A boarding action, plus update on spaceship interior.

 Last night was the monthly Trumpeter meeting at Bonsor, so I took my WIP spaceship interior for a test game.

The scenario was a boarding action using Wiley Games' Galactic Heroes (aka Fistful of Lead in Spaaaace!).  I set up four teams.  The spaceship crew were divided into the engineering team and the bridge crew, and against them were a team of greenskinned aliens and a team of human attackers.  Each team had four figures, which seemed to be a good number.  I kept traits to a minimum, just one per leader.  The aliens ended up a bit overpowered, so that will need to be fixed in the next go 'round.  And this game will appear again, as I am planning to put it on at the Trumpeters' Salute gaming convention in April.

Here is the game table.  Engineering is on the left, bridge is on the right, and everyone starts in the cargo hold in the centre.

In terms of pinning the walls to the floor, I found that longer quilting pins work much better than the shorter finishing nails.  Generally, the walls were stable enough that they stayed in place as the game went on.  In this photo, the finishing nail is circled in blue, and the quilting pins are shown in red.  So the big head of the pin is more visible than the head of the nail, but it doesn't interfere with gaming, so no biggie as far as I'm concerned.  The pins are more useful.

I came up with a few house rules for the boarding action scenario.  First, I had fun with the doors.  Each door must be activated to open it.  A figure must pass a 3+ roll to open a door, which will remain open until the end of the turn, when it automatically closes.  The boarding parties managed to get the door codes, and the ship crew doesn't have time to reprogram them in the timeframe of the scenario.  We adjusted that rule during the game to allow the ship crew to lock all the doors three turns after getting control of the bridge and/or engineering department.  There was lots of fun with the number of times the door test was failed.  In my mind, this represented someone under huge pressure trying to type in the passcode, screwing up and then retyping.  As each figure gets two actions per turn, it meant they had two tries to open the door. Failing the first attempt meant that they wasted time trying again instead of actually going through the door.  This will need some refinement for the next game.  I suppose that the doors can be moved perpendicular to the walls to show they are open.  Maybe opening and closing doors can be competitive with boarders and defenders both doing skill tests to open and close the doors, with different challenge levels when right at the door versus remotely operating them from the bridge or from engineering.

Here is a big door. There is an identical door on the other side of the wall facing the cargo hold.

This photo shows the engineering team holding off the boarders in the corridor between the cargo hold and engineering.  As a bit of fun, the yellow slippery floor sign was intended to be a mini-trap. Anyone moving quickly would need to pass a test or else fall down (take one shock and require an action to stand up again).  Regrettably, I wasn't able to spring this on anyone.  Next time it will be in the cargo hold so that I'll be likelier to trip someone up!

There was a ferocious battle between the bridge crew and the aliens in the corridor leading to the bridge.

My smoke and wound markers filled up the corridor quickly, but the attackers were held off long enough to allow the pilot in the red dress to get the ship airborne.

Meanwhile the engineers are chilling by their control panel, wondering what the fuss is at the other end of the ship :)

Despite getting the ship into the air, the aliens still gained the bridge.

We finished the first play through early enough to try a second time.  Players swapped teams, and we increased the challenge for the attackers by starting them outside the ship, and put more barricades inside to provide cover for both attackers and defenders.

Despite the need to refine the scenario, all the players enjoyed the game.  I'll adjust things before Salute, including allowing for 6 players, contested tests to open and close doors, better define the victory conditions for attackers and defenders.  The aliens were a bit nerfed, so they will either be toned down or simply replaced with human spacers.

Almost all the spacers wear space suits (vacc suits to us Traveller grognards!), which I rated as light armour.  That choice is good, but some of the weapon choices are a bit fussy.  I like the idea that blasters are powerful but inaccurate - very Star Warsy!  In practice though, if everyone has a blaster it's a bit silly to be applying modifiers to the shoot and wound rolls.  So I probably will use the weapons rules straight, assuming everyone has a blaster.  The aliens had AP1 lasers, though, which i'll reclassify for the next playthrough.

I'll write up the revised scenario before the next playtest, including the profiles for each of the teams, objectives, house rules and anything else I can think of.