Five Parsecs, First Time

This past weekend the boy and I played our first legit game of FiveCore.  His ragtag spaceship crew was hired by the local authorities to escort a key witness across town to the safety of a waiting armored vehicle.  My gangster and his hired goons, triplets in heavy armor, had been hired by the local crime syndicate to make sure that witness met with an unfortunate accident on the way to safety.

The battlefield - we rolled for random entry points.  The escape
vehicle is hiding just behind the red-topped building in the upper
center of the battlefield.

The crew huddles for safety at the start of the game.

First encounter - his second in command gets charged by
the leader of the goons and meets a grisly end.

She is avenged by the crew's snakeman who uses a mental
block on the goon to sneak in and stab him in the back.

The game results in a pyrhhic victory for the goons.  They managed to kill the witness, but two of the three brothers died, and the leader of the goons suffered crippling injuries.  Hope the crime syndicate paid him well, because he's going to have to retire to a quiet life of drudgery doing something really boring for a living, like geology or something.

I'm still trying to decide if I like Five Parsecs from Home.  The game takes a "no stats, but lots of special rules" approach to wargames, and in many ways feels more complicated than its "lots of stats, no special rules" counterparts.  With stats everything you need is right there on one line in numbers.  With special rules, you've got to remember which ones apply at which time, and that means a lot more to remember on the fly.

Our first game led to frequent stops and head slaps when I realized that guy had this skill which should have negated that event.  It felt like the late stages of a Necromunda campaign where you've got too many guys with too many skills to remember them all at once.

Note that this isn't necessarily a criticism of the game.  As I said, I'm still trying to decide if I prefer this style.  I definitely want to take it for a few more spins around the block before committing one way or the other.  The crew still has five active members, and the crime syndicate is likely looking for revenge for the deaths of two of their finest hitmen...