Galleys and Galleons in spaaaaace! Catch the pigeon

Yeah it’s the follow up to my previous Trek post so I won’t stretch your patience, feel free to click away now to something that’s more your bag. Man.

I started to write a blow by blow account of the catch the pigeon mission but realised early on that an account showing what’s possible with the rules is probably more interesting than the ins and outs of each die roll.

The game modelled an encounter between two vessels, one from the Romulan Star Empire (boo hiss) and one from the United Federation of Planets (yay for the good guys). Both ships are on different randomly generated missions and both are broadly comparable in capability. The Romulan ship is a Carrion class cruiser the IRW Varak and the Federation vessel is the Constitution class USS Eisenhower. The Ike is a bit faster than the Varak but the Varak is a bit easier to manoeuvre. Although they are both of a similar size they have differing load outs and specific capabilities.

The Varak is on patrol looking for Federation vessels near the neutral zone and has standing orders to scan any Federation vessels they encounter for new technology. 

The Eisenhower has been chasing a stolen shuttle with a Romulan agent who has some top secret plans on board. The shuttle has been damaged during its escape but has just managed to limp into an asteroid field on the border of the neutral zone. 

To win the Romulan player must obtain four elements of intelligence information from the Federation vessel but for extra points can deny the Eisenhower the ability to complete its own mission. The Eisenhower needs to catch the spy and recover the shuttle while potentially frustrating the Romulan’s objective.

The game lasted an hour and took about 13 turns. 

Anywhoo… here’s what happened.

The game area. Eisenhower on the right, Varak on the left and the shuttle (a teeny tiny counter) in the centre of the asteroid field.

 

The Romulan player procured the maximum number of capability enhancing burn cards while the federation player spent more on vessel load out. The cards are purchased but drawn randomly. He ended up with a pretty good haul as it turned out. 

The Eisenhower paid for a burn card and drew this « mutiny » card but more on this later. Neither vessel comes onto the board with its shields up and the Federation also suffers from faction specific characteristics that limit their early game options. They may never fire first, they may not raise shields unless confronted with one of five hostile actions and worse they automatically lose ten victory points if they don’t attempt to hail at least one possible adversary before the fireworks start. It’s tough being the galactic good guys. 

The Romulan player decides to screw around with the Federation player rather than prioritise his own mission. Having won the initiative but being slower than the Eisenhower he plays his extra speed burn card and gains another hex towards the shuttlecraft. Maybe he can scoop it up and get it off board, denying the Eisenhower any chance of completing its mission?  Each side rolls dice to generate up to 3 action points. Action points are spent to perform…errr…actions, unsurprisingly. The more complex the action the more expensive it is. There are never enough action points to go around, and a lot of the game is spent agonising over what to do with the number of points you’ve actually got, rather than what you’d like or need to do.

No shooting has occurred up to this point and the Captain of the Eisenhower decides to hail the Romulan ship in order to avoid losing ten of his potential victory points. It costs him a precious action and it doesn’t go well. In a dice off the Romulan Captain beats the Federation captain, gaining valuable intelligence that’s unwittingly revealed in the exchange. This counts as one of the four levels of intel he needs to obtain to complete his mission. The only plus side to the encounter for the Eisenhower is that the Romulan’s aggressive rhetoric presents an obvious threat, allowing them to raise their shields.

The Varak swings around and only has to enter the shuttlecraft’s hex to scoop it up, but the Eisenhower threads it’s way between the asteroids and attempts to drag it out of the Varak’s path with a tractor beam. Yeah, when I say tractor beam I mean a wooden barbecue skewer painted light blue. Lol. The asteroids move randomly each turn by the way, and bumping into one is not recommended. 

Somewhere around this point the Romulan player found he didn’t have enough action points to use his sensors to scan the Eisenhower for further intel, but he did have enough points to try hailing the Federation vessel and taunting them a bit. Another die roll off between the two captains saw the Romulan win again and gain a further level of intel from the exchange. The Ike’s captain should learn to keep his big yap shut! Players are only allowed two hailing exchanges between opposing vessels.

With the Federation vessel about to drag the shuttle out of the way the Varak’s captain plays his second burn card which is a « secret weapon ». I’ve not specified what the weapon actually is but its effects bypass all of the usual defence options and badly damage four of the Eisenhower’s critical systems.

The Romulan specifies which systems are to be marked as damaged. He chooses the bridge, weapons and targeting, the hanger bay and the shield generators. Ouch. If any of these areas are hit again they are destroyed and may not be repaired in game. Since they are only damaged they can’t be used for now but they can be repaired - which of course costs precious action points. The loss of shields puts the Eisenhower at a serious disadvantage in combat, while the damage to the bridge and targeting prevents the further functioning of the tractor beam. With that said, even if the tractor beam was working the shuttle couldn’t be brought into the now badly damaged hanger bay.

The gloves are finally off and the Eisenhower is now cleared to fight back, except, with the damage it’s just received it’s not able to. The captain decides his first priority is to get the shields back on line and spends two of his three action points getting them working again. 

One of the oddities in my rules is that movement, once a ship is under way, costs no action points, but changing its heading does (though different types of vessel have limitations on how many heading changes they can make in a turn). It’s a bit like skating on ice. You keep whizzing along unless you make an effort to change your velocity or vector. The Eisenhower swings wide around the Varak’s stern as further hurried repairs are undertaken and the weapon systems come back on line.

The Romulan player launches a boarding party by using his « surprise » burn card. Despite the card  increasing the combat potential of the Romulan marines the Eisenhower’s security red shirts quickly despatch them before any damage can be wrought. If boarding parties manage to get a foothold they remain onboard their target and can attack every time the parent vessel activates.

Suspecting that the Varak will pick up the shuttle, the Eisenhower tries to cut off their escape route as engineers manage to fix the bridge systems by shining a salt shaker with a blinking light on over a bunch of fluorescent tubes. With bridge and weapon systems now fully functional they can engage the enemy at last. 

The Varak does indeed scoop up the shuttlecraft and uses its remaining action points to launch a salvo of plasma torpedos from its aft mounted torpedo bay. The salvo moves two hexes straight away but after this their seeker heads will move them towards the nearest target. They remain in game for three turns before they expire or explode and no further torpedos may be launched from the parent vessel while they remain in play. The Eisenhower is equipped with a comprehensive electronic counter measures system (ECM) and could attempt to steer the torpedoes in a different direction but it’s costly in action points and not guaranteed to be successful. 

Rather than pay for a costly and possibly ineffective attempt to override the Romulan torpedoes, the Eisenhower uses another of its attributes, namely it’s point defence short range gattling phasers. 50% of the passing enemy ordnance is destroyed as the Federation ship launches its own photon torpedoes in a counter strike. 

With the photon torpedos closing in fast the Varak uses all it’s action points to cloak. The model is replaced by three question mark counters. From here on in the Romulan player can choose to reappear in a hex containing one of these counters each of which moves as though it were the ship itself. The cloaking ship breaks the target lock of the Eisenhowers torpedoes which will now continue in a straight line off the board. Meanwhile back at the ranch the remaining 50% of the Romulan’s Plasma torpedoes circle round and close in on the tail of the Eisenhower.

Whammo! The remaining plasma torpedo strikes the Ike’s aft shields. On the bridge everyone lurches from one side to another and sparks erupt from consoles, lol. The question marks denoting the Varak’s potential location begin to spread out. 

Blast weapon combat is dealt with differently to beam weapon exchanges, in that there is a much greater chance of serious hull damage. The Eisenhower suffers damage to its engines and one of the white dice used to roll for action points is changed to red - denoting hull damage as well. If you use a red dice to roll for action points and you don’t roll high enough, a whole new range of bad things happen - so there’s a risk v reward thing going on from here on in. If a vessel gets three red dice it is crippled. Hull damage can be repaired in game like system damage, but not fully. There will always be one red dice in play.

The Varak sneaks past the Eisenhower heading for its own board edge. If it can just get in a scan with its sensors it can complete its four levels of intel collection and get the hell out of Dodge. Unfortunately cloaking a ship costs a lot of action points and remaining cloaked costs almost as much. Unable to roll up enough action points the cloak drops and the Varak model is put back on the board in place of one of the question mark counters. In the turn that a vessel de cloaks it has no shields. The Eisenhower launches a second photon torpedo strike from its aft launchers.  

The photon torpedoes strike home, killing and injuring a significant proportion of the crew, causing major hull damage (red dice) and damaging the comms system. 

Which was when the Federation player dropped his single burn card. It can only be used on a vessel with hull damage so there’d been no chance of playing it till now. With only a few un injured crew remaining and major hull damage the Romulan captain rolls for mutiny and fails with three dice - causing the remaining crew to surrender. 

So the Eisenhower takes control of the Varak, seizing the shuttle craft and spy that’d been previously taken on board her. With 50 points for completing their mission, extra points for the damage caused to the Varak and no deductions for failing to communicate prior to hostilities it’s a very convincing (if not very lucky) last minute win for the good guys. Huzzah. 

This was my third proper battle with the rules and they worked splendidly, if I do say so myself. It’s gratifying to bring something to a conclusion that’s been gestating for so long. I’ve a couple more models to paint up and a campaign to organise but otherwise I can consider this an itch well and truly scratched.

If you’ve stuck with the post this far I admire your fortitude! Rest assured you’ve made an old man very happy, which is hopefully reward enough in this crazy mixed up world. 

Toodleooh.

The Final Front Ear

It’s been busy busy here at maison Broom just lately; I’ve played more games in the last two months than in the last two years - and finally got to meet, albeit over a computer screen, some of the great gamers I’ve corresponded with since I’ve been blogging. I have to say it knocks solo gaming into a cocked hat.

On the subject of cocked hats (watch out - sweet segue coming up) a close personal friend of the blog recently sent me a brand new copy of C&C Tricorne they claimed they had no need for, which was very generous of them indeed. Recalling how much I enjoy C&C in general I’ve decided to rebase my growing AWI forces to fit this rule set and my hexon hexes. It’s taken me over 40 years to settle on a figure scale that suits me and the last ten to realise I prefer simple rules and hexes or squares over open terrain and measuring. Doh. Fast learner eh!

Anywhoo… On the subject of finally getting my gaming sh*t together, I’ve also commenced play testing a Star Trek ship to ship combat rule set that’s been on my mental back burner and endlessly tinkered with since 2005 or thereabouts. 

Dad joke alert. The final front ear.

My wants were simple. No ticking off damage boxes, multiple ways to win, NO power management, no buckets of dice, no complicated tables, limited table clutter, customisable ships, use of tactics, no measuring, no turning arcs or game aid appliances, ships crews to be as important as the ships themselves and a dash of added burn card unpredictability. 

The Trek combat we see on screen does not of course follow realistic physics, and aspects of it are more like naval battles in the ocean. It was this ocean / naval connection that led me inevitably to a fantastic game system that I realised I’d been playing for a while and which I could easily co opt. I’m referring of course to Galleys and Galleons. I dropped the designer of G&G a line in 2017 to ensure he had no issues with me dicking about with it…and here we are six years later still in the testing stage. Lol.

In this post I’ll document the set up for a quick game of what I can only call « Galleys and Galleons….In Spaaaace. » and in the next one how the game itself went down…err…man. 

My setting for this whole shebang is the alternate so called Nu Trek of the 2009 JJ Abrams reboot, for the simple reason that I like the ships…and anyway Stew’s already got TNG totally locked down. Lol.

First off I drew a mission card for each of the protagonists, this gives a points limit that restricts how many or what type of vessels can be deployed. The Federation drew a catch the pigeon mission in which a stolen shuttlecraft and a hostage VIP need to be rescued from an asteroid field. The Romulan player (also me on this occasion) drew an I Spy mission where they have to scan an opposing vessel four times to pick up important intel.

The Federation player has this vessel:

The USS Eisenhower NCC-1890 (Constitution Class). The red bands on the base denote the hex sides through which it may fire its energy beam weapons.

And the Romulan player has this vessel:

The I.R.W. Varak (Corvid Class) Warbird.

All ships came from Nashstarshipyards at Shapeways and all the counters were from good old Warbases.

Both players randomly drew a one use burn card that can be deployed at any time in the game. Usually you’d keep these secret until deciding to play them, but this is show and tell time.

Each ship has a data card showing it’s points cost it’s quality and combat rating (as per G&G) and a set of icons denoting its major systems. Systems in various combinations are needed to operate the items listed under the special rules section. 

Each ship has three white dice and three red dice (which denote hull damage) though only three represent the vessel at any one time. White dice get replaced with red dice when the ship gets damaged. Three of these are rolled against a vessels Q (quality) rating every turn to see how many actions the vessel may perform. The green plastic ? Markers replace the vessel on the board when it cloaks, and the two teardrop acid green markers are plasma torpedo’s which after launch track their targets across the board for three turns - unlike energy beam combat which is instantaneous.

Not that any one is wondering, but those systems that are common to most vessels are bridge, weapons (all), crew, warp core (or equivalent energy producing doohickey), propulsion (warp and impulse), sensors, comms, hanger bay and shield generators. In addition to these the Varak has a cloak and the Eisenhower a large cargo bay. At the bottom of the card the movement potential of each vessel is listed. The Varak is slower but can turn more than the Eisenhower, while the Federation ship is faster overall.

There. Clear as mud. 

Think that lot was bad? I’m going to bore the arse off you with the next post. Lol. Feel free to skip it if its not your bag daddyo - 

I’ll be back to proper historical wargaming soon enough.

Toodleooh.

Clickbait

Seeing as how the majority of this blogs followers are proper « old skool » military history gamer types who wouldn’t normally bother opening up a sci fi themed post I have sneakily deployed this picture of my recently completed Pendraken 10mm AWI 64th Regiment…

…. in order to lure them in to a post that’s really about a recent solo game of Trek Hulk. (pat pend).

I hate to think how long it’s been since I last ran a proper game, so having finished the above unit I took the opportunity to take a break from painting and test out some alterations I’d made to my Startrek / Spacehulk rules mashup.

The result is shown below in glorious Broom Battle Picture Library format.

The scenario: 

A small recon team from the USS Witchita Falls have boarded a damaged Borg sphere orbiting Cestus III. The sphere is undergoing repairs following a recent battle. Having split up to place a number of covert surveillance devices we join Lt Commander Cassidy Yates who has become lost in the internal labyrinth of the ship and who has only twelve turns to make her way back to the docking hatch entrance.The Borg are absorbed in repair work and at game start remain passively disinterested in the interlopers. Cassidy is equipped with a hand held phaser and a tricorder.

Victory conditions:

Borg: Major victory - assimilate all Starfleet personnel. Minor victory - assimilate some Starfleet personnel.

Federation: Major victory - Get all personnel off the Borg ship before turn 12. Minor victory - get some personnel off the Borg ship before turn 12.

Turn 1. Game start. Lt.Cmdr Yates starts in a room that contains a Borg regeneration alcove and a dormant Borg. The corridors of the sphere are dark and without electronic help she can only see into the first corridor tiles running off from the room she’s in. She urgently needs to find the hatch leading to the small cloaked shuttle the away team came in on, but all comms are being jammed and the Borg are close to completing their repairs. 

Turn 1 cont’d.  As part of the federation players phase, new corridor sections are revealed either by being within two squares of a join (just one new tile is revealed) or by using the tricorder to reveal 3 new tiles (in a single direction). Yates used the tricorder and with 3 x 1d6 die rolls revealed a long corridor a short corridor and  wonder of wonders the access hatch to the cloaked shuttle! (Striped end piece). This could have made it a pretty short game but unfortunately the narrow long corridor turned out to be populated by two Borg that are blocking her path. (Occupancy of rooms, long corridors and crossing points is diced for - this was the worst possible outcome!). The orange game marker indicates she has used the tricorder once. If it is used more than 3 times the Borg will consider this a hostile act…which would make them angry…and you really don’t want to make them angry. For reference purposes, moving more than 3 squares in a turn also makes the Borg angry as does weapon fire or blocking a drones path.

Creeping along in the dark Yates tries a different direction and reveals a long corridor section occupied by…another lost away team member. Lt T’Rell is a Vulcan (command branch) armed with a phaser rifle. This has more punch and longer range than the hand phaser but is unusable in close combat. Friendly figures in a corridor block line of sight and line of fire.

 

Using the tricorder for a second time Yates detects two crossing corridor sections and a T junction. The freshly revealed areas are populated by 1 drone, 2 drones, and a third away team member (Ensign Savar - science division - armed with a hand held phaser and a tricorder).

It’s behind you! Oh no it isn’t… Err oh yes it is! Until the Borg are triggered into becoming collectively hostile the federation player has to roll dice and move any borg drones within their line of site, the dice indicate the number of squares moved. 2 of 4 was having a fine old time repairing the ship until he tried to move four squares down a corridor and found his way blocked by T’Rell. Being unable to reach the data node he intended to repair made 2 of 4 angry. Unfortunately when 2 of 4 became angry all the other Borg on the board become angry too. Angry Borg are no longer controlled by the federation player and must move towards the nearest none Borg interloper and attempt to assimilate them. just to be clear, assimilation is not a nice thing.

A change of view. Yates and T’Rell are in the far background. Ensign Savar at the T junction realises the Borg have just become hostile and determined to get her retaliation in first she fires her hand phaser at the drone with its back to her. Hand phasers roll 2d6 and need a 6 to kill with the first shot. Bingo. 1 drone down - several thousand to go.

With alarms going off all over the place and Ensign Savar’s target now a glowing pile of ash Lt T’Rell turns swiftly and attacks 2 of 4 in close combat. T’Rell is carrying a two handed phaser rifle which he can’t shoot in such close proximity to a target so he has to biff the Borg with it instead. The Borg roll 2d6 in close combat and pick the best result, while T’Rell rolls 1d6 but gets to add plus 1 since he’s a Vulcan. Choosing the 6 result 2 of 4 rolls higher so manages to fend off the Vulcans attack. Using the rest of his personal action points T’Rell tries again but once again the feisty Borg stops him cold. While the Vulcan grapples with the drone Lt Cmdr Yates is unable to fire since the corridor is narrow and her colleague is blocking the shot. In the background Savar spends her remaining action points to go on overwatch.

Though she’s on overwatch it’s dark in the corridor and Savar is scared. Prompted to attack and assimilate her, the nearest Borg moves purposefully two squares in her direction. Savar’s shots go wide. With two action points left the Borg enters close combat and rolls high. Savar goes down. Two assimilation tubules enter her neck and millions of assimilation nanites entire her blood stream. Stage 1 of the assimilation process starts to occur. 

Lt Cmdr Yates goes on overwatch looking to cover against Borg moves should Lt T’Rell go down as well, but the doughty Vulcan clobbers 2 of 4 upside da head (as I believe the youth say these days) with his phaser rifle and finishes him off. Yates gets a tingling feeling at the back of her neck and turns…

The other Borg drones have not been idle and while the drama has been unfolding in front of her they’ve been sneaking up behind. Cassidy uses her hand phaser but fails to score a six with her two dice. Her second shot needs a five or six and fails again. Her third shot only needs a four five or six. She rolls a four but it’s a double four. Doubles indicate that the Borg drones personal shields have blocked the shot by matching the frequency of the phaser (or some such). She still has one action point left and therefore one shot but the adapted Borg shield prevents any further fire at him this turn.

Poor ensign Savar starts to transform into a Borg and soon rises to her feet as one of them…

…But not for long. Turning the corner Lt T’Rall uses the phaser rifle as it was intended. The phaser rifle has a longer range and a multi kill capability. With his first shot the Vulcan takes out the assimilating drone and what’s left of poor old Savar. I still think they’d have been better to have pulled back and nuked the site from orbit mind you.

Placing herself on overwatch Cassidy uses her tricorder with her last two actions and discovers…silly old T’Rell had been standing in front of the escape hatch all along!

Turn 11 and one turn ahead of schedule the remaining team members escape through the hatch into the  waiting shuttle. I make that a minor win for both party’s, or a draw as we used to say in the old country.

This game only took an hour to set up and play so I could’ve played again if those pesky continentals had somehow learned to paint themselves in the interim. I’ve taken down my Trek Hulk rules (above right) for now while I make  a few alterations but they’ll be back up again soon for anyone that’s interested. 

Toodleooh.

Crossroads motel… In spaaaaaace!

I’m not sure if Crossroads was a  “thing” outside of the West Midlands ATV region but it formed an unfortunately essential part of late evening viewing in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s. Famed for its wooden acting, frequently forgotten lines and most importantly it’s wobbly sets it is still fondly remembered in some quarters as the only show where Brummies were able to hear themselves on TV. It brought us memorable characters like Benny the woolly hat wearing simpleton and the gorgeous Miss Diane. 

I’ve just discovered there was even a board game - though I think bored game would be a better term.

Anywhoo the thing to focus on here is the wobbly sets aspect because a few nights ago I knocked up a few of my own. The Trekhulk test game I conducted recently has been quite a success but I felt a bit restricted by its parent Space Hulks single width corridors and overall lack of a 3D feel. 

While getting ready to set up my next VSF game I noticed I had a large amount of foam board in stock, some wide blue masking tape and a lot of unused mdf bases in various shapes and sizes. A little light bulb went on in my head and by 2am in the morning I’d mocked up this load of cobblers  - VSF game totally forgotten.

Rear of the bridge with turbo lift access. Foam board sticky blue tape and some unused mdf bases. The doors were made out of MS Word shapes and the LCARS terminals were resized off the inter web and printed out.

Front view of the bridge showing helm, navigation and the ships viewscreen. I’d been wondering what to do with that big oval base for ages!

Main engineering with its upturned yoghurt pot and doohickey warp core. The corridors and rooms are all separate and can be repositioned into different layouts.

Transporter room 1.

You can never have enough corridors going nowhere!

Same stuff - different angle

Now it ain’t pretty and to be honest it’s as rough as a bears arse, but as semi disposable 3D Star Trek terrain it’ll do for test purposes. I took the decision from the off that new rules without hexes or squares would be required, placing my new Tactical Trek in proper skirmish territory. 

I’ll let you know how I get on, when I’ve finished the shuttle bay and run a game.

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!