First Play: Five Parsecs from Home

For the last couple of years I've been playing miniatures war games meant for two or more players in solo mode. This meant the age-old method of trying to make the best moves for each side, a method I've employed since I first learned how to play chess. I played around with different rule sets and methods of unit activation to try and even out the effects of any bias I might have inserted into the game, with some success. Success being defined by how fun it was and how smoothly the game went. Some of the successful attempts have been with Full Sail, Full Thrust (fighter module), and Star Breach. However, the feeling that it's just me versus someone or something other than me isn't there as much as I'd like.

A couple of months ago, I came across some buzz over a certain title called Five Parsecs from Home. This game is one in a series that uses a base set of mechanics and rules (referred to as Five Core), then adds to it to create rule sets for skirmish battles specific to certain time periods and settings. Five Parsecs is set in a scifi universe and focuses on your crew of miscreants taking special mercenary jobs a la Firefly, though I get more of a cyberpunk feel, like Shadowrun (which I've never played, only read a novel set in that universe). Five Men at Kursk, a title I just got through the Bundle of Holding, is set in World War 2. There's a post-apocalyptic and a medieval fantasy settings available and a black-powder era version currently in production.

These games are part wargame and part RPG.

So just like Dungeons and Dragons, the first thing to do is roll some dice over and over again! I do like rolling dice! Explanation? For each of your six starting crew members, you are rolling dice and looking up the results on a series of charts. Differently from D&D, all characters start with the same stats used to modify in-game die rolls. This start-up round of rolling gives each character a general background, a class, and a directing motivation. Each of these attributes come with extras they bring to the table in the way of money, weapons, bonuses to their stats, or even rivals that are hunting them and that you may suddenly have to face in an encounter. So pretty much the only input you have on crew creation is coming up with their names and picking which minis to represent them on the table.

After everything is set up, there's a bit of worker placement to try and get more stuff and find potentially profitable "job openings". You choose from the jobs rolled, or if no jobs are rolled you take on a less profitable target of opportunity.

Next, set up terrain and roll for opposition. There are numerous foes you could face, each with a certain tabletop AI that directs you in how to move them, taking away the feeling of sameness that comes with playing both sides of a two player game (the same tactician for both sides).

Then there is some more RPG stuff that is done after the battle. Rolling to find out what happens to fallen crew members, what rewards come from a successful completion, if any new enemies were made.

(Never mind all that stuff, how did the game go?)

The Crew (all names but one from a random scifi name generator)

Name - Background - Motivation - Character Class - Special Notes
Chas Desi - drifter - Order - Negotiator - Crew Leader
Malik Tachak - drifter - Fame - Worker - My character (the rules say to pick one)
Jani Dering - from a war torn hell hole - Faith - Traveller
Big McLargehuge - from a space station - Loyalty - Technician
Jacinto Riordae - from a comfortable megacity - Faith - Artist
Dia Carthes - from a mining colony - Order - Punk

For Malik and Big I chose to use the Heroclix that I modded to be Han and Chewie. The rest are re-based Heroclix sculpts with little to no other changes made to them.

The job was a delivery, to make it fit the foe that I rolled (Unity Soldiers) and the patron offering the job (a city council), I made the soldiers a band of deserters that had taken over a portion of the city. They had taken military equipment with them, including high grade communications devices that they could listen in to military and police radio frequencies. The city wanted my crew to install and set off a directional EMP device in close proximity to the deserters' base of operations and set it off in order to disable their communications abilities.

Move 1

The crew landed their craft, the Bresi Drifter, outside the deserter-controlled zone. Starting at left and moving clockwise are Chas, Jani, Malik, Big, Dia, and Jacinto.

The layout: the commander and two rifles at the makeshift bunker at top-left, a specialist and rifle behind the cylindrical structure (top-middle), and a specialist and rifle on the right. The box of pipe sections in the middle of everything is the drop point.

Jacinto heads toward the drop zone with the EMP.

The deserter troops saw the Bresi Drifter coming and make their moves. They must have liberated some kind of RADAR system when they took off.

Chas and Jani set out across the street to try and keep the soldiers from flanking them. Chas only has grenades and a power claw and can't fire at anyone. Jani takes a shot through cover at a specialist and misses.

Move 2

Jani can't quite make the barrier and takes cover behind a bush. A rifleman knocks her down anyway. This is not looking good.

Chas gets behind a big rock, the rest of the gang takes cover by a pile of pipes. All of them miss any shots taken at the soldiers.

These soldiers move out of cover to take down Jacinto.

Dia falls next, despite finding cover behind a bush.

While Malik goes for the EMP, Big makes his way to Dia's position and takes down a specialist.

Move 3

The commander and his rifles pop around the corner of the fence. The riflemen both miss, but the commander hits home and Big is out of this fight.

At this point, Chas and Malik begin retreating. By the end of Turn 4, they have successfully retreated, no way they'd have been able to accomplish this mission after such heavy losses. Better to live to fight another day.

The dice gods were punishing! The crew goes home to lick its wounds. Big and Jani got away with minor wounds and need to spend a turn recuperating. Dia required minor surgery, costing the team 1 credit and she also must spend a turn getting well. Jacinto did not survive his wounds. Jacinto's weapons are recovered.

Will Chas and Malik be able to attempt the other job that was offered at the same time as this one? Maybe they can recruit a couple of other mercenary types to join the crew of the Bresi Drifter. Luckily, they have two water purifiers that they can clean water to sell, so at least they won't want for credits.
***

As you can see, maybe, gameplay is very fast. And yes, the game is set up to run as a kind of campaign, characters continue participating in engagements, miss fights to heal, gain experience to "level up", collect loot, and more. I really like the mix here and I'm excited to move this story along as well as to try the other titles from Nordic Weasel that I just got: Five Klicks from the Zone and Five Men at Kursk.

Game play is simple enough, less math required than Star Breach. No keeping track of health points, characters hit are either stunned or down for the count and you find out later how bad it is. I might have been forgetting about being stunned, don't think it would have helped much in the long run though.

I'll likely wait a bit before playing again, I also want to try one of the solo RPGs I downloaded.