The Sordid World Of Card Hacking.

My Star Trek Attack Wing (STAW) card hacking is done. There is literally nothing left to cut, past or discard.

The idea was to make every redundant card useful, flesh out my sometimes thin factions (I only play series aligned, so no illogical* cross overs of timelines or factions), no power builds of bizarre non-canon mixes.

This meant that after my small purge a few years ago, some periods like The Original Series or Movies or Enterprise, were uneven or just plain……plain.

My rebuild into the STAW universe, a product of holding on to just enough of some periods and basically all of the less popular ones, kept the fires burning and then came some clearance and new releases. It has been a dramatic revival to say the least.

My TNG Fed “battle” fleet for example had about four ships (one Galaxy, One Akira, One Excelsior and one Nebula), which has now expanded to about 20!

There were more ships out there, but at post STAW high tide, they had become scarce and expensive, some of which I had sold for little only recently! What is out there is the same old range of unwanted ships, usually DS9, Enterprise or Mirror universe options. I just bought another clutch of them for $10 a pop, because, well, you will see below.

Ok, too many useless cards, too many holes in my collections and some imbalance has crept in over time in points values specifically.

Scissors and glue, a little black pen run along cut lines and some self imposed rules;

• no repeats in the same time line,

• all changes need to feel right,

• balance needs to be retained, which with AW is not that hard as the system is quite “soft”. Doing this in X-Wing could seriously break the game,

• time moves (mostly) in one direction, meaning you can use old tech in a later period, but not the other way around.

The TNG period is split into DS9 (small ships), TNG (large ships) and Voyager. This helps spread some repeats without change, DS9 in particular getting some young Picard and Riker cards, then TOS and TNG are split, finally the separate Kelvin timeline and Enterprise are sets.

What did not need changing?

Many cards can be split over timelines, meaning duplicate TNG period personalities can appear in TNG, DS9 or even Voyager sets and some long lived races like Vulcans or Romulans might appear one time line earlier or later (Tuvok already does).

Weapon and other non named upgrades are fine with multiples, but some are unbalanced with others (like Photon or Plasma torpedoes at different costs to effect), so care has been taken to split these into different periods like dearer ones into DS9 or an earlier period, cheaper into TNG “battle” for example.

What hacks well?

First up, STAW hacks well because the components are consistent for the most part and the game is a lot less rigid and tight in its approach than X-Wing or Armada. Many mods and abilities are repeated over the range already, most effects are far from game changing and there are fewer “power builds” available.

No Soontir + Palpatine + PTL for example or “Fortress Han”. The game, especially if limited to series aligned sets, feels more like a story telling platform than an alpha strike brawler. I know there was a competitive circuit out there and favourite card combos, but when the game is faction limited, many of the auto builds simply evaporate.

Basically, mistakes in play and Wizkids in design, can be absorbed into the game dynamic and the tidal wave of options tends to drown out lone beacons.

Points values are an easy and often necessary fix. I have run out of usable numbers, one of the things stopping any more changes (but more cheap buys will address that).

Wizkids have not been kind here, changing to much lower values in later ships, splitting some periods into the early and late groups. This is especially annoying with generic ships (see another solution below).

Upgrade bars can be changed easily. This can help minor point discrepancies and other annoyances, like the Tholian Patrol ship with a single weapon slot, meaning it can be either a web spinner or an attack ship (WTF?) or 1-2 point differences in generic ships, where the dearer one can be expanded or made “special” with upgrade options. Generics on the whole can also be spiced up with more variety, making some of them genuinely attractive.

Captains, Crew and Ship cards are generally easy enough. Some can be a melding of two halves, the “fake” laid over the base, which the Romulan and Klingon fleets benefitted from most.

Ship stats are a mix of ideas.

I dislike the generic ships having 1 less shield value. It makes no sense and the often 1-2 point cheaper ship seems of little benefit when you lose both 1 shield and an ability as well as the inconsistency of “0” value ships having nothing to reduce.

In some periods (TOM and earlier), I have made these consistent, in TNG and DS9, generic and named ships are treated as two separate games (and their point costs support this also), Voyager is the exception, things left as they are, seeing as most ships are named and the ones not are used as lesser “filler ships” only as Wizkids intended.

Sometimes things that just bug me are fixed.

The Tholians have had their agility changed to 3 from 2, which seemed off for their small and nimble design as well as adding a single Agility 3 ship in TOS.

The Xindi Insectoid is now 3-3-3-0 for similar reasons, as they “popped” reasonably easily, but should be at least as agile as the NX series.

The NX series were problematic, being relatively small and nimble, but slower and tougher than the bulk of the Xindi and the Romulan Drone ships. I toyed with the idea of changing them from 2-3-3-0 to 2-2-4-0, but will sit on that a while as it makes them quite a bit weaker (Hull points are less effective than either Agility or Shields) and they have several other ways of being a little more robust.

I had fun with my assimilated fleet, boosting some Primary stats and point costs across the board, pretty much every later faction getting a representative (except the Kazon of course).

I have little use for Mirror universe ships generally, often don’t even watch the episodes, their cards being absorbed into main stream sets or bulking out the two Mirror periods I have retained, the Kelvin and TOS original. Both of these have benefitted greatly with some genuine options (the Kelvin did not even come with any elite talents). This gives me a TOS Chekov, a second Yarr and some others like Captain Black for the Enterprise era.

A few others had their abilities re-homed. Captains like the famous but anonymous Romulan Commander (TOS), Charvanek, Picard, Kirk, Archer, Sisco all have alternates from captains of other periods.

I especially like the “desperate” Kirk (Mirror card with Karr ability) or “undercover” Sisco from the mirror set and “Xindi war focussed” Archer (a simple skill 7 Hirogen). These allow you some surprise value while fielding favourite commanders.

A few generic Captains got promoted as mid to low end leaders with abilities because often in limited period sets, Captains are either skill 6-9 or 1, with not much between. This is not unprecedented (Somraw Commander, Romulan Commander, Xindi Councillor etc), allowing all those generics to be a little more interesting. This re-homed the huge redundancy of Kazon, Vulcan, Klingon and Romulan leader abilities.

I find it easier to replace the top picture and faction icon than try to cut around the icon and ability panel.

Obviously if there are going to be clashes like Mirror Kirk v Re-purposed Kirk, the original takes precedence (or maybe they should be the same?).

The Borg, a little weaker than most overall, now have a fleet of assimilated TNG re-paints, mostly ships that did not match the later paint schemes anyway.

Ship names were fun.

The USS Ni’Var for example which means “of two worlds” now appears in TOM (ex-Pegasus) and DS9 (ex-Sabre class).

For exotics, there is a bioship Delta and Theta and a couple of Borg scout cubes extra.

The Enterprise era gets the Voyager NX-04, Federation NX-10, a dawn of the Federation flagship. The Xindi get Insectoid Xindus Prime, Reptilian Dometus, lots of Vulcans (including a rebel faction), more Andorians which are very thin and the Romulans and Klingons, are bulked up with excess ship names from other periods. Captains for the Terrans include Black and Soval from the mirror pack, both considered logical call-ups for a Romulan or Klingon war scenario.

I probably had the most fun with the DS9 small ship fleet. A surplus Sao Paulo with a printing error became the Independent, I added ships to most factions like the Romulan scout Ra, Bajoran scouts Rassin and Bajor, Interceptors 2, 3, 4, 7 and 11, Marquis raider Hiro Kyan, USS Hunter (Sabre class).

These all got points adjustments to the older levels for consistency and as they are in an enclosed space, balance is retained.

The TNG or “battle” fleets are played as either generics or named ships as I have so many, generic ships preferred for big battles.

In generics, they have been either point adjusted and in some cases their upgrade bars changed for balance and variety.

In unique ships I have added as many as I can justify, USS Dominion (Galaxy), Dreadnaught (Prometheus), IKS Mulan, Gath’Oth, Gornar, Ves Batlh (Enterprise era), Reman Shinzon (Scimitar class), Ferengi Lurins Raider, Cardassian Pringor, the mirror universe ship Prakesh, Dominion Gor Nistas.

The TOS period, always a favourite but not favoured by Wizkids has increased somewhat. The Intrepid is represented twice, the newer Vulcan aligned one has been renamed USS Soval, better fitting its Vulcan-centric role. I also made a Dauntless, a Romulan Praetus, Klingon Kronos One (new K’Tinga flagship with the only 4 Primary in TOS but no cloak) and D7 Somraw, Gorn Gos’Orass, the modified the Tholians (see above). The ISS Avenger adds to the Mirror faction (see below) meaning I can easily make 100 pt fleets from any of these factions. I was tempted to make the Avenger the Spectre, but the process was already done and some strong glue fought me.

The TOM period was pretty sparce, being the favourite of the guy I sold some to, but not mine, but thanks in part to the 10th anniversary pack, it got a good fleshing out and is probably stronger now than before. The Enterprise refit now has a sister ship the Spectre, a heavily armed Klingon war variant like the USS Vengeance from Into Darkness (I toyed with the idea of using one of the giant Kelvin ships renamed).

I thought a war-like option could be fun, especially as a Khan hijacking would be tough enough to take on the Enterprise head to head, no sneakiness needed. I also added the Cerberus and Vulcan to the Excelsior class, Ni’Var to the Oberth, and Federation to the Miranda.

The Klingons, being the main protagonist in this period have a huge fleet, as many ships from this period as I could find, some duplicates from the last Klingon boxed set, but minus Chang’s BoP (had it, sold it, but I have managed to replace the bulk of the cards and its effect), so 2 Bop, 2 D7, and no less than 7 K’Tinka class.

This period can now easily field up to 250-300pts a side.

Voyager series, basically intact as the buyer was not a fan, is decent in both Federation and hypothetical allied fleet. I can play a true mixed fleet of options from the Val Jean surviving, two Delta Flyers, the Dauntless becoming a friend and asset, the Prometheus as an alternate or possibly sent to help, or the Raven or Equinox surviving their encounters.

Lots of Hirogens, Kazon, Vidiian, Krenim, Sp 8472, Borg and through a curious Adversaries of the Delta Quadrant duplication of one cardboard panel, but missing the other, resulting in Wizkids sending me a replacement half set, I managed to make two Nasari and Numiri ships and captains.

This set was a little annoying with no generic captain for these factions.

By my calculations, about 50 more named ships, the same in useful captains and by splitting the game into sub-games, more uses for my many other duplicate cards. Probably 200 cards put to use and more options in more periods for more factions with some minor quibbles resolved.

I do not play tournament, usually supply the entire game as it goes and nothing was done to deliberately break the game. If someone has an issue with this, I can just field official cards.

*logical being Borg, Species 8742, Tholians etc who did cross time lines.

An example;

The TOS Mirror timeline, when played time and faction limited is thin, basically most slots are set so no surprises or variety. There is some choice in captain (2 + a generic), weapons are Photon Torps and Phaser Barrage etc. It is really only crew that has some depth.

So, what could I do?

First up, three ships, the basis of a decent 100pt+ fleet.

The ISS Avenger from Enterprise (I only used the original and Kelvin mirror sets, the rest were raided for parts) and a generic with a shield bump.

The generic is changed from an all too squeaky clean Pike to the slovenly Decker (also fixes duplication). Quite a bunch, cold, stressed, mean and apathetic.

Now they need captains, so the three are increased to four with a stray Gardner with a suitable snarl on his face. I also have a Tellarite generic, but I do not think he would be tolerated in that empire.

More captains need more Elite talents so I got creative.

The ISS bought with it Sabotage, to go with Tantalus Field and a special making use of a spare Marlena Moreau card.

Moreau is a crew card but there is a synergy here and as Kirks wife, she could be considered to be an edge for his ambitions.

All suitably thematic and the Moreau plays to her “power behind the throne” role.

House rule #1* is “multiple cards of the same character may be used as long as they all take the same effects, so if Moreau Elite is disabled, both are (place the crew card under the elite until it is re-enabled).

The Moreau Elite is the homeless “Intendants Orders” from the Regents Flagship. Nice Synergy and the cost cut Moreau imparts on herself is balanced out with both cards being disabled if the Elite is played.

There is a short fall in Weapon upgrades pictured with potentially 6 slots to fill, so I found another Photonic Torp.

Crew are also a little thin, only just a full fleet, but with the Orion Tac Officer (likely serving under duress), and a very dead Red Shirt that I forgot to photograph, I have fitting additions.

One option could be to change the upgrade bar on the generic ship?

Maybe only a devious Orion could find a place in this twisted reality.

Finally Tech, where I am over supplied.

Two of the above came from the ISS Avenger (I had two, the other cards went to the Kelvin set).

So, from a single ship with a limited choice in Captains and Crew and little else, I now have a triple ship fleet, almost completely loaded out and capable of even fighting within it’s only ranks (Kirk v Spock) with some substance.

*Rule #1 includes “if a Captain is duplicated, only its other Captain variants can be used” (or the dual card rules from the Kelvin pack). Multiples of the same character of course have to be on the same ship.

Rule #2 is the option of “fielding more upgrades than the bar, but only having active as many as the ship’s action bar allows (not counting Elites)”. If a Captain or Crew card add any slots, this increases the active options. If Disabled, an upgrade can only be re-enabled if it is in the active group. This allows the player to field for example, the entire Enterprise Crew in the same game, but decide which to play as needed.

It's All In A Name (or Generational Blindness)

I read some of a very long thread about the USS Intrepid, a TOS series Starship named with 1960’s sensibilities, a Constitution class, crewed by an all Vulcan Crew.

The original question was “why an all Vulcan ship, named as an Amero/Anglo-centric human ship name?

Comments ranged from “maybe it was lend-lease” or “A Vulcan captain might choose an all Vulcan crew”, “maybe it was translated from Vulcan”, to “these ships have a long life and are re-purposed”.

The actual ship itself, taken from the Vulcan faction pack, probably about to meet a similarly sticky end as the one in the series.

I was intrigued that every answer took the historians approach of “it has to have a real and logical answer in the Trek universe?”.

The obvious answer is, it was written in the 1960’s for a TV series aimed at broadening the thinking of, but also having to be harmonious with, middle American post war ideals. Most of the writers and crew had served in WWII or Korea, some on ships like the Enterprise, Intrepid etc. It made sense to them.

Simple as that, it was generationally mandatory that the ship be named after a ship type that made sense to a post war English speaking audience.

It still happens too often.

I very much doubt the writers, even as open minded as they were and known for pushing social boundaries at the time*, had the foresight or even vernacular to think 50 real years ahead.

Ironically, it is the general acceptance now of all things Trek that has elevated even those dated ideals to canon, thus seeming to need real answers for real assumptions.

*Including having Russian and Japanese crew, trying to get a female first officer on the bridge and the first interracial kiss on TV.

Two Very Different Ways Of Segregating 1e X-Wing

I tinker with 1e X-Wing regularly. It makes me happy, keeps me invested and connected.

Two segregations that have become popular around here lately are deliberately polar opposites, but both equally satisfying.

Everyday Heroes uses only generic ships pilots.

The hump that needed to be smoothed was one of PS for the various ships. The Rebels were severely nobbled here with a scattering of PS4 pilots, no 5’s or 6’s. The Empire has a pair of 6’s and several 5’s, the Scum a decent showing of 5’s (a product of limited names to draw from, resulting in a need for better generics like Imperial Guard pilot and Black Sun Ace).

The fix is elegant and simple. The “PS” value becomes a load-out value, which can be spent on EPT’s and Mods only, two upgrades we generally avoid to fix the broken bits of 1e. These are effectively free, factored into the cost of the ship, so a bought benefit, but a benefit no less. If a ship also has an EPT slot, that can be used to buy any value EPT, bought as normal.

Crew and Droid upgrades are also limited to generics and upgrades generally are quite conservative with no Ion effects for example.

“0” cost Mods and EPT’s are obviously removed as are any that pertain to PS variants, limitations or effects and Titles, named or generic are also out.

Initiative is changed to “random order after dials are set”, the d6 roll winner choosing to move and fire first or second in order for each, both having advantages, the first mover/firer obviously gets first shot, but the second gets to manoeuvre in response to the first mover and the Snapshot EPT becomes a big deal.

The Rebels could be accused of being less interesting, less “modified”, but that is fine, it all evens out with larger squads etc. The weaker-cheaper pilots are more predictable, less interesting, the stronger ones can be quite capable and unpredictable.

The Red Sqd X-Wing for example has 4 points to spend on Engine Upgrade (faster), or Expert Handling and Vectored Thrusters (jouster), or maybe Wingman and Selfless (support Biggs), Deadeye, Munitions failsafe and Stay on target (payload Luke).

The PS 6 Imperial Guard pilot could go with Stealth Device and PTL or maybe Targeting Comp, PTL and Lightning Reflexes (faux Soontir) or Autothrusters, Predator and Crack Shot and that is before taking another paid EPT.

The Black Sun Ace Kihraxz, lacks Vaksai, but can still sport 5 points of upgrades and an EPT, so up to 9 points of EPT’s and Mods.

The ships are clean, the mods stand out as points of difference, every missing name can be mimicked.

*

The second group is “Legends”, which only uses named Pilots, Crew and Droids as well as named ship Titles. These are quite literally the stuff of legend.

Legends assumes mundane Droids, Crew etc are always present making the world go around, it just calls out the names that make a difference.

Time for the ships with few or no generic options like the two Phantoms or Captured Tie to shine.

PS is used as usual, but no EPT’s (there is an experimental option) or Mods (the named pilot abilities are the difference). This translates into more mixed squads, just like the movies, which is fine.

Legends also increases the range of options including Ion effects and combat is resolved as normal.

Legends feels like a platform for mixed squads with interesting combinations and still allows for many of the power builds of open X-Wing (Han, Chewie, C-3PO and Falcon Title or Palpatine and Soontir).

If I had to choose, Everyday Heroes could easily be my one ride here, but all options are good on their day.

Last Years Orders Start To Arrive

I have a few things coming for various games, most ordered last year. For some it seems like an eternity ago for some and they are all late (I get why). This week two arrived.

Please excuse the mini rant about long drop times, something only one person is responsible for and it is a first world problem.

The BRP UGE Creatures book. This one was only about a three months since random discovery to arrival, but an auto buy as the core BRP system is still my pilot point for RPG’s.

Not as much a monster manual as a guide to making monsters by class or type and across genre, it is compatible with basically every D100 game I have (with conversion notes for the Chaosium ones). It is colour, nicely presented, as comprehensive as a medium sized, universal system support book can be and I hope they follow it up with a Powers and Gear book of the same quality in the near future.

The second item was an avalanche of TMNT Unmatched boxes.

I went for the lot or I guess in pizza theming “the works”, realising that if I did not, it would never feel complete.

I was there at the beginning of TMNT. I had some 1e comics, went to the movie (original one), even got the Palladium TMNT RPG (still have a pdf of that somewhere). I have not kept up with them more recently, but it is safe to say, I am an early adopter.

The core box “with extra cheese” is the second Unmatched collaborative set, allowing for solo or team play and it is comprehensive. Two villains, two big boards, the Turtles and their sidekicks, various minor henchmen and even peripheral characters handled as events in the initiative deck.

These look true to the comics. The alternates look like later versions.

The “cheese” is an alt-art version of the main play deck, the one that handles the villains and co in the larger game. I have no need for this really, but it is cool to have.

The second box is a little pizza box full of 16 alternate character sculpts (some of the best Unmatched offers) and all the minor characters. This was a must have for me as I have decided to get minis for all sidekicks, so the official ones were a must.

A morning outing with the alternate Turtles. Action poses and more detailed than the originals.

I bought the separate card packs for Shredder and Krang so they can play normally. They will make great enemies and it completes the offer. Interestingly the core box has a hole for these, in fact as usual with Unmatched the box holds all the cards with sleeves on, so way to go Restoration Games. The only thing I have no place for is the alt-art core deck, but I will tuck that away.

Sidekicks. I shot this angle to show Splinter’s tail.

The bad crew, Shredder and Krang alternates, all the henchmen. The Alternate sculpts are better than the core ones, but also more over the top.

The last bit was an underwhelming looking plastic bag full of cool bits. 24 “Hand” Ninjas and other upgraded components (plastic traded for cardboard). These minis are up to the standard of the rest, just smaller, less varied and purple, but a huge upgrade from little marker discs!

I will continue to collect Unmatched sets, the Bruce Lee/Ali set is on the way now and Hellboy is an auto-buy. I was luke warm warm on Lee vs Ali, but then I thought I missed Lee the first time around and he and Ali are the ultimate “who would win out of…” characters that kind of define the system.

Ali vs T-Rex, Hellboy or Luke Cage, Lee vs Electra, Daredevil or Shredder, plus a temple and boxing ring. All good.

Only Captains Chair (months late now), DCeased Gotham Knights (even more overdue) and the standee upgrade box for Cyclades, disappointingly absent when ordered before Christmas.

Soon Grasshopper, soon.

Brushes Are Wet Again.

After a year of saying yes to a lot of jobs that earned little, but cost a lot of time (it’s called video people, it eats time like a goose poops), I have managed to re-kindle my miniature painting bug over the holidays, with more realistic goals and standards set with a desire to get stuff on the table.

My cunning angle of attack will be to do the scenery first. This makes sense as the drive to add figures to an already great looking game space is always stronger than painting figures and then having to build the surface and sets for them to be used.

Step one is to take stock of what has already been done, which is as usual, more than I remember doing.

I have completed enough to at least get on with for now, but I have failed in the past to let these accomplishments push me on to greater things.

U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. Cigar box “Desert Town” mat and home made buildings.

“Avengers Assemble!”, some remounted Heroclix. If you are picky, there are plenty of excellent paint jobs to go with or touch up if needed and it is nice to get some pre-painted figs on the table (the big job is the rules).

It’s a bugger when you turn up to work for a modern skirmish game and the player-gods decide to throw a dinosaur at you!

18mm ECW Museum figs, one of two sets for the period, the other in 28mm Redoubt.

My cowboys and some of their substantial town.

Some Yanks in Italy. Britannia figs in classic 20mm.

The enemy view of same. The Cigar Box range of mats includes some photo realistic and these more model-like ones. All do their job well and contours are firm insulation foam hills placed under, which look great.

20mm Britannia Pacific marines. This mat is “Redwood forrest”, but doubles as rich jungle Pacific.

More Clix, Hellboy this time (look behind you guys!).

Some excellent Foundry foot Serjeants. I failed to get mounted figures, so a castle or seige skirmish only.

Next is finish the projects that are either closest to my heart and interests or my biggest passion projects.

The list is daunting, but also exciting, with priority given to;

• 28mm Weird West using Malifaux 1e with some other figs (Reaper mostly), probably using Savage Worlds, Haunted West, or something home brewed for rules. I went to gift these and ended up collecting more, so I must love them! A western town (have) and a Dickensian village (have).

• 5mm scale giant mechs using a large set of Heroclix Mech Warriors traded with a friend. This is mostly a remount job, with selective touching up. I will use 6-10mm scenery here.

• 15mm DBA (2.0/2.2 or 3.0 edition or Armati at a pinch). A tournament set using double sized (24 el) armies, covering Polybian Roman v Carthage v Successor (various). This is already under way, but stalled at fiddly Successor shield designs, so I will simplify and just get it done. Really like the rock-paper-scissors vibe of this game and these armies cover most of the troop types. Needs only a little clearly defined scenery on a set board size (have).

• 20mm WW2 Europe, Russia, Pacific and some Vietnam, which will be mounted for two game system families, with element = section bases (BattlegroupPanzer Grenadier/O Group/Crossfire/Battlefront) for operational level (battalion v battalion) games of over 100 figs each (option of Coy level with element = team) and one with figs mounted as singles for 1:1 to 1:10 scale for smaller 20-60 fig forces (Rapid Fire style). I have enough figs for both (indeed doing all my units the same is a bit redundant as I have 10-12 German units for example) and I like both styles. Again these are partly complete, just need some application applied. Big one this, a ruined village, city ruins, farms jungle etc, lots to do. I have done the jungle, which gets the Pacific and Vietnam out of the way.

• 28mm “Gangs of Old Kroy” rat wars game, using my huge but now out of date Warhammer Skaven armies. Rules may be a bought set, or my own. The Dickensian village above.

• 32mm Supers and Supernatural game using re-purposed Heroclix. This one is very much about the scenery, the rules and remounting already painted figs. I have a full city to finish (not as bad as it sounds) and about 100 figs to re-mount (also not too bad). The rules are already written in my head and in some form in a file somewhere and they work, they just need finalising. Anything can work, but the big city, a smaller, darker one, desert with various towns and the jungle are mostly ready.

• 28mm Arthurian using the big base Dux Bellorum system. Dark age village done.

• 28mm ECW using………. a system of some sort, possibly A Very Civille Action, still not sure. Middle age village and farms, partly done.

• 28mm moderns. I built up a comprehensive arid, jungle and urban range mostly around Eureka figs with others to fill holes. Afghan village, jungle and modern city as above.

• Finish my Armada fighters and Attack Wing re-paints. Scenery mostly card stock.

• Board games like Zombicide Black Plague, DCeased or Marvel, which I decided to paint for some reason. I am always surprised when I open up an old game like Pandemic Cthulhu or Batman Talisman and find the figs painted, but Zombicide was a monster in every sense with over 300 figs. Lesson learned, once started…. . It is not for nothing I have lately preferred the standee options.

There are plenty of other projects that hopefully will follow, some nearly complete;

• 28mm cowboys (complete town, just need rules).

• 28mm Dark Ages (complete), using an official Dark Age variant of Lion Rampant. Dark age village and tower.

• 18mm ECW using which ever mounting system the 28’s do not use, probably Principles of War or Victory Without Quarter (modified). I picked up some cheap and interesting “DnD buildings”, that turned out to be closer to 15mm than 28.

• 15mm huge army ancients, possibly with the Tactica or Armati rules or something of my own creation. These were originally a tactical primer of an early Roman Empire legion vs various barbarian, horse tribe, skirmisher, mixed and Civil war opponents. I later added a mid Imperial Roman vexation. Each force numbered over 300 figs (about 80-100 DBA elements) and looks impressive on the table.

• 15mm ACW. Big AB armies, no idea on rules yet, but plenty of options*. Some American farmsteads and bits for this and below.

• 15mm AWI. Similar mixed Essex, Hallmark and Washington Wars armies (some are my first minis).

• 18mm Napoleonic Peninsula, War of 1812 and Russia, using 1:20 scale rules of which I have a few sets. My slight interest in Napoleonics is based on smaller fights with larger units using AB figs and one of several excellent rules sets. I have a plastic Hougemont, some other buildings and mats*.

• 15mm late Crusader. Desert mat and some dwellings.

• 6mm various (basically every period I did not do in another scale) from WW2, colonial, Crimea, Samurai to Aztec and more. 6mm has its own scenery, yet to be done.

• 10mm Fantasy, a full set of old Warmaster figs.

• Sci-Fi bits in various scales.

• 15-18 other bits, some a bit unlikely.

• 12mm Sun King a beautiful little hallmark set.

*The base of the games are a set of Cigar Box cloth mats, with some neoprene and cloth for naval, space etc.

My Gripping Beast Arthurians (all the older metal range) need re-mounting onto diorama bases for Dux Bellorum. I prefer the rules and it reduces handling damage).

A 6mm Samurai castle. It seems I covered a lot with this scale years ago that I had managed to forget. Just needs an army to surround it.

*One of the issues I have faced often is rules. Surrounded by purchased options, I ten to go with a heavily modded take or my own, which can bog things down. Part of the new offensive is the make a smart choice and get on with it. Smart means a basing style that can be used for a few.

Revised, Updated And Glorious, But Still Flawed.

Looking closely at my SciFi RPG options, some things have become evident.

Mongoose Traveller 2022 edition, was first cab off the rank, but it is unworkable and a shining example of a big, glossy, overpriced but under produced book that sits in my wheelhouse of things that most annoy me about this hobby.

The big glossy tome, with its main enemy behind.

Some background.

I love Traveller, like a person coming home from a long career travelling loves their home town, it was there when I first discovered my immediate world and flavoured my view of the rest as it expanded.

It was my first RPG (before TableTop needed to be inserted in front) when I got the little black box of three books and it was my favourite for a long time, a beacon of systemic logic, when compared to D20 games in particular, games I did not mesh with from day one. I spent many a school lunch time with friends discovering our made up universe, such as it was.

It supported the fiction I was reading (A Mote in Gods Eye, The Stainless Steel Rat, 2000AD comics, Chronicle of the New Sun, Dark Tower), what I was watching (Star Wars, Blake’s Seven, Blade Runner) and it was solidly grounded, while still open to much adaption. The original boxed set lacked any type of illustration, literally leaving it up to players to decide what it looked like, the front cover text of the beleagured Beowulf creating an emotive “mind picture”, but nothing else.

It was not until Call of Cthulhu (2-3e) that I discovered another system family that sat as well with me.

I have had almost every edition of Traveller, played Striker, 2300AD, Mega, some other spin-offs and generally feel content with their simple mechanics.

The 2008 Mongoose or 1e edition was an automatic buy and it sat really well with me mechanically and aesthetically. It suited my preference for matt finish, low preciousness games, with retro mono art that reminded me of my roots in gaming.

Love the comic book style pics.

I like/need games I can tinker with and make notes in the margins of, games without overly strong opinions baked in (unless that was why I bought them*), nor the all too precious high gloss pages that scream “leave me alone, I am perfect”, while sporting a bunch of typos. It was one of the games I would highlight when dissing the big glossy tomes I have a love-hate relationship with.

The 2016 2e edition of MT broke the golden rule of Traveller. The starship design rules were no longer included in the core book. Even with the pdf of High Guard at hand I mostly ignored it and recently gifted it when I got the newer version.

I assumed all would be good, I assumed a lot.

I recently chose MGT2.2022 as my main SciFi squeeze, until reality hit. There are no robot rules, not even an example of one, not even any real mention and worse, there are not even any drones listed in equipment. Star ship ones are, but not others and the Remote Op skill is included.

There are some glaring omissions (Battledress is talked about but the actual listing of it is missing), some floor plans are wrong, lines of text missing or incorrect etc, which is just poor for a re-boot book with little time pressure on it (no one even expected it, so no excuse at all).

Lovely illustration of Battledress armour, shame they forgot to include any specs of it in the actual book!

The book is sublime, which that makes it all the worse for being flawed and sorry, but errata does not cut it, not at this price, in this well trodden space.

The 2008 version is actually better in many ways with some examples of drones and robots, basic rules for more, more Alien races, less railroading of a look and fewer fixed ideas (or ones that sit better with me), more of that old school pulpy feel and I can add notes in the matt paper borders (even mark errata points), which helps, because it does need some.

It lacks the harmonious mechanics of 2e, but has some clever sub-systems and it all works fine with a few tweaks.

A study in two styles, the later version is up to date by modern standards, but the older presentation has it’s own thing and for someone bought up on the art of 2000AD comics, Chris Foss and John Berkey art, it sews so many creative seeds.

Now don’t get me wrong, I want to like 2e and had a plan laid out to deal with no robots (a post Human vs AI ascendency war, resulting in a human win and suspicious anti-AI culture like Dune), but I am not spending over $100au per book just to then over-do some more robots, drones, vehicles, star ships and gear, also likely with their own annoying typos and omissions.

There should have been at least some skeletons, a few samples to build from in the core, like the 2008 version has plenty of, summed up in a single paragraph.

I am happy, I even prefer to do my own thing on the fly with some basic hints, but nothing at all is a little too much of a stretch.

MGT1e is tempting, but maybe a stretch for long term play and it looks like I have lost all my pdf’s of the support books.

Above are ship floor plans from MGT1e, M-Space and MGT2e. The first two are functional, the MGT2e ones are beautiful for sure, something I may use in another system. The MGT1e ones photo copy well and can be used with minis.

So, I am going with M-Space instead for a several reasons.

• It is more complete in scope in one book and open ended enough to accomodate my needs. What is missing has usually been covered in another compatible game and there are many*. There is nothing to say Cthulhu, Mothership, Luther Arkwright or others cannot be integrated into an M-Space game effortlessly.

• It has low preciousness (but it is still beautiful). Matt printed with large margins, so notes can be added, even printed pages inserted (and I have two copies, three with the older edition with pdf’s, all for less than the Traveller 2e core book).

• The vibe of the book is more emotive than prescriptive. If you start with a story idea first, you do not hit that baked in Traveller 3rd Imperium thing.

• I can apply it to anything from alternate past (Tales from the Loop/Electric State/John Carter/H.G. Wells), the present (Dresden Files, X-Files, Laundry Files, in fact all the files), Star Wars pulp, Star Trek utopian future or Sci Fantasy as is or by applying any number of other compatible games*.

• I prefer the art even though much of it is abstract and a little sparse. I get a Scandi-1980’s classic SciFi art feel from it, which is more my style, just the cover of the Companion for example gave me an adventure seed.

• The systems are more interesting and comprehensive, especially non combat systems, like extended conflicts and again, I can draw from so many other systems in the extended family.

• It is cheaper and less greedy, not needing you to buy whole books for small insights into elements that should be in some way in the core. Some stuff is even free and there is a direct line to the creator.

• I prefer how tech is handled, with a regular level of tech level 12-ish (Traveller measure) as standard, Q-tech as the optional “ancient” tech and no explicit measures. Sometimes the TL ratings in Traveller make little sense to me, especially with current advances where we may well have sentient AI before we have a settlement on the moon!

• MGT 1e can be used for inspiration.

The art in M-Space hits that “lived in” look of Star Wars, with a more up to date, if Scandi twist.

Once again, the ease of a D100 system with its comprehensive coverage of genre, intuitive and easy to grasp mechanics, multi game cross-compatibility and approachable offerings has won the day. They have even addressed the back story character gen of Classic Traveller in the Companion.

Art can be more than a stylised space suit, dogfight or street scene. It can be emotive, deep and thought provoking. The artists of the 1970’s to 2000’s and the current Scandi artists tend to add context, humanity and scale.

*Mythras/Imperative, Destined, Legend, Luther Arkright, Worlds United, After the Vampire Wars and most BRP titles.

Sci Fi TTRPG's, What To Pick And Why

With the holidays on us, I am back into gaming as a good distractor and creative outlet.

Sci-Fi TTRPG’s have always been a favourite, but I tend to get stuck on rules sets.

M-Space is a D100, Mythras Imperative spin-off that really puts me in the right head space (so to speak), but it is a building block generic and hard edged game, less Star Wars (maybe a little Andor), more early Trek, Alien or Interstellar, so most games tend to lean towards dystopian futures, darker themes. I used to collect Sci-Fi art books in the 80’s like Trevor Webb or John Berley or the more recent scandi works by Simon Stalenhag and this reminds me of those (Clarence Redd, the author being one of those).

Mothership takes M-Space style gaming into an even darker space. The system is also D100 but simpler and the game more a one-shot or short campaign style. It is Alien with licence filed off, deadly, disheartening and highly xenophobic, ideal for what it is, if just a little limited in scope. Regardless of the system chosen, the scenarios available are excellent and highly adaptable.

Savage Worlds (Sci-Fi Companion). This one bothers me as it was meant to be “the one”, the pulpy Sci-Fi fix-all with direct connection to the SW system tree, but it has fallen away a little. I think that is down to me forgetting why I bought the companions in the first place.

Originally I only bought the companions to add to the core for things like kids-on-bikes, supers or supernatural pickup games that needed more…… stuff, but I now feel swamped by the weight of it all. It is a great, flexible and fun system and it and M-Space effectively cover the whole gamut of genre and styles, but neither add any specific theme.

I also have a fan based Star Wars hack, worth a look.

Traveller (2022 revision). This one is an old favourite in a well liked form*, a game I have owned every single version of except for Marc Millers T5, which looks more like a science reference book. The big thing that held me back was a lack of AI and robots without buying the specific book for them, but I guess in hind sight, that may be a good thing.

One tension I find hard to reconcile in Sci-Fi RPG’s and fiction is the continued ascendency of humanity over AI. Even now, that seems unlikely unless we as a race choose to retain control for no other reason than to protect our own relevance.

Using robots and computers as human controlled tools only, the Traveller core book champions biological races over AI in a homage to past SF tropes. The Robots book can add more options, but I am not keen on going down that rabbit hole ($100au+ per book, lots of books). The reality for our own world is already much less bio-autonomous.

I am reminded of the religious level tech rejection of Dune and the ascendency of the Human spirit mantra or the quaintly clumsy semi-sentient Droids in Star Wars**.

Traveller (2008 1e). I have a soft spot for this clunky, unpolished 80’s homage to the “little black box” OG version. The line drawings, the overall feel and layout all take me back and in some ways it is actually a little bit better than the new version, such as Robots and Drones actually getting a mention, basic rules even. The mechanics are crude when compared to the latest 2e print, but they work ok.

Star Wars (d6 WEG version probably ReUp). I have the anniversary original and ReUp pdf and some other bits for this. Might play it for fun, especially after seeing Bad Batch and Rebels.

BRP for a Dark Tower, Shadow of the Torturer style far future Earth fallen game. This has been boiling away for years, bringing together all the legacy D100 game styles (Hawkmoon, Elric, Future Earth etc) and anything else I want to add. BRP Creatures is on the way soon-ish, which may well cement this one.

Frontier Space, a D00 lite game is of some interest, but I feel the number of games before it will deny it seeing daylight.

Star Trek Adventures; Captains Log, is a solo adventure generator for the STA game and for me a gentle toe dip into a game that scares me, because I could very easily get eyeballs deep in this one. The 2d20 system does not appeal greatly, but the scenario generator does excite and it looks to be, at least in part, fairly system agnostic. I could also add the Core book for deeper mechanics, but I know where that could lead.

Things I do not have (yet).

Cortex Prime (on order). This is possibly the best generic game for Sci-Fi, offering both systemic and thematic flexibility as well as rounding out my Marvel Heroic RPG system (which lacks char-gen rules). This is a clever system that hits a sweet spot for me of being highly narrative, but at the same time mechanically sound and you basically build the game parameters as you go.

Scum and Villainy, is a Firefly, Star Wars, Dark Matter-like rogues in space game that appeals on many levels. Based on the Blades in the Dark, Forged in Darkness system, a game I have avoided so far, wishing to keep my system choices tight, it has hit a sweet spot for me with their SF and Military version Band of Blades, so maybe it’s a thing and unlike STA, it is contained.

Tales from the Loop/Electric State are Year Zero Engine systems that I do not have in any form, both based on firm favourite books I do own (with others). I feel M-Space/BRP/Cortex can do the hard, but grounded SF they are based on, no need to get the game books, just use the originals for inspiration and eye candy. I might get Electric State as a one-shot game generator and it has the easiest system in the series to grok. The reality of these is the original works of fiction (and others) are enough to get me going.

Alien, also using the YZE system from above, is effectively the same as Mothership and I do not need two versions of the same thing, even if the mechanics do look cool. Unfortunately I left my run a little late and it looks like the “Evolved” edition has lost some of the original’s clarity.

Games that will not be looked at;

Star Finder and Stars Without Number, are basically DnD in space so no interest here.

Anything else, because this is enough!

*

From here, it looks like M-Space or Cortex will be used for some grounded games (The Loop etc), Traveller 1e for a space cowboy sandbox in true ‘80’s SciFi style (with Drynax maybe) and Savage Worlds for a pulpier version, more Guardians of the Galaxy.

*It may be because I had the original “little black box”, but to me Traveller needs to be self contained, something they lost in the 2016 version, which I have since gifted. The 2022 revision is better in many ways and feels complete again, except for basically zero robot or drone rules (but I have pdf’s of the 2016 books).

**My take is the second Empire fell when biologicals rebelled against sentient AI (maybe the last Emperor was an AI and decided humanity was a servant race or surplus to requirements?), so after a protracted war and the collapse of all things civilised, the AI were beaten (a massive computer Virus maybe or something more kinetic) and humanity turned its back on all things non-biologically sentient, even limiting or banning cybernetic implants.

Robots are seen as tools only if allowed (anything in human guise is highly sensitive), computers have to be human controlled and non sentient/humanoid in nature and are heavy policed, with massive stigma and paranoia common and overt enforcement of these rules, some parts of the fractured Empire even going further.

This has resulted in a loosely cobbled together “Empire” limited to TL12, with slow, cautious advancement without the aide of AI. Any tech higher than this is preciously guarded and mysterious with little scope to repair or improve on it as the tech is too advanced to trust.

Ancient AI may be a good protagonist, rarities and story drivers, maybe even an AI enemy re-emerging from the depths (2nd Empire strikes back)?

The Trials And Tribulations Of Generic RPG's

Generic RPG’s are a terrific way to enter the TTRPG hobby, but they can also be a bit of a double edged sword.

One one hand you have the world (universe, alternate reality) at your finger tips, on the other hand you have to colour in the world picture yourself, sometimes even draw the lines.

I have found that quite often, generic games draw me in for their flexibility, their promise and their lack of constraints (hate constraints, but like guide lines and flexibility). I think that free-form structureless structure is my ideal.

The problem is, I usually stall at the creative bit, not because I am lazy (well, not only), not because I do not have any decent ideas, but because I often do not know where to start, where the lines need to be drawn. The BRP UGE is a prime example. It, like most generic games, has tools to help, but I find it hard to commit, ironically often turning to the ready made worlds on the lagger system tree like Cthulhu or Runequest.

Generic RPG’s often struggle to give you some character, a feeling of the type of game they are capable of providing without leaning too far one way or the other. Savage Worlds is a good example of a generic game that claims to be able to do any genre/mood/style, but is actually better at providing a pulpy style to any basically genre, other styles are very much down to player and GM pay-in.

The BRP UGE in contrast is better at realistic simulations. You can push either peg into either hole, but why force it?

This also realistically leads to some generic systems simply not being able to do some things well. Want to play a Guardians of the Galaxy style SciFi game, then Savage Worlds rocks. Want to do something more grounded like Tales of the Loop where action is less dynamic, but more threatening? Best look at a game like M-Space (Mythras) or BRP.

A themed game saves you much of the creative brain work, but paints you into the corner of having to learn its lore, adhere (mostly) to it’s requirements and tell your stories against a fleshed out backdrop made from another’s imagination.

Like most people I often come up with ideas when reading other peoples works.

I find alternate roads, ones that better suit me, but rarely find a perfect “as written” work. This is often rule zero of a game, the reality that players and GM’s will stray, so no issue really, I guess it is just a matter of where do you accept and where do you create.

Do I need to remake structure rather than build from the ground up to be truly free?

This tends to work best when you already like the theme, such as Tales from the Loop or Tolkien, but it can be a compromise in the worst way if the theme jangles and the mechanics are not worth the effort or worse, you break what you like.

My advice to myself, and to others if it helps, is to start small. Everything great started small by the very nature of things.

This is how we used to play. Small adventures with small characters that explored their world as it and they evolved into larger entities.

This is how Forgotten Realms or Runequest started, with a village, then a nearby forrest or row of hills housing a temple or ruin, then maybe a nearby city, a kingdom, then a continent or even another time or dimension and so on.

Savage Worlds is ideal here.

This system allows the players to start creating the feel of the game they want to play from minute one, the GM guiding and learning from them equally. The world, it’s parameters, its limitations will set themselves as they go, the massive depth of loosely themed companions are just there to draw from.

I have looked at several of the more themed sets like Deadlands and chosen against going into them, because apart from the price (hard to get in Australia and quite expensive, especially if you get drawn into all the fluff), the baked in theme does not hold me. I like SW for it’s “write it as you go” generic nature.

Sometimes though, worlds collide in the best way.

Haunted West popped onto my radar today, while circling Scum and Villainy and Electric State on a local website (Campaign Supplies), two game styles I know I can do with systems I have (Traveller, SW or M-Space), simply by adopting the theme and going from there.

Some games, as lovely and polished as they are, are really only a one-shot engine or short campaign at best. Other systems can mimic their domain without such constraints.

Anyway, back to Haunted West.

It is a D100 game, with the system modernised in the ways I like. It is much like Deadlands, but without the supernatural baked in so heavily to the theme (it tackles everything from ancient European Horrors to Aliens, but all are optional and their level of influence is up to the GM).

It also tackles a lot of mature themes maturely and it has a ton of background. Finally it also allows several play styles from crunchy miniatures and measurements to mostly narrative play.

It was a reflex buy and I anticipate its arrival immensely.

A little of this and a little bit of that, but nothing too heavy handed, almost a themed generic game.

The secret sauce was a generic enough game with a not overly opinionated theme, well produced and deep (800+ pages), well priced at less than twice the price of your average book (or as it goes, a single SW companion in Aus.) with more than twice the content, and an improved version of a system I like with play style options.

It is all in the mind I guess.

I tend to stumble with generic games through analysis paralysis and grind to a halt with themed ones faced with a wall of pre-made stuff I want to do differently or were simply insurmountable walls of text like the Iron Kingdoms RPG (with 100 pages of history up front). The trick is of course, to just play and let it work itself out.

Commitment to creativity is the key, setting boundaries and focussing on them is the lock.

When do generic games shine?

When the theme, no matter how compelling, is probably not enough to hold a full system or longer, deeper game. An argument could be made for example, that Mothership or Electric State are both games that are built around a single premise, one the space hulk monster hunt, the other a road trip across a perilous land. Both could easily be done as a single scenario in a bigger game, but that brings us to what makes themed games different.

Themed games are usually tighter and more on point.

Looking at the two mentioned above, they shine as one-shot games, the mechanics are honed to the theme, the theming itself is myopic, Mothership excelling in dark fatalism, Electric State feeding off the excellent inspiration provided by the book.

Simulating Mothership with for example M-Space is perfectly possible, nearly ideal even, but you need to set the scene and look to the rules for options. Electric state is much the same, M-Space could do it and Tales from the Loop or even The Labyrinth (a later book). There is of course a sub-theme effect of generic games.

Savage Worlds could cover a Mothership-style scenario, but it would be hard to avoid either a nihilistic or pulp-comedic vibe, because the mechanics promote that. It would be possible to darken the mood (as prescribed in the books), by removing some of the elasticity of the system, but it needs to be overtly done.

M-Space is already a harder, more realistic and therefore less forgiving game so it could be easily shifted to Mothership style, just adopt a Call of Cthulhu mentality, one where survival is not guaranteed, the adversary is not a push over or even beatable. It might even be a better game as the players may go in with a less “doomed” frame of mind from the start.

So, a good generic game is not only a decent set of flexible and comprehensive rules, but it must also be good at adapting to different themes. This is tough as art, font, previous history and any built in bias, intended or not, will influence the user from page one.

For me it often starts with a single picture.

A Jim Burns work from the 70’s. Plenty of inspiration here.

Ed. I have just purchased a second hand copy of the Cortex Prime system book. I was not in the mood or head space for more systems, but this one has me intrigued. The system is not only a generic set of rules, but a “building block” game system.

You actually design the game around the theme you want to support and it has a proven track record with games like Marvel Heroic Role Playing (A game I have what little was published, but it has no char-gen rules) and Firefly, a favourite series and a theme I had in mind with my hunt for a good SciFi game. I was never interested in Smallville, but I now get that that very asymmetrical dynamic could only be handled well by a handful of systems and this is one of them.

It uses a Savage Worlds style dice range in small pools, but the characteristics, groups of important stats, skills, affiliations, special abilities and motivations are up to the player and GM to design to suit the game. Want a game heavily influenced by interactions (Delta Green, Reign, Tale from the Loop), then add them and name them as suits (family, self, friends or company, state, family).

I have a feeling that the creative stall I suffer from is rooted more in setting the feel of the generic game than anything else, Cortex Prime sets the style in char-gen, so it may well fix that.

It also seems to be probably the easiest game to port other games across to, like Tale, or Electric State and adds the char-gen rules needed to add characters missing from their unfinished Marvel game.

Is this the ultimate any genre, any style, any mechanical platform game? We will see.

Into The Unknown, Knowing More, Wishing For Something Different.

The first expansion for Into The Unknown (ITU), is on the way finally (it never made it, but Wizkids kindly replaced it without question). I have a great respect for this deep and well constructed game, but feel I may never get a chance to play it properly.

Gt my heart racing when I first saw it, but things have gone a little soft over time.

Unlike Captains Chair, a game designed to be played 1v1 or solo, it is a game that may need two well versed players in both Trek, especially the Dominion War and the game mechanics to really shine.

The roll out is interesting, but I feel, a little odd.

The Enterprise makes sense as does the Defiant, although needing to buy the expansion just to complete the core cast is a little crap. No Riker and some others on the Enterprise, especially one with the Hathaway included seems like a cash grab.

The Dominion make a decent opponent, but why not start with a less specific and massively more flexible Klingon or Romulan adversary?

The expansion is equally vexing.

Another Defiant class?

Why not a Romulan Scout or Science ship to go with the Romulan included or even a K’Tinga or K’Vort for the Klingons?

The next expansion is not on my must get list on any level. Cardassians and more Klingons. No thanks, I am done there. Romulans maybe, but not more Klingons.

The separate ships are also strangely annoying.

A second Enterprise (that does not cosmetically match the other ships) seems like a needlessly convoluted collectors piece, that could have been an Akira, an Excelsior, or maybe a Nebula, and why a Bird of Prey in a cloaked version when more than one ship can cloak?

With another B’Rel BOP coming in the next expansion I wonder again if more variety could have been better? It does not help that the Klingon battleship and Cardassians generally don’t interest.

Collectors pieces, not useful additions, with no other useful game additions included like scenario, crew or captains, apart from the ship panel.

What would I have liked to have seen?

First up I would have liked the ships a little smaller.

Why? Because the Borg, the D’Deridex class and Dominion Battleship and some others ships will be prohibitively large, possibly never made because of it. This may have meant making some of the little ships slightly bigger, or not.

They are lovely to look at, but after so much effort was applied to scale them correctly with each other, they are comically oversized on the play table. Sure the Defiant would be tiny, but I have a absolutely minute Millennium Falcon and other rogues in Armada that make me happy and to my mind, that only makes their presence on the table all the more intriguing.

I do appreciate the true to scale effort, but smaller would have worked as well and to me increases the feeling of tiny points of light in the vastness of space (and the movement tools etc may have been easier to make?).

The game is good enough to stand on its merits with just some attention paid to avoiding the Attack Wing “scale all over the place” thing.

Star Wars X-Wing and Armada both made small compromises and got away with it, they just avoided clangers like the Delta Flyer at 15% the size of the Scimitar or Borg Sphere or the TOS Enterprise about right to the TNG version, then other ships wildly off with it.

Personally, I would have loved them to do themed sets that could be integrated-or not, as the player chooses or singles like Attack Wing with missions included. This would allow players like me to just cover periods of interest (TOS, TOM, Voyager, DS9, Enterprise).

I would pay for a core game and twice what they are asking for their very well priced single ships if there was more value included in each and I could build up faction specific sets and only repeat ships if I actually wanted to.

I would love, love, love a Kirk vs Khan vs Chang set, as this is probably the best game produced for those conflicts.

The future of this game will be interesting. It is admittedly an itch-scratcher, a dream come true for some, but I am not expecting it to end well.

Would I, an admitted Trek lover and Attack Wing hoarder really spend $500-1000au in this space if the bulk of the ships are not actually of interest (the Dominion war is a stretch for me)?

Captains Chair is another I am loosing patience with.

Shran, but no Archer, then Kirk, Khan and Pike, but no TOS Klingons or Romulans. Nothing Voyager or Borg mentioned at all, two Discovery captains, but both Federation, two Lower Decks captains and nothing Dominion yet. Way to milk it Wizkids, running out of care factor here, no matter how good the game is, this “scatter gun” coverage is tedious.

Really need a set with some TOS enemies, a Voyager blip and some Borg (the ideal solo opponent?). Some series specific sets like Xindi war, Voyager, TOS and TNG maybe.

Ed. The first expansion re-send arrived today, late, but welcome. It finishes the Enterprise crew, adds some Fed ships, Klingons and a sole Romulan. I am done here now, lots to explore elsewhere.

The Fine Art Of Cutting Your Losses And (Hopefully) Increasing Your Gains

Game collecting, or I guess collecting of any type is sometimes a fine art.

Do you obsessively always get everything available or just the bits that interest? Do you go for the “maximum” experience or always seek better balance?

I try with all my heart to strike a balance. I am happy to stop at a point of sufficiency short of completeness as long as that point makes sense and feels right.

Examples;

My Eldritch Horror set has the core game and all three of the small expansions, but not one of the three “big box” ones. The pretty universal vibe from the community was the small expansions added much without growing the footprint of the game, one is even considered near mandatory to make the core game work*.

The larger expansions add table hogging extra boards, eat huge amounts of time and add complication and one is guilty of the “big empty box” syndrome common with some games.

The ideal starter or even end point would be the core and Forsaken Lore, then maybe a second small expansion, either Signs of Carcosa, Cities in Ruin or Strange Remnants. Opinions were divided which, so I went with all of them.

Everdell core got all the small expanded game card set expansions Rugwort, Extra, Extra! and Legends (through the BGG store as I missed them initially) and some Rugwort Rats from Etsy.

I then picked up Bellfaire to open the core game up a little (the ideal example of an expansion to me, with more options, but no real change in the core dynamic**) and then I waited for Mistwood for solo play. Mistwood adds an AI opponent, or a ghost player and no extra boards.

This felt just right, but I have just purchased Newleaf.

I was avoiding the big expansions that changed the core game, but Newleaf comes with some extra useful content (core and legend cards, events), ways to play them with an integrated theme that sits ok with me and ignorable other bits.

I can take what I want, much the same as Bellfaire. It also has butterflies, bats and bees, love those guys.

Spirecrest and Pearlbrook are not going to happen. My set is balanced and punches above its weight.

Mostly enough.

Star Wars Villainous. This is a tough one. The game is far from balanced in any form. The characters play fine and to theme, but a strong character or a competent player versus a weaker character/player create a dead duck game every time. Some characters like Kylo need a higher player count and Count Dooku needs at least one nerf to have any chance at all.

I have the first two expansions, but I am struggling with the last (Thrawn and Dooku) as they are weaker than the rest. The game is a seldom play for us, so much so I have to re-read the rules from scratch most times, making the last expansion feel like a completists fools errand. The game also struggles with insert-itis**.

This has since been gifted rather than continue to add to it.

My Attack Wing, Armada and X-Wing sets could all have done with less range (ideally I would exchange my prequel Armada collection for the same value in X-Wing ships), but these suffered from a combination of late game clearance deals, then post production obsessive chasing.

Attack Wing originally bought to be “the one” to avoid the others and even within that I could have stopped at TOS/TOM/Enterprise/Voyager themed sets and skipped the TNG era completely (where many of the scale and bloat issues are found).

X-Wing was only picked up because of the mass dumping of TFA 1e starters (5 for $100au), with intentions of limiting myself to TFA fleets (and the 2e starters were even a perfect fit) and Armada was meant to be the prequel fix-toe dip, which was never finished.

What happened to all of these after the initial “planned” bit is history and I regret nothing (well……….).

Zombicide is a mess, but I am actually ok with where I am.

Black Plague has plenty of depth, but it is not complete (no Green Hoard, no Oriental version), but I did get a few of the special edition character boxes, a few small box expansions and the kickstarter character box also.

Now, to where I would have gone if I had known.

DCeased is only getting the intro game and Gotham Knights if it is released (it completes the character figures) and Marvel gets the core, which I picked up cheap and it’s Intro set for other bits. These are far from complete, but I refuse to spend another $500au to get them there. The game is not that compelling!

My Star Wars Destiny set, was bought simply because full blister and starter boxes could be had for peanuts when it was cancelled, but it did turn into a few silly card and dice chases (no luck getting a full Vader set in 4 full boxes!).

I then split my sets into themed sub-sets and gifted the balance to avoid massive waste.

Another case of a curious and slightly infuriation mix of well themed starter boxes and luckless random blister buys, leading to real money spent for very little.

Tiny Epic games were a later discovery, when there were a dozen available. I was keen to get them all, then the flood gates opened. I have managed to stop buying them (Vikings was my last), no Cthulhu, Dungeon or Pirates and I even stopped collecting the originals. I am happy with about six different games with “deluxe” bits where relevant. I also bought a couple of Ultra-Tiny Epic games, which are quite amazing for what they are.

One thing of note with these is every single top ten list of TEG’s is different, making collecting them a hit and miss affair. I like Zombies, Vikings and Cowboys, have mixed feelings on the rest I have and no list I have ever read matches my tastes. It is also interesting to note that apart from their size, the value of the games locally ($50+ au) is often on par with similar “real” games (Cyclades Legendary edition is only twice that).

7 Wonders Dual for us was a much better buy than 7W regular as we most often play as a couple. The core game is a little unbalanced (few use green Science cards for victory and if they try, it is easy enough to spoil their plans in the late game), but the Pantheon expansion opens up more options and breaks the flow of play.

We have the Agora expansion also, but have never played it and would likely only play it with the base as a different feeling game to the Base + Pantheon game. I did get the Leader cards from Etsy (fan made content based on the Leaders expansion for 7W), which can open the game up almost like a Pantheon-lite expansion and is ideal for travel as they fit in the core box. I also like that specific leaders are called out, it adds some flavour and context to the civilisation you build.

Unmatched is getting the full treatment because it is fully and seamlessly inter-compatible and I just love it. This is the best and easiest intro game I have, one that can grow with the player, be played in teams and cooperatively and rewards you playing your character of choice, not just the best ones (basically the opposite of Villainous).

The game is also a stand out in that even after over a dozen releases, the earliest characters are just as relevant as the new ones. Every time I play it, the game is close.

I did hold off on some boxes until recently (Witcher, Shakespeare), but now I intend to get Hell Boy and have TMNT and Ali v Lee on pre-order (maybe not Stars and Stripes we will see).

In hind sight I could probably have skipped the Marvel sets as they add the least to the overall landscape and the elusive Deadpool single is a ghost these days.

Into the Unknown has just started and seems to be in a death spiral of slow expansion releases already. I really only want to complete the Enterprise and DS9 crews and add a small Romulan presence (really wish the second Defiant in Tensions Rising was a Romulan Scout or Science ship), so one more expansion will end that.

Away Missions is a little gem that has much to gain by grabbing the expansions. I did not go with the TOS sets, but I have the rest and each adds options to the game that keeps it interesting.

This is another case of a core game that some find unbalanced (The Borg can be hard to play, but make an ideal team for teaching or an experienced player to use to even things up a little), but one that opens up dramatically with Klingon, Romulan and more Federations teams.

Captains Chair is a bit like Unmatched in that it can be played in any combination and solo, so I will get the two new sets and leave it at that (I really just want some TOS/Strange New Worlds love). I would have been ok with a proper TOS/TOM themed box only.

You see the pattern?

If logical boundaries can be found, I will set them. If a favourite period or logical stopping point is presented, I will grab it and stop there, or sometimes not it seems.

I like to add an expansion that increases options and improves balance first, but occasionally (and sometimes with intent) let it get out of control, especially when a game is ended. I have learned to avoid expansions that are just money grabs, add little (or are just bad value), or run the risk of ruining the core game.

Control tends to come with;

1. awareness of the landscape (including possible growth-future releases),

2. planning within that landscape to a satisfying conclusion,

3. being satisfied and moving on, because there are a lot of games out there.

If you have no idea what the landscape may be, which is to say, it is still a growing concern, then you cannot plan your “sanity fences” to fend off rampant expansionism. It does not help that companies like Wizkids tend to deliberatley mix things up so you cannot easily draw clean lines within the offer (again, Captains Chair with only TOS or TNG characters).

The perfect pain storm tends to be blind collecting (Destiny), which is both frustrating and wasteful, a limited release schedule with common instant collectibles (AW, XW), coming late to the game (most of the above) or waiting seemingly for ever for new releases (Into the Unknown, Captains Chair, Zombicide DC/Marvel). The last is probably tariff based, so way to go Trump and the new world order!

Wingspan is improved with the European expansion for all the right reasons, but we are yet to be tempted to run the Australian expansion (we have) or the South American one (we do not have). It is a beautiful game, but basically fine as is.

Sometimes, I can short circuit the process by just being patient.

Cyclaides Legendary is a big tempter especially with favourite reviewers like Board Game Bollocks rating it consistently in their top 2 games for years (and I have bought). I waited for the deluxe (Legendary) version, which promised to be a cleaner and smoother experience at reduced cost.

The original basically needed at least 1 expansion to make it complete and 2 for a full experience. It was and is as I had hoped. I am not even bothered by the Maelstrom expansion coming later (or the need to buy the deluxe set to get both) as it is optional, cheap enough and coming soon after the core game.

I bought the Carcassonne big box, which did it justice well and truly and was much better value than buying a half dozen smaller expansions.

It turns out, I may have bought a better, or at least more efficient version of the Everdell experience with Silverfrost. It not only has a more dynamic and challenging core system (snow!), but also a simpler solo AI than Mistwood, a Spirequest sub-game and slicker mechanisms, but that also falls into the “wait a very long time to see where things finally land”, category.

I bought it anyway as an Everdell variant with a Spirequest vibe. The simpler Farshore does not tempt, but Everdell Duo does.

*

For me the perfect expansion is one that expands on the core game without wholesale change, fixes needed balance issues, adds more of the good, makes the bits that do not work perfectly fit into the game more relevant and keep the footprint/shelf presence of the game under control.

Expansions like 7WD Pantheon (or the Leader cards), Everdell Bellfaire, Extra, Extra! & Legends, Eldritch Horror Forsaken Lore are ideal and near mandatory for those games. All are a small additions that add much and should really be included in future core releases or re-designs, like the Cyclades Legendary edition, which cherry picked the best of three expansions.

Everdell Pearl Brook/Spire Crest, EH Under the Pyramids and the other big box expansions are not on my wish list as they either add little, change the feel of the game or sometimes become a distracting sub-game in their own right. There are also some “big, but empty box” traps in there.

Other times, a little “where would I like to end up and how will I get there most efficiently” before I start a journey can be helpful.

If I limited my X-Wing collection to TFA period (1 and 2e), my Armada collection to the original series and my Attack Wing fleets to TOS, TOM, Voyager and Enterprise, I would have saved a lot, had the same overall experience and picked up some of the bits I missed in the end (like Weapon Zero from Enterprise).

*Most games are pretty well designed, but sometimes elements are a little unbalanced from the start like uninspiring Science cards in 7WD, limited card selection in Eldritch Horror or the overly complicated Events in Everdell, that the designers may fix these with an expansion.

**Insert-itis is when the box insert refuses to accomodate sleeved cards, cannot fix it’s own components once assembles or has no room for small expansions that do not have their own box, like the three characters for Star Trek Expeditions (a massive box with no room for it’s micro expansion box). Villainous will not take sleeved cards and/or the needed token tray has to be carried separately.

Star Trek Attack Wing, Why Playing "Pure" Matters.

Star Trek Attack Wing is a big game with a decade of releases.

This tends to be the weight most competitive games struggle to handle. STAW also has a few other layers of complications, but these can be used to help balance the game, indeed, the designers may have intended this the whole time.

The designers of STAW seemed to me to be creating a game that requires timeline and faction specific alignment to make sense of their designs, which are then hijacked and used in a true mix-n-match by the tournament circuit. That is to say, the ships they design are in balance if played to cannon, but the balance is thrown out when timelines and factions are mixed.

One of the game elements that STAW has over X-Wing is their ship Captains are separate from their ships. When abused (i.e. in competition), this makes for some really weird combinations, but when kept “pure” it adds needed variety in sometimes small fleets.

Then we come to relative ship strengths.

For tournament players, many lesser ships (i.e. from the older periods) were stripped of their cards then sat unused or were only added as cannon fodder or fillers in unlikely fleets.

Weak ships in AW are a relative thing and to their credit, the designers did balance ships within their own periods.

If you use these ships only against their contemporaries, their abilities are well themed and balance out properly. The only issue is some fleets are thin to say the least.

The Gorn are a scary proposition in a TOS fight with stats of 3-1-3-4 (highest Shields in TOS) and some funky upgrades, but drop them into a TNG game and they die quickly, unable to match even a Ferenghi Marauder. Right horse on the right course.

By separating my ships into faction and timeline pure fleets, I have achieved a form of unbalanced-balance that suits just fine. Kirk as captain of a Borg cube with crew drawn from across the galaxy and through time might be a powerful option, but not on my watch! Everything feels right, it fits and makes sense.

No more weak vs strong ship anomalies, such as the Vulcan D’Kyr ships from the Enterprise era having better stats the a D’Deridex in TNG!

This Enterprise from the Kelvin set is a monster, so a favourite of some tournament players, but totally unbalances the game unless kept in its patch. I have toyed with the idea of using one as the a USS Vengeance style ship for an “Into Darkness” style scenario, it is genuinely that much bigger than the Enterprise in the other image above with stats of 4-1-6-3 and speed 6!

This has also allowed me to re-purpose the many repeat cards you accumulate for more bespoke options. If you take a ship ability or name from one era and shift it to another, the game is not (has never been) so finely balanced that this causes problems, it just adds options and you avoid repeats.

This is only really possible thanks to pure timelines.

My TOS set for example includes the Federation Enterprise, Intrepid and Dauntless, the Gorn Gornarus, Go’Sorass and Gress’Sril, the Klingon have a spanking new K’Tinga flagship Kronos One (as yet without cloaking), Gr’oth and Somraw D-7’s, Romulan Gal Gath’Thong, Praetus, Vorta Vor, Kazara BOP and D-7 Algeron. Six of those ships are recent “home made” add-ons, can you tell which?

Play how you will, but I for one see real benefits in sticking to the factions and periods that are canon, in fact I really struggle to move away from them. I do choose to, the matchups are genuinely “Trek” in their weirdness, like Xindi meeting later Federation or Borg, Sp8472 and Tholians popping up all around, as they did, the Gorn in later or earlier periods.

Scenarios I do intend to play are;

• The Borg going back to pre-federation Terran with a Tac Cube taking on the whole Earth and Andorian or Vulcan fleet (my Vulcan fleet is massive).

• The rebellious Vulcans attacking Andoria and Earth.

• Tholians vs Terran, the nimble NX vs Tholians look fun.

• Sp8472 vs Dominion.

• Sp8472 vs Terrans and co.

• Borg vs TOM period Feds.

• Borg vs Dominion.

• The Kelvin Enterprise in the Terran period (truer to scale).

• Gorn vs Terrans. The Gorn are tough and resilient.

• Bajorans or Marquis going into the Delta Quadrant in numbers vs Kazons (or the reverse)

• Hirogens vs Borg (likely)
  
  

X-Wing 1st Edition, Was It Really Broken?

The recent demise of 2e X-Wing was on the cards, but a shame and the reasons for it are laid plain, nothing new to sell, a tournament circuit fractured and dwindling, constant rules changes and resistance, but mostly a lack of growth and new blood. It was also a victim of a time when gaming generally, especially big circuit gaming seems to be on the wane.

Second editions existence and the pain, or excitement it caused was felt necessary as 1e was deemed too “broken” to fix.

Broken?

Second edition addressed a few things, mostly to do with tournament play and natural mechanical evolution;

• The game had left some ships behind, specifically the first ships you would think of in a Star Wars game. The reality was, the iconic names of Star Wars were mostly redundant in the tournament space, and often not fun casually.

• Point values and upgrade options were printed on the cards, meaning needed changes had to be applied via existing means. These fixes had become habitual, standardised even, but the options available were often a stretch of the system or even player acceptance.

• The elephant in the room of multiple time lines was becoming troublesome. The Prequels were never addressed and the sequels kept throwing up new ideas and hurdles (see mechanics above). That Star Wars Armada was doing a Prequel range only made this more obvious.

• There were too many new ideas (mechanics) and the core concepts of the game were changing, game balance and play styles shifting. Builds were ever more dependent on Action chains and as more were introduced, it became more complex.

It is hard to un-make things once they are out there and equally, some older options simply never made it to the table*. The fixes were largely successful, if a little messy and all together too late.

The X-Wing, namesake ship of the game, by the end of the 1e game was nimble, strong, tricky and well priced with needed options available (though not really options). The Kihraxz, the Scum equivalent, is a chameleon with even more options and even the Tie Advanced had merit for pilots other than Vader.

It was a fun ride, in retrospect few would change a thing from the “golden” years of the game, but it was always going to end badly.

To be honest, the simple clarity of 1e is the major draw for me, later game hi-jinx accepted. I liked points on card and could live with either removing or modifying the bits that jarred. “Official” card reprints for the tournament circuit (like the Armada upgrade card box) would have sufficed for many and effectively “2e’d” the game, but it was decided to go further for better or worse.

Second edition did get a lot right.

Larger upgrade cards were nice for older eyes, no point or upgrade options printed on ship cards provided needed flexibility and cleaner cards overall. An up to dated and evenly balanced design space for all ships, new upgrade types like Force and Turret Gunner, with mostly rationalised upgrades, fewer power choices and some already experimental mechanics, like Turret rotation, were settled as rote.

Recently, finally looking closely at 2e, I really like what they did with Droids and Ordnance (fewer, cleaner and more logical), can even live better with EPT’s and Mods (most generic Titles are absorbed), appreciate the logical choices made for some upgrades and reject a few overly wordy cards as I choose. It is a better game, but is it a better experience?

Dials got generally more exciting, “power” upgrades were dumped, along with “duds”, wording was tightened up (bit legalese, but ok) and the whole thing felt slicker, if a little weightier.

There is more covered, so there is more going on. Sometimes things are evolved logically, other times like they “balanced it to death”.

Life is unbalanced and these unbalances make it fun. The rock-paper-scissors simplicity of 1e has been diluted, something that around here we deliberately reduce by removing the clutter.

What went wrong?

Timing sucked.

COVID put a dent in all things communal, even though it did boost board game sales overall. X-Wing had no real solitaire option, so online play was the go if that was your jam. If not, the flame slowly dwindled.

There were new ships to buy in the TFA and Prequel ranges, but many of the original ships were not reprinted. The Auzituck, Alpha Starwing (a ship I have never actually seen so I will assume peple are just making it up), Star Viper, U-Wing and many more were supported in upgrade packs (rarely in the right numbers), but you needed to be part of the 1e to 2e migration upgrade dynamic or miss them, so no joy for new players.

Even now, it is sometimes possible to find some 1e clearance ships more easily than 2e packs and rare ones are costing as much as entire collections.

More K-Wings? Seems not. My second one was a Spanish language print with sourced cards and tokens. Picking up a third may cost me the same as buying into an entirely new game system.

The game was more popular than ever on the tournament circuit in later years, but casual and club players were shifting away to new games, or just away from games generally. An interesting point is Armada and Attack Wing have stayed mostly unchanged (1.5e shifts, not wholesale changes) and have stayed relatively sound as a result.

The Ship and Upgrade cards with no printed point cost or upgrade bar are clean and flexible, but there was constant change, both in the costs and their whole delivery system. The tournament circuit was constantly changing, the casual player resorted to pre-built “quick pick” cards or just gave up.

I wonder if many card based games would survive if they required a separate list of costs and conditions to play.

The feel is different, it’s not the fun club game it used to be, more an exercise in math.

Can’t explain this properly, but the feel of 1e still excites. 2e is like the pub band that has gone on to a more polished experience, but lost that “special something” along the way and higher ticket prices are still giving you the same perceived value.

Hard to fault the majority of decisions made, but no matter how much is good, something was lost.

For me they missed the golden opportunity to separate Pilots from ships.

This would have solved a few problems and added variety as well as adding that “what if” element to the game. AW has its Captains and even Wings of War added Aces in the late game. Luke flew an E-wing in later fiction, he could have flown a Y-Wing, A-Wing or even the Falcon. Han could have flown an X-Wing or YT2400, many Rebel pilots were, after all, trained in a Tie. Why limit pilots to ships, then have them fly several other ships anyway (Hera, Vader). What about Poe in a F/O Tie, which actually happened?

Breaking with the old, then adoption of the new stifled by bad luck, resentment and confusion, some choices that split the field more clearly into the tournament and casual groups, then supporting only one of these properly, higher and limited entry costs, a feeling for new players of missing the “golden age”, then finally an older idea assailed by newer ones (Crisis Protocol etc).

People move on and nostalgia only satisfies a few, but if that is also gone with genuine change, then there is not much to hold on to for them.

For me a good game is a good game, so a reduced form of 1e is pitch perfect and a TFA period jaunt into 2e is developing.

Classic that uses all the ships in the original trilogy and optionally Rogue One. This has EPT’s and Titles, but these are assigned in Pre-builds that suit the Pilots to their roles in the movies (EPT’s sometimes as multiples). For example, Luke gets his classic alpha strike build of R2-D2, Deadeye and Advanced Proton Torps, Vader has Advanced Targeting Comp, Determination and Squad Leader and Han Solo gets the Falcon Title, Chewie, C3PO, Elusiveness and Trick Shot.

Training Day that uses the neglected TFA fighters only, some core upgrades, but with the addition of Tech.

Skeleton Crew that uses a small core of 6 ships per factions, no Actions outside of the core 4, no EPT’s, Titles, named Crew or Droids (and no FAA Droid), an optional small choice of Mods, but with ship specific limits (0 for light ships, 1 for most others, up to 2 for some large ones and the Kihraxz) and faction aligned crew and ordnance upgrades. The combat rules are also simplified with Critical hits going directly to Hull, no cards are used.

Bare Bones expands the core ships to all the ships with the basic 4 Actions, adds back in named Crew and Droids, damage cards are back, but all other limitations are kept from above. As a simple balance fix, 2e dials can be used, which makes most older ships less rubbish and tames a few outliers.

Legends. This is similar to bare Bones, except that it only used named Pilts, Crew, Droids etc. The idea being generics are taken for granted, named heroes and villains stand out from these. Apart from squad builds, who really wants to fly generics?

Everyday Heroes. If the answer to above was “me, I will”, then this one is for you. The rules change a little to a random turn order (rolled after dials are set), the PS of the Pilots now used to determine EPT allocation.

This is due in part to the imbalance of PS values across the generic ships (Rebels are screwed) and in part to their irrelevance. Royal Guard Pilots and Black Sun Aces and Assassins sit on top, but EPT’s are not free, so not too much.

STAW "Cut And Paste", Some Wins And Other Oddballs

My Attack Wing “craft” session has finished. I have run out of need, ideas and more importantly, cards to pirate.

The last boxed set arrived, fittingly an original starter I got from Wizkids for $20us. This surprised me with two cards I did not realise I had sold off and lots of fillers. The ships were old paint schemes, which in two cases would require a re-paint. This went in an unusual direction (see below).

The very last ship and I really got lucky here, was a print damaged Sao Paulo Defiant class (which I replaced), so I still had the bad card and the temptation to use it.

Name? I was really limited.

The Independent was favourite (same vibe as Defiant), but the only cards I had were Marquis generic captains and the font was way too big. The one copy I did have was on a re-purposed ISS Enterprise and I cannot remember where it came from. It refused to move after a little poking and I even damaged it slightly, (many do come back off, but some are committed).

The Gorn had a surplus Disruptor Barrage card, so Disruptor was in the mix, but then I stumbled on a lone and unlikely to be missed Nistrim Raider, so U.S.S. Raider was born (later switched to USS Independent). I needed to extend the grey top banner a little as the name was shorter, but all good, done that before.

The ship text had two options left*, one from an original Delta Flyer I, which read “weapon upgrades up to 4 SP may be used” plus a “-1 attack in rear fire arc” option, the other was the NX Enterprise’s “Free Hull Plating”. I was loath to use the Plating card even though it fit the theme, as I only had 2 for the NX period and a re-named NX, the USS Federation had taken up the free hull plating option (I still needed one for the Enterprise).

The first option was chosen, but the first bit stumped me. In theme it was acceptable as I had added a weapon slot to the Raider (Independent), but it is only a small ship, so an individual weapon limit fit and there were plenty of sub 5pt options, but then I remembered the “Experimental Torpedo Bay” card, which allows you to “hide” a Torpedo card (any cost) under that 2 pt upgrade.

The DS9 period got a little attention, but the TOS and TNG Battle scales did also. The Dominion was a marriage of an Enterprise-D card and a Dominion Dreadnaught on another Galaxy, but let’s assume it was named before the war. The other half of the Dreadnaught card was a good fit on the flagship Prometheus class, Ni’Var means “of two worlds” in Vulcan and the USS Hunter was a neat inclusion. The Independant has been since changed to the Dauntless, the name re-used on a Defiant class.

I then realised I only had one Enterprise re-fit, but if I used it, I could not use my Ent-B card, so the USS Spectre, a weapon heavy war ship was created out of an excess Akira class card I had been hanging onto (thought it might end up being a second Mirror universe Constitution class, but frustratingly I lack an “ISS” tag).

Before this lucky collision of scarce resources, my project with Borg started.

My Borg offer is a little thin. I did not buy the big Cube, then let my scout, the Soong and a Sphere go in my purge. I found myself re-buying a cheap Soong vessel to get some depth, then a couple of OP sets with a Scout cube each (one got re-numbered), so a little better, but not ideal.

I missed the Assimilated ships box**, but I did have an excess of Klingon K’Vort, Vor’Cha, Romulan D’Deridex and Fed Galaxy and Akira ships, most in alternate colour schemes, so a grey/green repaint is booked and their cards have been…….. assimilated.

They have better shields, usually by 2 values, increased primary usually by one, a Borg action bar and suitable ship ability if necessary. This means three ships lost cloaking, but I figured the Borg could have assimilated and used that tech if it suited them, so maybe the added shields and regeneration draw too much power for their massive ships, or more likely they do not see the need to hide.

Points were adjusted in line with other Borg ships and suddenly my fleet of Borg is quite large (11 ships total).

Other excess ships are scattered through my sets, but the Klingons needed a lot of variety, so rule 1* was applied with vigour.

The Klingons needed some fillers. Somraw means “Muscle”, so appearing in a few periods makes sense. The Gornar was an excess Gornarus, Ves Batlh is a ceremonial sword, so again commonly used, Mulan came from…Romulan, but feels right for Klingons who also have the oriental sounding Kang, Chang and Ning’Tao. The Gath’Oth was made from my very last Gal Gath’Thong Romulan BOP and Gr’oth Klingon D-7. Easier to pronounce than some canon Klingon names.

This is obviously never going to float in a competitive space, but it was never meant to. It is merely a way of turning unwanted repeat cards into something useful and adding needed variety to some eras.

*Rule 1 of cut and paste is no repeats in the same era or set.

**Ironically my X-Wing and Armada collection caused me problems keeping up with my AW set. It’s ironic because I originally got into AW to avoid those two.

Rules As Written or RAW

I have a lot of TTRPG rules. For handling ease, I have tried to keep them in three camps, D100 style for the bulk, Savage Worlds and “other”, so that they are able to support different play styles and tastes, but also to aide in the learning of all of these rules. This is often done in a relative vacuum (little opportunity to play-which reinforces knowledge, or lack there of) and the problem is…..well……I get distracted.

Not by other media, not by life or work, not even by other TTRPG’s. I get distracted by my desire to do stuff my way, to reinvent, tinker and experiment. This has always been me and it really stifles actual gaming. Start reading a book, get an idea, start writing a book, get bogged down and repeat.

I have a set of WW2 wargame rules that I started in the early 2000’s, that may never be finished, even though the ideas are well enough cemented that I could probably write many of them from memory.

D100 games are another example.

I never intended to run RQ RAW, just mine the resources and simplify play using BRP or similar. Maybe I will give it a crack. It’s not like they have not laid down a clear and pleasant path.

I have so many of them and they all have great content, but the mechanics are often dated in application. This is getting better as games evolve, but still, almost as soon as I start reading one, I become aware of better ideas than those posed. Better? Well to my mind better.

The reality is, most d100 mechanics are easily enough hacked, the flexibility of the d100 roll-under based system blesses us with that, so I could easily enough write a one sheet variant to apply to basically all d100 games.

The latest version of Call of Cthulhu is pretty clean and slick. It is modernised while sticking to it’s roots and pretty bullet proof. I still struggle with the core mechanic, even though it works and many others are fine with it.

The problem, and I know this from my transition from amateur photographer to professional, is that actually doing something for real tends to quieten the demons, while doing it “theoretically’ as an anticipation of the real thing, tends to make little things bigger than they need to be.

I used to sweat lens play, mount tightness, colour of lenses matching in sets, those sets making sense. I now just grab the gear that will do a job and short of a drop or other issues, just put it back on the shelf to use again. I have lenses that are loose, some that grind, the odd one that is loose on the mount, cameras with damage and some little quirks, even a couple well past their shutter life rating, but as long as they work, they get used. I recently packed four bags of kit for a long and busy day, all without duplication and still had gear left over. Nothing is wasted.

I remember the example often used of the two art classes given the same task, make a perfect pot. One can only work in theory until the pot is made at the end of the process, the other class is allowed to make and make pots until time runs out. The makers always beat the theorists in final product.

I need to stop being a theorist and thinking of RAW as “cement shoes”. I need to be a maker. I need to play these games and only house rule when I am sure of my facts and it is for the better-for real.

STAW Generics.

One of the many separate Star Wars Attack Wing sets I have assembled is TNG Battle scale-Generics.

This is the big ships from the TNG period, but only generics (no uniques, or named).

They are weaker and cheaper than the Uniques*, rely on squadron builds, all abilities coming from their Captain and faction limited upgrade choices. You can make some strong squads with just these ships generally with a lot more plastic on the table than unique ship games.

The 100 pt squads tend to be 3-4 ships with a mix of Captains and limited upgrades, making for a decent small battle scenario, very much like an old school 1e X-Wing match and easy for new players to pick up.

Most of these now get a run and being an older photo, there are now even more!

100 points can net you 5x K’Vort class Klingon Bird of Prey with generic captains, which is 20 red dice, 35 health with 1 agility in a simple and powerful squad, if a little bland. You could also get 6 K’Tinga with a decent leader, or a mix of 4 Neg’Var and Vor’Cha cruisers.

The Federation could have a mix of up to 5 Nebula and Excelsior class with room for a better Captain, up to 4 Akira, Galaxy or Prometheus class with a mix of Captains or upgrades, even squeeze 4 Sovereign class (25) in with generic captains.

The Romulans can field 2 Reman Warbirds (32) with a support and even the Borg can get a few ships on the table.

You can load up some ships with upgrades, but lacking inherent ship abilities and with 1 less shield value across the board, points are generally better spent on more ships and upgrades spread wider. The smaller upgrade bars also tend focus the ships into specific roles, like “tech support” or “weapons platform”.

You can field everyone you want, they might just be on different ships.

Unlike XW especially 2e***, AW is a lacking in post move Actions, which can make flying a little boring, but it does better simulate the “battle wagon” as opposed to dog-fight style of play.

This format allows for squadron tactics and synergies to off-set that slightly.

*Generics in AW generally lose a shield point, some upgrade slots and their bespoke ability, which is a big hit for only 2 points and some of the maths is well wonky (especially if a ship does not have shields!). This has never been a good fit for me and using generics only removes this. In other periods, I have upgraded the shield values to be all the same as that seems a reasonable concession for a 2 point bump.

**DS9 (uniques), TNG Battle (uniques for scenarios, generics for bigger battles), Voyager, Kelvin and Enterprise (a mix of uniques and generics-with shields adjusted), TOM and TOS (mostly named, but shields are adjusted when generics are used).

***XW 1e sits between. I often compare the NX Enterprise 2-3-3-0 to the Tie Fighter 2-3-3-0, pointing to the vastly deeper build potential of the NX, which when fully loaded is quite robust with multiple crew, ordnance, a choice of Captains and now the Prototype option), but compared to the Tie it is slow, has no Roll (or Boost with upgrade), although, rare for Feds it does have two K-turns and one is white.

X Wing 1st Edition, A Great Journey, But When Did It Go Wrong?

A lot of this post is drawn for the “Stay on the Leader” blog, as I was not there. I was aware of the game, but only jumped after Attack Wing and when 1e was being cleared and SotL became one of my favourite resources. I will ignore Huge ships for this post as they are largely irrelevant in this context.

The posts that inspired this are much better are here,

https://stayontheleader.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-six-ages-of-x-wing-1-jurassic-park.html

and here

https://stayontheleader.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-six-ages-of-x-wing-2-twin-laser.html

Unfortunately his planned six part blog string was interrupted by the announcement of 2nd edition, but the two posts he did finish are fun reading and is an excellent window, for better or worse, into the changing dynamic of the game.

The journey of 1e X-Wing in the early days was a win for everyone concerned, it had enjoyable game play with a clever and slick game system, a great theme, excellent components and was tight enough to support a world tournament competition right to the end of its run, even if the cracks were starting to show.

Wave 1

Core Set (Tie Fighter and X-Wing), X and Y-Wing, Tie Fighter and Tie Advanced expansions.

After the Core set came the needed X-Wing and Tie expansions, which added more pilots to the core ships and then the Y-Wing and Tie Advanced were added for variety (and Vader).

We have the two ships most thought of first, some recognised pilots, Droids, Elite talents, Mods, ordnance and enough to play a decent game with (especially with two Core sets), joined by more of the same, Vader’s Advanced and a tank-y Y-Wing with Turret upgrades. Ion Turrets ruled this space early.

The state of the game was rich with excitement for what was to come, which I suppose most people would have assumed would stick mostly to the three original movies. I guess there were several possibilities here. The designers could have gone with 2 then 3 threads, much as they did with the 2e or Armada, of the Republic, Empire and then First Order (to be realised) periods, but instead they stuck to one, expanding it into the greater Imperial universe or ignoring elements all together.

Wave 2

Millenium Falcon, Slave 1, A-Wing, Tie Interceptor .

The first large base ships and something fast and agile for each faction. The Interceptor had the full range of manoeuvre Actions, the A-Wing was the fastest ship by a mile (or hundreds).

The choices are broadening, but an early miss-step is made with the Slave-1 as an Imperial large ship “filler” and one that was rarely if ever used after Wave 6, when the Scum version was released. Boost becomes a thing, broadening the range of standard Actions.

Wave 3

HWK-290, Lambda Shuttle, B-Wing, Tie Bomber (Rebel Transport).

The Rebels get a second Crew carrier/Turret option, the only 1 Attack ship in the game and in a ship from outside the movies. The Lambda arrives (possibly should have come before Slave-1) and the B-Wing and Tie Bomber appear as the final “must have” Movie ships and add some needed variety. The Transport brings our first Huge ship, more a scenario focus than serious tournament ship, but a sign of growing ambitions. It did add some useful Droids and Pilots.

My favourite ship (possibly tied with those nasty Interceptors), which means I am a jouster I guess, but the A-Wing was rarely worth running after Wave 5.

Wave 4

Z-95, Tie Defender, E-Wing, Tie Phantom, (Imperial Aces pack).

The Rebels get a filler and an A-Wing alternate, the Imperials score a super Interceptor and a cloaking wild card.

Now we are into expanded universe ships and the Imperials gain Cloaking. For me, sitting on the outside looking in, the tournament players must have been clawing at the walls every release schedule as the meta changed each wave and builds became more interesting or daunting, depending on your knowledge of the game, but that cycle was also the beginning of the end, even if only a few saw it at the time. For people like me with only a passing interest in Star Wars outside of the movies, we are now into the stick with what I have or try something else (STAW) period.

Wave 5

YT-2400, VT-49 Decimator (Tantive IV).

A thin wave, adding more expanded universe large ships and a second Huge ship, with Leia and Han Crew and more Upgrades. Two Rebel Huge ships set an expectation for more, but which ones? In the films only Rebel small ships are featured, so we expected more exploration in the expanded universe.

This was the time of Turrets vs Swarms, simple and effective.

Wave 6

StarViper, M3 Scyk, IG-2000, (Most Wanted), (Rebel Aces).

The Most Wanted pack was chock-full of goodies for the now separate Scum faction. They got their own version of the Y-Wing, Z-95 and some exclusive ships. The Rebels get the first of many band-aid fixes to earlier ships with the Aces pack, making the A-Wing and B-Wing more attractive.

The Scum are finally separated as the third faction with the “Most Wanted” pack and more ships (even if they and their pilots are quite obscure) and another movie mercenary appears. The expanded universe is being plumbed more deeply, the ships becoming meta affecting and “fixes” for older ships are appearing regularly in new products like Rebel Aces.

Wave 7

Hound’s Tooth, Kihraxz, K-Wing, Tie Punisher (Imperial Raider).

Another large ship mercenary, a Scum line fighter, A Rebel heavy bomber with SLAM action and an answering Punisher with a System upgrade. The Raider finally allows clumsy but impressive 1 on 1 Huge ship battles, the Tie Advanced also gets some help and the most expensive upgrade, Palpatine arrives (game changing until nerfed).

At this point, the releases are squarely aimed at the tournament circuit, with answers for each faction for balance, new mechanics (new Actions and manoeuvres even) and of course, more fixes. The meta is very much a slave to the release schedule now, older ships starting to show the strain with fixes a regular thing and an expectation that balance will be found at some point, but there will be constant change until it is.

Wave 8

(Force Awakens Core Set), T-70 X-Wing, Tie/fo, Ghost, Inquisitor’s Tie, Mist Hunter, Punishing One, (Imperial Veterans), (Assault Carrier).

The TFA period is added to the earlier time line, but no accounting for timeline consistency, with XT-70 and 65’s mixing, we have Poe and Luke or Kylo and Vader flying together and some other oddness. The tournament circuit responds to a better X-Wing and Tie, the Ghost and Inquisitor’s Tie from the Rebels series make an appearance as well as the last two mercs from The Empire Strikes Back. Imperial Vets make the Interceptor meaner (and prettier) and the Assault Carrier adds some Ties.

If the TFA period was split here, like in 2e, the game may have been able to share different threads and handle new rule additions, then the Republic period could have been added and 1e may have survived and even the simulation pundits would have been happy, but much of the damage was done. In some ways, X-Wing was now a slave to the sequel movie release schedule.

I started my journey picking up a clutch of TFA starters cheap, hoping to basically “do” the game with the limitation of TFA only, but it was never going to work. With both X-Wing and Armada (I started with prequels fleets), I would have been better off sticking to the original trilogy for both.

Wave 9

ARC-170, Special Forces Tie, Fang Fighter, Shadow Caster, (Heroes of the Resistance), (C-Roc Cruiser).

The TFA period gets some fleshing out with a new Falcon, Poe and a heavier Tie, but the rest of the releases are fringe at best, although the Fang becomes a favourite. The C-Roc gives some life to the Scyk, the Shadow Caster adds a rotating Turret, a sign of the future. The TFA period First Order pilots are mostly generics at this point as the releases are coming before the fiction can fill the gaps.

The Meta is straining now with multiple Jump Masters and other ships people had to research origins for becoming table dominant until nerfed by “official” rules. The JM in particular even needed a new card!

Wave 10

Sabine’s Tie, Upsilon Shuttle, Quad Jumper, U-Wing, Tie Striker.

Rounding out the Rebels with Sabine’s Tie was nice, the rest were Rogue One or TFA releases. The Tech upgrade becomes the new/old period threshold, the ships a mix of “must have” to fringe at best unless you are a competitive player where the best is picked off, the rest ignored.

The playing group is split even more now between casual players who make the older ships they want to fly, relevant again by ignoring the meta and “playing friendly”. The tournament circuit is hard edged, useless ships simply ignored for winning power builds.

Waze 11

Auzituck Gunship, Scurrg Bomber, Tie Aggressor.

The factions are getting more balancing ships, like the Aggressor, an Imperial Y-Wing, Scurrg as the Scum ordnance specialist (but all together too powerful) and the Wookie Gunship for good measure.

More new game mechanics are introduced, making a nonsense of some older ships and muddying the waters even further.

Wave 12

Alpha class Star Wing, Kimogila Fighter, Phantom II Expansion, (Guns for Hire).

Kihraxz and Viper fixes, Harpoon missiles and plenty of well liked upgrade cards make Guns for Hire the hot thing this wave. The elusive Star Wing, a cross between the Lambda and an Apache Helicopter (never actually seen one, the only ship to elude me), Kimogila and Phantom II are a mixed bag adding more mechancis, the last two can still be found on dusty shop shelves.

They are again mostly adjusting balance and filling in the cracks now. The game is healthy enough on the playing circuit, but the end is in sight for many.

Wave 13 (apparently this came before 12 for some reason?)

Resistance Bomber, Tie Silencer.

The needed depth for the TFA period, not that there was still any official period separation in the game.

For a slim time, my game was 5x TFA base sets and the half dozen other TFA ships on clearance which could have been enough. All the elements of the game were represented and the TFA ships were often the first to be cleared (and as it turned out the 2e upgrade packs fit my collection perfectly).

The playing fraternity are at odds now. The new ships are powerful, so helping the game come apart at the seams.

Wave 14

(Saw’s Renegades), Tie Reaper (second edition is announced).

The last 1e releases are Rogue One fillers and Saw’s pack comes with an attempt to fix the X-Wing.

Too little-too late, the announcement of 2e and imminent conversion packs kills 1e for most, for some, the game all together. My feeble attempt at controlling the monster, sticking to TFA (and Scum) in 1e was turning out to be a good idea as the conversion kit fit perfectly with my collection and the period was a discreet and growing range in 2e, but I bought a rare cheap 1e starter and the rest is history.

So, where did it go wrong?

The reality is competitive needs ruled the release schedule, fated to be I guess by the 100 pt, head to head on a 3x3 mat, structure of the game. Collecting ships, playing scenarios, simulating Star Wars and having fun all took a back seat to tournament play.

For many, Wave 6-7 was a high water mark with the release of Scum as a faction and action chains were emerging as the meta currency. Others stayed the course until Wave 10 or later, but for me, if I was buying and playing with the benefit of hind sight and as a simulation gamer with a strong need to play to canon, Wave 3 would have been plenty. Nothing was broken, everyone had their place and there was enough.

What could have been done differently?

If the initial launch had been four or five factions, with the Prequels and Scum factored in, then maybe the scope of the game would have been greater and later rules bloat avoided. When the last movie trilogy emerged, the discreet nature of the game would have allowed it’s emergence with new game rules tailored to the period.

Was 2e the fix that was needed?

You could argue that all that needed doing was a reprint of some cards, dials and upgrades that needed updating or fixing, but instead they started from scratch, while hanging on to a lot f dated mechanics.

I personally would have loved it if pilot cards were separate, allowing for vastly more variety from the start (like Captains in Attack Wing, but that got well out of hand didn’t it!). With a core ship build, swappable Pilots, maybe even variations of the same Pilot, the game would have had more variety from the get-go.

2e was a decent fix, balance was back, you could theoretically fly any ship you wanted and be competitive and many of the miss-steps of the 1e game were removed or reworked, so what went wrong?

Cards without point values or upgrades had a mixed reception, especially when the app needed was twitchy. The flexibility of non-printed values did mean the game could be balanced and re-balanced as needed, but it was also obvious there was a kowtowing to the tournament player, the casual player was a bit lost and therefore lost interest. There was also a feeling the very nature of the game could be (as was) massively shifted literally overnight.

Fantasy Flight and later Asmodee could not sell much except conversion kits and offered little new, so sales dropped and prices rose, so I guess so did R & D. The reality was, if you came in late and wanted to fill your fleet, you had to turn to increasingly rare and expensive 1e ships and conversion packs. A late surge helped but was too late to stem the tide and many realised, the promised re-prints were not to be.

The conversion packs were also rarely perfectly aligned with most players collections (half a dozen Vipers for example), either way too much or too little (3 was the unluckiest number). Personally I could have converted my TFA kit almost perfectly, but I went into the earlier period and broke that.

The community was still healthy, the game strong and balanced, but the early magic was gone and with it much of the potential for growth. For me, the biggest sign of a failing game was the loss of many of the blogs I liked. SotL is one of the few still up even with little actual play being done and nothing new added.

I miss the rock-paper-scissors simplicity of the original game. I regressed to re-capture a time and feeling I had basically missed first time around. Classic (movie ships), Bare Bones, Skeleton Crew, Aces and Eights, Expanded BB and Full Noise are all layers of 1e I enjoy, 2e is mostly languishing in reserve.

One fix that has a massive impact is to simply use 2e dials with 1e ships. This balances a lot of ships (more Talon Rolls, S-Loops and generally more speed, or sometimes less).

“Cut and paste as needed, the instructions are on the box”.

It is our game now, all ties with mother have been cut.

For many, especially non-competitive players, the latest take on 2e is a mess, a great big, over complicated, over nerfed, competition driven mess. The answer according to some is “go back to it’s roots”, more specifically reduce, reduce, reduce.

For example, I personally dislike EPT’s and Mods* and have an allergic dislike for Titles**, feeling they take away from the already represented bespoke abilities of the Pilots and Ships and are the key villains in the exaggerated “action chain” economy of the late 1e game. As proof of this, most were absorbed by the 2e game.

If you look at most 1e power lists, EPT and Mod combo’s are at their core. Soontir and Palpatine (as written) or Han and Chewie/C3-PO/R2-D2 are all less fortress-like without these extras and Pilots like Jake, Tycho or Vader get to do things with Actions that others just don’t. The game feels more like the designers intended. The rock-paper-scissors dynamic meets squad building hijinks limited to call-out cases while simulating Star Wars as we want it.

If like me you have a ton of exquisite little plastic ships, bags of card board collateral and an undying desire to “fly Star Wars”, then what is to be done?

I guess we all need to make our own way.

As I have said above, my jam is reduced upgrade 1e, probably with 2e dials as the easiest way to upgrade older ships (1e dials saved for intro level games). I have lots of ships that are 2e only, so I guess there is a need to do something like this with the 2e game, ship costs based on Pilot skill and “1 point” upgrades, but like 1e a lot of upgrade types will be banished. No EPT’s or Mods for a start, just ship and pilot abilities, ordnance and crew of all types (gunners, droids etc). Hero personalities, not modify the core concepts.

*We also play “full noise” with all the bits when the mood hits, especially in “Aces and Eights” a 60pt Ace + wingman fighter face-off.

**Especially the generic ones that are blatant fixes and the ones that hint at ship “sentience” and the same goes for Attack Wing.

Unmatched, Back On My Radar!

One of my favourite games and the easiest game I have to get to the table quickly with anyone, any time is Unmatched. It is so easy in fact, I can grab it after months away, look at the action card and just go.

Quick run down;

Players or teams each player using a main protagonist (usually 1 sometimes 2 or 3 characters) who sometimes have sidekicks (1-8), fight using a set number of cards (usually 30) on a small map until one side is beaten. Running out of cards equals exhaustion and likely defeat, so the game is limited in rounds, space and tactics.

I have no other game that can be set up in a minute, be played in 20-30, even with new players, can offer an even game no matter the player range (there are some easy to play characters and maybe sme handicapped ones), or just do a team-up game with Amazing Tales.

No matter how odd the match-up, most games I have played have been close, which is not nothing. Squirrel Girl vs T-Rex, Genie vs Robin Hood, different but equal.

It offers an almost infinite variety of matchups and something for all tastes from the goofy to hard boiled. There is even now a genuine solo option (one I am yet to beat convincingly in “easy” mode) and another to come.

Houdini decides whether to Boost his defence card, taking a mild hit if not. The maps are small (over half of this one is in the pic), but tricky and always different. The board above is in “stealth” mode, on the flip side to normal with less obvious ring colour, but I would prefer an alternate map.

I have almost all the sets, only missing the early (seem mythical to me) Deadpool and Bruce Lee singles and some of the newer ones are yet to be bought, but that is being rectified.

After stopping at Houdini/Genie, I grabbed Legends 3 on impulse, then the Shakespeare and two Witcher sets straight after based on reviews I came across while chasing ones for L3. Then I pre-ordered TMNT with the trimmings as I love Turtle stuff (I remember owning the very first comics and the RPG and some other stuff). I am sure Ali vs Lee, Hellboy and anything after are also likely.

One thing I love about this game, which flies in the face of many other competitive games like X-Wing, are the fixed character decks that lead to a friendly community ready to share ideas, game reports and opinions.

Like many tournament style games, there are player and character rankings, regional championships, but unlike most fighting games, a lot of people just enjoying the experience and champion less than optimal characters, because deck building and power teams simply do not exist. You play with what you get, as is, end of.

X-Wing 2e and the game on the whole died for me when all the design choices made, were clearly for tournament play. It was fine in 1e and I still love it, but to many it was “broken” competitively so 2e was born. Legion looks to be going the same way. Unmatched is more robust from the start, the design pressure is for balance not escalation. Some of the top rated tournament characters are some of the oldest available, which is a sign of a healthy game.

The game has fixed character/deck options, meaning there is no bulk buying then dumping of unwanted resources for the “perfect” deck. The decks are made to a flexible but stable formula and designed to represent their character theme, which they do really well. If you are playing Bloody Mary, Spiderman, Dr Tesla, The Genie or Big Foot, you know it, you feel it.

Dark doings in SoHo. Dracula and his brides (Etsy sourced alternate figs, normally the brides are coloured resin tokens and the toothy guy is more “civilised”), with a little help from a nasty looking Mr Hyde (alt) vs Holmes, Watson (alt) and The Invisible Man. Looks one sided, but like all Unmatched games, it ended with a narrow win to Dracula, coming back from early mauling and after Hyde was bested (as Dr Jekyll). The next game was Holmes v Raptors, a win to Holmes.

With over 50 characters available now and plans for more, everyone should find a favourite. You then master that character and try something new, but that may take a while and your opponent may be constantly changing.

Google “favourite or best Unmatched character/set/map” and you will rarely get the same answer. The same with “best set to start with” or “most fun character”. Even Deadpool, with a notoriously crippled hand made more for laughs than tournament play is widely sought after.

There are sentimental favourites and these can trump “better” characters even in the tournament circuit where power builds and favourites are usually found. As an example, the Buffy set is widely considered the weakest overall, but only if you go looking for trouble and play outside of that set and even then it still has many fans.

I use it as a themed set or for weaker characters to play against new players and still sometimes get a solid win (in fact one of my few wins against the Mothman AI was with an all Buffy crew).

Holmes the clever pugilist, Watson with his revolver and ability to heal, The Invisible man in the background, able to, you guessed it, dissapear and appear somewhere else.

No character is ever entirely useless or dominant. There is a rock-paper-scissors element to the game, but even then, random card draw, team composition and player skill can provide upsets.

You really can hero your crush character and answer that age old question, “in a fight between X and Y who would win?”, even if “X” is Red Riding Hood and “Y” is a giant T-Rex!

I tend to group my sets thematically (you probably saw that coming).

• Modern Mayhem, including Dino’s*, TMNT, Buffy etc plus the Amazing Tales Martians AI. The pending Hellboy set will go here to.

• Legends of History a mixed bag that is everything else that has no set theme like Achilles, Medusa, Black Beard, Bigfoot*, Sinbad and The Genie etc. This is Unmatched at it’s most random and truest to it’s roots.

• If you go down to the Woods has all the literary legends and fairytales with weird creatures all with a “anti-fairy tale” vibe that suits the Witcher sets like Red, Alice, Loki, Beowulf, Shakespeare, Arthur and Robin Hood.

• Amazing Tales set with all the 19th and early 20th century figs. Cobble & Fog, Houdini, Tesla, Bloody Mary, Golden Bat etc and the Amazing Tales Mothman AI.

*There are plenty of cross-overs (the Raptors tend to pop up anywhere as does the Genie), but otherwise I find it helps player buy-in to accept these groups and start their careers here.

Things I appreciate about the game is the room in each box for sleeved cards (Star Wars Villainous could learn from this) and the beautiful details. My only mild complaint is the sometimes missed opportunities with maps, when they print a less obvious movement ring version on the back of some instead of an alternate.

What would I love to see?

A Batman series, maybe 2-5 boxes with Bane + Thugs, Bat Man + Robin, Bat Woman + Bat Girl, Joker + Quinn, Nightwing, Riddler, Gordon + Harvey Dent, Green Arrow, Cat Woman, Scarecrow, Penguin, Red Hood, Death Stroke + Ravager, Poison Ivy, Mr Freeze, Two Face, Ra’s & Talia al Ghul, Deadshot, Poison Ivy etc. Every one of these just screams Unmatched (although many of them have parables in the game already).

Others?

The Three Musketeers, James Bond, Indiana Jones, a reprint of the game that it came from, Star Wars Epic Duels, The Lord of the Rings, the list can go on and on.

Why Savage Worlds Won.

So what won out?

I am referring to the post I did recently about looking to delve deeply into an RPG that I have already to re-introduce an old friend and once obsessed RPG-er, while getting myself properly up to speed with a game (you get rusty with neglect, just like any tool).

*

Ok, so I went with 13th Age, my one and only d20 fantasy game system, a DnD heart-breaker, the salve for jaded DnD players, a love letter to house rules.

Then I started reading the rules and realised, like many games I have rejected recently, it is a lot to take on board for a one single theme game and flies in the face of my current direction, which is to master a single system or pair of systems and play any period using it.

To be clear, I have never been a DnD fan. Even in my earliest days, I played Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, D6 Star Wars and many, many others, but never really got the DnD bug. Ironically or more likely unwisely, I have owned a lot of it from the old Red and Blue basic books, ADnD to 5e as well as Pathfinder 1e (a mountain of), Iron Heroes and 13th Age, but most was sold off, hardly used.

13th Age has survived for two reasons.

It is an over the top, heroic version of the old game, designed by inner sanctum designers who house rule heavily and this is the result.

It is fun to read, fun to design/imagine up things and for it’s type, fun to play. Overall a much more pleasant version of DnD (for me).

But, it is still DnD and it is not my one game ideal.

It is still a heavy load in a busy life and at the end of the day, it is less interesting to me than other genres. I felt it might be a soft landing for a lapsed DnD gamer coming back, but he is lapsed and maybe that was for a reason, so let’s try something new!

So, I switched back to Savage Worlds (not D100, I will explain).

Savage Worlds won for the following reason.

It is the one set of consistent rules I can learn and apply to any game, even another existing game with a quick hack.

In a nutshell, I can do a 13th Age or other inspired scenario with one rule set if it is SW, but not the other way around.

No rule set is perfect, especially when you try to apply it to different themes.

Savage Worlds has a rep for being pulpy, swingy and lite*, all of which are true to some extent, but it also has the flexibility to curb or exaggerate any of these easily.

Want a darker and more gritty game?

The Benny, Wild and exploding dice systems are easily reduced, removed or can have added effects built in easily. Want a Benny spent to have a twist, a bit like a “fail forward”, want t limit the exploding dice to once only, want to drp the Wild dice to make characters very ordinary? Easily done.

Want a more heroic game like 13th Age?

Just escalate starting characters to Seasoned tier, which is basically what the 13a designers did. Then add the One Unique Thing, ICONs and the world parameters and you have it. No need even to use classes, just Race and concept, which tend to fall into standard tropes.

How about Rune Quest, SW style? Again, it is the world and background that are important. Character gen is key, especially with Rune Magic. The core of this is the desire to play a game that personifies the world you chose, nt find ways to break it with rule set “X” (or SW).

For me as a GM, there are some real benefits that cannot be over stated.

• Prep time can be very quick. On-the-go fixes are easy, even sandboxing a whole world is doable. Lift and drop from any source is a piece of cake. It is not impossible to play a “what would you like to do” game from scratch, building the world as you go, adding twists and turns as needed. Remember player agency is a creative tool not a hurdle.

• It can absorb almost any source materiel you might want.

• The rules are consistent, especially magic and powers, which tend to do my head in when a half dozen different systems need to be learned.

• Combat can be quick and “theatre of the mind” or a miniatures game.

• Combat is not the only way of getting things done.

What to do?

Learn the Core or Players rule book. This will let you reenact basically any book, graphic novel, RPG or movie you want with a little applied imagination and an open mind.

This was where it started for me. Looking for a Kids on Bikes vehicle, I stumbled across this about the same time the fourth and last (Sci-Fi) companions became available, led to a wholesale adoption of the thing right under my nose the whole time!

If you want to go deeper and into a specific genre, get a Companion, which will add some thematic guidance, more of everything you like and full bestiaries etc.

These, the GM Screen and Core Book and you are done. Over 1000 pages of more, more, more!

For added ease and table presence, there is a ton of official (or not) collateral like themed playing cards and dice, minis, maps, counters etc. My pick would be the accessory box, then get some correctly themed playing cards as extra action decks.

Even though I do have the oversized action deck for SW and SWPF, cheap themed card packs can add a lot.

If you want the work done for you, which switches the dynamic from making to learning, get a pre-made set, like RIFTs, Deadlands, Pathfinder etc. Nothing is ever wasted even if you cut away much of the background.

My one themed set, because it was my first and meant to be my last SWADE foray.

Games I will likely do in SW would be (with companions noted);

• Rivers of London style modern soft supernatural (RPG/Books). HC/FC

• Tales from the Loop/After the Flood/Electric State (books). SFC

• Kids on Bikes (movies). CB (they do Pinebox TX, but too much for what I need)

• The One Ring (RPG/Books). FC

• Delta Green, 1990’s X-Files game (DG, X Files, Cthulhu, Supernatural). HC, SFC

• Warmachine/Iron Kingdoms steam punk (RPG/war game), FC/SFC

• Malifaux weird west (based on the figure line)-possibly with the above. FC/HC

• Everdell (based on the board game). FC

• Mouse Guard (Graphic novels and RPG)-possibly combined with above. FC

• A 1960’s cool-Bond style game (Trouble Shooters RPG, early period Bond, Avengers and U.N.C.L.E books, movie and TV, Tin Tin etc). CB

• Heroes of Normandie Weird War II (based on the board game and Achting Cthulhu RPG-already done in SWeX). AC/HC

• Warhammer style gritty Gothic Renaissance fantasy (based on the 1e books). FC/HC

• A sci-fantasy 1889 style game with Jules Verne science (John Carter books, Space 1889 RPG, Tarzan, War of the Worlds). SFC

• Alien/Mothership hack (RPG’s & movies), more an experiment really. SFC/HC

• A Star Wars style space opera/supers cross over. SHC/SFC

• Guardians of the Galaxy/Marvel style supers game. SHC/SFC

• An Iron Heroes/Conan style Swords and Sorcery game (IH RPG and books). FC/PF

• A Malazan Book of the Fallen sci-fant military Campaign (Malazan Books). SFC/FC

• Starship Troopers style game (The book more than the movies). SFC

• An old school four colour supers game (Batman, Marvel etc). SHC

• A novelty supers game (Mystery Men, 1960’s spoof comics, Kick-Ass, new Fantastic Four movie, Watchmen-less dark). SHC

• A Highlander style “immortals are among us” game (movie, other stuff). SHC/FC

SHC Super Hero Comp, SFC Sci-Fi Comp, FC Fantasy comp, HC Horror Comp, CB Core Book (and nothing else), AC Achtung Cthulhu, PF SW Pathfinder.

Why not D100 games?

Because it they be my easy fall-back, my mood switcher, but unlike SW, the various games are each slightly different. I could have gone BRP UGE, and converted most others to that, but felt the lighter SW vibe was more approachable and converting D100 to SW would be easier than SW to D100.

* I guess the opposite of this is often hard, predictable and heavy.

Savage Worlds Math, It Works Fine

The original system that Savage Worlds came from was a pool of dice system and worked well, but the designers felt it could be easier, much easier.

They distilled the pool down to a single dice, with a “wild” dice as the PC/Villain equaliser, to add a curve. At first glance I felt it was too easy and slanted towards weaker characters as the “exploding” mechanism, is rolled was too easy, but I have come to change my mind on that.

The core roll to pass is 4, the Attribute dice range from D4 to D12 and the wild dice is D6 (50/50). Double ones crap out, we will call this a fumble and maximums on the chosen passing dice are an explode (re-roll and add).

The Math;

Rolling an exploding 4 on a d4 is 1/3 easier than rolling a 6 on a d6, but it also has a 75% chance of failing completely (the d6 wild dice is 50%) and the fumble chance is 1 in 24 as opposed to 1 in 36 with 2d6.

Double exploding the d4 is a 1 in 16 chance, 1 in 64 chance of reaching 12 (with 2 raises) and an explode. the 1d4 and 1d6 has a 25% + 50% chance of success, almost all down to the wild dice.

An exploding d6 can match the maximum potential of that d4 triple roll with one maximum (and explode), or a 1 in 36 chance (i.e. almost twice as often) of going again. It has an evens chance of a raise anyway and can reach 3 raises with another roll even without exploding, so more effect and more likely to happen. The 2d6 has 50% + 50% chance of success and 1 in 36 of fumbling.

Going to the extreme end, with a d12 roll, there is a 1 in 72 fumble chance, a 50% + 75% pass chance, less chance of an exploding roll, but a double raise is possible on a natural roll at 1 in 12 with an explode! The fumble drops to negligible (but not improbable, about double the chance of a 2d6 roll), so the good gets exponentially better, the wild dice goes from enabler to safety net.

Three raises (sometimes the practical maximum), can be reached by a d4 or d6 in three rolls, d8 and d10 in two rolls, a d12 can get there in two.

If you cap explode rolls to a single re-roll only for a less swingy game, the d4 can reach one, d6 only two, d8 and above can make three.

If, alternatively, you only allow the Wild dice to explode, there is a 1 in 6 chance of 1 explode with 1-2 raise potential, 1 in 36 of another re-roll, 1 in 216 chance of another and 1 in 1296 of another etc.

I also felt the +1 added after d12 was a patch fix (time the d16 became readily available as a step to the d20), but looking at the math above, it becomes a massive, but still controlled boost. The fumble and explode chance of the raw d12 remains, but the success chance goes up to about 50 + 84% at +1, 50 + 92% at +2 etc until rolls are only used to determine raises and fumble/fails and often only Strength is boosted anyway, meaning only damage dice are boosted.

Simple, clean and as it turns out, effective (seems I substituted a d4 for a d20, my bad).

On the surface, the 25% chance of an exploding d4 seems too good, but the reality is, it is limited in effect, more likely than not to fail and as increments of 4 are needed for raises, it has to explode every roll to make any real difference.

I would argue, the d4 benefit is a good levelling tool at the bottom of the tree for those desperate adventurers who “have a crack”, but are of little other real value and the d12 with a “+” bonus is a good way of capping increases.

The effect of wounds is an interesting side case. Wildcards get three wounds with a -1 to all rolls per wound. Extras or Mooks are down with 1 hit, which if you think about it, ties in with every fight scene in every action ever.

1 wound basically nullifies raw d4’s, meaning they must explode to pass and even the Wild dice is a 66% chance of failing. 2 wounds takes the Wild to 85% fail, the d4 an explode and 2+. 3 wounds means any dice under d8 must now explode to pass and even a d12 is at 50/50 chance.

Wounds then, like the subtle +1 after d12 are a logical way of simulating one of my favourite, but often overlooked issues with RPG combat, where wounds actually simulate shock, blood loss and damage, not just abstract hit points.

Rune Quest first used location hit points so an arm or leg could be crippled or a lucky hit to the head ending it quickly, then Traveller introduced a more abstract but equally effective hits that reduce characteristics model, but it all came with on-the-go math, where SW simply does it with wound counters.

For those who prefer the attritional grind of hit point pools, ask yourself if you are ok with rejecting reality for gamesmanship.

An Old Friend Revisiting Role Playing

A friend of mine, probably my main gaming partner at the moment was once a dedicated DnD gamer (1-2e I think), but it has been a while.

My own TTRPG gaming has become quite “hypothetical” lately as most of my gaming group was moved away over time (it’s not me I tell you, just life and such……)

He is a teacher and one of his duties is to mind a rainy day gaming group who, among other things, play 5e. He said to me, when I enquired if he would be interested in RPG-ing again, that it all looked like “too much stuff” compared to his gaming days.

He and I come from the “skinny book, big imagination” era, where most of your collateral was home made of very basic stuff (Traveller with zero illustrations or ADnD with worse than zero).

My first thought was Savage Worlds (my current crush), but immediately after came 13th Age (familiar to him) and after that a D100 game (familiar mechanics for me).

I felt instinctively that 5e would be a sterile, stereotypical and predictable evolution of his old school past and something he had already developed an aversion to (and I had ditched a while back), while 13th Age would both avoid the “too much stuff” issue and refresh the game into a much more mature game, being close to the “house ruled for common sense” version he likely played, all while retaining some familiarity.

Lets look at why;

• It is all in one book in 1e (2e is 2 books), every other book is optional.

• It is conversational, flexible and fun, a soft, but comfortable landing for a returning gamer.

• It is “theatre of the mind”, not a miniatures game in disguise, much like we used to play.

• It does have the main structure of later DnD for familiarity, but is not held back by all the old DnD rule oddities and those it has, make more sense.

• I can do Glorantha with it as a sub-state of existing 13th Age*.

• It is less swingy than SW can be (but does not have to be), so less character perilous. DnD style games are attrition based, a resource management system to support long term medium stress team play.

• I have two core books and there is a free SRD to down-load for him to study.

• 13th Age Glorantha could launch us into D100 games or even SW.

Cousins only, but a good enough connection.

I have little interest in 2e because to be honest, for the gaming I am likely to do, with the open ended “fix it if you don’t like it” mandate it already has and the ten years of player input out there, I do not think the added complication of changing would be justified**. Many reviews support this. There is nothing wrong with the 1e game, there are plenty of options available, 2e is just an “official” adoption of some of these.

A prime example is Icons, which vex some, are ignored by others, or just used as fits the game. I tend to roll them in secret as prompts for interventions on players behalf when the story needs it. There is a whole sub-plot at work, forces bigger than the players realise and Icons are that (I am reminded of the Malazan books, where the ascended “Gods” mess with mere mortals regularly).

Savage Worlds has it’s own advantages;

• A new and modern game with less mechanical depth up front (but no less depth internally). This possibly breaks pre-conceptions and opens a new gaming mind.

• It is also all in one book (of which I have several), with thematic expansions seamlessly slotting in.

• The ability to change genre, even in the same game with a “RIFTS” style multi setting.

• Easy GM-ing on the fly.

• A minis game side hustle, which plays into our other gaming and may solve some other problems.

• Pathfinder as an established world, fully supported by SW and I retained a lot od collateral from my since sold collection, like maps and 4e cardboard counters etc.

• Achtung Cthulhu 1e as another option (made for Explorers edition, but an easy fix).

• The ability to do the 13A world if I want, although of all the games I have, this would probably make the least sense. Maybe even an Eberron re-think?

The hobby has become very interconnected it seems.

Savage Worlds might be a good alternative if he is not as keen on anything DnD based after all. I could actually make it a tactical war game campaign engine (my weird west home brew with Malifaux figs or maybe some Supers), that organically grows into an RPG experience.

The last option, probably the easiest for me, is to do a D100 game, likely BRP or Cthulhu or even Mothership.

This has the advantages of;

• Some familiarity for him with Rune Quest, Cthulhu etc as they were around the same time as he last played and unlike DnD, have remained mostly unchanged.

• May entice others as both our wives could possibly be enticed into a “civilised” Cthulhu/Delta Green game more likely than any other genre.

• Has solo modules for him to try at home.

• Grounded and intuitive system. He and his wife are mathematicians, so a D% game would be a comfortable fit.

• Can also be used as a skirmish game, although this is softer.

• Cthulhu and co are by far my best supported games with 100+ adventures at hand. This is effectively the opposite dynamic to SW, which is very much a “make it as you go” game.

• Also has compatibility with Achtung Cthulhu (CoC 6e), so a mid campaign switch to/from SW could be made.

• I am personally most comfortable with D100 games. If I could have only one…..

• Feels more in keeping with his (my) past interests and reading.

Yes, he has heard of Ducks as characters.

Option 1 is probably go with 13A as it would fit with his expectations, but have SW and D100 in the wings for later games, or a fast switch if it is just not taking.

The last contender is Dragonbane, a new buy. D100 turned to D20 roll under, with a Scandi take on DnD/Runequest-like concepts.

This leads in basically any direction.

*A “lost valley” or other continent, or maybe a gateway to another Age.

**Most stuff is backwards compatible, but some changes do not excite, some are easily done with awareness, some have already been and books like “Dark Alleys and Twisted Paths” or “13 True Ways” are already in the set for their mechanical options and are not as compatible. Basically, I am of the mind that the way I want to play it does not need micro management or “official” changes.