Home-Brewed Sci Fi

Before I start, we lost our family dog this morning. My wife had Flash for nearly 16 years, and she's been my dog for almost 12. She'd been sick for a few months and very uncomfortable for a week or so - I don't think she slept a wink last night. I took her to the vet this morning so she could go on to the great beyond. It's been a pretty sad day here at the Ski house.This is her at a happier time...

Zig and I got together Saturday evening to give StarDust: Ground a first playtest. I'd put together the 1.0 during the week and there was enough to go on for a game. After a few very rudimentary move and shoot examples, we loaded up the table and tested out everything.

The table and our setups. Since I'd spent the week putting rules to paper (and keyboard) I hadn't spent any time coming up scenarios. We quickly put together a rather Flames of War-style thing with one objective per side and half the units off the table in reserve.

One of my tanks gets a long-ranged shot off at some enemy infantry

Ziggy's sniper gets a hit on one of my squads creeping around the flank. They hit him once in return.

Some Red Guard reinforcements arrive on my right flank - a hover tank and a squad of infantry. My tanks prepare to fend them off.

And to make things even more exciting, the dadgummed transport arrives carrying yet another squad of infantry. They've landed practically on top of my objective.

I send a squad up and over to deal with the sniper. One of my stands is eliminated in the process.

We get him back though.

The hover tank is a tough customer. It isn't causing any damage but it's hard to hit with its smoke launcher screwing things up for me.

Not wanting to be taken lying down, I assault the squad that just dropped in.

But good defensive fire from the Red Guard and a terrible Close Combat roll results in my squad being eliminated. Disaster!

A bit of vengeance as I get some easy shots at unprotected infantry heading over to that objective. I get a kill and two pins on the scum.

Zig's commander is in position to call in some artillery and does so. No kills, but my squad was now pinned down big as shit.

The flier scoots around and takes a pot-shot at one of my tanks. No damage but the crew was rattled to the point where they had to retreat. 

A bit more vengeance - the flier is taken out by an autocannon hit from one of my tanks. Another tank shoots up the squad that captured the objective but results in just pins and not enough to rout them. We called the game shortly thereafter - the results were not in question and we'd seen all we needed from a rules standpoint.

There was a good bit of discussion about vehicles, armor and how that is dealt with. The end result is that vehicles are a lot more reliable now when they get shot at. Infantry rules, gunfire, close combat and artillery seemed pretty good, good enough to not require any adjustments to those rules at this point. We also made airborne vehicles a hell of a lot harder to hit for things that aren't specialist AA vehicles.

Overall, we both liked the game and will continue work on it. I've got a bug swarm chomping at the bit for a chance to play and a robot army that wants to come out and play.

Next Saturday is Victory at Sea at Morningstar and whatever game Mike is bringing.

My youngest playing with Axis and Allies bits...