Combat Zone Chronicles PF: It's a Jungle Out There

In the Urban Jungle you can head over to the Barf for a burger. In the real jungle, the swamp will eat your boot.

Most games of Combat Zone are situated in urban areas, where buildings and streets make up the battle zones. But why not let your brave warriors enjoy a change of environment and take a deep breath of fresh air? Fighting in the jungle can also be both interesting and challenging.

First you'll need enough jungle scenery. Although this might seem to be a challenge, nothing is further form the truth.

A lot of stores, especially those that sell home-decorations (like the Xenos and Blokker in the Netherlands), sell a lot plastic plants that are perfect for building a suitable jungle.

If they look ok, buy them. It doesn't matter if they are foliage on vines or small clumps, all are useful. Most are made of small clumps that 'peg' together, so you can easily strip a large plant or vine into dozens of smaller plants. The key is variety. Make sure that you have got bigger and higher plants as well as small bush-like ones.

Make a number of irregularly-shaped bases, and glue your plants onto them. The only thing you have to do next is make some bases and glue the plants onto them. I used a glue-gun. To cover up the glue and to tidy up the bases a bit I used clumps of lichen.

When gluing the plants onto the base I placed them into clumps. First of all this give some stability to the ones that stick out and second of all it makes moving miniatures through the jungle that much easier. Clumps can make the jungle look dense, while leaving flat spaces for figures to stand.

Add some flocking and bushes to a clear plastic base.

Drop in an Alligator for flavour If you want, you can give some or all of the plants a drybrush with a green paint for some extra colour-variation, but this is not necessary.

There are lots of other features you can make for your jungle: swamps, rocky outcrop, buildings, lost temples, ancient idols, and so on. Put them on a jungle base and add some plants to them and they’ll nicely fit in.

Having made enough jungle for my table I thought a lot about rules which would give the games a good jungle-feeling. After playtesting and more thought I came up with the following rules:

Extra Cover: Since the table is covered with jungle, troopers will always get +1 Toughness against shooting (except in designated areas such as roads, villages and clearings). This bonus is accumulative with other terrain bonusses. So a trooper hiding behind a bush will get +1 cover for the bush and also +1 cover for being in the jungle.

Difficult Movement: Moving through the jungle can be quite a challenge, especially for troopers that carry a lot of equipment. Troopers wearing flak armour or a combat suit get -1 cm on their movement value (this is accumulative with the -1 movement penalty for wearing a combat suit).

Jungle scenery: these pieces of terrain count as dense jungle. Vision into, out of and in them is limited to 3 cm dense jungle.

Jungle Hazards: When fighting in a jungle the human enemy is not the only enemy. The jungle is a dangerous place and most often more troopers will succumb to the jungle than be taken out by the enemy.

Fortunately for the players at least some protection for these hazards can be hired. For every 300 points a player may hire a local scout. Every scout has to be attached to a unit. A unit may only contain one scout.

Local Scout

Equipment: machete (counts as sword), autoshotgun or assault rifle, primitive armour, veteran (may be given a comm. unit for the normal points)
Points: 31 with an autoshotgun or 39 with an assault rifle

Special Rules

Bushcraft: +1 on jungle effect roll, +1/-1 (so the result will be modified towards the ‘7’) on jungle effects; members in a unit that are within 15cm can benefit from these bonuses.
Hired Gun: if the scout becomes the last living member of a unit, he most make a reaction test. If the test is successful the scout will keep on fighting, otherwise he will vanish into the jungle.

At start of the reaction test phase roll a d6 for every squad. On 5+ (6+ if accompanied by scout) the squad has suffered from a jungle hazard. Randomize for the target within the unit and then roll 2d6 for the effect and consult the following table.

Effect

2 Pit Trap: The trooper falls into a pit and is instantly killed..

3 Boa Constrictor attack. A round of close combat follows. The boa throws 2d6 to hit and when winning 2d6 to wound.

4 Killer Bee Attack: Throw 3d6, hits are scored on 4+. 2d4, ignore armour.

5 Distraction: Rustling leaves attract the troopers attention and he loses 1 AP for this turn.

6 Distraction: Did he really see something in the corner of his eye, or was it the jungle playing tricks on him? The trooper loses 1 AP for this turn.

7 Distraction: Screeching monkeys cause the trooper to take cover and scan his surroundings. The trooper is ‘kept down’ and loses 2 AP for this turn.

8 Distraction: Suddenly a flock of birds takes off under a lot of noise. The trooper drops down (he is ‘kept down’) and concentrates on spotting ‘the enemy’. He loses 2 AP.

9 Poisonous plants: Character has wandered into a patch of toxic greenery. Place a 5cm template on the tester. Whoever is fully covered by the template loses half his AP rounded up. When partially covered roll a d6, on a 4+ the model is safe.

10 Monkey attack: A group of monkeys decide to throw rocks at the unlucky victim. Their RoF is 3d6. They hit on 5+ and are at Strength 2d4.

11 Wart Hog attack: It attacks with 2d8 and also wounds with 2d8.

12 Quicksand: Place a 5cm template on the target. Every model hit by the template has been sucked into the quicksand. Through a d6 for every model. The target needs a 6+ to escape, the other models a 4+. When successful place them on the edge of the template (players choice). If unsuccessful the models may try to escape in their next activation. For every turn in the quicksand a model receives -1 on the roll. When it’s impossible to make a succesfull roll, the trooper has drowned.