Summer Summary

Computer problems and then summer business kept me from posting since May. But I did get a couple of games in and do a couple of crafts. 

Full Sail

I made up a scenario for Full Sail involving three pirate hunters pouncing on five pirate ships anchored in a small bay; again using ships from the Pirates of the Spanish Main game. I'm experimenting with translating thrust and movement rules written for spaceships to suit sailing ships. Haven't quite hit something that I feel works, but I think I'm on the right track.

Anyway, the pirate hunters consisted of a single-mast, a two-mast, and a three-mast headed to the mouth of the bay with the wind advantage (entry side, wind direction and speed was set randomly). Pirates were arranged at random with random facings inside the bay, all starting at anchor (4 two-mast and one single-mast). I rolled for each to see if they notice the hunters coming in, three succeed and try to get underway. Hunters have to capture or sink as many ships as possible. Pirates just have to get away.

Mid-game (the only picture I took). The three-mast hunter is about to fully engage and board one of the pirates (background). During the previous turn, the small hunter in the middle had just dropped off a boarding party to that capsized ship behind it, which was immediately sunk by the dark-sailed schooner making its getaway.

Of the five pirate ships, one is captured, one is sunk, three get away. One of the escaped ships loses almost all of its crew while repelling boarders, before breaking away from the grapple.

5 Parsecs: Bug Hunt (2nd mission)

Nik and Gwisom (Treen is in the infirmary) led a fire team and science team out to investigate an abandoned cargo ship and an alien plant causing problems in a storage compound. Nothing incredible happened, the mission was low priority so razor lizards came at the troopers in easily manageable intervals and numbers. Only near the end did one one of the fire team soldiers fall prey to the aliens.

Some razor lizards eye up the party of troopers and scientists trying to get to the extraction zone.

Full Thrust: Star Wars fighter craft

I got to introduce my two brothers to Full Thrust via the Star Wars fighters modification. They enjoyed it. They took Imperial TIE fighters (2 each) and I had an X-wing and a B-wing. Scattered a bunch of asteroids to make things interesting. They slaughtered me in 5 rounds.

ACW gaming

I used the paper American Civil War soldier stands I made for a simple battle using rules found in One Hour Wargames. The battle over a bridge ended in a stalemate after heavy casualties on both sides. I still want to try playing using more detailed rules. I'll get there.

Miniatures

My D&D group is starting a new adventure and I'm trying a halfling cleric. Modded a Heroclix Puck sculpt to represent the character.

Painted some more Tyranids and a Tusken raider I located after a couple years of being lost. Also started painting some computer kiosks for terrain/objective markers. Also there were some other minis prepped for painting. Pictures likely to show up later.

Not game related

I volunteered my time to make a wooden sign for our local village-owned ice cream parlour. Used a found piece of plywood. It had two coats of paint on it; a kind of cream over a really light blue. Sanding revealed some of the bottom coat.

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: 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.