My 3D printer has seen a lot of action since I started using it again, a few months back.
Mainly it’s been used to make terrain for Marvel Crisis Protocol and a ship for sci-fi gaming.
After Action Reports from The Front
My 3D printer has seen a lot of action since I started using it again, a few months back.
Mainly it’s been used to make terrain for Marvel Crisis Protocol and a ship for sci-fi gaming.
Since I’m still learning the rules, I’m using the option where you have 5 ‘mulligans’ to use in your Five Parsecs From Home campaign, and invoking this:
Pepsiman will not be in sickbay for 4 campaign turns.
Meanwhile, my crew will be escaping the planet with the new, improved 3D printed version of the Vulture.
Stand By!
I’m taking a plunge into a few skirmish-level games that have come out over the past few years, some of which I picked up some time ago, others I just picked up.
Necromunda
I don’t want to think of myself as a Games Workshop fanboy, since I’ve pretty much given up on keeping up with whatever version of Warhammer 40K is currently out there. Even Kill Team is less interesting to me. But Necromunda has always been an interesting game, both background and core rules, which plays much like earlier editions for 40K. This and Blood Bowl are the only two GW games that I’m planning on playing.
Marvel Crisis Protocol
If anything this scratches the itch for superhero gaming, more than the Marvel Champions card game does. There’s nothing wrong with the card game, I just bought too many supplements for it. For MCP I’m sticking to the core set and a handful of supplements that I find interesting. I’m probably not getting Thanos, for example.
Five Parsecs From Home
I had picked up the previous two versions of this game from the designer through Wargames Vault, and was about to embark on a campaign, when I found out the the 3rd edition was being put out by Modiphius, the game company that currently has the Star Trek and Dune RPG licenses. This has proven to be a fun one to play, a solo skirmish game, miniatures agnostic, which allows me to mix and match miniatures for my crew and adversaries from ones that I own, thought I bought minis for the next game that I’ll probably use for this one, too.
Stargrave
After watching a lot of review videos, I picked this one up, along with the miniatures sets, even though this one is also miniatures agnostic. Like 5PFH, this one involves creating a crew to run missions, though this one is designed to be played with at least 2 players, though I may have found a solution around that.
Hostile Tactical AI
This card set emulates an opponent in 2-player skirmish games, like all the ones listed above. I haven’t tried playing with it yet, but I hope to soon, with one of the games systems listed above, or possibly with Memoir ’44 and the Commands and Colors games in my collection.
I should have been posting after action reports here instead of just on Facebook.
Anyways, I sent the crew on the following assignments:
Mal found nothing while exploring, though he did get some alone time.
Ban and Jake acquired an auto rifle, which was given to Harry. They also received a quest rumor.
Pepsiman gained experience and raised his Combat Skill attribute.
Nick and Harry met up with the Vulture crew’s Patron, Bungo McJankeypants, who offered the following job:
Fight off a group of Abductor Raiders, who may have arrived ahead of a possible planetary invasion.
The crew were outnumbered 7-to6, but in the end the crew were victorious, but sustained casualties.
Pepsiman suffered a potential crippling injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next 4 campaign turns.
Mal suffered a serious injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next 2 campaign turns.
Nick suffered a minor injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next campaign turn.
The crew was well paid for the job, but found no loot in the area post battle. They also gained another quest rumor.
Oh, and the planet is about to be invaded. The crew is going to high tail it out of here in the next campaign turn.
I’ve had this game sitting on my hard drive since last September, and this week I finally started reading the rules.
It’s pretty much what I’ve been looking for in a solo skirmish-type game.
Today I created my first crew.
I have no intention or desire to play Star Wars X-Wing 2.0 because of the ‘conversion’ cost involved if I were to convert all the 1.0 ships that I own.
That said, I picked up the Fireball.
Star Wars Resistance may not be my favorite animated series, but it’s grown on me, as has this ship.
Don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to play with it in a game, though. It’ll be a nice display piece in any case.
Light the spark.
The biggest issue I have with games like Imperial Assault is the setup and take down time.
Though I think I simplified the issue with IA by separating the different tile sets. I may end up placing no more than 2 expansion tile sets in a single box.
Of course, I’m only currently playing through the solo player app on my iPad, so for now it’s only been requiring map tiles from the core set.
But I messed up something in my campaign yesterday, and decided to abandon the campaign and will start over at a later time.
—
Conversely, setup and take down of Terraforming Mars is a snap, especially for solo play.
It was the first time I got to try this game solo, and I followed a set up video online, but I didn’t need to. I’d played once before, and solo setup is similar to regular setup.
It’s the game play that’s rough. I didn’t come close to terraforming in the allotted time. Though I did manage to smash an ice asteroid and the moon Phobos into the planet’s surface.
—
Since I finally got the expansions for Marvel Champions that I was waiting for, I’ll probably go back to that game fairly soon.
Stand by!