Doors, Traps & Utilities
Doors decide tempo. Traps punish certainty. Utilities are how skilled teams steal back control. This chapter is the practical side of the game: the tools and thresholds that make a building feel like an active opponent instead of a backdrop.
Door States
Every important entry should have a clear state marker. A door is not just scenery in this system. It is information, timing, noise, and sometimes the only thing keeping one side alive for another round.
| Door State | Effect |
|---|---|
| Open | Full line of sight through the threshold. |
| Closed | Blocks sight, but may be opened with movement. |
| Locked | Requires a breach, tool, or Control-based access. |
| Barricaded | Requires a hard breach or multiple successes. |
| Trapped | Triggers a trap when opened or crossed. |
| Blown | Permanently open and usually leaves debris as half cover. |
Door Interaction
The basic rules are simple:
- opening or closing an unlocked door costs 1 movement
- opening a watched door can trigger Overwatch
- locked and barricaded doors cannot be bypassed in the move phase unless a rule says otherwise
If a door matters to the mission, mark it. Do not trust memory once the board gets noisy.
Trap Types
Traps should feel like part of the site's character. A trap in a worker-block gang house is different from a trap in a private clinic archive. Use the same core rules, but let the fiction explain why the trap is there.
Alarm Trap
An alarm trap raises Noise, reveals the direction of the assault, and may activate remote locks, cameras, or reinforcements. It is often the mildest trap tactically and the worst one strategically.
Blast Trap
A blast trap forces adjacent figures to test Guard and usually leaves the threshold full of debris or fire. It exists to punish the assumption that speed is always the right answer.
Smoke Dump
A smoke dump floods a room, lane, or threshold with smoke. It may save the defender, delay the assault, or just make both sides miserable. That uncertainty is the point.
Evidence Burn
An evidence burn begins a countdown on a drive rack, ledger pile, relic cabinet, or lab tray. Unless somebody Secures the objective in time, the truth leaves the room before the team does.
Dead Switch
A dead switch is linked to a living hostile, panic button, or timed trigger. It usually threatens hostages, evidence, or the mission's larger consequences. This is one of the cleanest ways to make capture matter.
Utility Gear
Utility gear should feel mission-shaping, not like filler. These tools are what let a trained team behave differently from a gang with rifles.
Door Mirror
Use a Door Mirror to reveal one adjacent closed room without opening it. It does not trigger traps by itself and does not create Noise. The mirror is simple, but it embodies one of the game's central ideas: information is often worth more than aggression.
Flash Device
Throw a Flash Device into a visible room, around a doorway, or through a blown breach. Every figure in the blast area tests Nerve. On failure, that figure becomes Suppressed and cannot use Overwatch until the next round. Flashing a room does not win it for you, but it can turn a lethal entry into a survivable one.
Smoke Canister
Place a Smoke Canister in one room segment or corridor slice. Smoke is best used to cut a lane, cover a casualty drag, or block the defender's cleanest angle. It is much less useful for holding a room you do not already control.
Breaching Charge
A Breaching Charge automatically destroys a standard door and can open one soft wall section if the mission allows structural breaches. It always raises Noise. Use it when time matters more than subtlety.
Door Wedge
A Door Wedge temporarily denies an easy route. Place it on a standard door to seal that entry from casual movement. Removing the wedge requires adjacency and 1 Control success. Wedges are one of the simplest ways to stop a site from recontesting a room you just paid for.
Restraint Kit
Use a Restraint Kit to make capture-first play reliable. Without one, a restrained target may break free on its next successful Nerve test. If your campaign cares about live arrests, bring restraints or accept that you did not really plan to keep anyone.
Trauma Stabilizer
A Trauma Stabilizer stops Bleeding or critical collapse on a Downed ally. It may return that figure to 1 Wound, though the figure remains Suppressed. This is not miraculous medicine. It is emergency function bought at the edge of failure.
Secure-Data Puck
A Secure-Data Puck clones, freezes, or hard-locks digital evidence. Mechanically, it converts one successful Secure action on digital evidence into a locked objective state that is harder for the hostile side to reverse or destroy.
Room Transitions
Crossing from one room into another is the most dangerous movement in the game. That is where information, sight, traps, and morale all collide.
Before crossing a live threshold, ask:
- Is the room revealed?
- Is the lane watched?
- Is the door trapped?
- Is there smoke, flash coverage, or shield support?
- Do you actually need to enter now, or are you rushing because the doorway feels intolerable?
If the room is not confirmed safe, treat the threshold as hostile ground. Most bad entries come from teams that know this and go anyway without changing anything first.