Galactic Heroes - Test Play and Review Part 2

Following up my previous post where we playtested Fistful of Lead:  Galactic Heroes (GH), we closed out that experience with some imbalance between teams.  We decided to give three factions even odds, with a Psionic and war walker each, and several normal troopers to round out each team.

We returned to our grim, dark setting perhaps in the year 40,000 or so.  This time, the Emperor's elites, the high-tech Tor, and the savage Ornks were vying for a flex compactor, an essential component for the Doom Moon, a large battle station that could change the balance of power in the universe.

 Recommend clicking on the above.  The Tor are advancing from top left, Imperial elites at top right, Ornks about to show up at bottom.

 The Tor advancing.  The mystical blue portal orb  

The Ornks arrive, their Odd Boy in the lead and war walker bringing the big guns to the fight.

The Emperor's elites disembark from their ship. 

 The three factions can see each other and exchange fire.

 One of  the Tor raced out and dragged the flex compactor toward his lines, but Imperial fire shook him and forced a retreat back to where the Tor cleric could calm his nerves.

The Ornks take heavy fire from both Tor and Imperial forces.

The Imperial psyker advances to crush an Ornk, fighting over the precious cargo next to them.

My Ornk war walker advances into the fray.

My war walker hoses some Tor down with his flamer.  The Imperial psyker has been killed at this point.

Mediocre results from my war walker's flamer - I had hoped to clear the table of Tor resistance, no such luck.

The Tor psyker decides it's a good idea to charge my war walker and engage in close combat.  This doesn't pan out as hoped, as he is wounded and knocked down.

My war walker gets shot by Tor troopers and retreats.  My psyker runs forward and delivers a coup de grace, finishing off his Tor counterpart.

Some fresh Tor who hadn't engaged in the fight move forward and kill my Psyker and wound my war walker with accurate fire.  This game's pretty much over.

We called the game at this point.  Both the Imperial and Ornk factions were shot to pieces and the Tor had two warriors who had largely sat out the fight and were fresh.  Victory for the Tor.

Game impressions:

1.  As with my first game, this one turned into a scrum where all sides ended up depleted by casualties.  All troopers default to d10 skill, and all had rifles, so there's not a lot of differentiation in troop capability.  The longer range of the Tor rifles definitely distinguished them and gave an advantage.

2.  The addition of a psyker and war walker to each faction kept things even between factions, but I like that no mini is impervious to harm or too overpowered.  If it bleeds, someone can kill it.

3.  The activation mechanism continues to please.  Haven't found a better way to manage multiple factions in a quick and engaging manner.

Exit note: this game was played in December.  Next post will be a likewise belated Christmas game post, with a mashup of Fistful of Lead activation cards, but Savage Worlds Showdown mini stats.

Good Reads

I've added a number of links to other wargaming blogs, visible when you look at the right-hand side of my blog in the Web Version.

Among them are some good reads, with bits of worldbuilding and continued adventures.  Some hand-picked examples:

MiniMetalMayhem's Tomorrow's War collection is a great read.

You should also check out his Zombie posts, with several very fun game write-ups.

For worldbuilding, you'd be hard-pressed to beat IrishSerb's After:  Tales of the Post-Apocalypse..

You can also read my modern combat chronicles, played in Force on Force, organized by theater of combat.  Each theater page lists the games in their logical chronological order:

Force on Force: Iraq

Force on Force: Afghanistan

Force on Force: Libyan Civil War

Force on Force: Special Operations

Force on Force: Miscellaneous

Enjoy!

Galactic Heroes - First Game and Review

I'm happy to say that I was a kickstarter supporter of Fistful of Lead:  Galactic Heroes.  I got my promised game rulebook, activation card deck, galactic codex, vehicle supplement, template, dice, vehicle, and scenery.

If you're not familiar with the game, the original Fistful of Lead is a wild west game that uses a card-based activation system and allows you to have several factions on the board, all in competition with each other.  The Galactic Heroes version takes the system and expands it to science fiction settings, and the accompanying codex provides sample statistics for a number of popular sci-fi movies, books, and games.

The boys and I took the rules for a spin in a grim, dark world perhaps 40,000 years into the future that should be familiar to many sci-fi gamers.  The scenario, modified lightly from one in the basic rulebook, sets four factions against each other in a remote desert planet town, all trying to capture a droid containing plans for the Doom Moon.

A dusty town, a hive of scum and villainy, where four factions are vying for the valuable droid.  At upper left, the desert raiders have come out of the mountains spoiling for a fight.  At upper right, the Emperor's elite troopers have disembarked from their ship at the spaceport to collect what rightfully belongs to their master.  At bottom right, the local constabulary venture out from their barracks to retrieve the droid, either to curry the Emperor's favor or because they've turned heretic.  At bottom left, the mysterious Tor have appeared via a glowing blue wormhole opening made possible by the mystic that leads them.

One of the local constabulary takes a lucky shot and downs the Tor war walker.  One of the neat features of the GH system is that everyone can hurt everyone if the dice are right.

The leader of the Emperor's elite troopers downs a desert raider.  The desert raiders advanced constantly into a hail of fire from the Emperor's top hit squad, and suffered casualties accordingly.

State of the board after a turn.  All factions have advanced toward the droids in the middle of the board, and all have traded some shots with each other.

Droid success!  One of the local constabulary checked a wandering droid and found that it contained the plans to the Doom Moon.  I didn't have enough droid models handy, so the droid in question may look a bit like a Heroclix refugee from the Teen Titans.

The Tor troops trade shots with the desert raiders.

The Emperor's troopers rain down small arms and rocket launcher fire on the desert raiders.  At this point, the desert raider player opted to restart his faction, which the rules allow to happen with the caveat that the reborn faction loses its advantageous edges.

The Tor proved effective in shooting up the local constabulary.  The Tor weapons have a range advantage that proved decisive over some of their foes.

An Imperial commando goes down (foreground), and his leader gets shaken by enemy fire (background).

A local trooper gets nailed by Imperial return fire, and the Imperial leader goes down.

The Imperial leader makes a check to see if he can recover from his wound (mandatory), and rolls a 1 - the only way he could get put out of action!

The Tor war walker, downed again by constabulary fire, is attended to by the Tor Psionic, who heals him.

The Tor war walker promptly jumps up and fries a constable with his flamer!

And return fire downs both the Psionic and the war walker!

I recommend blowing this one up to full size.  One Imperial commando is wounded and out of ammo a left, the rocket launcher trooper at bottom is shaken, but manages to get a shot off and vaporize one of the local constables.  A desert raider is creeping in at right on the rear of the Imperial advance.  Complete chaos.

More chaos.  The Tor war walker, now with two wounds, trades fire with opposing constabulary, many sporting wounds of their own.

Eventually, all the factions' forces were worn down by attrition.  The last Tor warrior grabbed the droid and made a run for the Tor portal orb (exit point to victory) while the Tor war walker provided covering fire until it ran out of ammo, then served as a barrier to the advancing desert raiders.

Success! The last Tor warrior takes the droid with the Doom Moon plans through the portal to win the game.

First impressions:
- The activation system may be the best selling point for this game.  The card-based system lets multiple factions play at the same table, and incorporates bonuses into the flow of the game to create a fun and engaging experience.
- Though I generally favor longer ranges for shooting weapons, the relatively short ranges given by the Codex that came with GH still managed to shoot up all of the factions.  Not sure if I'd change the ranges for weapon effectiveness given the massive attrition that this game produced.
- So far, the one thing missing is a point system.  We gave the Emperor's elites and the Tor five troopers each based on their tougher stats, and the desert raiders and constables six troopers each to try to even it out.  The Tor Psionic and war walker proved very effective, and the extended range of their weapons also weighed heavily in their favor.

We resolved to give the system another try, again in the grimdark universe, but to give each faction a Psionic and war walker of their own to even things out.  We've played that, and I'll post it as soon as it's written up.  More to follow.

DEFCON ZERO Preview and Test Play

I had the opportunity several months ago to meet J. Reid Denton, the man behind Covert Intervention Games' forthcoming DEFCON ZERO.  It's a modern combat game that hopes to offer fast-playing yet realistic gameplay.  I met up with Reid at The Games Tavern in Chantilly, Virginia not far from Washington DC.  

In the spirit of disclosure, I've previously corresponded with Reid via email and have volunteered to be a Beta tester for DEFCON ZERO.  Both Reid and I are military veterans of deployments to the middle east with the U.S. Army, and I agreed with much of the game design philosophy that he laid out in this podcast (also available here).  So I've been excited for a while about this game.

I'm posting two write-ups below, but here's the Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) for a first look at DEFCON ZERO:

- The game uses a unique mission cards system for each player which provides victory conditions based on mission type. There are four groups of missions - Offense, Defense, Enabling and Stability with several missions within each group.  Cards from within each of these categories provide varying missions, so a Defense card could task your force with delaying enemy forces or blocking their progress entirely.  Your opponent doesn't get to see your card, so they don't know what victory conditions you have and vice versa.  So you may be giving your opponent victory points without knowing it, and vice versa.  In the missions played below, the victory conditions influenced the way we played.

- The general flow runs on an action-reaction scheme that allows competing units to attempt an “interrupt reaction” against the force with iniative in a roll-off based on Capability Rating.  Capability Ratings provide a die type to roll, from d6 to d12.  

- The weapon ranges are scaled in cm for effective ranges.  Weapon ranges are what they are in real life in meters (it's a military thing), scaled to the models, with a centimeter on the board per meter in the world.  Your minis' movement will be measured, accordingly, in centimeters instead of inches.  It's a small nod to realism, and in a world where maximum ranges for rifles end at the scale equivalent of 50 meters or so in many less realistic games, I appreciated it. 

- Options for combat optic-equipped shooters which create a bonus to shooting that amounts to a +1 on their rolls, effectively allowing a 3+ to have a chance of success against the opponents Combat Rating.  I've struggled with how to incorporate the benefits of optics into my homebrew rules or in-house rules for other games, and this is a good way to do it that I hadn't thought of.

- The casualty mechanism creates urgency all its own.  Regulars take a d12 roll (place the die next to the downed mini) to count down one digit each turn to dying, while irregulars die off or disappear pretty easily.  This plays well with the realities of modern combat and how many casualties first-world nations are willing to accept.  An insurgent force offensive raid mission against a civil affairs unit on a stability mission can quickly change character entirely into a mad scramble to prevent Coalition fatalities.

- DEFCON ZERO handles grenades uniquely.  As I wrote separately in this other post, I've been experimenting with my own homebrew rules and the grenades are different there than in other systems.  In Savage Worlds or any other number of systems, grenades have a blast radius.  In Force on Force, an under-barrel grenade launcher adds an additional die of firepower to the fire team.  I've always thought that this underplayed their effectiveness.  DEFCON ZERO provides a special template which covers blasts, back blasts, measurements, and more which Reid designed.  I don't have a picture of the template, but it's clear that Reid has put some thought into how grenades are and aren't effective on the battlefield. (Hint: You don’t want to be in the lethal radius and ensuring you keep your 10 meter distance between troops is absolutely critical to not get fragged!)

Test Play 1:  We secured a table and set up a rural desert scene where a U.S. Army infantry squad is guarding a compound at a key road/railroad intersection that insurgents assault.  My mission card provided traditional defensive incentives - points for enemy casualties and keeping enemies from advancing to my end of the board.

Here's the compound where the Americans are in the defense.

Here's a close-up of the compound, showing the U.S. troops on alert on the roofs of the compound and behind sandbags.

Here's the approaching insurgent fighters, with most of them shielded by a hill that's the last covered and concealed position before being exposed to the American troops.

Here are some aerial shots taken with Reid’s phone in a proprietary application that mimics the appearance of a drone feed.  Reid’s day job involves combat simulations for the Department of Defense.  Did I mention that this game is built upon serious simulation of battlefield conditions?

"Cobra 31, we have UAV visual on your location."

"Cobra 31, looks like you've got company over the hill.  We're tasking the UAV to get a better look."

"Yup, two squads of fighting-age males with small arms approaching."

"Looks more like three squads.  Stay frosty - it's coming your way."

"Thanks for the heads-up!"

As the insurgents crest the hill and move to assault the compound where the Americans are quartered, they lose initiative to the Americans are exposed to an overwhelming amount of firepower and are dropped to a man.

After a recovery/first aid roll, a couple of the insurgents recover.

Another group of insurgents crests a different hill, and lose another initiative contest.  They pay the price.

A third group of insurgents move to engage the American troops, and take significant casualties.  Half of the squad fall, but enough remain standing to return fire against the U.S. outpost.

The insurgent return fire knocks out two U.S. troops.  I recommend clicking on this photo - it shows two 12-sided dice for the casualties, which are the turns remaining until the casualties are out-of-action/dead.

We ran out of time to run this game to completion, but it gave me an opportunity to see how the mechanics work.  

Test Play 2:  I went back the next day and we were able to run a more complete game.  I was playing the Americans again, but this time against regulars from a middle eastern nation that had vehicular support.

In this instance, I had victory objectives associated with screening - merely reporting advancing enemy unit locations to my higher headquarters earned victory points.  As the report below shows, a fair amount of my marking of enemy positions ended up happening with tracer rounds, not radio reports.

Here's the battlefield from my viewpoint.  I've arrayed a couple of squads in buildings anticipating an enemy advance, with a Gustav recoilless rifle and a machine gun team for extra support.  I've got an M113 in the rear for CASEVAC/Casualty Collection Point.

View from my lead squad leader's position on a rooftop in the center of the board and overlooking a key road/railroad intersection.

View from my machine gun team's position on a rooftop on my right flank.

I picked up  victory points for reporting the advance of this technical and T-72 tank.  I failed an initiative roll when the technical crew spotted my guys, but the DShKa gunner missed when he opened fire.

Enemies advancing across the board.

The lead enemy squad crested this hill, but one of my squads won initiative and shot it up.  The casualty count-down markers are next to the downed soldiers.

The enemy technicals also crested the ridge and paid the price - one was immobilized, the crew on the other wiped out and marked with the red smoke you see above.

My center squad falls off overwatch.

The enemy tank scored a hit on my machine gun crew, necessitating first aid for the downed soldiers marked with d12s here.

My Gustav crew pops up and fires at the enemy T-72, scoring a hit and immobilizing it.

I advanced a squad leader and fire team up the left side of the board using cover and concealment.

State of my side of the board after several turns.  I had racked up a few more victory points for reporting enemy advances at this point.

View from my M113 as it prepares to advance and provide some .50 caliber support.

The enemy infantry squad is still lying out in the open bleeding out, and the squad leader tries to run away.  My guys shot him down before he could get far.

More casualties for enemy infantry at this compound on their left flank.  They've got a mortar team in the compound - on-board artillery that could make a big impact in this fight - but they haven't gotten their act together to successfully employ it.

The fire team I moved up the left side of the board gets inside of a building.

More U.S. troops advance, this time up the center of the board and across the road-railroad intersection.

The enemy mortar finally gets into the game and lands fire on my squad in the center.

We had to wrap up the game at this point, but I played enough to have a feel for the game.

Exit thoughts:  DEFCON ZERO provides a relatively streamlined version of modern combat that's built on the bones of a realistic simulation.  This realistic simulation, however, is accomplished without the minutiae of a role-playing game level of detail.  The mission cards, and the fact that you don't know exactly what your enemy's goals are, provide an additional touch of realism and a fog of war element that I enjoyed.  There's some on-board marker maintenance, such as turning d12 casualty markers down one number at the end of each turn, but no paper tracking of the game beyond victory points.  I enjoyed the play-tests and look forward to seeing the finished product.