York Inquisitor Day 7th November

[Myriad]

A report on the inquisitor 2 playtests in York, actually 4 seperate scenarios.


The first game saw 4 teams of 2 organised into two teams.  Inquisitor Hanja and Ungen Batu, along with Evandon and Ylla, had been involved in an operation that had grown well out of hand.  Inquisitor lord Elbo Smogg and brother Caynen, along with Inquisitor Khaled and his assassin Vek had been investigating.  However, exterminatus had been ordered and with only 6 spaces in the shuttle sent to rescue them, competition was inevitable.
With Khaled (the opposing pilot), swiftly accessing the shuttle's controls, Evandon was confronted upon approaching the shuttle by a red-robed figure brandishing a bolt pistol, and quickly dived into cover. 

Outnumbered for the moment, Evandon and Ylla manage to persuade Smog to let them board the shuttle.
In danger of being left behind, inquisitor Hanja used the psychic shriek ability, stunning everyone nearby (including Ungen Batu, unfortunately), and charged onto the shuttle, brabdishing his force staff. 

Attempting to repeat the feat, however, he was stunned by the psychic backlash and fell backwards out of the shuttle as it took off, the robed figure of brother Caynen just making the ramp, leaving Hanja and Ungen stranded and Evandon and Ylla with some explaining to do!
Design notes : the addition of the persuade power really aided the narrative flow of this game, giving Evandon & Ylla options to avoid a firefight. 
We also got a first look at the new psychic rules, which flowed pretty well and had a real impact on the game - the psychic shriek power proved to be really nasty, butt certainly added to the drama.  I had thought that rolling D10s for control dice and suffering a mishap on a double wouldn't happen, but it came up at the second attempt.

The second scenario saw Khaled and his minion Valdez, complete with two cyber-mastiffs, trying to prevent Magos Lan Strumm from recovering a piece of intelligence from the person of a sleeping knarloc. Quickly adopting positions overlooking the sleeping creature, they waited for events to develop.
That things were slow to develop were partly due to the servitor rules - following a string of failed sagacity tests (2 out of 4, but on 78 since they test on double sagacity to understand orders), the magos's servitor Spare Parts was having trouble walking from A to B, while the magos himself was attempting to sneak round behind the sleeping knarloc. 

Eventually spotting the servitor stumbling into view, they opened fire, but a wayward aim saw the power generator exploding, waking the knarloc and plunging the area into darkness.
The knarloc responded by taking cover in a building where the magos was lurking, and he proceeded to lay into it with his daemon blade, eventually crippling a leg. 

Fortuitously Khaled managed to weave his way through the darkness just in time to empty both stubbers into Lann Strumm, throwing him backwards and killing one of his own cyber-mastiffs.  Defaulted to combat settings, the servitor arrived on the scene, only to collapse from blood loss!
With Lan Strumm failing his willpower test and becoming possessed by his daemon weapon, the mission was forgotten and the knarloc crawled to safety.

Rules issues :  Firing two stubbers, Khaled nearly ran out of ammo, and the new salvo rules certainly expedited that process. 
The servitor froze up, but this was as much to do with poor luck as the rules themselves.
The daemon weapon rules got a workout.  The mystic sword granting the ability to cast psychic powers tend to have few control dice, since their willpower starts low and raises through the game.  The 'thirsty heart' power meant that in the course of the combat with the knarloc Lan's WS rose to over 100, but they're meant to be powerful I guess.




In the next game Khaled found himself hunting the Kroot, Som (a neutral for this scenario), under the watchful eye of a cat, cyber-familiar to inquisitor lord Elbo Smogg, who wished to apprehend the assassin Vek.

Som, getting the drop on the assassin Vek, leapt out and charged with an animal cry, but quickly found himself overmatched despite raining down blows.  Dodging backwards, he was able to break away and run for cover behind the valkyrie.

Meanwhile, Khaled had spotted the figure of brother Caynen and send Valdez and her dogs to question him as to the location of the kroot. 

Vek, meanwhile, was distracted from his pursuit of Som by another redemptionist, brother Jools.  Taking aim, he felled his target in one shot, but drew the attention of inquisitor lord Elbo Smogg, who in turn stunned him using the choke power.  Running accross the rooftops, Khaled arrived in time to intervene and, despite briefly being persuaded by Elbo, opened fire.
His ire raised, Elbo resolved also to choke Khaled, and rolled four actions.  The intensity of his actions drew the attention of the warp, and with a piteous mew his cat slid from the Valkyrie.  Detecting Elbo's intent, Khaled drew upon his own psychic powers, three times managing to nullify the attacks before finally succumbing.
Vek was showing signs of recovery, however, and at the scenario's conclusion both fugitives remained at large.

Rules Issues : The psychic duel between Smogg and Khaled, as well as highly dramatic, gave a thorough work out to the psychic rules, including detection and nullification, and they came out of it pretty well.  The 'familiar' rules also got worked pretty well.
Another issue arose with the combat between Som and Vek - you can now dodge out of reach of an opponent in combat and get charged again.  While there's a slightly uncomfortable room for ambiguity, in general this imrpoved the flow of the game, with the two combatants moving a fair distance before Som finally made his escape.

Both the previous two scenarios took some time, and we managed to play just one more quick game, with Evandon & Ylla, Khaled & Vek and Hanja & Ungen all trying to recover a book from the redemptionist archivist, brother Jools.  Seeing the imposing Vek, Ylla took careful aim with he needle pistol and shot him in the chest before dashing behind the cover of the building, only for the shot to deflect off Vek's ballistic weave! 
Seeing Ylla in danger the normally innocuous Evandon pulled both pistols and opened fire, hitting Vek in the leg with both guns and crippling him. 

As Khaled became involved Evandon calmy readjusted his aim and shot him in the groin at 30 yards, stunning him in turn.  All the shooting caused brother Jools to make a break for safety, narrowly dodging the swinging flail of Ungen.  A shot from Evandon went wide, but sent jools diving for cover, at which point Ylla ran up, wrested the book from the helpless priests hands, and sprinted off.

Rules points : Again somebody dodged out of combat.  The psychic mishap rules were also in action again, with an early attempt by Khaled to scan the area resulting in him being stunned for a turn.  In general they seem to crop up often enough without being prohibitive.  The new rules for needle pistols came up, in that robes can easily protect from the toxin, although since the toxin is more powerful in itself this could not be a huge issue.

[Kaled]

Nice work in posting this. I have a few pictures on my camera (I'll upload them later in the week), but as usual I forgot about my camera in the heat of battle - I don't know how many Adlan took with it though.

Also, there's no 'h' in Kaled...

[Myriad]

My humblest apologies - I can't spell Knarloc either.
Nicholas has been correcting small details ever since.