Tell Ashkur · Desert dig · 18:40 local · dusk

Operation First Light

For twenty thousand years the Fraternity of the Rose Cross has kept its silence and watched the Guardians the Anunnaki left behind to keep us small. Nibiru is on its way back. Tonight the Invisible College shows itself.

Objective

The Guardians are here to feed on the aura of the people at the dig. Neutralise every Guardian, and get the civilians to the dropship before they are seized and drained.

• Take Elohim and Giants alive where you can: a living one is worth three dead ones to the Order's scholars.
• Destroy the Djinn. When the last one falls, its thralls drop where they stand, free.
• Leave the amrita font in the Guardians' lair intact. A broken font explodes, and its amrita is lost.

Ground

How to fight

• Click an operative, then click a tile to move. Teal tiles leave enough AP for a snap shot; amber tiles do not.
• Pick a shot (keys 1 to 3), then click a Guardian. The percentage is what the ballistics really give you.
• AP you do not spend lets an operative fire on Guardians that move in sight. They do the same to you.
• A seized civilian is drained on that Guardian's next turn. Kill it, stun it or draw it away first.
• Stairs and ramps join the storeys and are marked in gold. Click a flight of stairs and the operative climbs it; at its foot or its head, the Go upstairs and Go downstairs buttons (U, J) do the same. The view follows whoever is selected; the arrows beside End turn (Page Up, Page Down) look at another storey.
• Right-click turns an operative to face a tile. Drag pans the camera, right-drag rotates, the wheel zooms.

Field manual

Rules of engagement

Controls

Click

Select an operative, move, or confirm a target

Right-click

Turn to face a tile (1 AP per 45°), or cancel targeting

1 to 9

Shots, Arc Lance, grenade, medkit

K · R

Kneel or stand · reload

Tab · F

Next operative · centre the camera on them

Page Up · Page Down

Look one storey higher or lower (also the [ and ] keys)

Enter · Esc

End turn · cancel

Drag · right-drag · wheel

Pan, rotate and zoom (also WASD, Q/E, + and -)

What decides a fight

• Action points. Everything costs AP. Shots cost a share of an operative's maximum, so a fast operative shoots no more often than a slow one, but moves further.
• Ballistics. Every round is traced through the air. Walls, low cover and bodies stop it, including your own people. Kneeling steadies the aim and makes you a smaller target.
• Facing. Operatives see a wide cone ahead, not behind. Armour is thickest in front and thinnest at the rear, for both sides.
• Reaction fire. Whoever has the better reactions and more AP left shoots first when someone moves in view.
• Morale. Deaths and wounds wear it down. Below half, an operative may freeze, run or fire wildly.
• Light. A squad lands by day, at dusk or at night, as the hour is at that place. At dusk a soldier with neither a torch nor night goggles sees a fifth less far. At night a soldier sees 7 tiles, 11 with a torch on the belt or in the pack, and nearly as far as by day with night goggles, which are worn on the head in place of a helm. Street lamps and amrita fonts show whatever stands near them, from any distance. The Guardians need no light. The armoury sells both.
• Kit. What is in a hand is used at once. Taking a grenade, a medkit or a magazine from the belt costs 4 AP more, from the pack 8; the action bar shows the full price. The Arc Lance stays in the left hand once drawn.
• Taking them alive. Wound a Guardian, then strike it with the Arc Lance from beside it, on the same storey: when its stun passes its remaining health it drops, alive. A Hush Grenade does the same from a distance. Win the site and it comes home; a Binding Vault keeps it alive for the scholars. A Djinn has no body to stun: only a Seal Helm can bind one.
• Smoke and mines. A Shroud Canister lays three turns of smoke that nobody sees through, in either direction. A Sentinel Mine is laid where the soldier stands and goes off when a Guardian comes within a step of it.
• Rockets. A launcher is carried in the left hand or the pack, and rockets on the belt or in the pack. A rocket flies straight at a tile the squad can see, up to some 24 tiles off, and bursts on the first thing in its way: walls come down with it. The Pilum is bought; the Ballista and the Sunfire, each harder than the last, are built in the Workshop once the scholars have worked them out. All three fire the same rockets.
• Dust. A rocket's blast raises dust over the ground it strikes, for two turns. It is thinner than smoke: it hides what lies more than two tiles deep in it or beyond it, and whoever stands in it from more than six tiles away, for both sides. A rocket can be sent at a Guardian on a roof or in the air: raise the storey shown and click it.
• Guided rockets. A Wyvern launcher flies its rocket along a path you lay out: click up to eight points, one after another, each in a straight line from the one before. It can turn corners, go in at a window and, from the foot of a flight of stairs, up to the storey above. Click the last point again (or press Enter) to send it; right-click takes a leg back. The Helios launchers are guided the same way and fire a warhead built in the Workshop: its blast is very wide, and one from a Helios II ends a Titan.
• Playing together. Where the game runs on a server of its own, two players can share a field: one opens a room and gives the other its code. Each commands six soldiers; the ground, the Guardians and the civilians are doubled. Both move during the same turn, in any order, and the turn passes to the Guardians when both have ended it. The other player's soldiers are named in blue.
• Mastiff. A tracked gun driven by remote. It takes a seat in the dropship, moves and shoots like a soldier, and cannot be frightened or whispered to.
• A bound Djinn. Once a Seal Helm has bound it, it is yours: from your next turn you select it and move it like one of the squad. It passes through walls and floors, and its Lash strikes a Guardian the squad can see within 10 tiles, with no line of fire needed. It has no weapon and no cover against what shoots back. Keep it alive and it comes home as a captive.
• Kestrel. A drone flown on a wire to any tile the squad has already seen, with no line of sight needed. One flight, a very large blast.
• Titans. They come only when the threat is high. Bronze turns bullets from the front: go for the flanks and the rear, use grenades, or bring Lumen Rifles from the Workshop, whose light goes through armour.
• Buildings. A shut door hides the room behind it; walk through and it opens, for 2 AP, and stays open. Bullets and grenades break doors, walls and window glass. A window is a sill to shoot over: its glass stops neither a look nor a shot.
• Height. Storeys are joined by stairs and ramps. Floors stop bullets; a parapet or a window sill is cover. An Elohim flies wherever there is open air, a Djinn passes through floors, a Giant never leaves the ground.
• Capture. The Binder's Arc Lance builds stun. A Guardian drops alive once stun reaches its remaining health, so wound a Giant first.

Guardians

• Dark Elohim. Winged, accurate, flies over low cover. Break its line of sight.
• Giant. Walks through walls and throws stone. Its back is its weak point.
• Djinn. Bodiless, hides inside walls and whispers at whoever the others can see. Bullets do little; the Arc Lance destroys it.
• Thrall. A human the Djinn have hollowed out, armed with a rifle. Killing one earns little. Stun it, or destroy every Djinn, and it goes free.

Civilians and amrita

• Civilians. Guardians sense their aura and hunt them. Once an operative sees a civilian, they run for the dropship and are safe when they reach the pad. Each one saved counts for you; each one lost, or hit by your own fire, counts against you.
• Amrita. Recovered from every Guardian neutralised (double if taken alive) and from each font left intact, but only if you secure the site.

New site

Where do we land?

The ground decides the fight. Landing somewhere else abandons the mission in progress.