No More Shooting People in Space!

Humans vs Skulkers, latest playtest rules version.

Scenario: Salvage. The area is littered with valuables (6 tokens, circled red) to be grabbed and sold off. Get your hands on as much as you can. Whoever has the most Packages in their possession at the end of the game (5 turns) claims victory.

The game has it all… deadly firefights… pew pew! 

Critical hits and grenade launchers go BOOM.

Takes 3 shooters to take down a major character.

Desperate hand to hand combat.

Units breaking as they cannot stand the stress of combat. The skulker in the background barely passed a last-minute morale check and didn’t run off the table. The human failed his last-minute check and ran off. (I need to replace this guy. In all my games he’s underperformed. Can’t hit the side of a barn, can’t find any salvage, always gets killed outright or runs off, fails morale checks…)

In the end the game ended in a draw (1-1) as some objectives went uncollected and some units carrying the loot got shot off the table. Note also this table setup is particularly dense, making manoeuvre and shooting zones a challenge. Melee units though, will lap it up.

AAR: Apologies. No vehicles in this game as I only have one bike and the vehicles in this game are either bikes or trikes.

However, I can now report there are official solo rules via the NPF (Non Player Forces) rules. They can be added to a PvP game to sow more chaos and randomness or used in a solo game. There’s also the addition of wandering monsters if you choose to add that in for more fun and mayhem. And now the rules for upgrading your force are more fleshed out via the Mercenary Mode that gives you a structure to base and upgrade your forces with.

I like the game. As I've said before, combat goes beyond just hit or miss as the Threat table allows for some interesting stuff to happen (shoot back, run away, dive for cover...). It's a bit like the 2 Hour Wargames Chain Reaction system without the extra fiddliness. (Although if you do go all-in on the Chain Reaction system you will get a very interesting, fun game unlike any other.)

Also, the fact you can only do 1 action in your activation gives you some interesting decisions to be made. Do you make a move that will allow you to shoot later during the Firefight Phase... or move to take advantage of the terrain and to position yourself in a more advantageous location for the next turn, sacrificing your chance to shoot this turn? Do you go mostly shooty units or do you take melee units in the hope that they don't get shot off the table and you can massacre the other side in hand to hand combat since combat happens automatically when you get base to base? Do you React to the other side's movement and shoot, foregoing your chance to act this phase but allowing you to shoot again during the Firefight phase?

And as always, narrative driven objectives tick a major box for me since it makes more sense than "hold this token to gain X VPs at the end of a turn" unless it's part of a larger narrative where you have to take and hold an objective to set up a larger battle in the future.

This will be my last report on the game as I want to move on to other games. The game’s stated objective is “it is aimed at being dramatic, exciting and occasionally over the top. It is not meant to be a hardcore military game and the results are not meant to be especially realistic.” The game’s primary influences are old school skirmish games like Laserburn, Spacefarers etc. 

So if this game so far sounds interesting to you, look out for Shoot People In Space from Nordic Weasel Games when it eventually gets released.