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