Sicario 1: Border Patrol (A Warfighter campaign)

 This is the first game in a Warfighter campaign set in the jungle in or near Mexico. The enemy is a drug cartel.

Our hero is a tough Mexican soldier called Torres. She represents me in the game. If she dies or is medically discharged, the campaign is over. I plan to include her faithful sidekick Diaz throughout the campaign. I've played a few one-offs with this pair and they are starting to develop characters in my head. Other soldiers will be added as needed to fill out the roster and provide more firepower.

 At the start of the campaign, I selected 6 missions from those available for the current location (jungle).  I arrange these in order from lowest resource point allocation to highest. This is the order the missions will be played in. Each campaign game will consist of one of the selected missions paired with a randomly chosen objective. For this campaign, I have deliberately chosen the lowest resource point missions to keep the games short and in the hope that I can motor through this thing. Let's see if my hero survives a full tour of duty.

The mission is to destroy a drug cartel convoy but we have to get there first. The mission is three locations and 7 turns long. We start on the mission card and have 2 turns to destroy 4 vehicles once we activate the objective card. Getting to the contact point will be easy, because it is only 1 move away if we want to stand off and shoot, or 2 moves if we choose to get up close and personal in the objective card. The only problem is that they will be shooting back. This is a mission where I could wish I had extra soldiers along to provide more firepower. With 2 soldiers, I get a maximum of two shots off each turn unless I have cards that give me free shots.

I draw Torres' action cards and get 1 location card. Lucky. I've become used to getting none on the first draw. Torres finds it hard to leave the cantina, but once she is moving, woe betide those that get in her way. I play the location card High Ground and draw for hostiles. There's hired muscle up here, but we blundered into him because Torres got lost (event card) and we lost time (one turn). The hired muscle pops up in our jump-off point but the gameboard makes it hard to set him up there.

Diaz opens fire and downs the guy. The team moves into the High Ground. Luckily, the hired muscle was alone and no reinforcements turn up. Taking a punt on remaining undisturbed while we prepare to hit the convoy, the team rests up quickly on the next turn and Torres draws action cards with a view to getting the right ones in hand for the assault.

Ok, let's go. Torres gives the command to close in so that chances of hitting the objective are increased. Using action cards that give the team free moves, they close quickly and open fire. The convoy is led by hired muscle and a technical. Torres lobs a grenade in there and the technical just becomes another hunk of junk. She then shoots up one of the cars. Diaz focuses on the cars and soon there are two burning wrecks. Unfortunately, Diaz blew an entire magazine on it and has to pause to reload.

This gives the cartel leader (a reinforcement) a chance to leap out of his car and join the fray. He and the hired muscle open up and wound both Torres and Diaz. The pair respond by blasting the remaining vehicles with everything they have. With all four targets now smoking wrecks, Torres and Diaz beat a hasty retreat. Score one for the good guys.

The objective was in location 3 so Torres scored 3 victory points. That is still no effect on the cartel, but it is early days yet. A few more like this and she could have a huge effect on the cartel's operation in this area.

Torres also earns 3 mission points for the objective being in location 3. These can only be used to buy skill cards. She already comes with two skills: Fallen and Marksman. It will be very useful to have more. I opt to buy the Good to Go card which gives Torres experience points at start. These will come in handy in my experience. Good to Go costs 2 points, so I have 1 point to save for later.

Finally, I need to roll for a mission adjustment. Each success results in the cartel tightening up its security and will make the next mission a bit more difficult. I score a 10 meaning that I need to add 3 to the next objective's hostile value. This is quite a lot of extra firepower for it to have and I'm going to need to take that into account when equipping my team next mission.