Void Admiral Solo Starship Game

 Unfortunately, my planned game of Void Admiral this week had to be postponed. I have only played the rules a couple of times (but really like them) so I decided that, as I had the ships out anyway, I'd play a quick solo game to help reinforce the rules.

I decided to play the 24 pt Loyalist fleet I was intending to use and pitch it against a fleet from the Noble Houses. I thought this would give myself some tactical challenges, the Loyalists have strong frontal armour and long range missiles, whereas the Noble Houses have shorted ranged weapons, but being turret mounted are more flexible in their firing arcs. The Loyalists also have much better command and control.

The two fleets close in on each other. This is a basic "smash and grab" raid. The two space stations are old Imperial assets which contain important data which the Loyalist have come to retrieve. However as the Noble houses in this sector feel that the Imperium have effectively abandoned them to fend for themselves, they believe that any such Imperial assets now belong to them.

It's a version of the Hold the Line scenario in the rulebook. Fleets score 1 victory point at the end

of each round for each station that they have at least one ship within 6” of. But they do not score points for any stations that also have an enemy ship within 6”. 

In turn 1 only the Loyalist ships are in range, but their opening salvos of missiles do little damage (so really rubbish dice rolling!).

As the Noble Houses close the distance both the sovereign and a sceptre concentrate their fire on the Loyalist flagship, strippng it's shields and inflicting some damage.

The sovereign also launches a fighter attack, but the galleon's own squadrons and flak defences neutralise the threat. Both fleets have their smaller ships within range of a station, but it's the same one!

A Loyalist destroyer fires on a sceptre, not inflicting damage but knocking it's shields down.

This leaves the sceptre vulnerable to the shooting and fighters of the second destroyer, and the Noble Houses ship takes heavy damage.

The sovereign manoeuvres around into the rear arc of the galleon, it's turrets pouring in cannon and laser fire at close range. The Loyalist flagship explodes spectacularly.

Almost simultaneously the damaged sceptre explodes!

The fleets now have ships within range of both stations, but no-one is able to download data yet.

A space-age version of Crossing the T. Both Loyalist destroyers manage to get into the rear arc of the sovereign bombarding it and launching fighter strikes, but neither can get their powerful missile batteries to bear. The Noble houses flagship is badly damaged, bur still fighting. 

The remaining sceptre is now able to start downloading data from one of the stations.

Another Loyalist ship explodes under intense cannon and laser fire.

The little Loyalist corvette tries to hide behind a station, but a large Noble houses ship bears down on it, it predictable results, turning the corvette to space dust!

Having grabed some data, the last Loyalist ship breaks off and runs, leaving the Noble houses in clear control.

Final result after 5 turns, Noble Houses 20VPs to the Loyalists 7VPs.

It was fun and certainly gave me a better grasp of the rules. I'd only used the Loyalists so far and their increased armour and powerful missiles are only good if they can keep the enemy in front of them. Their weaker side batteries were no match for the turreted weapons of the Noble Houses who could combine both front and rear weapons into a devastating broadside, once in range.

I'm looking forward to play a live opponent again soon.

Painting for March to May

Just keeping abreast of my painting so far this year, March was quite productive  but things ground to a halt after that. Not due to lack of interest, but rather lack of time, two trips abroad in April and a week in Devon at the beginning of May didn't leave me a lot of painting opportunities!

A pair of barbarians from the Wildspire set.

A pair of lizardmen from the same set.

Also from Wildspire, a group of dwarves.

Then various sci-fi scatter pieces, from a batch of 3d prints I picked up. All ready for Scrapjacks.

 Then a return to Jotunheim in May

A resin armoured bear from TT Combat's Max Mini range. This is a test paint for a unit for Midgard.

Happy with that, I've now finished the unit.

A Yeti/Snow Demon, another from the Wildspire set.

A Frost Giant from the Wildspire set.

A Ghost Warg, I'm not sure how to class this yet, an undead/spirit creature or just a large beastie. The model is a 3d print Dire Wolf from Headbunny Games.

From warmer climes.....

...a flying beastie, again a 3d print from Headbunny Games. I'll probably use this as a stand-in for an Orphidian in my Chronopia Stygian army.

Scrapjacks - Trying a new system

 Ross came over for a game last night which gave me the opportunity to have a second try at Scrapjacks. This is a new set of sci-fi rules from Patrick Todoroff, due out in March. Patrick has put a free Quick Start Guide with a taster scenario on Wargames Vault  https://www.wargamevault.com/en/product/500732/scrapjacks-quick-start-guide

I'd had one opportunity to play through the rules so I had a reasonable grasp of the mechanisms. Anyone who has played any of Patrick's other systems, like Exploit Zero, Zona Alfa, When Nightmares Come or Nightwatch will be familiar with the basics.

The premise is a solo or co-op game, running a salvage team exploring derelict space craft/stations. The Quick Start Guide includes a two-park scenario to familiarise you with the basic rules. There are 4 basic roles in the team, each of which has specific specialisms.

Starting off in the first MHU (Modular Habitation Unit) the crew split up and move quickly towards various POI (Point of Interest). The main objective is to hack a fried relay by the exit, so Buzz (our specialist hacker) ignores the POIs and heads straight for the dodgy panel. Wrecker gets to the closest POI and find a Maintenance Supply Cabinet. This is quickly broken open and contains a Power Cell, some useful kit and 2 pts of salvage. POIs may contain useful bits the Scrapjacks can make use of (like suit patch kits) and generic salvage that offer a monetary value. As the rest of the team spread out we roll for the first Hitch. After all the Scrapjacks have taken their turn you roll of the Hitch table, which could bring foes into play, or else some environmental hazard. We roll a Void Mould, a nasty substance that can damage suits we get 3 suit breeches.

The team has a pool of Air Charge, representing a mixture of air and power available to the crew. We were already down to 5 and unless repaired quickly, each suit breech loses an Air Charge at the end of each turn, so it's not good.

In Turn two we concentrate on fixing the suit breaches but and Wrecker realises that her suit is still leaking air. This means that the team don't move so far, and at the end of the turn some maintenance bots turn up.

Two malfunctioning bots , ready to clean the MHU of all unwanted organic material (which includes the Scrapjacks).

Wrecker's suit is still leaking air.

Buzz gets close to the objective, but there are two more bots nearby.

In turn three Doc repairs Wrecker's suit, then moves on towards the objective. Q.B. (the team's "muscle") kicks open the POI next to him, a Security Locker, grabbing the goodies inside, then takes down one of the bots with his riot gun. Buzz ignores the threatening bots to start working of rerouting the fried relay. The bots activate and move in on Wrecker and Q.B. , but fail to score a hit.

This is leaving Wrecker looking rather exposed.

Turn 4, Buzz completes the rewiring, so it's safe to exit. Wrecker moves up to join the crew. the bots attack again and both Q.B. and Wrecker are wounded this time.

A bot's eye view.

The Hitch roll brings on a team of pirates/claim jumpers, which makes thing look fairly hairy for the team, so we elect to move on to the next MHU. Unfortunately this means we have left two POI not investigated, so it's not looking like a very profitable start.

The second MHU has lost gravity, so we start off in zero-g. This make movement easier, but has a risk of damaging suits every time a Scrapjack moves, so we decide to restore gravity asap. Once that is accomplished the team move on towards the various POI. Our Hitch roll trigger's a Hull Shift witch wounds two of the team.

 Doc uses his med kits to stop the bleeding and we break into 2 POI, finding a Emergency Aid Cabinet and a Supply Crate. This replenishes a med kit and 2 patch kits as well as giving us some valuable salvage. We strike lucky with the Hitch roll of just "Uneasy Silence", which (literally) gives us breathing room. 

Moving on to Turn 3, we check out another POI and find another Maintenance Supply  Cabinet, giving us some more salvage and Wrecker gets to the objective. This just requires breaking into a wall panel and installing a beacon, and Wrecker is very good a breaking into things!

But the Hitch roll turns up more maintenance bots, two of which a very threatening to Doc, bringing up the rear.

Turn 4 and Wrecker blew open one of the hatches with a det-cord, them prised the other open with her wrecker bar, to complete the objective. With bots closing in we decided to call it a day and evac.

Good fun! We both enjoyed the games. Having played once already I was more comfortable with the mechanisms, allowing me the opportunity to make better use of my utility items. We had escaped lightly, but a bit light on salvage. Between the two MHUs we had only acquired salvage to a value of 6.

With a bit of time on our hands, we decided to re-set and play through the second MHU again. This time it was a much more dangerous mission. Between Void Mould, Hull Shifts and Toxic Gas, by the end of turn 4 we were down to 2 Air Charge and had 3 wounded. As more bots turned up we decided to let Wrecker do her stuff on the wall panels and then get out of Dodge. A very close call, however we had scored 13 points of salvage, more than double what we had found in the entire first run.

The Quick Start Guide is, as expected, quite basic. It's fun to play a few times, as each scenario is different, depending on the Hitch rolls. After a while I expect games will start to feel a bit "samey", but I am hoping the full rules will have plenty different options to give variety to the fun.

For me, Scrapjacks certainly has an Expanse-vibe, and I am looking forward to the full rules coming out (hopefully) in March.

Tenfold Dungeon - The Facility Sci-Fi

 Although I have had this set longer than my fantasy sets, and I have used it for photographs, I had not actually posted a review of the full set yet!!! Very remiss of me.

So here it is...

So what do you get in the set?

2 large rooms, 4 medium rooms, 3 small rooms and 3 corridors, various dividing walls, stairs and clips, plus 13 double-sided doors.

I picked up a couple of sets of card terrain for Core Space to equip the base with panels, consoles and assorted scatter. Here are images of the various rooms.

Intruder Alert, Intruder Alert!!!

This is going to get a lot of use for Sci-fi and Post Apocalypse, maybe even some VSF with a change of scatter.

POST-APOCOLYPTIC CAMPAIGN 3

 Having had their arses kicked by the Wasteland Androids, Colin's party decided to make an adjustment to the route of their journey (they ran away so they now had to go the long way around!).

Sorry, I neglected to take any pictures of Game 2, suffice to say it ended with the leader and another fighter down and the rest of the party making a hasty exit as the metallic killers closed in. The leader survived, wandering into camp the next day, but had lost all his kit. On the plus side, they had managed to loot a gun, a stack of energy cells and a plasma grenade as they scarpered!

They now had to cross an area of dense jungle-like vegetation. The party will enter from the North (top edge) and need to exit from the South edge.

A simple task, but there are distractions along the way.

On either side of the table are some interesting containers, is it worth the delay to check these out?

However, something is lurking in the undergrowth....

....not all the plants are rooted to the ground, and regard the interlopers with murderous intent!

The party cautiously move forward.

The plant leader opens fire with an assault rifle.

The party dodge for cover in the undergrowth as two of their guns broke in quick succession (poor maintenance) when they tried to return fire. The party gunsmith will be very busy tonight repairing those!

More plants start advancing into the fray. The tall plant moving down the path had a kinetic energy absorbtion mutation, very disconcerting for Colin's champion when she rushed up to close range and empties the magazine of her smg into the creature, with no effect!

Seeing an opportunity, Colin threw his can of herbicide catching the plant leader and two others in the blast. The effect was disappointing, it only knocked the two plants off their feet and had no effect on the leader at all. But it destroyed the vegetation around them so that they were no longer in cover, allowing Colin's mutant sharpshooter to aid and take the leader down with his assault rifle. In fact the mutant proved to be deadly in this game (after a poor performance against the androids) taking out three more plants with carefully placed shots.

Without the leader's bonus the plants were now only activating on 5s or 6s, allowing Colin to run rings around them. His party were able to loot two of the containers, gaining much needed food, a needler pistol and another grenade.  

Colin almost blew it at this point. With a clear path to escape down in front of him, he momentarily turned to go for the third container. But he realised that it was too far away and there were still quite a few plants, including some undisclosed ambushers, between him and the container, so decided to retreat (as I was bound to get lucky on my activations at some point).

But that delay was enough for me to activate one of the ambushers, who was fast moving (for a vegetable) and leapt on the simian hybrid bringing up the tail of the party!

As they struggled I was also able to get a monster plant (with really big teeth!) to start to close in.

In the nick of time, Colin's mutant moved back and between them killed the ambusher, allowing the party to leg it of the table before my big beastie could get into contact!

A great game, with a lot of fun a laughter. 

The party are back on track, next time they face the storms of The Radioactive Desert!