Do you have a plan of the premises?
Do you know where the target will be (or where he will move to) during the raid?

negative on both so far. the fiasco took up all of last session, so all we've had time to get are basic details. We will before we go in (hopefully).

Been there, done that, just on friday evening. To be fair, we were caught by surprise by a police squad on some ganger's turf. Then again, we weren't doing enough recon anyway...

On topic: You could bring non-lethal traps ready for immediate deployment. This way you can keep your enemies out of vital areas, e.g. your excape route(s). Non-lethal is the way because they might accidentially try to evacuate your target through the same route... It also helps to avoid collateral damage.
That said, so far this thread is really a spawn of good ideas!

How much time is there for preparations before going in? Hours, days or weeks? Even though I find the sewer tactics mentioned brilliant (and hilarious, as long as it doesn't happen to me...), it might take a up to a day...

You need to move on to Plan G. Or maybe Plan F: Frag it all.

Convince Knight Errant to storm the joint, get yourselves a surplus Nissan patrol-2 that still has all the trimmings except the exterior obvious ones, such that it might be a detective's vehicle, and get your Face and someone who can do "muscle" well without being the troll (sorry, troll,) great fake IDs as a Knight Errant detective and sergeant from another locality. Have your hacker slot a Knight Errant procedures chip and linguasoft and stand ready to intercept and answer convincingly any attempts to check.

Knight Errant swoops in, storms the compound, gets their people shot up attempting to get past the drones and such. Frame up one of the guards you can do some legwork on as being the real mastermind in disguise, or else somewhere in the place who isn't your target. When Knight Errant are dragging them all out, have your "Lieutenant" show up and claim your target to drag back to his home jurisdiction on some warrant or another. You may need to fake one, but that shouldn't be too hard. Hell, you don't even have to fake it; frame him up in some other jurisdiction for something heinous enough that even the Sixth World will want his ass to fry, like sexual violence against very young children or something get them to issue a real warrant for his arrest.

Then you drive him into the barrens with him restrained for you by Knight Errant. If anyone questions why you're taking him into the Barrens, remind them that he's wanted for something monumentally heinous and make a show of turning off your car's recorder. They'll get the message and won't question you further.

I like the idea of getting KE to do the job for you. Only problem is they might accidentally geek your target in the process.

But you asked for tips on breaching, so here's a few tactics that came in handy back when my team was operating out of Hong Kong:

1) Making the sewer system back up is a good idea. If you've got a guy who can do demo, rig the lines with explosives--placed so that the blast wave forces the sewage back up the pipes. The results are spectacular, and it's done wonders for my group in the past. A little legwork will get you plans for the local sewer system, and by studying those you can figure out how and where to set things up without needing to actually get on/under the target property.

After all the toilets are done geysering waste, you can pose as a cleaning crew to get access, or just grab the mark as he flees the building.

2) Freeze foam grenades are great for sealing entranceways, creating chokepoints, and generally keeping security off your back while you navigate the building. Use it on doors, hallways, guards, and elevator shafts--just be sure to bring something that will let you break it down in a hurry if you need to. Again, if you've got access to a demo guy, either on your team or as a contact, picking up some shaped charges will do you a world of good--just be sure they're facing the right way when you set 'em.

3) Set up a distraction. Whether it's a disposable spirit, those drones that can imitate the sound of a firefight, or the aforementioned hobos hopped up on K10, drawing the attention of security (and the cops) away from your team is invaluable when pulling off an extraction. If we're talking about a residential neighborhood, try paying off one (or more) of the neighbors to have a very loud, very public fight on their front lawn. Tell 'em you're a casting agent for a new reality show.

4) Dose the entire neighborhood with drugs. This is how my team successfully robbed a bank owned by Lofwyr in the middle of Hong Kong. We bought a bunch of drones and rigged them to spray a mixture of perfume and time-release hallucinogens over people as they headed in to work, making it look like an aggressive marketing campaign for the fragrance. We timed our run so that we were busting through the doors about the time the entire Hong Kong financial district lost their collective shit.

Slab *is* more effective for this, but it also tends to be more expensive, harder to get, and easier to trace. A good combo of cancerands loaded with warp is all you really need to get the job done.

Bear in mind, this is also how our team got run out of Hong Kong by military gunships, culminating in the complete destruction of Kowloon and the sinking of an aircraft carrier that was blocking the harbor, so YMMV.

Now if you are looking for actual room clearing procedures I would say that you need a minimum of 4 people. This is the short version of a RL swat entry.

4 members stack up to the door, usually 2 to a side. one "Kicks" open the door (this could be a shotty, litteral kick, or just turning the knob.) Number 2 tosses in a flash bang. Flash bang goes off and members 3 and 4 enter the room one high and one low so as to cover each other with fields of fire. They then break off and follow separate walls so as to have intersecting fields of fire, without placing each other in the line of fire. Then members 1 and 2 follow in in a similar fashion, each member prosecutes any available targets.

l
l
l4=====Intersecting field
l--------------- of fire
l
l
l
l\.... __________3_______
2..... 1

This is a rough graphic of how the members would be after breaching the door and members 3 and 4 entered the room along with the intersecting feilds of fire. Keep in mind that with properly done surprise and a flash bang that these tactics can work well in SR

The problem is that there were, before an idiot alarmed the target's security, 10 armed guys defending the target inside a hardened multi-story building, the building itself inside a large walled security perimeter. A rational assumption is either there are a lot more guys and bots inside, or the target is gone and what is left is a killing field.

So while you prepare to clear room 1 (while also being watched by the security team's building surveillance) and are hence fixed in place, the security team maneuvers against you. This assumes they need to, as they can have all sorts of goodies wired up and waiting for someone to push a button. Like sticky foam bombs above the inside of interior doorways, claymore mines in the corners, gas flooding, etc.

I'm talking about actual room clearing tactics, might not be an entire plan, but probably something that any runner would want to know how to do properly. I completely agree attacking a strong hold head on is kinda dumb. You should go check my Chinese delivery plan. Or the one that I will highly endorse involving the sewer. In either case we could discuss how any given plan won't work till the sun goes down and be no closer to success.

You may just need to return Mr. Johnson's down-payment and tell him that the idiot newbie that got hitched with your team scrubbed the run and is now dead for his troubles. It sounds like the whole run's gone south.

Or, if Mr. Johnson's not the type to take his monies back and leave with little acrimony, do as the song says, take the money and run.



But if you're still at gonna, I say your best bet is to get someone who isn't on your payroll to do the whole "fighting it out with drones" shit. Hence, get Knight Errant to do the room-to-room breaching, they'll have their Matrix assets gang-bang the drones and such. Get someone whose skin isn't related to yours put their skin in the firefights, then stroll in and collect your man when they're done.

Mission over. Complements on this thread, it kept us alive through a very high-risk run.

Unfortunately the target escaped. Captain idiot alerted them enough that they rigged several key rooms to blow, which really screwed us over. outside of that pretty much every aspect worked as planned.

I hope you've yelled at Captain Idiot sufficiently. Was he gone before you even tried to breach?

Nah, we think it was just a brain fail. He did get a lot of grief over it, but we've had worse idiot moments in our time.

Love to hear some more details about how the run got fragged.

yes very much so, do share (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

As you wish (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It was just another day in Seattle. We'd just gotten back from a little trip down Bogota way and to be honest hadn't quite got over the brute force attitude. Our trolls, the brothers Jake and Borris, decided that there was still too much heat after a stunt they pulled before we left and headed up to the Athabaskan Council for some quiet time. Likewise, our self-proclaimed Jedi Obi-Jon and our augmented faceman both decided to keep a low profile. In retrospect, I should have joined them.

Anyway, Dragoneye and myself got called in to a meet-up, along with some fresh blood. The place was some dive hidden somewhere in upper downtown, fairly quiet for the time of day, while the employer was... well, in this business it's better to keep these things confidential. Here's where we met up with the new blood, and in truth I should have started running there and then. However, the Jonson and I had enough history to keep me in place and I trusted her judgement. Not the best move, as it turned out.

Firstly there was some try-hard calling himself Link. He had the whole look going, with a lined duster and wide-brimmed fedora. Kept to the shadows in order to appear 'edgy', but it wasn't dark enough to conceal the fact he barely had two brain cells to his name. He introduced himself as a sniper, which was kind of redundant talent as that's Dragoneye's shtick, and a quick slip into the astral showed that he was an adept who dabbled with augmentation on the side.

The second guy was actually a girl. Human female, very posh. She introduced herself as Dr Quin, and said she was standing in for a friend. A quick check on the matrix showed that she was a legit surgeon, and a well connected one at that. Personally I was amazed that she had time to come down in place of this troll our J had contacted, some reclusive combat monster who went by 'Shadow'. Subtle.

The job is simple. Extract guarded target alive for questioning. He's some orc smuggler with ties to the Vory, holed up in a mansion up Everett way. J gives us air recon footage, 2 grand apiece upfront, and solid estimates on number of hostiles.

A quick discussion with the new guys revealed little about Shadow, and a lot about Link. My initial impression was right, this guy would have trouble tying his own shoelaces. In spite of this he told us that he was good at sneaking about, which makes good sense for a sniper. No-one seems to have any suggestions, so I decide to throw some ideas out. Firstly, we needed more intel. I had a plan about that, as I'd just gotten my hands on a new spell and was itching for a chance to put it through its paces. The target was fortified and heavily guarded, so an all out assault wasn't exactly a favorite option. I tasked Dragoneye with finding out how they were getting food in and out with an eye to infiltrating via their catering service, asked Dr Quin to tell Shadow to do... whatever the f*** it is he does, and set Link to see if any of the guards left the place after their shift. Bribing, threatening or impersonating a guard would give us a good way in.

So we each go our separate ways. I head home, then use my new shapechange spell to turn into a pigeon for some good old fashioned aerial recon. An improved invisibility spell on top of that was probably overkill, but I didn't have any armor sized for pigeons and getting a sucking chest wound from some bored punk with a gun and ammo to spare wasn't high on my to-do list. The first thing I noticed was that there were no birds in the compound. I circled once or twice, not sure what to make of this development, when a seagull glided too close to the building. the moment it got within a preset range a drone opened fire, shredding the unfortunate creature in a hail of bullets.

Well, there goes my plan of simply flying in.

A peek on the astral showed that both the main house and the security buildings were warded, and that watcher spirits were patrolling the perimeter. Not an unbeatable obstacle, but still a possible problem.

To be continued...

Armed with the knowledge that their drones will shoot down anything that moves, I start to formulate a plan C and call the others. My initial ideas are along the lines of skeet shooters and tennis auto-servers, but Shadow volunteers to hunt down some pigeons for our distraction. It probably wasn't the best use of our assets, but I didn't know what else to do with him so I told him to go for it. Rather worryingly, Link didn't pick up when I called him.

Around four pm Link sends everyone a message, telling us that he's found a weakness in the compound and to meet him in a copse near the north-eastern corner. I don't have to tell you how suspicious that sounds, considering that it has nothing to do with his job and he failed to pick up when I called him earlier. As a quick test I messaged him back, asking if this was like last time. The one-word reply told me all I needed to know.

It's a trap.

In spite of this, Shadow insists we should go in and see what's happened. I can't really blame him on that, as we need to know what happened to Link. That doesn't mean walking into a trap sounds any better. In the end Shadow volunteers to walk in with a holo-projector to make it look like we're all there, while Dragoneye and myself provide support from the sidelines. It turns out that Shadow is pretty good at spotting tripwires, and he manages to get out without setting off any of the explosives rigged throughout the trees.

So to sum up, we're down a rookie who's alerted the target of our interest and has potentially spilled all of our plans to them. It looks like plan C is going to be our best bet after all.

Damn.

So it was "target is gone and what is left is a killing field"?

Did you you all live?

Unsurprisingly, collecting enough birds to keep the drones distracted while we assault the compound is proving to be impractical. A couple of carefully constructed posts on shadowsea gave me a few alternative ideas, and after chatting to my fixer I'm now the proud owner of 10,000 bouncy balls. I've also managed to rope in some hired muscle for our little assault, a physical adept cyclops who's sole skill seems to be hitting things very hard. I have some ideas about that, but more later.

Dragoneye disappeared for a while and came back with some "Volunteers" to help us in our raid. Some Humanis thugs with trode nets, hot SIMs and personafixes to make them more plyable. Shadow has apparently not gotten the memo about the bouncy balls, and is busily thinning out the seagull population. Yeah, I don't think he's the sharpest knife in the draw, so we'll put him in a support role where he doesn't need to have any initiative.

While I'm well aware of the dangers of mixing different magics, the new guy's unarmed abilities and my shapechange spell have so much potential together I couldn't resist trying something. A bit of digging revealed that of all the creatures I could turn him into horses were among the most balanced in combining strength, durability and speed. After a couple of dry runs he seemed comfortable enough with his new form, and he dismissed my doubts about size by saying he'd simply kick a new hole in the wall if he runs into a narrow doorway.

Anyway, the first part of the plan works well enough. multiple breaching charges, holograms, bouncy balls, humanis thugs, what birds we'd captured... yeah, it was absolute chaos. Our drop with the balls was a bit off, but we still managed to deplete the ammunition from every drone on the eastern side of the compound and kill every sensor in the area. We enter through the side door (leading to the kitchen) and make for the staircase. Well, to be perfectly honest our behorsed one charged up while Dragoneye and myself held off the drones that still had ammunition. Between the transformation, the deflection spell I was maintaining, and his own combat sense he was able to dodge his way past several elite troopers, knocking them out with ease in the process.

Then everything went to hell. It turns out that they'd been planning on all this and had the target's office was rigged to blow while they headed for the garage. That's bad, but not insurmountable. After all, we have a horse to charge after them and kick their roadmaster to pieces, right?
Well, we would have if the garage hadn't also been rigged to blow after they left. At that point we had Knight Errant on the way, Vory reinforcements edging them out, and the target heading out in a street-going tank.

To make a long story short we got out of it alive, just, but the mission was a complete and costly failure. All because one guy made a dumbass decision and gave the game away before we'd even started.

Sometimes the right answer is "Sorry Mr Johnson, here is your money back."

Did you ever find out what happened to the dumbass? If these are Vory... Well, I'd be looking for his family to grab them and smuggle them to another country with new names.



Also, I love the in-character write-up. It's a pity your run was scrubbed despite your best efforts to raise truely Mechromancian proportions of anarchy, really, but honestly, who could expect them to rig their own fragging mansion to blow?

I hope the Johnson's in a forgiving mood. Or, failing that, is willing to let you try again.

I saved the Johnson's life recently, so I do expect some forgiveness on that score.
You want the really sad thing? I specifically told the GM I was looking for a milk run, even if it's at truly pitiful pay, SO WE COULD IDENTIFY THESE PROBLEMS BEFORE TAKING ON A TOUGH RUN WHERE THEY COULD GET SOMEONE KILLED! I think there was a miss-communication somewhere down the line.

As to the dumbass... we don't know anything about him. No real names, no family, no home address, nothing. Also, Shadow? That troll who figured it'd be cheaper to get a 6/6 contact to be his face rather than put points into having a social dice pool (he's at -2 net dp on all social skills thanks to charisma 2, paranoid, and not taking any skills. Makes you wonder how he got a 6/6 contact in the first place)? Yeah, his player was a no-show so HE was relegated to extraction/backup and I took his place on the front lines. The original plan was to have me sitting in a car maintaining a metric ton of buffs on the group and then intervening if they needed a hot extraction or the target tried to do a runner.

Well, you know what they say. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

EDIT: I kinda feel that the story was a bit rushed at the end. I promise I'll do better next time!

Awesome story!
A shame the plan went to pieces...
But I may take a few ideas for general mayhem out of this thread, too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I'll add it to my folder of Good Ideas^TM.