I'm always finding myself at a loss as to which MC move to make when the table goes quiet.
Admittedly, the players are cooperatively and proactively dealing with a pair of outside threats: a plague has broken out and they are motivated to contain it and minimize risk to their hold; also, the local slave lord's slave gang recently made a move on some of the hardholder's people who had caught the plague while out scavenging.
My suspicion is that I'm not documenting/detailing enough about NPC motivations and relationships with the PCs. Also, most of the scenes are PC-centered, which is to say, a PC is acting to solve a problem, rather than an NPC giving the PC a challenge or pointing a gun in someone's face. I feel as if I'm reactively MCing, and I'm finding it hard to swing the momentum the other way where I'm the one punchig their characters where they are vulnerable.
The proactive questioning, the shoving guns in faces: I'm still slow when it comes to that stuff, and I wonder if really doubling down on the NPCs and their needs will give me more improvisational fodder for when that quiet moment comes.
As for actual play examples: the scenes that happened, happened, and while there may have been rules glitches, I managed them successfully enough.
One recent example in our third session of play: the Angel, Hardholder and Brainer went out to gather some samples of the plague fungus that a few of the Hardholder's people had eaten in desperation (the hunger want had been indicated in session 1, and this is continuing activity on that subject).
I set up a mob of bastards from the local slaver camp, out to avenge a recent loss at the hand of this hardholder's gang. The firefight was a "seize by force" slugfest punctuated by the Brainer doing some mindfuckery, thankfully made shorter by the hardholder remembering to use the autofire advantage of his machine gun against the slaver party.
The Angel got pretty wounded, made it to 9, and so I let him use his Angel kit on himself: he blew the roll, so I let the Hardholder and Brainer roll Hx to help him out. They brought his 5 to a 7, so I chose to put him in a 24-hour coma, and spend an extra unit of his Angel kit.
Another moment was the Angel giving in and using Healing Touch on the Brainer. He rolled 7-9 (success, but "acting under fire"), and then blew the "acting under fire" roll. I just didn't know what to do to him at that point. I didn't give in to the temptation to go back and undo the success of his move (thankfully, this was borne out here on the board), but I just couldn't think of a good followup move at the time. And my grasp of my world's Psychic Maelstrom was so tenuous and underformed that the logical step - have the Maelstrom happen to him - stressed me out more than just letting the roll work. I've since had some good suggestions about what to do when that roll is blown for that ability, but I'm choking when I'm at bat.