A mammoth task

The Tribe had occupied their cave complex for more than twenty summers and had been happy there until the Cromagnons moved in nearby. They’d been able to tolerate the first few, but others quickly followed in their wake. The smells of foreign food and the noise of their never ending parties disturbed the Tribe at night and tempers soon began to fray. 

After one especially angry confrontation Ogg woke to find his cave entrance (no that’s not a euphemism) had been “tagged” with crude depictions of the Tribe’s latest hunting failure. 

Cromagnon graffiti. Apparently aroused and seemingly distracted by a flamingo, Ogg is depicted being trampled by an angry Auroch.

Ogg wasted no time getting “tooled up” to deal out his own brand of Palaeolithic justice but was given pause by the tribes shaman shrieking the ancient invocation “leaveimoggtitaintworthit.”

To find peace the Shaman knew the Tribe would have to relocate and to this end she instructed six of her best hunters to head North and scout for somewhere more suitable.

Meanwhile…

Things had changed a lot in the valley since Munches The Most Grass had been a calf. The snowdrifts had all gone, but in their place the herd now found themselves constantly beset by tiny buzzing creatures and the ever lurking fire monkeys. 

The old bull flapped at the little biters with his furry ears and ambled out of the shade of the pines to a spot where the sparse scrub seemed the sweetest.

Munches the most grass wanders out of the Forrest, struggling to decide if he should go for bellowing or trumpeting in the forthcoming game. Tough decision. 

Well that’s the fluff background I’ve settled on to back up the first Paleo Diet scenario from the rule book. The distances have been converted to hexes but that’s about the only change I’ve made. 

By the way, special mention should be made of dear old Kaptain Kobold, who’s excellent blog initially introduced me to the game a few years ago.

I’ll report on this game next week and I suspect that I’ll follow that up with a VSF game focussed on zee chermans. 

Behind the scenes I’ll be making Starfleet corridor sections this week and breaking my New Years resolution not to buy any more miniatures. I’m planning on getting back to some proper army style gaming with a manufacturer of miniatures I’ve not used before; so if anyone knows any good reason why this man and some Forged in Battle 15mm Arthurian miniatures should not be joined in holy wargamery, speak now or forever hold your peace. 

Toodle ooh 

We come in peace…Shoot to kill

Welcome to part 2 of theTrek Hulk mashup “It’s Trek Jim but not as we know it”.

For those that can’t remember and can’t be arsed to go back a post, an Away Team from the USS Cousteau have beamed aboard a damaged Borg recon vessel in order to download its communication logs.

The following pictures and text help illustrate some of the rules and are not, you’ll be relieved to hear, an exhaustive blow by blow account of the game.

The Away Team head out up the corridor with security officer Ensign Ginsella and her phaser rifle in the lead. The miniatures have 4 action points to spend plus the chance of a 1-6 command point boost to this total each turn - which could be translated into extra movement if I wanted, though moving more than 3 squares per turn automatically switches the Borg from ambivalent and semi dormant to full on hostile mode.

Should I get the Away Team to leg it or opt for caution? The orange counter in the middle of the countdown stack indicates the buggers will come to life whatever I do on turn 5, but until then I suspect it might be best to make as much progress as I can without disturbing them.

Note that until the Borg become actively hostile the Away Team player controls the movement of any of those not in a regeneration alcove and MUST roll 1D6-2 for their movement every turn. A negative die roll outcome means an individual Borg will stay where it is but anything positive means it has to move that number of squares.

The die roll for the Borg in the nearest corridor recess was a 2 so he didn’t move, but just to be on the safe side I put Ensign Ginsella on overwatch using the action points I hadn’t used on movement.

The team tiptoes past the Borg in the recess and spreads out to leave a 1 square gap between them. Once again unused action and command points were used to put the Ensign on point into overwatch. Anything coming down the corridor was going to have a nasty surprise.

Which was all fine until I rolled for the mandatory Borg movement and got a 5. Even with a -2 deduction he was still required to move 3 squares and obviously couldn’t.

There are 4 things that will tip the Borg into instant hostility; weapon fire, interaction with an objective, rapid movement and yes…blocking the path of a moving drone. 2 of 10 stepped out into the corridor behind Ensign Ginsella but couldn’t go any further. He was not best pleased.

Finding his path blocked 2 of 10 became immediately hostile which meant (since the Borg are all linked together by a single hive mind) that all of the other buggers had suddenly become hostile too. Dammit. So much for the stealthy approach.

2 of 10 had only used 1 point to move into the corridor and still had two points left which was enough to initiate a melee on the unsuspecting Ensign. Ginsella had been placed on overwatch, a stance that allows her to fire at any moving enemy outside of the Away Teams turn however she was carrying the phaser rifle which cannot be fired at targets in an adjacent square. The Borg roll 2d6 in melee and pick the highest score while Starfleet officers roll 1d6. Highest scoring mini wins the melee. Note there is no facing aspect at work here as there is in Space Hulk.

2 of 10 rolled badly but Ginsella, who in fairness was looking the other way at the time, rolled even worse. Assimilation tubules shot out of the Borgs wrist and burrowed into the security officers neck. Assimilation in Trek Hulk is a two part process, and though Ginsella now had millions of transformative nanobots swarming through her body the length of time it takes to become fully Borgified varies from individual to individual. 

Luckily for the stricken Ginsella, Lt Posc (the Away Team medic) was next in line behind and he launched straight into a melee of his own with 2 of 10. Posc has a hand phaser of course and could’ve just shot at the Borg, but I forgot in all the  “excitement”. Lol. Posc bravely grappled the drone while Ginsella lay writhing on the deck plates in transformative agony. Could the doughty Denobulan medic save her? Well yes it seemed he could. His melee die roll was a 6 and the best that  old Borgy chops could muster was a 5.

2 of 10 is removed from the board but will be recycled as a new drone as soon as a regeneration alcove is empty. 

With sufficient action points remaining Posc injects Ginsella with a shot of Federation anti assimilation nanobots that hunt down and destroy their Borg counterparts. He only has two  doses of these on him, so he best not to be too liberal with their application.  (Yup this is my own invention and may prove to be unnecessary game wise or a bit OP as the kids say - we’ll have to see).

The Borg are now in hostile mode but a roll of 2 means that only two of the drones on the board can be activated this turn. In the above picture two drones step out of their regeneration alcoves leaving the spots clear for future casualties to re spawn on them. Given that the Borg vessel is considered to be damaged I have not allowed the Borg to use their one in game corridor blocking forcefield.

With no further need for caution the Away Team move quickly towards the target that lies unhelpfully just out of shot on the right.

Drones began to fill the corridor between the Away Team and the target data node. There was a lot of poor shooting and a seemingly never ending stream of targets. In this instance the drone advancing on the Ensign was able to adapt his shielding to her phaser fire when she rolled a double in overwatch - shrugging off the hit.

The Away Team slowly ground their way forward often having to resort to desperate hand to hand action due to Ginsella and the bloody annoying 1 square prohibition on phaser rifle fire. Given that characters can not pass through each other in the narrow corridor or fire weapons around those in front, Ginsella’s weapon was all they’d got to keep the Borg at bay.

Finally the phaser rifle comes in to its own. Fired during the Away Team activation rather than in overwatch it catches a whole line of Borg coming down the corridor. Doubles and adaptive shielding only help save drones during overwatch fire so this time it was all down to getting kill scores on the dice with mods applied for repeated shots at the same target. 

The phaser rifle needs a 5 or 6 to kill and uses two dice per attack. The advantage it has over the regular hand phaser is that it is able to kill an additional enemy in an adjacent square to the original target - if two kills were actually rolled. Two Borg in a line went down to the first shot, leaving those behind them as new prospective targets. More action points were available so Ginsella fired again, achieving yet another two kills with one shot. Sweet.

Times up!  The game turn counter reaches 10 which means the Borg have guessed the Away Teams intent and have fractally encrypted their computer access. No I don’t know what that means either. Ensign Ginsella ducks down a side corridor in order to take the end ladder square up or down to another deck while the gallant Doctor Posc takes up overwatch in the corridor. The first Borg he fires at in overwatch is saved through shield adaptation when the Doctor rolls a double 1. Time to beam out quick sharp!

So the whole thing ended in a Starfleet failure, though I’m sure that Ensign Ginsella will get a mention in the Captain’s log. Sufficient recompense I’m sure you’ll agree.

The whole shebang took 45 minutes to play and only minutes to set up and put back again - which for me is a definite plus. Without a doubt this has proved the most successful of my homebrew rule sets to date and trust me I’m my own worst critic.

Given that I wanted as vanilla a testing set up as I could get I did not use movement between decks via ladders and crawl-ways, overloaded phasers as explosive devices or force fields. Apart from the Doctor doing a bit of healing there was no opportunity for any of the other command, security, science or engineering division specialisations to be used either.

Lessons learned and observations:

It’d be interesting to fight on tiles that are more than 1 square wide or allow for a passing / position swop option between adjacent characters.

Next time I’d take a bigger Away Team and split them into two groups.

I need to think more carefully about the deck plan layouts. The one I used was thrown down in haste and the limited number of approaches to the target looked nice but may have handed an unwitting advantage to the Borg.

I hate the term “going forward” but I have a mind to make my own Federation ship tiles utilising 3d terrain pieces acquired from a good friend of the blog. We’ll see how things turn out after a bit more testing.

Toodle ooh!

It's Trek Jim, but not as we know it

I know that this blogs regular readership are unlikely to be interested in Star Trek, and as a consequence this latest post may elicit little more than a yawn and a click of the mouse to take them elsewhere. To those that keep reading, thanks for bearing with me. 

I've always been a huge fan of the Star Trek franchise and for many years I've had a fancy to game out a couple of scenes from my favourite Trek movie, namely 1996's First Contact. 

My recent acquisition of miniatures from Modipheus coupled with  some starship deck tiles from Games Workshop's Space Hulk have allowed me to mash it all together and create...well...Trek Hulk. Lol. 

The original GW rules architecture needed a little tweaking to match the different protagonists, but for the few that are curious or want to have a go themselves my suggestions are in the home-brew rules tab up on the top right of the blog page.

In the hopes of providing a little context, here's a clip of Captain Picard's attempt to regain control of main engineering after a Borg incursion on the Enterprise.

The GW ship deck tiles are fantastic quality and while they don't look very  Federation they do look sort of Borgish. 

I've now run two games based on a Starfleet Away Team fighting in a Borgified environment and I thought I'd present the results here in Broom Battle Picture Library format (just loads of pics with relevant rules info very briefly explained underneath).

Even if Trek's not your thing, I hope you enjoy the gaming aspect.

Scenario 1. We come in peace...shoot to kill.

It's Stardate 50893.5 and the USS Cousteau has intercepted a small Borg reconnaissance vessel. Worried about what it might have transmitted back to the collective, the Cousteau's Captain sends an Away Team to download the communications log from the enemy ships data core.

The map:

Deck 16 of the Borg recon vessel. Computer core in the far room, Borg regeneration alcoves (grey pads) and the Away Team beam in site (room at the bottom of the picture).

Turns out that a 23rd Century Borg data node looks very much like an upside down empty Epson black ink cartridge. Weird that.

Starfleet:

4 Person Away Team:

Cmdr Tamara Castille - Human female (Command - Phaser, Tricorder)

Ensign Ginsella - Denobulan female (Security - Phaser rifle)

Lt Posc - Denobulan male (Medical - Phaser, Tricorder, 2 x shots of anti assimilation nano bots)

Lt Cmdr Sorik - Vulcan male (Science, Phaser, Tricorder)

Lt Cmdr Sorik, Lt Posc, Cmdr Castille, Ensign Ginsella - locked and loaded. Ooh look - the Borg in the background are waving!

Time clock - 10 turns

Borg automatic trigger point - turn 5

Automatic beam out - Information downloaded or when 2 away team members have been assimilated.

Special weapons - none.

Borg:

6 Drones in regeneration alcoves

2 Drones in corridor computer alcoves

2 Drones in outer edge corridors (must be 10 squares or more from beam in site). 

No force fields in play since vessel is damaged.

Victory conditions:

Starfleet win if the communication logs are downloaded from the Borg data hub. The Borg win if the Starfleet away team are forced to beam out without the information (i.e. run out of time or suffer two assimilations). 

The away team have to start in adjacent squares when they beam in. The game count down clock is a series of TTS numbered chits from 1-10. (Centre of table). The Borg will remain indifferent to the Away Teams presence as long as they don’t move more than three squares per turn, don’t fire weapons, don’t block Borg Drone movement and don’t interact with the objective. The orange counter in the middle of the count down clock is the point at which the Borg automatically become alarmed and turn hostile - whatever the Away Team do. Adding another team member to the initial 4 causes the Borg to become automatically hostile 1 turn earlier, and deducting a team member allows the Starfleet personnel to gain an extra turn before this happens…

Resistance is futile. You will adapt to service us.

Since I’m pretty sure you’ve already had more Trek than you can cope with - I’ll give you the “deets” of the game itself in the next post.

I bet you can hardly wait. Lol.

Toodle oooh

WTF

The Tribe.

My latest gaming dalliance is with the excellent Paleo Diet Stone Age skirmish rules.

I can almost hear you saying WTF* Broom?! Where are the ruddy muskets, where’s the pikes? 

I know, I know, you didn't sign up for this nonsense (as was politely explained to me in an email by a recent ex blog follower!) however the heart wants what the heart wants and I guess in this day and age we all have to learn to live with disappointment don't we...besides Norm himself recently posted about subject matter drift - so I'm clearly in good company.

Anywhoo - should anyone out there still be reading this let me introduce the chaps I'll be using for my Paleo Diet hunting party. 

Igg: Quite a looker is our Igg, well that’s what his mom says anyhow. Igg has an eye for the laydeez and is currently trialling a new cologne of his own devising called… “hint of mammoth”.

Dave: Dave has a weird name and is often taunted by the others over his continual promulgation of conspiracy theories. Dave reckons that the Cromagnon’s and their so called “rock music” are somehow linked to the disappearing ice sheets. 

Ugg: A couple of Cromagnon boys gave Ugg this strange hunting contrivance - well they did when he agreed to stop strangling them. Now he’s got to work out how to use it.

Ogg: Ogg loves his new sedimentary cryptochrystalline chert tipped hunting stick. It sports the latest in bark textured grip control too. Here… Feel the weight.

Egg: Poor old Egg is a life long sufferer of explosive flatulence. Hunting parties have to ensure that Egg and Agg are kept apart where possible due to their potential combustibility.

Agg: Agg has quite a thing for fire. Quite an unnatural thing for fire come to think of it. If it burns…well you get the picture. Agg isn’t his actual name but it is the sound he makes when bits of burning tar drip off the branch onto his head.

It’s been a long old time since I’ve painted figures this big (32mm - Lucid Eye) but I think they came out okay. Both Ugg and Agg are fairly clumsy conversions to cover the requirements for characters wielding fire and a bow - but they sort of work. Before I can get to actually gaming with them I’m obviously going to need a selection of animals to hunt and be hunted by. Fortunately there are a couple of sources to obtain these from and the whole things very much an ongoing, when I can be arsed, type of project…so no pressure.

Toodle ooh!

* My grandchildren are very keen for me to encourage a younger demographic to the hobby through the use of "text speak". As a strong advocate of all things new (cough) I am of course very happy to oblige and am delighted to learn that "WTF" apparently stands for Well That’s Fantastic. 

Who knew?