.
T5BALLAST spends his one action on the rig needing a 6, rolls 5, Tempo reroll 3. One attempt left in the mission. KETCH: natural 1, Fumble 5 again, and he has no field gear left to lose so it does nothing at all; then a natural 6 that puts Veteran A on his mortal track. DRAY fails the crossing on a natural 1 (Edge refused, not spent), Fumble 3, Exposed, which does nothing to a man who was never in Stealth; second attempt 5, across; Push Through buys a third action and he wins the Fight 7 to 4. SPOOL crosses on a 5. THREAT: Veteran A beats BALLAST and the armour check is 2 against Heavy Plate, absorbed. Veteran B wins a tie against DRAY and rolls 1, absorbed. Then the rider swings at SPOOL and rolls a natural 1, which always loses; SPOOL wins on a raw 2 and his armour check is a natural 6, a Mortal Wound, rider out of action. The rider's second attack never happened, and its armour check had already rolled a 6. EVENT card 4, ESCORT REINFORCEMENT, a second technical drives on.
T6Last turn. Activations are atomic in solo, so the split-Spool plan was refused and the fallback ran. KETCH rolls 2 and 2 at Veteran A. SPOOL makes THE LAST DISARM at 3+ on a 5 and extracts the Asset with his second action. DRAY needs 4+ to break the Lock and hand-carry the Asset out: natural 1, Fumble 1, the tool seizes, no further progress on that task this activation. He never gets a second attempt. BALLAST's final action is a Fight and he rolls a natural 1; Veteran A's armour check is a natural 6, second Mortal Wound, BALLAST OUT OF ACTION. THREAT: three melee wins against Slow Match and all three armour checks came up 1, 2, 2, every one of them absorbed. One technical round landed for 2 FW on SPOOL. Two civilian-risk SITREPs both came up 1, no casualty, no Heat. EVENT card 5, DUST STORM, and the End Phase closed the mission.
END107 D6 on record. 13 natural ones and 13 natural sixes, exactly level. Six of the sixes belonged to the convoy.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED // Q. ADAIR
Start with the honest part. The dice were not kind and they were not cruel, they were level: 107 rolls, thirteen ones and thirteen sixes, which is about as close to the middle as a night gets. This one was not decided by luck. It was decided by geometry, and the geometry was decided in a single die.
Dray's natural 6 in turn three is the whole report. It killed the lead vehicle, banked the secondary three turns early, corked a road nobody could then leave, and turned a mission with a running clock into a static siege. It also, in the same instant, walled Slow Match off from the only objective that scored. There was no way to know that at the time and no way to avoid it either, because the SUV was on the bridge and the bridge was the only place on the table where an Armour 3 vehicle takes a shot at plus one. The right play and the losing play were the same play. That does not happen often and it is worth the price of admission.
The turn it swung, for the record, was not turn three. It was turn six. Spool made the last disarm at 3+ and pulled a live Asset out of a wired cab with the second action of his activation, which is a full victory sitting on the road in the open. Dray needed a 4 or better to peel one Veteran off his webbing and walk the man two inches north. He rolled a one, which cannot be bought with Edge, then fumbled into a result that says no further progress this activation, and the last turn of the game ended with him standing exactly where he started. Everything the contract asked for was recovered and none of it went home.
Balance read: this scenario is under-built for the table it prints. The convoy moves 8in a turn from the south edge of a 24in board, so an untouched column is off the north edge during turn four, which makes the printed six-turn clock two turns of theatre. And its signature rule, the Ambush Window, fires "before convoy movement" on turn one, when the convoy is still off the table and there is nothing to shoot. Neither of those is a small thing. As written, the fantasy the box art sells you, a squad opening up on a moving column at the choke, is not reachable through the sequence.
- One thing to try next time: deploy the convoy ON the table at the south edge before turn one and let the Ambush Window fire into it, then cut the clock to four turns and say so. That is the game the scenario is describing in its own opening paragraph, and it takes two sentences to write. Second option if you want the current shape: give the players a stated extraction edge. The scenario asks you to "recover the Asset" and never once says where to take him, which is exactly how a run ends with the objective alive, breathing, and standing in the enemy laager with nobody able to move him.
- The rule that decided the middle third: smoke blocks shooting and explicitly does not block movement or melee, and the solo AI Protocol reads Fight above Shoot. Put those two sentences together and a smoke screen thrown over occupied ground is an invitation, not a wall. Ballast walked into his own cloud with three armed men already inside it and they all put their rifles down and came at him. That is not a bug, it is the best emergent moment of the night, but it is the sort of thing a player only learns once.
- Kit and terrain: built the crossing out of a snapped length of cork tile for the deck and two offcuts of foamboard for the banks, then poured the channel in gloss medium tinted the colour of old tea. The wreck is a resin 6mm hull with the wheels cut off and pressed nose down into the tile so the whole span reads as blocked from any angle at the table. The single most useful piece of terrain I have made this year, because every player who walked past it understood the mission without being told.
- Rules gaps logged this run: fifteen. The big ones are that the module's vehicles carry Durability with no Armour Rating and no damage rule at all, the solo enemy tier table prints wound boxes and points and no attributes, weapons or ranges, the mounted weapon is written in "damage" which is not a currency this game uses, the module asks for four operators at 200 points when four of the six classes cost 400-plus between them, and the Fumble Table produced three dead results in one game because two of its six entries assume a weapon or a Stealth state the acting operator did not have.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTPARTIAL VICTORY on turn 6. Convoy stopped and never moved again, lead SUV destroyed on the span, Asset disarmed out of the truck alive and under Slow Match control, and stranded on the south bank when the End Phase closed. The printed outcome table has no row for this: it only knows a Partial as the lead vehicle escaping or the Asset dying, and neither happened.
CASUALTIES // SLOW MATCH1 of 4 Out of Action. BALLAST down on the last activation of the game, his second Mortal Wound coming off a natural 6 on an armour check. SPOOL finished on 3 Flesh Wounds. DRAY untouched behind Armour 2 and three absorbed armour checks. KETCH never left the outcrop and was never shot at.
CASUALTIES // CONVOY2 of 7 personnel Out of Action, the deck rifleman and the dismounted escort rider, so they never came close to the four that would have broken them. Lead SUV destroyed, one motorcycle wrecked on the caltrops, Veteran A left on his mortal track, Veteran B on 2 Flesh Wounds, the truck driver still behind the wheel on 1.
MVPSPOOL. The Tech Specialist threw the smoke that got the squad across, crossed on his first attempt, killed a Soldier in melee at Bad on the man's own natural 1 and in doing so cancelled the second attack that had already rolled the six that would have dropped him, then made the mission's last disarm at 3+ and lifted the Asset out of a wired cab. He fights worse than anybody on the roster and he did all of it.
EVERYTHING THE CONTRACT ASKED FOR WAS RECOVERED. NONE OF IT WENT HOME.