These Rules Are FUBAR

Last night, the boy and I headed down to the weekly game night and threw together a quick test drive of the FUBAR rules.

For those of you who don’t know, FUBAR is a free, one-page, sci-fi set of rules from Gawd ‘Elp Us Games. As a one page set of rules they are reasonably complete, with all the standard rules for initiative, activation, movement, firing, melee, and morale. It uses a bit of a hybrid game turn with elements of IGO-UGO and action-reaction. Whoever wins initiative activates units by beating a target number based on troop quality – better troops are more likely to activate. When a unit fails its activation, that unit goes onto overwatch, and play passes to the opposite player.

Like this, only bigger.

Firepower is resolved in the standard manner – roll dice for each little man (with extra dice added for squad support weapons), and each die that beats a target number (modified by things like aiming, troop quality, and cover), hits a figure.  Any hit figure that doesn’t make an armor save is hurt.  Sort of.  The first few wounds suppress a figure and left over ouchies eliminate a figure.

The deal here is that each suppressed figure in a unit makes it harder to activate on their next turn.  If your unit fails to activate, your suppressed figures stand back up, but that unit is stuck on overwatch for the turn.  As a result, choosing between suppression and casualties gives you the choice protecting your men and making it more likely that your unit does what you want them to do.

As a one-page rule set, there were a number of issues that cropped up during play for which we had no real answers.  All we could do was use common sense and roll a die.  Although, to be honest, I wound up giving the boy the benefit of the doubt more often than not cause I’m just that kind of Dad.

Let’s leave more detailed discussion of the rules for another day.  The take home message here is that the rules are light, quick, and easy, and we’re looking forward to more games.  Now that we’ve resolved the bulk of the drudgery of the rules, we’re eager to put them to use with more sophisticated scenarios and asymmetric forces.

Next time, I’ll bore you with the stuff that won’t make a lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the rules.  Promise.

Free To A Good Home

And by free, I mean "you pay shipping."

I've got half a box of 2omm plastic militia types gathering dust in my bits box.  Long time readers may remember them from the Car Wars project.  I hate to throw them out, but I'm too lazy to even count them, let alone do anything with them.  If you want 'em, leave a post below - we'll work out some PayPal hoo-hah, and you've got em.

MegaDungeon Assault

Saturday night seven brave souls set out from the village whose name we forgot and couldn't find because I lost the wilderness maps to make a second assault on the Temple of Evil contained within The Dungeon.  Two new hardy adventurers joined in the fun, a pair of elven sisters seeking the Lost Tribe of Elves somewhere in a hidden vale to the north.

On their way to The Dungeon, they camped for the night, only to be ambushed by red robed cultists.  After dispatching the cultists, as seen here...

...they cleverly took their robes and unholy symbols, the better to sneak into the Temple of Evil.  With only six robes, one adventurer (Frodo the Hobbit), played prisoner.  This time, the pesky orcish guardians charged 5gp for passage for all of the "cultists" wink wink and a whopping 100gp for the "prisoner" wink wink.

So the party barged into the Temple and marched straight up to the head of the temple, a bald man who had put the smack down on them last go 'round, and promptly beat the holy living heaven out of him and the rest of his cult.  Feeling smug bout killing most of his lackeys and capturing him, they set about exploring the massive main hall, only to be ambushed by two gargoyles.  A long fight won through smart tactics and the clever use of archers left them with only a little time to gather up as much loot as they could carry and scoot back to the main entrance where the perfidious orcs charged them yet another 100gp for safe entry to the surface.

Only once they were outside did they realize that they forgot to take the Temple leader with them.  They know next time that he'll be ready for them, but they've got enough gold to help ease their worries...

Man, it's invigorating to play D&D with 13 year olds.  You forget about all the stupid things like consistency and cleverness and just roll with the fun.  Yeah, we've got a party with Frodo, Gandalf, Pierce and Annie (from the grossly under-rated NBC television show Community) and Katniss Everdeen.  So what if it isn't wholy original?  It's adventurous and silly and lots of fun.

Happy Halloween

Heavy Marine Support

This is Pendraken's new style for Marines with Heavy Weapons (SF3).  Those assistants might make decent noncoms or other officers.  Might have to assign a couple of regular troops to serve as assistant gunners are re-position these pointers as LTs.

Snipers!  This pack comes with five teams of snipers, but two will suffice for this force.  The other sets will be put to good use backing up another force.

About those armored marines; I painted the visors greenish, and gave their shoulder pads bright logos to help players discriminate between these guys and the regular troops.

Played another warm-up game of Tomorrow's War this past weekend.  I think I have a decent enough grasp of the rules and enough figures to put together a platoon sized force list.  It might be light on the anti-tank stuff, but that won't be a problem until I order up some tanks.

Next Up on the Block

More Pendraken boys for the Kitchen Sink sci-fi extravaganza.  Turns out Pendraken is revamping their sci-fi line.  This first batch of dudes is Marines is SF-1, Marines in Battle Armor.  Now, I was expecting something a little more like what's shown in this picture here.  What I got was something more like SF2, but with added faceplates and heavy shoulder pads:

New style SF-1.

I sent an email to Pendraken complaining that I got the wrong package, and their customer service asked me to double check.  Lo and behold, I went back to my already painted figures and realized...I'd already bought and painted a pack of SF-1, but never made the connection.  Here are the two types of figures next to each other for comparison:

SF-1 on the outside, SF-2 on the inside

Whoops.  The plan was to have one force of Imperial Guard style marines and one force of Space Marine style battle armored troops.  Not a big deal because I can use different caliber troops with Tomorrow's War - some have more armor than others.  But I'm going to have to go back and make it a little more obvious on the table which ones have armor and which ones don't.

Also, it turns out you can still get the old style heavy suited marines from Pendraken, but you have to shoot them an email.  It's like a secret menu just for the cool kids.

I also picked up some heavy weapon teams (SF3) to add some firepower.  These are some pretty solid turrets they pack - can't imagine them humping these into combat without some sort of transport, but they are easy to spot on the table.

And we'll round the whole thing off with some additional support in the form of two man sniper teams.  These are from the Falklands British line (FLB-15 to be exact).  At this scale, and given that they are wearing gillie suits, they'll blend in with the sci-fi types with no muss and no fuss.

Tomorrow's War AAR: Test Drive

Took the Tomorrow's War ruleset for a little test drive over the Labor Day Weekend, and figured what I haven't figured out.  Now I know what sections of the rulebook need a good re-reading.  Here are some quick notes on the game.

I have 20 each of the lizardmen and humans, so we set them up as two forces with Quality and Morale at d8 for everyone.  The lizards deployed in two squads of two fireteams plus a couple of 'platoon' leaders, while the humans went with three 'squads' of six men each with a couple of 'platoon' leaders.  Guess this battle was fought late in the war when attrition had reduced the number of effectives each side could put in the field.

The mission was simple for both sides, secure the perimeter of the mining station.  Whichever force had more men alive inside the perimeter at the end of turn six would be the winner.

End of Turn One - Positioning.  The lizards make straight for
the prize, and the humans begin a more
conservative pincer movement.

Middle of Turn Two - First Contact.  The marines get the drop
on the lizards.

End of Turn Two - Both sides have a unit inside the perimeter.
Red arrows indicate a firefight.  The humans get the better
of the first round of combat, trading one dead marine for
three seriously wounded lizards.

Middle of Turn Three - Turning Point.  The humans close assault
the larger lizard force and it goes horribly wrong.  The lizards can't
break the charge, but make up for in it melee.  The lizards
don't take a single casualty, and capture two POWs.

End of Turn Three.  The humans move up on the left and
keep up the suppression fire on the right.

End of Turn Four.  The marines on the right flank move into thicker cover,
to no avail.  They do nothing to the lizards, but receive three more
casualties.  The squad to their left falls back in response
to the overwhelming advance of the 2nd lizard squad.

End of Turn Five - the Better Part of Valor.  The humans quit
the field, rushing the casualties from squad one to
MEDEVAC.  Lizards victorious.

While the troop quality and numbers were even, the lizards had more and better support weapons.  In the end, they were simply able to put a lot more lead and lazer blasts in the air, and that made the critical difference.  If we play this again, I'll probably give the marines some sort of light armor to compensate and give them more stopping power.

Post game wrap-up.  Guess we'll have to put the
\terrain and figures back in the box later.