Having clawed my way up to the endgame in two game years, and starting to hit the "grind" wall (clicking through scads of enemy contacts, starting the fuel capsule grind, waiting for who knows how long for the magical SGC to show up, etc.) I finally decided to "pause" the campaign and go back through and explore the new early game.
New Campaign, Veteran level, plopping the first hideout ("Bare Base") down in southern Greece for coverage of Europe and N. Africa. Set up the base for defense and start checking out the new gals. All are sporting "tribal wear", interesting. I laugh out loud at the "Escaped Lunatics" in the Monthly Report.
Minimal gear, cool. 6 in a crew? Fun! not too hard to equip them, anyone with 60 + firing gets a musket. Weaklings get rapiers and cutlasses, some of the stronger gals get sabers and extra gear. I make up some canteens, but realize they take a lot of space, we'll see. Order 4 more hands, and a bit more equipment. Survival comes in, while we are hearing quite a few rumors of enemy activity in Siberia and Asia. Put the runts to making more gear, javelins at the top to give some of those gals something to toss. The braintrust duo figures Hunting Bows might be a way to get more to eat as things seem kinda meager around here. New hands arrive sporting some better gear (adventurer duds) so we spread that around a bit.
Then we get confirmed word of a village of nasty Ratmen in N. America. Time to go investigate and see if something interesting can be turned up there.
The immediate impression of the maze of hovels, makes us feel like our crew is a bit sparse for this investigation but we spread out taking cover by fences and walls, hoping for the best. Immediate contact with two rats that surprise us. One gets taken out by reaction fire (the leader, no less, with a hipshot from a musket!) but the other gets real unfriendly-like a throws a knife that sticks in my gal!! Patching up her four gaping wounds becomes the first major challenge. Fortunately, one gal has a bandage and the little rat had another. The joy of looting the enemy shoots dopamine into my cortex as I continue the operation. So many of the gals are weak and out of shape, that its challenging to maintain a good pace while working through the warren! My cannoneer, makes her way forward, and gets shot at from all sides. She takes out one brave rodent that approached by beating it senseless with the cannon then ducks back into cover. A horrible growling roar however, tears in from behind her and her anguished scream is the last we heard of her.
This is where I left my first session of the new campaign, and I have to say, it feels tremendous!! The early game innovations, Dioxine, are terrific! The smaller set of equipment and trappings is great, as is the sheer joy of being able to loot an Ol' Revolver and know you just got a serious upgrade in fire power! What a great experience! Thanks!
