Sky Pirates in the... er... sky!

OK, I’ve teased you folks with this game long enough. As previously mentioned, Sector AL-IX was a Kickstarter game that I backed late last year and the creator actually delivered on time. It’s also one of those games that’s 3D only. You have to print everything yourself, 3D models and 2D stat cards.

While I got all the files on time as promised late last year, I didn’t get this printed out because my Ender 3 printer was causing problems. So I took it to a friend who was able to sort it out.

In the meanwhile though, the whole Bambulabs list of 3D printers came to my attention, with the promise of true plug and print. And what do you know. They do! So I sold off my Ender 3 and got an A1 Mini. It’s proved to be as advertised. Any failed prints has been down to user error (usually wrong slicer settings) or insufficient supports, causing the print to shear off the print bed.

One thing though: the provided stainless steel hotend is OK, but… flakey. Much better to spring for a hardened steel hotend so that it can take the hundreds/thousands of hours of printing that you are going to put the printer to.

OK, digression over! I managed to get all the terrain printed up in about two weeks, which is excellent because with my old Ender 3, it might have taken up to a month due to the slow speeds. Now, the A1 Mini is so fast I always have stuff queued up to print and the only holdback has been filament stocks. I’ve run through as much filament in 2 months than I have in 3 years with the Ender 3.

Now, we all know FDM printers are excellent for printing terrain, but I’ve been seeing on Youtube some videos that have claimed they are also decent for printing minis. Given that all the videos I’ve seen were of bulky, larger than life space marines, I rolled my eyes and went sure… but what about normal sized humans? 

Well, the improvements in 3D printing in 3 years hasn’t just been to the hardware. The software side has also taken leaps and bounds and with the help of some more YouTube videos, I decided to give it my first try. But not any old mini. Oh, no. I decided for my first FDM printed mini, it would be a 12mm Full Spectrum Dominance mini!!!! And what do you know… I managed it! Amazing!

However, I wasn’t going to print all the minis on FDM because it would take too long. (Resin printers do batch printing, so it takes as long to print 30 minis as it does to print one, while FDM printers have to print one at a time, layer line by layer line.)

I sent the minis out for 3D resin printing while I printed the required ships using  FDM.

Long story short everything came together, I did a quick and dirty spray paint job on the terrain and a very quick paint job on the minis (took me 2-3 hours to paint up a dozen minis or so.)

And so we come to the first game of Sector AL-IX!

The game advertises itself as “A dieselpunk, cloud pirate tactical tabletop skirmish game playable in Solo/Coop for 3d printing in 12mm scale.

It is specially designed for 3D printing enthusiasts, painting lovers, and fans of immersive strategy games!

In Sector AL-IX, you take on the role of a sky pirate captain and his fleet. Aboard your makeshift anti-gravity ships, your goal is to amass as much loot as possible to maintain and expand your crew by completing various missions. Your adversary is the powerful "Compagnie du Nord", which will use all means to counter you. The "Compagnie du Nord" has unlimited resources... It's up to you to find the right strategy to evade them.”

Which is very correct and comes with an introductory campaign: Troubled Sky.

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Chapter 1: The Flight!

Someone must have turned you in to the authorities. As you come back to your ship to embark, the intervention teams of the Compagnie du Nord have emerged from nowhere, taken your ship and captured your crew. Unfortunately, everything you owned was in the ship’s hold, and it was not much!

You run for your life, but the CDN teams are tailing you close. Eventually, you find yourself trapped like rats on a pier. Surrounded, your only way out is an old handling shuttle at the end of the pier...

The first game was basically a chase because the CDN or "Compagnie du Nord" minions spawn endlessly so it all came down to: can I outrun them and can I start the handling shuttle before they catch up?

So there was the chase. I couldn’t even turn around to shoot the pursuers for fear they’d catch up. I made the mistake of losing precious time trying to shoot the CDN Agents early in the game before realising how futile it was and had to run for my life after that.

 

Then there were the endlessly spawning minions directly in front of my fleeing captain and crew…

But I burst through them and made for the handling shuttle, only now having to turn around to shoot at the pursuers while my Blade Lady took care of the pilot and my Captain went to start the shuttle. Very hot, last minute action there…

And a success! My captain managed to start the shuttle on her first try!

Finale: the shuttle pulled out of the dock, leaving the sole remaining CDN Agent frantically signalling his superiors.

Now, to get my pirate tug boat back!

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My thoughts. The game rules are very simple:

1. Two types of movement. Ground troops and ship/motojets. Motets have a compulsory initial forward movement much like the Imperial jet bikes in Star Wars Legion. Movement uses what the game calls an Omnitool that takes care of movement, ship turning and shooting range.
2. Shooting is roll to hit, roll for armour save and if you fail, you take damage according to weapon type. For most human units, one hit means you’re dead. These are not space marines! For ships it’s trickier: there’s ship boarding actions, ships firing on ships, so firing arcs need to be taken into account as well as how many hits each part of the ship can take.
3. There are rules for various obstacles and terrain in the sky. One conceit the game has is everything takes place high up in the skies, on floating platforms or islands so there are buoys, mines etc. to deal with in the sky. A close look at the minis shows every single meaning has a berthing mask and a small tank of oxygen attached. On a 12mm mini at that 😉
4. And that’s it. The game uses d20s which if you all know by now is NOT my favourite die type but hey, this is the ONLY dieselpunk sky pirate game in existence so what do you do?

With very basic rules, the game will rise or fall on the strength of the campaigns. And while the rules do give you guidelines on how to create your own, I think for the first few campaigns, you’d want to play some pre-made ones. Troubled Sky is the first. Rise (a followup Kickstarter expansion) is the second, but it’s also much shorter. That’s good! You don’t want campaigns with 20-30 turns long! There's also a for-sale 3rd mini campaign that I haven't picked up yet because I need to finish the first two. Then there's a sub-game titled Big Game Fishing where you're a fisherman clan going after huge sky whales and similar big game.

Troubled Sky has your captain (essentially your PC) trying to get back their ship that was impounded by the CDN, then go on some raiding sprees to get enough loot to hire on more sky pirates and ships and then the adventure starts, with the wife of a Doctor with a mysterious… something… going missing and you’ve been asked to find him. Don’t ask me more. I’ve deliberately avoided reading ahead so even I don’t know!

And there you have it. If you’re inclined to try the game out, its available on MyMiniFactory although the pricing is way above that of the Kickstarter because the Late Pledge period is over so I’d advise to either wait for another Kickstarter, join the Discord to learn more, or wait for the inevitable MMF Sale where you can typically get between 30% - 50% off the STL files. 

In the mean time, I need to paint up more ships and minis and motojets to get ready for the 2nd scenario: What Belongs To Me.