Showing posts with label Star Wars skirmish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Wars skirmish. Show all posts

Monday, August 7, 2023

First Star Wars Skirmish Using Galactic Heroes

    Keith dug out his old Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Miniatures for a game of Galactic Heroes
We have been using the Wiley Games rules for a number of different miniatures games. After watching Rogue One the other night, and reading some really cool threads on the Lead Adventure Forum, I was itching to give it a try. The only problem was I have zero Star Wars miniatures, and only a handful of Sci-Fi ones.

    My four Rebel troopers deployed on the edge of the ruined spaceport overlooking our goal
No problem, though. Keith has Star Wars figures. Keith has everything! So, all it took was a casual mention of how, "Gee, I really think we should give it a try..." and Keith volunteered to run a game of Galactic Heroes (Wiley Games' Sci-Fi skirmish using their Fistful of Lead engine) for us. Success! It HAD been awhile since he ran a game, so doubtless he was ready to give it a go. Plus, he said he has dozens and dozens of the prepainted plastic figures produced by Wizards of the Coast back in 2004. Keith was obviously the right man for the job, and he emailed out that he'd be running a game for us on our normal Sunday evening gaming session.

    We had six players -- two Rebels, two Imperials, and two "Mercenary Scum" spaced across the table
Mike S also has dozens of the figures, too, and brought his along, as well. However, there was no need for his reinforcements, as it turned out. Hmm...if BOTH of them have way more than they need, maybe I should see if either would be willing to part with a few? I could jazz 'em up a little and...well, I did say that I don't have any Star Wars figures, didn't I??

    Mercenary Scum player Joel sent his Gomorrans to investigate the ship, getting a jump on the others
There were six players on the evening of the game, and Keith divided us up into three factions: Rebel Alliance, Imperials, and Neutral Mercenary Scum (somebody said...not sure if it was Keith or another player disparaging the mix of droids, aliens, and leaders who had "Force" powers. Keith gave each of us a mission. I was a Rebel player, and me and Mike W were to get to the starship that had set down in the center of town and see what useful technology we could scavenge from it. The two Mercenary Scum players, Allen and Joel S, had a similar goal. The Imperials -- Mike S and Jenny -- were to patrol the ruined town looking for ne'er do wells, criminals and rebels. 

    We were having none of that, and drew a bead on the pig men, firing off blasters to no avail
Keith had us toss down a bunch of cardstock ruins to simulate a war-torn spaceport somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. Keith DOES own miniatures for every period ever imagined. However, his terrain is definitely in the "quick and simple" category. Still, this was a playtest, he reminded us. I'm sure he has more fancy terrain squirreled away somewhere in his basement that will see the light of a "G Class" star someday! I know I have a handful of buildings from Miniature Building Authority in their Middle Eastern line which would certainly fit the desert planet theme of many Star Wars films. Now...does that mean I will be painting them up soon...? Well, er...I mean -- Keith has everything! Well, we'll see...

    Thankfully, Joel's Assassin Droid & Trash Can Droid were blasting away at Stormtroopers instead
My Rebel Alliance troopers (Leader, Specialist, and two blaster pistol-armed troops) set up in the ruins on the corner of the board. Our goal would be to have our Specialist with his blaster rifle provide covering fire while the two troopers dashed forward in stages towards the spaceship. The leader would cover them and be in the middle to rally any troopers who needed it. My fellow rebel, Mike W, was W-A-Y on the other edge of the board and would never make it to the spaceship. He did get in a firefight with some Stormtroopers, though, like a good rebel! The other Stormtrooper player, Mike S, was directly across the table from me, but we were using a likely too large table, so he struggled to get a shot off at my guys. Plus, Allen, the evil Mercenary Scum kept him VERY distracted.

    Meanwhile, Allen's Mercenaries were giving the other Stormtroopers more than they could handle
Speaking of which, Allen's brother Joel was immediately to my left. Joel had a force of three Gomorran grunts (remember those pigmen from the Star Wars universe?), an assassin droid, a walking trash can (the walking square box of a droid) that we finally decided had a blaster mounted to his trash can lid top, and a leader who had the Force. He was a very creepy alien looking dude who came from a planet plagued by extremely bad luck. Joel's rolls were AWFUL!

    The Gomorrans reach the spaceship and begin to investigate it with their thick, piggy fingers
Anyway, as I crept forward towards the spaceship, Joel sent his grunts (perfect name for pig-faced aliens) towards the ship, beating me there. Luckily, the assassin droid and the trash can focused on shooting Jenny's Stormtroopers instead of us. I admit that I started hostilities between Joel and I when my laser rifle-armed specialist took a potshot at a pig man. Joel's leader then used the Force to attack my specialist, who shrugged off his attack. On my next turn, he ran to the window, drew a bead on the alien-mercenary-scum-leader and blasted him, knocking him to the ground, wounded. 

    The Force was NOT with Joel's leader, as my specialist & his blaster rifle took him out of action
This started a one-sided fight between the two. Joel's leader popped back up, used the Force to push my guy out into the open (and away from the window, so he had no shot). Not content with keeping me at a distance, the creepy spindly alien leaped out of the window and engaged my specialist in melee. Joel's leader was a combat specialist (roll two dice, take the higher in melee), and my specialist was a long-range guy. Joel proceeded to roll a "1" and "2" for his combat rolls. My stalwart rebel trooper knocked him down and gave him a second wound for good measure. On my turn, he shouldered the blaster rifle and finished him off. In none of those rolls, did Joel ever roll above a "3," I believe!

Rebel trooper cleverly uses the final action to sprint to the ship and 1st move next turn to reach it

He got his revenge, though. As I was being clever, I used the last move of the turn to sprint one of my ordinary troopers across the wide open ground towards the spaceship. I used my first move on the following turn to dart him into the cover of the spaceship, right underneath the landing ramp. One of Joel's Gomorrans fiddled with some controls and released the ramp. Keith let him roll an attack with the surprise descent of the ramp and it wounded and knocked down my out-of-breath rebel trooper! As you can imagine, much hilarity erupted around the table at my expense!

    Allen's tiny alien laughs as the Gomorrans release the landing ramp on my out-of-breath trooper
Allen, who had been focusing on Mike S's Stormtroopers, decided to sneak up a diminutive alien up and try to kick my trooper while he was down. The Force was obviously with me that night (and not with those supposedly having Force powers!). My trooper defeated the tiny alien -- sorry, I forget which race he represented -- and leaped to his feet. On his turn, he snagged a communications jammer from the spacecraft and bolted away as fast as his rebel feet could carry him.

  Droid trooper uses the newly-discovered 'Ready' action to wait for someone to run into the open
Allen made up for this turn of bad luck by taking his frustrations out on a different Mike (Stelzer, playing the Stormtroopers). His Force-wielding leader dashed out into melee with a squad of Stormtroopers. Just like in the movies, he light-sabered hapless trooper after trooper, leaving a trail of crispy white plastic armor in his wake. Between the shooting kills Allen had inflicted earlier on Mike, and this melee mayhem, the squad of imperials was left with one figure. He promptly fled the scene, doubtless calling in backup!

    Allen's leader wades through Stormtroopers with his light saber like they were...well, Stormtroopers!
Seeing as how my rebels had taken out 3-4 enemy, including a leader, and had snagged some tech from the spaceship, we decided to leave the scene of our crimes against the Empire, as well. It had been a successful outing, with no losses. We rationalized the communications jammer was exactly what we had been looking for. How else would we ensure the Imperials we ambushed couldn't call for backup?

Cue the Star Wars music, and hopefully there will be a sequel soon...!

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Star Wars skirmish

The Rebel Alliance enemy, Keith and Steve, and our Imperial co-commander, Joel
 We use the Ganesha Games rules, "Song of Blades and Heroes," for a number of periods. Their modern one, Flying Lead, was adapted by Mike S to use in Star Wars skirmishes. We'd play-tested it once before, and Mike was itching to do another game of it. He cooked up a scenario that featured an imperial raid on a rebel base. Intelligence reported that the leadership of the Rebel Alliance was meeting on the planet, and we were sent in to capture them.

Mike set up a nice board with lots of scratch-built, futuristic terrain. Our favorite was the radar dish made from a plastic champagne glass. We also noticed immediately, as he passed out the command, that we would each have a freaking HUGE force. I think Mike looked at the recommended point level per side and interpreted it as per player. With six players total, that meant our battle was three times the recommended size - ha, ha!

This led some of us to attempt only one action per figure, so as not to "crap out" (two failures or more on an attempt). If a player rolls two or mroe failures on the same roll, their turn is over and the remaining figures in their command do not move. This would be my lot for much of the game. It seemed whenever I tried more than one activation, I crapped out. But rather than have you read about my typical, awful dice rolling, I thought I'd plug in a couple of After-Action Reports that others who were present emailed to each other.
Imperial Scout trooper finds a nasty surprise around the corner -- a whole pack of rebels!
First up, is the report sent out by my fellow Imperial commander, Joel Sams:

Star Wars Skirmish - GM: Mike S
Team Rebel:  Allen, Steve, Keith
Team S'Troopers: Mike D,  Tom, Joel

"...Juliett Platoon, right flank! Storm Troopers assault!" Fanned out moving smoothly toward the village. We encounter worker droids amongst a tank farms.


Pvt. 'Joker':  "Hey Sargent are these the droids we're looking for?" Then that ambush hits Papa Platoon hard.  The rebels are all over them like ugly on a wampa.  Our preplanned memory bank kicks in...
Sgt. HardKor:  "AMBUSH! SPREAD OUT -- MOVE, NOW! Third squad take rear guard  position by that radar dish. Pvt. Joker, take point!  Get across that pipeline...move, NOW!"

Our squad moves as a unit across the pipeline and our body armor is pressed hard against an adobe shanty.  We see Gunner Thompson of Papa Platoon is dropping grenades everywhere BUT on the  rebels.  The firefight is intense Papa Platoon holds up in storage tanks uses the cover and their body armour helps holds off the rebels.

Sgt. HardKor arrives at the adobe. "Is this structure secured?"

We repeat the question aloud to ourselves,  Is this ..structure...secure??" Suddenly we are under small arms fire from INSIDE the building. Then the adobe from across the dusty street also erupt with small arms fire.  Sgt. HardKor directs traffic. "Moon and Rok around back- look for a back door!"

Five minutes of firefight, then Pvt. Joker looks up and pauses, "I love it when they RUN!" Three streets away a herd of rebels (20 or more?) are running like gazelle, with move and shoot tactics.  Their unit moves fluidly and quickly overwhelm Motel Platoon on the left flank.  It is a sight to see and we are in awe of their ability.  Papa Platoon falls back just before Motel Platoon bends, and it is Papa Platoon that stops those Runnin' Rebels. 

Things aren't much better on this end of the battlefield as my leader (in red hair) is about to be overwhelmed, but go down fighting...!
 Next up, is a post from the other Rebel commander, Tom:

It was indeed a trap! The 4th Antares Legion had deployed a battalion of Storm Troops flawlessly from their transports at extremely close range to the rebel hive of scum and villainy, known as the Sar-Lor Industrial Complex (SLIC). We advanced on a search and destroy mission intended to decapitate the rebel leadership in this sector of empire.

It appears that the rebels were aware of our plans and had laid an ambush for us. As we approached SLIC a large number of rebels appeared immediately to our rear and opened fire on us. If we had been deployed on different sides of the village as had been the original plan proposed, any one of our Companies might easily have been annihilated, but as the operational commander I had 'altered' our line of embarkation to minimize friendly fire casualties and the rebels were facing three times the troops that they likely expected.

Police Commander Smythe was the first to go down as he was the furthest in the rear of our forces and many of us were caught in the open. However, the rebel scum, were as usual, unprepared for a firefight and when the initial surprise was over the  massive firepower returned by our battle line proved devastating.

Our left and right flanks put forward advance guards toward SLIC to probe for further enemy forces and they very quickly found them lurking in many of the buildings of the town. In addition they reported additional rebel reinforcements were being brought up through the worker's slum.

The right flank held well, engaging rebel forces in the slum, but the left flank seemed to be unmotivated and once engaged with the rebel scum quickly decided withdraw was the better option. A huge rebel thrust on the left almost broke through our  lines to the waiting evacuation ships, but the left flank managed at the critical moment to stiffen and hold off the rebels.

A number of experienced rebel pilots were killed or injured, but the high level commanders slipped the noose.

General Moose
Commander Antares Legion

Look out behind you! One turn after we march onto the board, a massive force of rebels sprints on behind us and opens fire...thankfully, Allen wasn't hot with his dice or we'd had an even rougher time of it...!