First Play: Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt

During early pandemic days, I purchased the Five Parsecs From Home rules (2nd Edition?). It's been upgraded and is now available as a hardcover. Either way it's worth checking out. I played set up a crew and played one battle, wrote up an AAR and haven't played again.

Last month, I bought the spin-off Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt. This game is a little more similar to the Vanguard title I wrote so many AAR's for; try and get something done before the alien threat gets too great. Only this title adds that higher level of off-table crew management I enjoyed in Five Parsecs From Home. I rolled up a team (you get a team of three to keep track of in Bug Hunt, but they have a chance at pulling in special teams or weapons to assist in each battle).

I started a spreadsheet file to keep track of everything happening off-table. Will it help me get more games in? I don't know.

So the first mission is on an Earth-like planet and takes place at a historical commemoration site where a couple of old buildings are preserved along with a working lumber yard. Reports come in stating a disturbance in the area. The Anti-Xenomorph Extermination Squad (A.X.E.S.) is sent in to investigate. They are Nik, a space fleet marine; and Treen and Gwisom, two infantry soldiers. 

Our sleepy little out of the way museum of olden-days construction and forest exploitation. Image is pre-generation of objectives (secure west building and hack museum kiosk on south side of display enclosure).

What a good scenario I had: over the course of the game I must have rolled in a grand total of over thirty aliens (used my trusty Tyranids). I rolled well to set up a team of my three heroes, the customary fire team of 4 soldiers, a sergeant, and a team of two engineers (high Tech score for hacking). Also got an incinerator, which I gave to one of the soldiers.

I didn't keep track of turns nor did I get any pictures until it was almost over.

The team encountered aliens right away as they came in on the south east and crossed the road toward the kiosk and the large building. Two blips located among the buildings turned out to be around 11 aliens (I rolled razor lizards). Treen did an outstanding job holding them off while Nik tested a tactical location that opened up a force shield and he and the engineer team got in it. Treen was wounded and put out of play.

Gwisom went for a tactical location among the lumber piles. All he found was a device to distract the six aliens he found for a while. But it gave him time to make his way back to the fire team. They decide to run to the museum courtyard to help clear a path for the engineers to get to the kiosk (a vital objective). 

At this point, Treen, the sergeant, and a fire team soldier are out. The engineers (bottom-left) succeeded in hacking the kiosk and the fire team are about to secure the west building. The dark circle is the marker for the triggered force shield that kept everyone alive while they cleared away all the aliens that were hanging out among the buildings. So many more blips coming from the north!

West building secured! Evac called in! It's a race to the jump ship!

That incinerator is a welcome addition to this mission.

Post action line-up: (left to right) Engineers, surviving Fire Team, Nik, Gwisom, and casualties Treen, sarge and trooper.

In the post-mission phase Nik and Gwisom got their XP and Treen rolled up a torso injury landing her three days in recovery, but I awarded her the bonus XP for her mighty stand against overwhelming odds. Can two agents accomplish get through the next few tasks? We'll see next time on Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt!

This was a great and engaging game! The blip system keeps a person on their toes, I didn't dare approach them because I kept rolling high numbers on contact. The only thing I can think of at the moment that is lacking is a battle area generation system like one sees in Five Klicks from the Zone (which I've yet to play) as I find it hard to just come up with a battle map.

First Play: Warstuff

The following is an old entry that was being drafted as the motherboard went kaput on the computer I was using. Played in November, I'm just getting back to it now.

Looking through lists of free wargame rules, I was really looking for air combat stuff, but I ended up on One Page Rules. Their new starship combat rules (new to me, have not been on the site for a long while) had come up in a list of free wargames I found. Scrolling through the sight, I happened onto Warstuff. So, where their other rules are pretty much written as alternates for some well-known popular wargames, Warstuff is a very generic game to be used for any models or toys one might have lying around their house.

The game is very accessible; needing only a print-out of the rules, some minis or toys for combatants, some six-sided dice, and a pencil and paper for writing out the army lists. I made a 150 point army in about 15 minutes then helped my 9 year old son make one in about 20 minutes. I set up a table and we played a game in less than an hour.

Building units

Warstuff is a points-based army builder. The rules suggest a game of 150 points and provide a very easy unit building process. 

Start with a model/toy/minifig you want to use in your squad. Choose a unit quality level for it; what number does the unit have to roll on a d6 to succeed at something, mainly shooting and dodging or landing hits in melee, but easily expanded to include testing for other perils. It costs though. For example: a low quality grunt costs 5 points, but only hits on rolls of 6+, where a higher quality troop succeeding on 3+ is 20 points.

Next step is to assign up to three of the 26 special features, which also cost points, to your units. Features consist of things like Frenzy (reroll a failed melee roll) or Shooter (make a ranged attack). 

Mix and match quality, features, and number of units until you hit the game's point level. So you could have a force of ten low quality (6+), medium range shooters (call it a squad of Imperial soldier goons). Or go for two high quality (2+) guys with the max number of high-cost features (perhaps some armed and armoured bounty hunters). Hmmm, that's a game I should try running myself - Does quality stand up to quantity?

Rules

Super simple rules provided for movement, shooting, and melee. Easy to add on anything more you need. The download on the website now is actually different than what I downloaded, though I haven't compared the two versions.

Gameplay

As mentioned, I played with my son, who's 9. We had two games using Lego minifigs as our combatants. I played both games with a team of five: a dwarf warrior, Maui, an undersea being, and two random gun-men. It's been long enough since I started this post, I don't remember any stats except that Maui had the Large feature.

My glorious Warstuff team.

My son tried two different teams. Team one was Sith Anakin and a collection of clone troopers. Second was a pilot Anakin and some Ninjago guys.

He really liked the game, even though I won both rounds. We'll probably play again soon.

Lord Garmadon perches himself on the building, ready to huck some dynamite my way. This is where we had to improvise some rules for jumping/falling off of things.

We had some morale rules and Anakin's team lost a morale check at this point. I think only Master Wu and R2-D2 remained standing. Besides the dwarf, seen here, I had lost one of the gunmen.