A few random 15mm pictures

I was hunting through my hard drive and came across a few photographs that I don't think I've posted yet...

 First, a couple of security officers investigate some suspicious looking aliens,

 A GZG tech checks out the cryopods.

Alternative Armies psyker walks the corridors.

 

Some of Dutchmogul's combat droids prepare to repel alien invaders from Random Minis.

A 3D printed alien civilian.

Five Parsecs from Home: Tactics

As my Birthday present, back in the Summer, I received Five Parsecs from Home: Tactics, to give me some extra options when running games for the crews of the Millennium Chicken and the Power Cruiser.  Here are my first thoughts:

Obligatory cover photo.

 Firstly, I did notice that there are quite a few issues with the editing and proofreading.  There are numerous typos and spelling mistakes, brackets start in the wrong place, a target selection diagram is labelled incorrectly, (B1 and B2 switched so that it no longer makes sense).  I don't know whether there was a rush to get it finished, I certainly didn't spot the same sort of problems in the original Five Parsecs or the Compendium expansion.  Apart from this issue though, the quality is what you'd usually expect from Modiphius, i.e. excellent.  High quality glossy paper, crisp printing, atmospheric artwork from Christian Quinot all adds up to something that feels like a classy product in your hands.

Example artwork.

 

Ivan Sorensen obviously has a real soft spot for the original Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, his Rogue Hammer and Renegade Scout game systems being a very direct and obvious homage to it.  This also carries through to Five Parsecs Tactics.  Ivan has coined the term "Directed Scenario Gaming" to describe the 40K:RT style of Game-Master run player vs player game, something which has rather faded away from the 1990s onwards.  Nowadays it just tends to be the 2 players, and modern 40K certainly seems to encourage the mentality that everything has to be exactly as per the rule book, even down to the size and amount of terrain used in a game.  This is Ivan's attempt to hark back to that earlier style of gaming and to give it a name.  It's something I really miss in a lot of games that I've watched people playing at clubs, where it is often just an unimaginative "line up the armies and let them shoot each other".  It's a reason why I prefer the more asymmetric style of something like Tomorrow's War, where there is a specific objective to accomplish other than just killing all of the enemy.  [One of the most disappointing games I witnessed was a big club game whene everyone brought in as much as they could.  There were superheavy tanks, a Reaver Titan, hordes of tanks and Space Marines.  I thought it was an excellent opportunity for a really unusual game such as trying to stop the Titan walking the length of the table, but it just ended up the usual situation of lining up the 2 opposing armies about 3 feet apart along the 18 foot long run of tables and pounding each other to pieces.  Such a missed opportunity - but I digress...]

Contents 1.

 

Contents 2.

The rules are fairly similar to standard Five Parsecs, but with adjustments as required for the larger scale of the games.  The addition of vehicles and heavier weapons is one of the most obvious examples.  There are also more rules for morale on both sides, which makes sense when you're dealing with multiple units and lots of troops instead of just a small crew of 4-6.  While there are still solo options, the possibility of a live opponent is built in from the start with this rule set.  One interesting addition is "Tactical Options", with rules for skulking (i.e. hiding), fall back and overwatch.  The overwatch rule (p43) does seem slightly odd though, in that you can’t fire partway through enemy move, only before they start or after they finish.  In other words, it's impossible to shoot at someone as they dash from cover to cover across a street, which to me takes away one of the main functions of overwatch.

The campaigns section offers 4 types of battle.  Starting small with skirmish, graduating to battle, finishing with grand battle.  An additional option is the "evolving objective battle" where the objectives are revealed as the game unfolds.  There are 100 scenario seeds (reminiscent of the original Rogue Trader with its 10 x 10 tables of plot generator plus 20 additional sub-plots), story events that take place between battles, primary and secondary objectives that can be incorporated.  Characters and squads can grow and improve, each battle can influence what happens in the next, and to the campaign as a whole.  The campaign section is a really important part of the game if you're playing solo, so this is a particularly useful part of the book.

100 scenario ideas.

Possible inspiration? The original 40K: Rogue Trader

plot generator (plus proper Dark Angels in BLACK armour!) 

  Game mastering: this involves a useful discussion of Active vs Passive GM, how to use tests to allow troops to accomlish tasks, adding tasks / actions, how to arrange the battlefield, side plots, deployment options, assembling scenarios, additional rules on construction, demolition, dangerous terrain, gas/smoke, using items and lots more.

The Army Builder covers a range of options for army leaders, various squad types (infantry, recon, storm), weapon teams, specialists (techs, medical, communications etc), alternative squad types (enforcer, pirate, militia, cavalry). There is also the option of an armoured platoons of vehicles.

The vehicles section of the army builder includes 3 bikes (2 of which are grav/speeder type); 2 trikes; armoured car; tracked & grav versions of APCs, IFVs, light & medium tanks; tracked heavy tanks; light & heavy walkers; 2 sizes of combat robot. Optional weapon upgrades are available for several, but there are no construction rules.  Although you could invent other vehicles eg. jeep, transport truck, police car or scout robot, you'd have to take a guess at their points cost.  This is an example of the artwork (which is excellent throughout) not matching the content.  There are a couple of different pictures of wheeled APCs in the book, but there isn't one in the example vehicles, only tracked or grav.  The Field Commander's Guide expansion does offer extra rules for modifications and upgrades to your vehicles, but it would have been nice to have a few extra options in the main book.

Vehicle rules (featuring vehicle not included in rules)

  Veterans includes special skills, with differing sets for squads, sergeants, gun crews, vehicles.

15 races are listed, along with their variations in characteristics and special abilities.  Each race includes stats for military, civilian (eg. GM run characters), sergeants/minor characters, major characters, and epic characters.  This is the sort of game where most races use fairly equivalent weapons.  No 40K style armies where each has unique weapons with lots of special rules, in Five Parsecs everyone has access to weapons which fall into certain basic categories.  A rifle may fire projectiles using gunpowder, compressed air or magnetic coils, but if all of them have the same chance of armour penetration and damage, they all use the same profile.  Certain races may be more likely to be predisposed to certain weapon types, but most weapons are available to most races.

 There are a further 5 pages of creatures which the GM might like to spring on unsuspecting players at the dramatically appropriate moment...

The army builder ends with 7 pages of points costs to help you assemble your army.

At the end of the book, we have the appendices, which start with 2 pages of conversion rules to use 5PH characters in Tactics: the first on how to convert stats both ways between games, fairly minimal because much is already very similar; the second page on combining the games so that crews can take part in a Tactics battle instead of a normal campaign turn scenario.

The rest of the appendices include an 8 page timeline for background fluff, a couple of pages each on how to start collecting figures, inspirations (film/TV/games/music/books), designers notes.

At the very back are 2 pages of game markers & units cards (obviously easier printed from a pdf than trying to copy from the book), plus a detailed 6-page index.

This book will be a good addition to our games, providing extra options for including vehicles and bigger weapons.  One of the campaigns may end in a full scale rebellion, and having the option for large scale battles will be really useful.  There are also loads of great campaign ideas and mechanisms that you could use for all sorts of games, not just Five Parsecs.

Despite the poor editing noted at the start of this review, I'm very glad I got this book.  It was quite pricey at £31.50 from Wayland Games (with free postage), and would have been even more so direct from Modiphius at £40 plus £6.31 postage.  Modiphius do throw in the pdf free (usually £20 on its own), but that's a lot of money compared to what I'd usually expect to pay for a set of rules*, and paying almost 50% more for a game when you get it direct from the publisher seems a substantial uplift.  Apart from the dodgy editing in places, it is otherwise a very good quality product, 205 glossy pages, packed with content, the vast majority of which is rules with fairly minimal fluff, hardback in the same slightly smaller size as used for the previous Five Parsecs books.

*Looking at pricing again, the cheapskate in me is perhaps being a little harsh.  According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, my copy of Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader (286 pages) was £9.99 in 1990, which would be around £25.55 today.  This is the softback 2nd imprint.  The original 1987 hardback at £14.99 would be the equivalent of £44.80 today.  The current 11th edition of 40K is £15.00 for an A5 softback (though you can download the basic rules free).  Xenos Rampant is £25 direct from Osprey Publishing for a 190 page hardback.  Battletech core rules seem to be from £30-£45 depending on edition and where you have to order from [though it has the advantage that the core of the rules is pretty much the same as when I started playing it back in the early 1990's].  So on balance, I suppose Five Parsecs:Tactics is only slightly above the average sort of price for games like this.  It's the high delivery cost from Modiphius that bumps it up as much as anything.

Moon Colony Bloodbath!

 Our friend Graham popped round again last week, and we played Moon Base Bloodbath.  Each player is running a moon colony, but things soon start to go wrong...

 Each player starts with a moonbase, in which 30 people live.  They also have 4 money, 4 food and a hand of 4 cards which represent various buildings they can construct.  Each player is playing against the game rather than against each other, but each is completely independent, so it isn't cooperative as such.

My character was Dr Banerjee.  None of the characters have any different abilities, it's just a way to differentiate between the colonies, as will become clear in due course...

Starting board.

Each card in the "Progress Deck" is turned over and resolved, one at a time.  Every card affects all players, so all will benefit or suffer equally unless anyone has played a card that protects them in some way.  There are 4 "Work" cards, which allow you to do one of the 5 coloured actions on the character board: Restock (gain 2 crates of supplies); Mine (gain 4 money); Farm (gain 4 food); Research (gain 2 extra building cards into your hand); Build (pay money to construct one of the buildings from your hand).

Work!

There are also 2 "Trouble" cards, which cause you to add a card from the "Event" deck into the Progress Deck.

Trouble!

The Event cards have a set order in which they are introduced, and with the odd exception, generally get worse as the game progresses.  They cause you to lose colonists, add a malfunctioning robot to the progress deck and affect your hand of building cards.  The first is Hunger, which means you have to pay 1 food for every building that you have, or lose the number of colonists equal to any shortfall.  At the start of the game this isn't a problem because no-one has much in the way of buildings, and we haven't used any food yet.  If you are able to overcome Hunger, you gain a couple of extra colonists as a reward.

Hunger!

 Following Hunger, comes Paperwork.  You draw an extra building card, but then have to discard 2 building cards from your hand.

The Event Deck

 For the first Work action, I spent my 4 money to build a "Market".  The card shows the cost to build (top left), the number of extra colonists it holds (top right), any extra action you get to take when you play it (pink box at the bottom), and any bonuses it gives at other times (just below the picture in the centre).  In this case, if I take the Farm action when a Work progress card is played, the market allows me to swap 2 of the 4 food I produce for 4 money.  When the Market was played, we added the "Trade" twist to the Progress Deck, as per the instruction in pink at the bottom of the card.  Twist cards add extra things that you can do during the game.  When the Trade card is drawn, all players can choose whether to swap a supply crate for 2 extra building cards added to their hand.

Building the market.

The building card goes at the top of your colony.  A green quarter circle in the centre indicates each work period that passes.

The colony grows...

Over the next 3 work periods, I mined for 2 turns to get enough money to build a Titanium Mine.  This will give me double the amount of money 

Adding a Titanium Mine.

And so we reached the end of the first turn.  The Progress Deck is shuffled and placed face down ready for the next turn, but now we know that it contains the Hunger and Paperwork events.  It also contains the Innovation card, which was added to the deck when I played the Titanium Mine.

Final work for the turn.

The Progress Deck also contains the "Intensive Farming" Twist, which was added when one of the other players constructed a building.  This allows you to spend a supply crate to get a bonus Farm work action.

Intensive Farming

The game progresses for the next couple of turns, with 2 new events being added every turn.  The third event is "Glitch", which adds a malfunctioning robot to the deck, then we have an air leak, "Tempers Flair" and a whole series of "Accidents".  Skipping ahead to the end of what was probably the 3rd turn, my colony has grown significantly, thanks to the market allowing me to farm and convert food into money at the same time.

End of Turn 3?

Looking more closely at the buildings, as well as my market and titanium mine, I also have a "Makeshift Lab" that earned me 2 free supply crates when I played it (and will come in useful later if I have to lose it, because it will give me a couple of extra building cards into my hand), and an "Assembly Line" that lets me pay 1 less money for each building I construct.

Buildings.

There's also a "Trading Post" that gives me 2 extra money whenever I add a card to the progress deck, and a "Hacker Lair" that lets me ignore the "Paperwork" event when it occurs.  The Hacker Lair also allowed me to add a Perk to the Progress Deck when I played it, earning me the 2 extra money as per the Trading Post card.

More buildings.

 The Perks you get to add to the Progress Deck are bonuses of the things you can work for, and only apply to your specific character.  They're only half what you get when you work, but are still a pleasant surprise when that card gets turned over!

Perks I haven't been able to add to the Progress Deck yet.

Jumping forward another couple of turns, we find that some of my buildings have gone.  Accidents and malfunctioning robots have been taking their toll, and instead of losing colonist counters, you can choose to lose buildings to the value of the number of colonists.  I've built a few more though - 2 sets of "Hydroponics", which are very useful.  Every time I farm, I get an extra colonist for each card, and whenever I lose another building I gain an extra money for each card.  I also have my "Organ Banks", which let me ignore the "Accident" event cards as long as I have supplies in the building.

A few buildings have changed.

By the end of the turn I've lost the Trading Post and Hacker Lair (counting as 13 colonists in total), but thanks to the Hydroponics I earned 4 money as they vanished, which added to the money I already had, enabled me to build some solar panels.  At this stage of the game, I don't care so much about the special ability it gives me, just the number of colonists it counts as.  This was the end of the final turn.

The colony slowly dwindles...

 I haven't mentioned much about the robots yet.  These are usually the most harmful cards in the Progress Deck once they've been added.  They usually kill a fair number of colonists, but often have additional problems they cause for you, or occasinally give a small bonus (e.g.the mining robot kills 6 colonists, but gives you 1 extra money for every Mine that you have).

Just a few of the many robots.

 The game ends when the first person (in this case Mrs Mini Metal Mayhem) has lost all their colonists.  Those with colonists left add them up to see who has the most.  Graham had 27 surviving, I had,,, 28!  A win by a single person!

If by some miracle, everyone has managed to keep their colony going for 6 turns, the final event card "Instruction Manual" is added to the deck when the first "Trouble" card is drawn.  This then ends the game, and the player with the most colonists wins.

 We really enjoyed this game, the way you constantly add to the Progress Deck slowly ramps up the tension.  The race is on to build up the colony as quickly as you can early on, before the deaths start to mount up.  The way different buildings interact is very useful, it often pays to think very carefully about the order in which to build them to make sure you get the most out of any bonuses they provide.  Towards the end of the game, it's worth constructing buildings just for the colonists they come with as much as the other benefits they provide.

There are enough robot cards, buildings and Twist cards that you'd need to play this a lot of times before you encounter them all.

We give this game an A, and I suspect we'll be getting our own copy to play with the kids when they're a little older (or by ourselves when they've gone to bed!). 

A Billion Suns: Test Flight

I've seen a few reviews of A Billion Suns, but watching Mr Wargaming's solo campaign was what really made me want to give it a try.  I have lots of starships bought for Full Thrust, which will work fine for A Billion Suns.

 I downloaded the quick start rules and persuaded the kids to give it a try.  We sorted through my boxes of starships and found some suitable fighters, gunships and corvettes.

Number Two Son selected my Full Thrust ESU fleet.  He didn't want to give his corporation a name, so their identity will remain a mystery for the time being.

Strikeboat (gunship), fighters and Corvette.

Number One Son went for the NAC fleet, with its Star Wars themed fighters (the A-Wing proxies are actually ESU light fighters), plus some Space: Above & Beyond ISSCVs (Inter-Solar System Cargo Vehicles) standing in for gunships.  They are employed by BugLab.

Corvette, fighters, ISSCVs (gunships)

 The trial game calls for 3 beacons to be set out in 2 separate playing areas.  I grabbed Mrs Mini Metal Mayhem's jewellery-making box (with her permission) and found some nice beads.  These were mounted on pieces of paper clip, sprayed black along with the base, then painted with gold and silver acrylics to produce the beacons.

Beacons from beads and paperclips.

 After our recent Voidfighter game, I made an order from eM4 Miniatures for some Silent Death fighters - just before I found the fighters I already had when sorting through the starship boxes.  I should have thought of looking there in the first place!.  Anyway, at the same time, I filled in my shortfall of D12 and D4, but also got a new set of D6 in rather nice purple and black with gold spots, a nice space nebula-like effect suitable for space battles.

Space dice!

 This game was also my first opportunity to try out my new "space game mat", which is actually a space shower curtain obtained for under £10 online.  The only problem is the folds from how I had it packed away, but I'm going to roll it up from now on, which should make it much flatter next time we use it.

For the 3-turn introductory game, you place 2 beacons in one sector (circled green on the left), and one on another sector (circled green on the right, with the large metal ruler separating the 2 sectors).  BugLab jumped a squadron of fighters (circled blue) into sector 1, and the other corporation jumped a squadron of fighters into sector 2.  Ships jumping in have to arrive at least 10" from the objectives.

Fighters jump in at the start of turn 1.

 Both squadrons then flew their full 6" towards the nearest beacon.  The fighters cost each corporation 2 credits to jump in.  We marked this with a couple of red counters for each side to show their debt.  There was no fighting because they were each the only occupier of their sector.

Unnamed corporation fighters approach their beacon.

BugLab fighters approach their beacon.

 At the end of the turn, they earned credits: 5 for having the greatest mass of ships within 6" of a beacon, plus another 5 for having the most ships in a sector.  We removed the red counters and gave each side 8 gold counters to show their profit so far.

 Turn 2 saw an unnamed corporation corvette jump into Sector 1 (costing 5 credits) to contest control.  BugLab jumped a gunship into Sector 1 (cost 3 credits) to reinforce their fighters.

Gunship vs. corvette.

 In Sector 2, the fighters circled the beacon, ensuring they remained within 6".  In Sector 1, the gunship accelerated 6", passing the corvette to try and secure the other beacon.  The corvette's auxillary blasters caused a point of damage to the gunship as it flew past.  The corvette then made use of its full 10" move to sweep past the gunship, though it took a couple of points of damage from the gunship's auxillary blasters.

Gunship vs corvette due to my rules mistake.

 The BugLab fighters remained close to their beacon to ensure they retained control of it.  At this point I made a mistake.  We did all the active attacks for the ships, in this case only the gunship had anyone in its fire arc to shoot at.  This was WRONG! Each ship is supposed to move, then suffer passive attacks from enemy ships, then make its own active attack.  So the gunship should have finished its entire turn (which meant there would be nothing it could shoot at in its fire arcs) before the corvette moved.  As it was though, due to my error, the gunship fired on the corvette and through some very lucky dice rolling, destroyed it.  Having jumped in behind the corvette though, the gunship was beyond 6" from the beacon and was therefore unable to hack it to earn the 5 credits available.  Both sides earned a total of 10 credits, 6 for the one beacon each controlled, plus 5 for control of a sector.

On the third and final turn, the unnamed corporation jumped in a second squadron of fighters (cost 2) to protect the beacon they controlled.  This gave them an extra 5 credits for the beacon plus 5 for controlling the sector.

Extra fighters incoming to Beacon 3.

 BugLab jumped additional fighters into Sector 1 as well.

BugLab fighter reinforcements arrive on the left.

The BugLab fighters and gunship converged on their second beacon, ensuring they'd earn the extra credits from hacking it. They earned 10 credits in total for the beacons, plus 5 for controlling Sector 1.

Beacon 1 secured by BugLab.

Beacon 2 secured by BugLab.

 The final score was 28 credits profit for BugLab, but only 21 Credits for the unnamed corporation.

 

Anonymous profit 21.

BugLab profit 28.

 

Despite some grumbling from Number Two Son when his corvette was destroyed, both kids enjoyed the game - though fidgeting and arguing was very distracting and might have contributed to my mistakes with the rules!  Re-reading them, I've realised that they should have been able to bring in more than one ship on a turn.  I read the paragraph "Players take it in turns.... to jump in one ship."  I thought this was a very simplified version where you only get one ship per turn to keep it quick and easy, but that's because I missed the second sentence that says "This continues round and round until all players have passed."

We'll have another try, but using more ships, and hopefully getting the firing correct too!  I think I'll be getting the full rules, the kids are very eager to use all my fighter carriers, frigates, cruisers, battleships and destroyers as well.  For "utility ships" required, I have various freighters and small transports which should work fine, as long as we can remember which side they are on.  I have some polystyrene spheres which can become planetoids and some asteroids made from torn up car washing sponge.

To finish, a picture of all our gold counters, which Number One Son felt should be positioned in the centre of the star on my space shower curtain...

Gold!