The terraces south of the old city were shrimp ponds before the sea came up through the sluices and stayed. They are still laid out in a grid, still walled by their dikes, and the water standing in them now is warm and shin deep and the colour of weak tea. Nothing is farmed there. Nothing needs to be. The Coalition holds the pumping line north of the causeway, the salvage consortiums hold the paperwork that says who owns whatever falls into the ponds, and some weeks before this a good deal fell into the ponds.
Three engagements worth of machine wreckage, in three heaps, sitting along the old service road that runs east to west across the middle of the grid. Both sides came for the same reason. Under the salvage convention it is not the side that wins the ground that strips the pile. It is the side with more claims standing near it when the assessors walk the line.
That is worth saying plainly, because it is why the afternoon went the way it did. Nobody out there was asked to win a fight. They were asked to be present.
The Coalition came from the south with five machines and a doctrine built for information. A Heavy Platform called THE CENSUS carrying the command core, a long gun called METER sitting behind a collapsed feed silo, two blocks of drone infantry, and a skirmisher team called THE INDEX. Close order, tight formation, and a signal suite that can reach into an enemy machine and tell it to do something stupid.
The consortium came from the north with seven, and the seven were junk. Four bio-mechanical scrappers built on animal chassis, a skirmisher team running the relay, a scout swarm, and one Strike Vehicle called THE BREAKER that was the only thing in their inventory that could actually hurt the Coalition line. Loose order, spread wide, and a doctrine that mostly consists of buying somebody a better antenna.
Both commanders looked at the water, counted the rings, and did the same arithmetic. Both of them parked.
The first round of a five round battle passed with two armies eighteen inches apart and not one voluntary movement order issued on either side. The Coalition sat in a block on the southern dike. The consortium sat in a line on the northern one. Both of them sat exactly where the scoring ring begins and the wreckage glow ends, in the four inch band where you count for the assessors and the wreck does not cook you. The only shooting was long and desultory. The score after round one was two to one to the consortium, because seven bodies beat five bodies, and both commanders knew it.
The Coalition broke the standoff with a firmware worm, which is the correct play and also the play that started killing consortium machines for free.
The scrappers run Autonomous. Every one of them checks at the start of its activation for a friendly command chassis within four inches, and without one it goes berserk and runs at the nearest enemy. A worm on a machine that is already Autonomous does not add the weakness. It skips straight to the outcome. The Coalition put one on a scrapper called SHIM, and SHIM ran twelve inches south out of the line, alone, into open water, and stopped four and a half inches in front of a Heavy Platform.
Then it could not come back, because the same rule that keeps a scrapper in line also keeps it running once it is out. SHIM had nobody within four inches any more. It was going to charge every round until it died.
The consortium answered with two inches of antenna. Open Source doctrine has a cheap broadcast that hangs a hero rating on a friendly machine, and a hero rating is a command chassis, and a machine that is its own command chassis passes its own leash check. For two signal they switched the Autonomous weakness off. It is a clean piece of rules reading and the desk gave it to them. It did not save SHIM, because a worm grants berserk directly and the antenna does not remove it, but it is going in the notes.
Round two took THE BREAKER out of the game before it ever charged. METER put two into it at long range and then THE INDEX, shooting at six or better through mangrove cover, rolled a natural six. Deadly Shots pays two strain for a natural six and ignores the cap that protects a formation from massed fire, and THE BREAKER is Fragile, which means it breaks at half its integrity. Seven strain. It broke in the second shooting phase of the battle without firing a shot or closing a yard. The consortium's only real weapon died to a shot that needed sixes.
SHIM tried to walk home and learned what disengagement costs here. Two Coalition units had closed into contact with it during the movement phase, and pulling out of contact hands every one of them a free attack at half strikes. Eleven dice came down at two or better. Four of them were natural ones. SHIM survived that on ten of thirteen, walked back into the wreckage glow, and died in the scrap phase to the same pile it had been standing near all game.
So the Coalition had killed two machines in two rounds, taken nothing in return, and was still losing four to two, and this is where the shape of the thing becomes clear. Breaking THE BREAKER dropped the consortium's count at the centre pile from six to five. The Coalition had four there. They lost that marker by one body while winning the war by two machines.
The consortium commander then did the best thing anybody did all afternoon. He built a cage.
Friendly footprints are impassable in this game, and a compulsory move that cannot be completed simply stops, and takes no penalty for stopping. So he parked a scrapper a tenth of an inch off his commander's south face, a scout swarm a tenth off its east face, another scrapper a tenth off its west face, and an impassable pump house beyond that. When the Coalition worm came in on round three, the commander of the consortium went berserk, looked for the nearest enemy, found every closing line blocked by its own army, and advanced one tenth of an inch. It kept both its markers. It took no damage. The worm cost two signal and bought fourteen hundredths of an inch.
The Coalition spent that round discovering it could not walk anywhere. Its formations are five inches wide. The gap between the west mangrove and the pump house is four inches. The gap between the pump house and the aerator field is two. The only ways north were through standing water, and a close order machine that moves through the wet is distracted, and a distracted machine may not finish its move in contact with anything. The Coalition army was not beaten to the centre. It was walled out of half the board by two pieces of scenery both sides had agreed on before deployment.
The cage had one wall missing and the Coalition found it on round four. The consortium had used the aerator field as the south face of the box, and the aerator field is perilous, not impassable. Perilous is not a wall. It is a toll. A worm went into HOOK, the southernmost scrapper, and HOOK charged eight and a half inches straight through the spars, paid five attacks for the crossing, took one hit, and came out the other side in Coalition water.
And it kept scoring. That is the finding this battle exists to produce. On a thirty six inch table a twelve inch scoring ring reaches from six inches to thirty, which is two thirds of the board's depth. HOOK was dragged eight and a half inches out of the position it had been holding and finished one and nine tenths of an inch from the centre pile and eight and a bit from the east one. It was still holding both. The entire Null Signal doctrine is built on moving enemy machines around, and there is nowhere on this table you can move a machine to that stops it counting.
What the charge did cost was command. Two overlapping command auras had been holding HOOK at fifteen integrity, and eight and a half inches took it out of both of them at once. It landed on thirteen, and a Coalition drone block was already walking to meet it.
They fought each other to a standstill in the mud, which nobody expected, because a loose order scrapper hits close order on five or better and gets hit back on two. HOOK threw ten dice at five and landed six. TALLY TWO threw ten dice at two and rolled five natural ones. Both of them ended the round on nine, and the centre pile tied at five bodies each for the second round running.
The last round was decided by two rolls and neither of them was the one the Coalition planned. Their gun and their skirmishers threw ten dice at the consortium commander looking for the twelve strain that would have swung the east pile, and got eight, which is a very good roll and four short. Then THE LEDGER, the consortium's relay, put six dice into METER and rolled three natural sixes. METER broke in the shooting phase and took the Coalition's only claim on the east pile off the board with it.
The consortium spent its whole movement phase walking two command auras down to HOOK so it could disengage at fifteen integrity instead of thirteen, and it worked to the exact width of one die. Five punishment dice at two or better, needing all five. The first one was a natural one. HOOK walked out on fourteen of fifteen, stood in the ring for the count, and held both piles.
Then the assessors counted, and the wreckage glow came up in the scrap phase, and HOOK went from fourteen to fifteen and came apart in the water it had spent the whole afternoon crossing. It held the pile until the counting was done and then the pile took it.
Eight to five. The consortium lost three machines out of seven and eight hundred and seventy five points. The Coalition lost one gun and four hundred. Nothing in the salvage convention has a column for that.
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED
The dice were not the story. 120 attack dice across five rounds, 18 natural sixes and 20 natural ones against an expected 20 and 20. That is as flat as a set gets. Neither commander has anywhere to hide. This battle was decided by measurement, and specifically by four numbers.
A twelve inch scoring ring on a thirty six inch table is two thirds of the board. Wreckage Rights puts its markers on the centreline and scores everything within twelve inches, which means the band runs from six inches to thirty out of a possible thirty six. In round four a machine was dragged eight and a half inches out of the position it was holding, through a perilous field, and finished still counting for both of the markers it had left. That is the whole doctrine of Null Signal, an entire electronic warfare suite built around making enemy units move, and there is no distance on this table you can move a unit that stops it scoring. Three Berserk orders went out over five rounds and between them they produced four tenths of an inch of movement. Try this scenario at an eight inch ring before you try anything else.
Wreckage Rights counts bodies, not points. Both lists were built to exactly 2,000 and one of them had seven units and the other five. That is a 3-0 sweep at every marker on turn one before a die is rolled, and the Coalition never recovered from it. Killing THE BREAKER in round two took the consortium's centre count from six to five and the Coalition still lost the marker by one body. The final scoreline is the honest summary: the army that lost three of seven machines and 875 points beat the army that lost one and 400, eight to five. If you are running this scenario, agree a unit count as well as a points limit, or accept that the list is the scenario.
The four inch lane. The recommended Wide footprint is five inches across. On this table the west mangrove and the pump house left a four inch gap and the pump house and the aerator field left a two inch gap, and the Coalition's close order line could not use either. Its only route into the northern half of the board was through standing water, and rough terrain gives close and free order units Distracted, and a Distracted unit may not end a move in contact. The Coalition was not outfought out of the centre. It was walled out by two pieces of scenery both players had agreed on before deployment and neither had measured. This is the second time the desk has hit footprint geometry in Iron Line and the second time it decided a game. Leave every gap you intend to be passable at six inches or agree up front that it is not.
Perilous is a toll, not a wall. The consortium's cage was excellent and it had one soft face. It used the aerator field as HOOK's south wall, and perilous terrain does not stop anything, it just charges. HOOK went through it for five attacks and took one hit. Everything else in that cage was impassable or a friendly footprint and held perfectly for three rounds. Build cages out of things that cannot be walked through.
The best play either commander made was two signal on a hero pulse. Autonomous fires only if a unit has no Chassis keyword and no friendly Chassis within four inches, and Open Source's cheapest broadcast grants Hero, which is typed Chassis. So a two signal pulse makes a scrapper its own officer and switches the leash off for a round with no officer moving. The desk allowed it, because the Commander entry already says a unit's own Hero satisfies the check. It does not remove a Berserk that a Firmware Worm grants directly, which is the correct split. It does mean the Autonomous weakness, worth minus 25 points and minus 50 on a doubled unit, can be switched off for two signal a round by the army that took it.
The turn it swung, and it was not a turn. The score after every round was 1-2, 1-2, 1-1, 1-1, 1-2. Nothing swung. Both commanders found their best position in the first round and spent four more rounds failing to dislodge each other from it, which is a real result and worth printing rather than dressing up. The two rounds that tied at the centre marker were the closest the Coalition came, and both of those ties were produced by the Coalition breaking or displacing a unit that then turned out to still be inside the ring.
Two things the rules should say out loud. First, chapter 16 borrows line of sight from the shooting rules and never says whether it also borrows shooting's front edge range measurement. The two readings differed by 1.6 inches on the most important cast of round three and the desk had to pick one. Second, Salvage pays two signal per unit removed into a pool capped at ten, and in round two it paid the Coalition four signal it could not hold and then discarded the four it was owed the following round. Breaking two machines made the reward for breaking machines worth nothing.
A desk error, printed because it happened. On round four the desk placed both Coalition drone blocks overlapping THE STACK, which is impassable, and one of those illegal placements handed TALLY TWO a charge it was 0.225 inches short of making. The PRC commander caught it at the top of round five. The dice were rolled in good faith and were not un-rolled; both units were corrected to their nearest legal footprints for the final round, which closed the Coalition's only route to the east marker. Replayed strictly legally the Coalition finishes on five instead of six and the consortium still wins, so the error cost a point and not the match. The lesson for anybody running this at home is the one the movement chapter does not print: check the end footprint against every impassable piece before you spend the points, because an affordable move and a legal move are not the same thing.
One thing to try next time. Run Wreckage Rights again with an eight inch scoring ring and a unit count agreed alongside the points, and put the flank markers ten inches out instead of fifteen. As printed the flank markers sit three inches from the table edge, so roughly forty percent of their scoring ring is off the board, which quietly makes them cheaper to hold than the centre one. The consortium held the east pile for five straight rounds with two machines and never had to defend it.
On the table. The terrace grid is the cheapest board in this column so far. A sheet of brown parcel paper, a bottle of gloss varnish poured into rectangles for the ponds, and lolly sticks laid end to end for the dikes. The pump house is a shoebox. The aerator field is a handful of cocktail umbrellas with the paper stripped off, standing in blobs of hot glue, and it looked better than anything else on the board. The three wreck piles are just the models that died in the last game, left where they fell.