THRACKYour second game
of Thrackdown
You know how to move, shoot, and panic. Now for the good stuff: 150 Thracks, a roster you built yourself, your faction's own rules, Momentum Surges, and weapon traits in play for the first time. The mission is Hostage Grab, and negotiations are not on the table.
TONIGHT: Quick Start Rules · Faction Rules · Warband Builder
Build your own roster
No more fixed lineup. Pick your faction, open the roster, and spend 150 Thracks, the currency of Thrackdown, on whichever units you like, within the rules every warband follows. There's no upgrading yet, so every Thrack goes on fighters. Expect around 4 to 6 of them, and bring a mix of ranged and melee; the hostage sits in the middle of a killing field.
Leader required. Someone has to give the orders and steady the nerves.
Core before Specialists. You cannot field more Specialists than Core fighters. This is the rule game two exists to teach.
No Juggernauts tonight. At 150 Thracks a Juggernaut eats half your warband. Save the monsters for game three.
No gear or upgrades. Fighters carry their starting weapons only. Equipment slots arrive in game three.
This is the game where your banner starts to matter. Faction traits, unique Momentum Surges, and signature mechanics are all switched on. The Covenant grows fiercer as fear piles up. The Pact fights as one machine. The Splice mutates mid-battle. Whatever you chose, your warband now plays like nobody else's.
Meet your weapon traits
Every trait you politely ignored in game one now applies. Read your fighters' cards before deploying, because the wasteland's arsenal has opinions of its own.
The joys of Crude
Half the starting weapons in Nova Eden carry the Crude trait, and tonight you'll discover just how reliable they can be: roll a natural 1 while using one and it breaks.
That Pipe Gun is, after all, mostly a pipe with dreams. A broken weapon is a story, a scramble, and a very good reason to learn what your fists can do.
Not all traits bite you
- Sidearm: pistols can still fire in melee, as you learned in game one
- Pierce: punches through to damage a second nearby target
- Branching: arcing energy that jumps from your target to their nearest friend
- Poisoned: a scratch today is a casualty tomorrow
- Spray: why aim when you can hose the whole alley?
- Blast: why hit one model when you can worry three?
Hostage Grab
A local fixer was snatched by a rival warband for leverage. Your crew isn't here for negotiations, you're here to drag the poor sod out, alive or otherwise.
Setup: a 30" x 24" battlefield with dense cover and plenty of line-of-sight blockers; sightlines are what make this mission sing. Place the Hostage (a spare mini or token) dead centre; no Loot Crates to fight over this time, the hostage is the prize. Roll off for table edges: the winner picks an edge and their opponent takes the one directly across. Players then alternate deploying fighters within 3" of their own edge, starting with the winner of the roll off.
The game lasts 6 rounds. The hostage cannot be attacked, but they can absolutely be dragged, abandoned, stolen back, and fought over. Expect all of the above.
Suggested table setup. Dense cover and blocked sightlines make Snap Fire matter, so crowd the middle.
Drag the Hostage
A fighter in base contact may spend both actions to drag the hostage up to their full movement, but only if no enemy is within 1". Rescues are slow, loud, and very interruptible.
The Hostage Panics
If no fighter is within 2" of the hostage at the end of a round (Downed fighters don't count), they bolt D6+3" in a random direction. Terrified fixers make poor teammates.
Momentum for Custody
Carrying the hostage at the start of a round grants +1 Momentum. Possession pays, right up until someone takes it from you.
Control the hostage at the end of the game.
Drag them all the way into your deployment zone.
Nobody said the rescue had to be gentle.
Two rules this mission teaches
Snap Fire
Set fighters up covering the routes to the hostage and they can interrupt an enemy's activation with reaction fire. Every lane to the centre becomes a question: is that corridor watched? Learn to make your opponent flinch before they move.
Stabilise
Fighters will go down in the scrum around the hostage. Reviving a Downed ally under fire is risky, dramatic, and often the difference between a rescue and a rout. Sometimes the real hostage was the friend who caught a bullet on the way in.
Advice from the ruins
Game three: the full Thrackdown
You've learned the core. You've met your faction. Now take the leash off: 200 Thracks, equipment and gear slots, every weapon trait, and yes, the Juggernauts. Then start a campaign, because fighters who survive tonight deserve names, scars, and grudges that carry forward.