Category: Miniatures
Painting Marvel Crisis Protocol – Captain Marvel
Last time I covered my approach to Iron Man, next up on my bench was Captain Marvel. This time I used a more typical approach to contrasts using a modified slop chop method. I found that the Vallejo Xpress contrasts are really vibrant paints. GW contrasts needs that black wash to bring out the shadowed depth of color. With the Vallejo Xpress paints I could just use a simple white drybrush over gray primed minis. For other colors I used Vallejo acrylic paints.
For much of her suit I used Xpress Mystic Blue which gave her a lovely deep blue base. Note on the hands I was going for a fiery color, so I gave her hands and some of her forearms a white base coat.
For her sash, shoulders, and boots, I used Xpress Velvet Red. I also blended in Carmine Red for her shoulders and boots, and gave a simple highlight coat to portions of her sash belt. Her shoulder piping I used a base coat of Orange Ochre and blended in Deep Yellow. I also did this for her hair.
For Captain Marvel’s skin, I used Vallejo Basic Skin Tone for a base coat, followed up with a wash using Army Painter Soft Tone. Dead simple. Her hands I wanted a blazing look by giving a thin coat of Deep Yellow, followed up with a wash of Fluorescent Orange. I finally highlighted her hands and raised parts of her wrists with a Fluorescent Yellow.
I dabbled a little with an OSL effect using Deep Yellow thinned with Vallejo Glaze Medium. This ended up having some muddled results. For raised smooth sections like her thigh and chest, it turned out pretty good, giving a thin coat. But the medium was so thinned, for sections on her ribs, it seeped into the recesses of her uniform, instead of staying on the raised parts like I wanted. In retrospect, I should have done a quick drybrush first, and then touched up areas with the medium glaze to soften any harsh highlights. Regardless, she turned out pretty good. Next on the bench, Captain America.
Painting Marvel Crisis Protocol – Iron Man
I’ve had my Marvel Crisis Protocol core set languishing on the shelf for a while. Love the game and likely will get a review up sometime. But I eagerly assembled and primed the minis, but they sat on the back of the paint bench for months. In that interim I’ve been dabbling a little more with contrast paints and finally was able to pick up the Vallejo Xpress line. I really love these contrast paints and they have vibrant colors. For some minis they might not be a good fit, needing a fair amount of thinning to use. But for my MCP stuff they seemed a perfect fit to match that pop of comic book colors.
For Iron Man I decided to try a different approach that I typically use for contrasts, and gave the entire model a base coat of Vallejo gold. Usually I use the “slop chop” method. Take a gray primed mini, give it a thinned black wash, and then a strong drybrush of white. For the Vallejo contrasts I don’t even bother using a black wash, and instead just rely on white drybrushed over gray primed figures. However for Iron Man I wanted to try and get a slight metallic tint of red so I went with a gold base coat.
Over sections I wanted red, I used Xpress Velvet Red. I used it undiluted with a single coat. In retrospect, likely thinning it out more and doing multiple coats would have given a better candy apple paint job for the armor, but I was still happy with the results.
For the eyes, hand repulsors and arc reactor, I went with white blended some with Xpress Space Grey. Just enough to give a tinge of blue around the edges. I also touched up a few parts on the boots and legs with Vallejo gun metal for those few bits that had a different paint job.
I used a matte varnish to coat the mini and then later painted on a gloss varnish. This gave the figure a subtle shine. A little bit of detail on the base and I was done. A super simple paint job to get Iron Man ready for the tabletop.
I also found a site that does suit replicas. While it’s not likely a 100% accurate depiction of the Mk III suit, I thought it was good enough. And even better it had a lot of different perspectives to give you a good reference while painting.
The Torchbearers, take two: 5 Leagues from the Borderlands
About to jump into another campaign for 5 Leagues from the Borderland and decided to tread over old ground some with rolling up the warband. Loved the idea of a wild barbarian running the show, wrangling up an enigmatic mystic to help her cleanse the land of evil. So I stuck with that idea having Tamari and her mysterious spellcaster Druuna as the founding members of the Torchbearers. They were easily able to convince Karl the Inquisitor to join their company. The fervent zealot knew of a crafty crossbowman, Zane, through past dealings and were able to convince the rogue to join with promises of riches.
The group were charismatic enough to encourage a stout citizen guard, Corben, to accompany them north and he eagerly did so wielding his trusty sword and shield. The Torchbearers set out to the North Coast, set about to reach Lakes Crest first. Along the sparsely traveled West Road they came across a frantic peasant, Teller. His hovel was overrun by shambling dead, and he implored the company to help out his kin.
Contrast Paints
A while back I mentioned a new type of product on the market, contrast paints. Essentially it’s a paint-medium mix that is more of an intense glaze. The idea is the paint flows easily over a surface, gathering in cracks and having a thinner coat over raised surfaces. What you would usually get with a base coat and wash, you could get with a single coat of contrast paints. Additionally as it’s more transparent that your typical paint, you can get a slight highlight effect too.
Aside from Games Workshop, Vallejo and Army Painter have also thrown their hats into the contrast paint ring. I’ve only dabbled in using paints from GW and Vallejo so far (and I’ve fallen in love with the Vallejo Xpress paints). I steered clear of Army Painter due to issues of the paint reactivating when it becomes wet. There are workarounds with the Army Painter Speedpaints to minimize this, but the property of these contrast paints was pretty much a deal breaker for me ever buying them.
The concept of contrast paints is to use a neutral primer as an undercoat. And then pretty much lay down coats of contrast. As the paints are a little transparent, you really can’t paint over existing coats with different colors unless you are looking to mix hues to get a different shade. Instead you need to apply an undercoat and repaint. So if making some mistakes, it’s best to have brush-on primer handy in a shade similar to the undercoat being used, touch up any whoopsies, and keep painting with contrasts.
Working with contrast paints has been a learning experience though. Generally you can get away with using it directly from the pot. But depending on the pigmentation intensity you are going for, you may need to carefully thin it some with water and/or contrast medium. I found it better to work with lighter shades first, and then use darker shades so that you might be able to bypass touch ups with primer entirely.
The GW contrast line dries quickly and works best steadily painting to cover an entire section of a surface while it’s wet, before moving onto other parts of a model. If say, painting only half a space marine shoulder pad, you might get some uneven results coming back to the other half once that section dries. The portion you painted previously might get some brush strokes and repainting over those parts can impart a darker hue, potentially making that desired color you are striving for a little uneven.
I also learned that a single undercoat just wasn’t enough to bring out the depth possible with contrast paints. I tried first drybrushing white over gray primer. This helped in bringing out the highlights of a model allowing the contrast paint to work better as a glaze.
However I still wasn’t quite happy with the depth of color for the models as you can see with these battle mechs I worked on. I will freely admit though that it could have been the particular GW contrast paints I was using. Maybe thinning it out more would have worked better.
On the interwebs though was the slapchop method. The concept was using a darker undercoat with white highlights obtained through drybrushing. I used a gray undercoat followed up with a thin black wash.
Finally doing a copious white drybrush. The key is to try and leave the recesses of the model black, and give any raised sections a nice highlight of white. This immediately provides a foundation that has a fair amount of depth that will be enhanced with the contrast paint.
You can see with these cultists, the properties of the contrast paint easily give models with this undercoat method a great look. The nooks and crannies of the model get that deep tone of color, while raised sections with the white base coat have more depth over other areas on the mini. I could get a fair amount done with a single coat over different sections. And as the paints flow well and cover quickly, I could also get models painted up much faster than using conventional paints.
Hands down, using contrast paints will not give you the vibrancy and shadows that the Big Three offers. You cannot get the depth on a model that you normally would using blending. But if wanting to get a fair amount of minis painted to tabletop standard, contrast paints are an excellent choice. I had seriously thought of just giving a horde of my Zombicide minis a simple wash. Now I’m thinking that a quick coat of contrast paints instead would make them look fantastic. If looking for a means to get a fair number of models painted efficiently and still look pretty nice, contrast paints are worth looking into.
Review: 5 Leagues from the Borderlands
A long while back I picked up a solo sci-fi wargame, 5 Parsecs from Home. I later found out a new edition of a fantasy version was in the works and scooped it up as soon as I could. 5 Leagues from the Borderlands (5LB) is a solo skirmish wargame with RPG elements from Modiphius. You gather a warband of six adventurers, selecting one as your avatar, and seek to cleanse the land of evil.
The campaign has 3 main threats set at different thresholds, and you are tasked with removing them completely from a region. By gaining adventure points through encounters, you acquire enough to attempt various actions to find their hidden camps and eliminate them. A departure from 5 Parsecs from Home is that you start with an actual region map. You’ll sketch out some features, leave some areas as unexplored wilderness, add a few villages, and finally sprinkle some locations of interest throughout the map. This will define the region you’ll be adventuring in.
The campaign turn follows a sequence starting with preparation, upkeep, travel, and finally a potential encounter with enemies. Generally preparation allows for 2 actions providing opportunities to gather resources, rest up, buy or sell equipment, or seek out quest rumors. The type of actions will be dictated if you are in a village or out at remote home camp in the wilderness. You have to constantly keep money on hand to pay your troops. Skip out paying your hirelings too long, and eventually they will become disgruntled and leave.
You direct your warband to travel, investigating unexplored locations, strike out at an enemy camp, or patrol traveled roads. During your journey, you’ll have various random events with some being boons and others complicating your efforts. These events can also dictate the types of encounters you’ll have when engaging the enemy. While out on patrol, you might encounter a befuddled scholar that seems friendly enough, only to find they were a scout for a band of brigands that ambush you.
The types of encounters are split among a few scenarios, with some having defined defender and attacker positions. The enemies you encounter are determined randomly, rolling on different charts for the types of threats in the region. These threats broadly will align with particular enemy types such as undead, chanting cultists, ravenous beastmen, or even a spearhead of an invading army. Each encounter type will also have defined objectives. While it’s ideal to hold the field, a fair outcome can be to achieve the scenario objective and make a quick retreat. If things turn too sour on the battlefield, you can always call for the warband to retreat but expect more dire outcomes to your hirelings. Encounters can also encompass dungeon delves or attacks on monster lairs.
Scenarios run through several turns first starting with initiative. You will roll a d6 for each warband member, trying to not roll above their Agility score. You assign successful rolls to individual units that can undertake their full allotment of actions for the turn. Then enemy forces act next, and finally have your remaining forces act before the turn ends. A mode’s turn encompasses a movement action combined with an attack, some manner of a task action, or possibly a further dash of movement.
Ranged combat is rolling a d6 and trying to commonly roll over a 6+ or a 5+ (if the target is in the open). If the target is hit, a d6 roll is made to overcome armor and then an additional roll against the target’s toughness. If the total roll exceeds the toughness of the unit, it becomes a casualty. Rolls equal to, or less, result in the unit taking a wound and being stunned, with a second wound taking it out of the fight. Stunned models grant bonuses if in melee and are always treated as defending but the condition is removed at the end of the turn.
Melee combat is a little more involved and is fought over 3 rounds. Each model makes a combat roll trying to roll the highest adding their combat skill. After each round the defender moves back 1” and the attacker has the option to move in to continue the combat, or break off and end it. On ties, the attacker never follows up and the combat ends. If the attacker scores higher, they have a chance to inflict damage (resolved like ranged attacks). If the defender wins, the next round they become the attacker avoiding any damage for that exchange. Unlike ranged attacks, stuns only have an effect during that fight and are removed at the end of the exchange.
The player has as few tactical options when in combat, like whether to fight defensively or throw caution to the wind and fight wildly. Some weapons and positioning (such as being on higher ground) allow a model to counter attack, essentially being able to strike a hit while defending (instead of just being the attacker the following exchange). This special maneuver is avoided by selecting certain fighting tactics. So against particular enemies, or being at a disadvantage in positioning, you can overcome counter attack situations employing defensive tactics. Given you only need to exceed a model’s toughness to make it a casualty (with typical values between 3-4) being the attacker is ideal and combat can be deadly.
Movement is pretty simple, doing so up to a model’s rate in inches, with a second move as a dash action. Most difficult terrain uses 2” of the figure’s movement for every inch on the table. Models cannot pass through each other and there are simple rules for climbing and falling. Terrain is fairly abstract with line of sight based on drawing unimpeded lines of fire from the attacker to the target. Inverveining features, models, or beyond 3” in area cover will block line of sight. At the very least most features will offer some manner of cover to the target.
Your warband is always striving to gain adventure points. If you win an encounter against an enemy you gain d6 adventure points, and some simpler missions like patrols will only earn you one point. Once per campaign turn you can expend them and roll a d6, trying to roll less or equal to the number of spent points. If successful, you complete a major campaign milestone. This can be finding an enemy camp, finding a hidden location, further developing a settlement, or if you are lucky after being victorious in battle, reduce that faction threat to the region. Regardless if you are successful or not, the points are spent. The campaign becomes a balancing act between taking major risks to get high adventure point rewards, to doing more mundane campaign actions gaining resources, heal wounded members, and prepare for more dangerous fights.
Individual members of your warband will also slowly accrue experience. Earn a set number and they can advance, rolling to randomly increase a particular stat allowing them to fight more effectively, shrug off damage more easily, seize the initiative, or cover ground faster. They can also pick up skills that can help with particular campaign actions.
5LB does have magic and one of your heroes can be a mystic. However that model is limited to 3 spells per encounter using a resource called strands, and its entire action is used when casting. The spells are more for hindering your opponent, or providing a temporary boon to your warband, rather than all powerful spells, like hurling bolts of lightning and fireballs. Spells have a target number to cast, rolling 2d6 and expending a strand of energy doing so. Fortunately if you fail, the strands of mystical energy are not lost (and only happens if you make an abysmal roll).
You will find yourself trying to maintain funds to keep your warband together, repair and improve equipment, and do tasks to discover enemy camps during the game. All the while, random events during travel and end of campaign turns will be constantly throwing curveballs at you. Most will put an obstacle or hindrance in your way, but a few events will offer boons to your warband. As mentioned earlier, you are constantly seeking to gain adventure points that are expended to complete major campaign milestones. Given that faction threats commonly have values of 5-6, it can take a long time to eliminate an enemy from the region.
There are quite a few different factions to fight against and also unique foes and monsters that your warband will meet. Encounters fall into five general scenarios and some incorporate some type of combat at a location that requires exploration. While clearing the enemy from the table is always an option, usually you are tasked with completing an objective. Given that combat is deadly, with a chance of casualty becoming a corpse, you find yourself trying to complete what objectives you can and retreating before events on the battlefield become too dire.
At the end of each campaign turn after an encounter, surviving warband members gain experience. After gaining a certain number they can choose to randomly advance a trait or potentially gain a particular skill. Skills crop up when attempting to do certain actions during an encounter, or trying to do a campaign action. So that hero effective at crafting might be able to repair equipment or gain a few marks to ease the burden of upkeep. You’ll find yourself trying to maintain equipment, get better gear, and also purchase items to mitigate obstacles that get in your way during travel and after fights.
The Good – 5LB offers an enjoyable narrative experience that fits within a region, providing an ever evolving story. The melee combat can offer a dynamic swing back and forth, as each side gains advantage after a round of rolls. You have some choices during melee either fighting defensively or maybe go with all out attacks. Positioning can offer advantage and sometimes it’s worthwhile to gain the initiative in a combat round only to break it off so you can extract yourself the next turn. You’ll find yourself looking over a map, choosing to explore locations, and strive to seek out the enemy in hopes of delivering a decisive blow or to gain treasure.
The Bad – Combat is brutal and fast. At times almost too fast. You might find yourself painstakingly setting up a table with gobs of terrain, only to have a fight last a few turns before your warband has to turn tail and run which can veer towards being anti-climatic. It could also be considered there are simply too many random events which can result in detrimental effects for your warband. So much so that you are constantly in a hole of debt, injury, and poor equipment, with the campaign spiraling slowly towards a disastrous end.
Also, the accrue of adventure points can be ponderously slow where you can never seem to make any headway beating a foe. A typical campaign will have one threat with a level of 6 and the others with levels of 5. To lower a single threat by one level, you have to roll a d6 and score under a number of spent adventure points. Meaning to have a reasonable chance of defeating one threat, you’d need to get at about 8 campaign turns in. This can almost seem like an impossible task and is compounded some with outcomes of random events typically throwing even more problems at your warband.
The Verdict – I enjoy 5 Leagues from the Borderlands immensely. The combat is brutal and I do appreciate melee fights being a little more engaging over rounds of exchanges between figures. It can still provide some quick battles once things get going, almost to the point you spend more time setting up the table and combatants than running the fight itself. However the outcomes of travel, random warband events, and the push to achieve objectives in fights tends to offer a narrative tale for your warband. Losing a hero can hurt and there can be serious repercussions to fights. You are ever balancing maintaining enough resources to keep your warband afloat, and still try to make an impact on the region, dispatching enemies.
I’ve stated this before, but 5LB has vibes of the old microgame, Barbarian Prince. You have this goal to remove evil forces from the region and are always trying to explore the lands, take the fight to the enemy, and maintain resources and equipment to keep your warband together. But things happen. You commonly will have random events throw wrenches into your plans, and once in a while maybe get a boon to help. All of this helps weave together this story of your warband over the campaign turns. I really enjoy it. It helps immensely too having a wide variety of foes to fight, from nameless undead, wily fae, viscous goblins, to monsters like wyverns and trolls. Being a miniature agnostic system, you really get a chance to bust out your collection and play with different toys.
So if you fancy a solo wargame with a fantasy theme, and can embrace the occasional dip into light roleplaying, certainly give 5 Leagues from the Borderlands a look. You’ll find a game that’ll offer an epic adventure campaign wrapped around miniature wargaming rules.
The Threats: 5 Leagues from the Borderland Campaign
I had decided to map out my 5 Leagues campaign in the Nentir Vale. The campaign will have you trying to stave off 3 threats to the region determined randomly, two from within human realms and one external threat. I got to rolling and ended up with Whispers from Beyond and the Gnawing Horde. Feels like cultists and beastmen would be likely models for them. From the Foes Without, I rolled up the Curse of War. Seems the drums of war from the west has brought armies of a long conflict to the vale.
I sketched out some locations and added a few camps for the different threats. While not written on the map, I ended up having a marsh near the Downs and a towering mountain on the King’s Road East as unexplored locations. There is still plenty of unnamed wilderness to fill in as the campaign goes along. I also ended up with another unexplored location of note, the Sword Barrows. A likely delve to adventure in soon.
I also decided to push for a shorter campaign with threat levels being 5, 4, and 3 instead of the default values. Expect this will be more attainable getting a final conclusion to the campaign instead of dragging it out too long. Hee. I’m not that hopeful I will be able to complete it anyways, but will give it the college try.
Next time, onto my warband.
Review: Zona Alfa
Occasionally I get a bug up my butt to try out odd skirmish genres. I was interested in painting up some modern military figures but wanted to steer away from historical/modern conflicts and Osprey’s Publishing, Zona Alfa popped up on my radar. It’s heavily laden with sci-fi trappings but wrapped up in primarily modern weaponry and technology. Taking some inspiration from the Stalker PC game (and in turn, the movie), it truly draws its theme from the sci-fi book, Roadside Picnic.
A classic russian sci-fi story, Roadside Picnic has an unusual premise. Aliens arrived on earth, poked around, and then left, leaving behind remnants of their technology. Humans can’t deduce their actual purpose with most items breaking the laws of physics and beyond human comprehension. To draw from the book title, we are like ants crawling over the leftovers from aliens that happen to stop by earth for a short “picnic.”
The site of the alien landing becomes a secluded area, heavily guarded by the military. Only select personnel and researchers can enter it. Even more odd, the Zone is littered with physical anomalies that twist time and space. Segmented off from the public, individuals (Stalkers) sneak into the Zone, seeking strange tech to snatch up and sell on the black market. Throw in the PC game theme, you also have the Zone hit with radiation and horrible mutants. It becomes a fun setting to game in.
The skirmish rules are for 2 players that draft up a squad of mercs and fight against each other within the Zone. Crews are commanded by one leader type and typically have 3 to 6 other figures. Each figure represents a single man of varying tactical experience. Troops are defined by a simple stat line to represent movement, combat ability, defense, and Will, a catch-all trait used for both morale and task resolution. A nice departure from most systems is that varying levels of troop quality are also reflected in the number of actions they can take during their turn. It’s not just simply a change in stat profiles. So that lowly rookie can only do one action during their turn, while a hardened veteran can undertake 3 actions at the same time.
Players roll off initiative and alternate activating figures of their choice. All actions can be repeated multiple times, making veterans able to maneuver and fire effectively, while that rookie (limited to just one action) needing more turns to do similar tasks on the battlefield. Actions cover a range of abilities, from movement, shooting, melee, aiming (to improve a following attack), and rally, to interacting with the environment (like filling gas into a vehicle, or opening a secured door). There is also a special action that allows models to go into overwatch/ambush. But this requires 2 actions meaning only more trained troops are able to hold off and interrupt the opponent’s turn if desired.
Gear and abilities are also reflected in troop quality. Every unit will be able to wield one ranged, one melee weapon, and at least one peice of gear. However, more trained units will be able to carry more gear (up to 3 items) and have abilities that can help with other specialized tasks or particular combat actions. Gear and weapons are based on WYSIWYG (what you see, is what you get) of the model.
Shooting is a pretty easy affair. A unit must be in range and LOS, with intervening cover affecting how easy they can be hit. Pistols top off at roughly a foot, while rifles reach up to 36” and given that most tables are 3 to 4 feet square, you can easily throw out a lot of effective fire. Rolls are made against the attacker’s combat ability, trying to roll equal to or under their value. This target number is adjusted due to cover, with each piece of intervening terrain lowering it. Successful hits then have the defender roll for saves, trying to roll equal to or less than their armor stat (which is adjusted by any weapon modifiers). The number of attacks are based on weapon profiles, with your typical rifle throwing out 3 shots. So expect a lot of dice for those automatic weapons.
Unsuccessful saves result in wounds which will drop your typical trooper. If saves are successful, the target makes a Will check (again trying to roll equal to or less than their stat). If successful, they are fine, otherwise they take a pin. Pins penalize initiative rolls for the following turn and lower the melee combat ability of the figure. Removing them is automatic, but requires expending an action per pin.
Melee combat is simultaneous and each figure can use their weapon of choice, even ranged weapons. The catch is that an attacker can use any additional successful hits to cancel strikes from a defending model. So it certainly pays to be the aggressor and initiate that assault, rather than be the defender in melee.
Additionally the game has critical hits and failures. Regardless of the target number and modifiers, a 1 is always successful while a 10 is an automatic failure. There’s a simple rule implemented that rolling simultaneous 1s and 10s for a particular action cancel out this effect, just using the die results as normal. This can throw a wrench into the game as that 1 will also allow a figure to take one additional free action. Conversely rolling that 10 adds a pin to the model.
The game revolves around a larger campaign goal of accumulating 10,000 rubles, enough to have your leader retire from the stalker business. The concept of actual missions are pretty loose and the emphasis is to strive for a narrative experience. There are a few random tables, but sadly this part of the book is rather sparse. Each scenario however needs to have some specific objective and commonly you’ll find yourself settling for looting from a particular location on the tabletop. In addition to mission objectives will be Hot Spots which can spawn enemies. Once any hostiles from a Hot Spot or mission objective are cleared out, the location can be looted.
Post mission, crew members will gain experience that can be used to improve their stats and pick up new abilities. Loot gathered up can be sold and rubles can be spent to recruit new squad members and/or buy more gear. When creating your squad you also align yourself with one of 6 factions which can result in having allies, neutral parties, and enemies. Paired off on the table, you find your faction having an impact on how to approach the scenario. Allied squads work together to eliminate any hostiles and split the loot found (or try to make a Will test to break the alliance). Enemy factions will throw the scenario objective to the wayside and killing the enemy becomes the primary objective. While neutral parties can tackle the scenario and interact with the opposing crew as they see fit. Tagged with this faction system are discounts when purchasing types of equipment or free gear. It’s a nice wrinkle in these types of games.
The game can be ported to be a solo game pretty easily too. And there are optional rules out there to create co-op and solo games if desired. However it still revolves around a long campaign goal of hoarding enough rubles to make that 10,000 mark and retire. So while you can certainly play a one off game, it seems to offer a more full experience running an actual campaign to allow for advancement, getting loot, and more gear.
The Good – It’s a pretty fast and easy modern skirmish game revolving around light arms. The setting is certainly different and has room for more weirder hostiles if wanted. I like there is some gradation of troop abilities and equipment, but it’s not mired down in a long list of stat lines. The turn flow is fluid with alternating activations, and pins are a thing to think about. I also like that it’s based on d10 rolls, so you can get modifiers having an impact but it’s not as pronounced as you’d see with d6s.
The Bad – The rules are serviceable. But there are sparse areas that could use some tightening up. It seems to default back to that relaxed, reach a compromise with your opponent or roll a die, for determining odd situations quite heavily. It’s also unfortunate there are not more scenarios and detailed campaign rules. Even rules for implementing odd Zone anomalies seem tacked on and not fully developed.
The Verdict – Zona Alfa is a pretty fun set of rules. There are lots of bits I like in a skirmish wargame. You get a nice potential distribution of results using a d10 that allows for modifiers and slight tweaks from weapons and gear. There’s a good implementation of trained troops being able to do more on their activations. So what’s offered has some variety but not saddled down with extensive lists of gear, weapons, and units that just simply offer a different stat modifier.
I also enjoy the critical hit and misses rule. I can see folks wanting a more structured range of outcomes, but for skirmish games I’ve grown to enjoy those occasional swings of fortune and disaster that lead to some memorable experiences. There is also room here to account for other actions models can take during their turn, opening up options for different scenarios. If you wanted to make the objective to retrieve a keycode, and in turn spend time trying to open a vault, while simultaneously disabling a bomb, the rules can account for this. That feels like what the designer was going for. To present a flexible ruleset that lets you play these fun scenarios while also offering a light arms skirmish engagement.
But this is also where the game falls flat. It’s a fun setting that strives for a narrative experience, but doesn’t have the meat in the rules to back up this design philosophy. I really wish there were another 6-8 pages for scenarios, expanded encounter tables, and/or hostile creature profiles. You have a slim number of pages with a few anemic tables, and most of the burden for creating scenarios is up to the player. I get having a simple campaign goal, but the lack of rules to offer diverse scenarios and a narrative campaign is glaringly absent. Especially as there are other games (5 Parsecs from Home) that have a wealth of tables to randomly make up a scenario that just feels like it’s telling a story and can lend itself to a longer, more engaging campaign.
What you get with Zona Alfa is a serviceable skirmish ruleset that’s a fun twist on modern combat settings. It is an interesting world that can provide a gritty, grounded merc experience, or lean more into fighting weird creatures, mutants, and radiation zombies. However it seems you’re expected to do all the heavy lifting to get into the world it describes. You get more of a framework of rules that will offer a few fun games, but not quite the breadth of material to build a string of missions and encounters for a fleshed out campaign, which seems a shame as the wargame parts are so enjoyable.
Review: Five Parsecs from Home
As I’ve gotten older and my schedule filling up with non-gaming activities, I’ve found my flexibility to game with other people waning. So over the past few years I’ve been leaning more towards games that have a solo component. It’s much easier to have a table set up where I can putter down to the basement for a few hours during the week, instead of trying to coordinate with folks on where and when to get a game in. For board games I’ve got loads of choices but for miniature wargames there hasn’t been many options. I stumbled on Modiphius Entertainment’s Five Parsec from Home and was eager to give this sci-fi skirmish game a shot.
It’s an interesting game as it leans heavily on roleplay elements. You create a crew of individuals, one of which will be the captain that much of the game revolves around. Each member will have a basic profile characterizing their movement, combat ability, how quick they react, and a general stat for non-combat events. There are options for different alien races and a bevy of gear and equipment, all of which is generated randomly on a series of charts and tables.
For the meat of the skirmish game itself, you play on a table somewhere between 2 to 3 feet square. A good amount of terrain will be needed to break up line of sight. You’ll have roughly 6 crew members matched against a random number of opponents (usually about 3-8). The game will have some manner of a win condition and is played over rounds.
Each round you will roll for reaction, assigning each die roll to a crew member. You are trying to score equal to or less than a crew’s value. This allows you to act before your opponent. You can also have a crew member hold an action, interrupting the opposition’s turn with fire, or even just hold off till the end of the round. After initial quick reactions (if any), the opponent acts. Every figure activates once. Finally the player’s crew will have a turn with any remaining members activating if they haven’t done so.
An activation is a move and shooting or melee, just attack, or go on a full out sprint getting a little extra movement for the round. Ranged combat is dead simple using d6 and true line of sight. Close up, without cover hits on a 3+, 5+ to hit targets in the open at range, with most rolls needing a 6 to hit while in some manner of cover. The number of dice will match a weapon profile, adding the unit’s combat ability. Simple.
If a unit is hit another d6 roll is made adding the weapon’s damage value that is compared to the target’s toughness. Rolls equal or greater than the toughness will essentially take the model out of the fight. Otherwise they take a stun marker. Units with stun markers have limits on the actions they can take the following round (and then the stun marker is removed). But if a model gets 3 or more stun markers, they are removed from combat. Basically they are knocked out and removed as a casualty. Melee combat is resolved similarly but the opponent will get a chance to exchange blows.
Combat is brutal, quick, and easy to resolve. You’ll find yourself jockeying to get into position, hoping to get that quick reaction roll so you can provide overwatch while other members of your crew maneuver towards the objective. The opponent’s actions are governed by a simple AI that will dictate how aggressive they advance, adhere to cover, and what formations they will use on the table. The tactical rules are pretty bare bones and simple. What pairs wonderfully with this are the campaign rules.
See the game has a strong story theme. You are managing a starship crew and the resources needed to keep them going. You define a rough goal for the campaign picking from a list. This might be to earn so many credits, or as simple as playing a certain number of campaign turns. You measure resources as abstract credits. Each campaign turn you have to pay upkeep for your crew which increases if over 6 members. Your starship has a sort of mortgage that will increase until the debt is paid off. Damaged equipment needs to be repaired (or dumped as a loss) and injured crew members will need treatment.
Each campaign turn you’ll have crew members undertake different tasks. This might be to try to barter for equipment, seek out information and opportunities for big scores, or recruit new crew members. Every campaign turn you will automatically get a job opportunity, but you really want to obtain patrons. Patrons offer more lucrative payouts and potentially other benefits for completing operations. Job opportunities dry up? Get too many local rivals? You can pack up and jump to another planet.
This leads to how the tactical game plays out. Each mission will have an outline of a random objective and forces you’ll be fighting. Objectives might be to obtain a specific item, get crew members across the opposite table edge, or simply eliminate the opposition. This is paired with a randomly determined group of enemies and other battlefield conditions.
Complete the mission objective and you get a decent payday along with some loot. Fail a mission, you’ll get a few credits but it’ll mean losing a patron and a tighter budget for the next campaign turn. Crew members that survive will earn experience which can be used to improve their stats. Over the game you’ll have crew members develop, get better gear and weapons, and sadly, some will be removed as casualties. All of this is done through random charts that results in an evolving, narrative experience that makes the game shine.
And the potential outcomes are so varied. You can gain rivals, suffer a planetary invasion, get information on a juicy job, or a snippet of data that leads to an extended quest where you’ll keep seeking out rumors until you get the MacGuffin, earning a big reward. Crew members can suffer a bout of PTSD and sit out a mission or two, gain a skill, or other noteworthy life event. There are a series of charts you’ll be rolling a d100 for, continually evolving the trials and tribulations for your crew.
It’s paired with light resource management. Aside from gear and equipment, you also have credits. This part reminds me some of the classic solo microgame, Barbarian Prince. You are ever striving to balance credits needed for maintaining your crew and ship, and spending them for better equipment and skills. A windfall job can help get you out of debt, paying off your ship. Or a mission can be disastrous, having crew members tied up in the medbay or with damaged gear, leaving the hard choice of either cutting them loose or spending more of your precious credits to get them on their feet again. As a solo experience, it’s a lot of fun. Best of all there are also other more narrative elements like luck and story points which can be spent to mitigate a bad die roll some. So if you think you’ve gotten hosed with a streak of bad luck, there are ways to counter it. But like credits, their supply is limited.
The Good – It offers a grand experience that borders on being a roleplaying game. There’s a lot of choices with a touch of resource management each turn of the campaign. It’s matched with a tactical wargame ruleset that is fast and engaging. With varied opposition, battlefield conditions, and objectives this randomness increases the replayability. Best of all the actual battles flow pretty quickly with just enough tactics to make it enjoyable without bogging the experience down with lots of simulationist rules. It’s great fun expanding the abilities and gear of your crew, ever on the hunt for that next big payout.
The book is colorful with pleasant art. While an index isn’t present, the rules are sectioned off in different colors making it easy to go through after some familiarity. Another huge plus is the game is miniature agnostic. Any figures will do and the game works well in 28mm or 15mm without having to turn rules into pretzels for ranges.
The Bad – The rules are pretty well laid out but it can take some time to fully grasp everything. There are a lot of procedural charts which are rolled on and the first few times can be difficult to navigate everything. You are going to have a fair amount of bookkeeping to keep track of gear, cash, and other game resources. Lastly, the actual rules for playing the wargame portion are pretty thin. Some fights can be blown through so quickly, it might border on being anticlimactic. I could see the argument that as a skirmish wargame ruleset, it would be too light for some tastes.
The Verdict – Five Parsecs from Home is a wonderful solo sci-fi game. You aren’t going to get a meaty tactical AI experience here like with Star Army 5150. But it’s enough for a quick, brutal gun fight with enough gear and abilities to keep it interesting. Plus I love the idea of units sticking to cover as much as possible, risking that mad dash across open ground to get to an objective. All the while hoping your mates can offer enough suppression to stave off any incoming fire.
It’s paired with an enjoyable campaign ruleset. You will have a few random events, but also each turn mull over the choices to send off crew members in hopes to achieve some task. Do you settle on taking the regular opportunity job? Or do you put time and resources into finding a patron that will offer more lucrative pay? Do you spend credits and time trying to repair equipment? Or let it go and see what a crew member can find on the local market? Lots of fun choices. Lastly, if you think you’ve garnered too many enemies and dried up your prospects, you can always fly to another planet to see what awaits.
The battles also have a fair number of core objectives you need to achieve to win. And on top of that are several profiles of enemies you’ll be fighting against. The variety is impressive for such a modest rulebook. For me that is the selling point. It’s not some deep story, but Five Parsecs from Home sells a narrative experience. Over time you’ll see your plucky crew of adventurers and mercs improve, get better gear, and slowly accrue riches and fame. I am pleasantly surprised how much is packed into the rules. Well worth checking out if you are looking for a solo, sci-fi, skirmish wargame.
Firestorm Armada…. I’m not dead yet!
Sadly when Spartan Games went under, one of my favorite space fleet battles systems also went the way of the dodo, Firestorm Armada. I heard some rumblings that Warcradle Studios picked up the properties of Spartan Games and wondered if the setting would ever see the light of day again. It appears that Firestorm Armada will be given a second chance.
They are doing an open beta and the rules and other files are available for free (for now). I find it interesting they are also embracing a hexagonal base too. Which looks like a good way to add some delineation of firing arcs. I liked the concept of the range bands for weapon systems and having more arcs of fire will allow for some deft maneuvering over the square bases of old.
Regardless, cool to see the game getting a second life and eager to see the models Warcradle Studios has in the pipe. 
Packing Miniatures for Shipping
A while back I’ve moved and ended up relocating on the other side of the globe. I had quite a bit of trepidation moving all my miniatures. I use a fast and loose way of storing my figures in plastic boxes, layered on bubble wrap sheets. Good enough to keep the paint job protected but only if the box is kept upright. If I dump it on its side, the figures are going to shift around. Throw in a bunch of jostling of the box and you can expect figures to be clanking against each other (and on the inner sides of the container). I totally expected that my shipped stuff would be tossed around like a beach ball, and stacked sideways or upside down in a shipping container that would make any Tetris player proud.
So I had to try to work out a solution and stuck with bubble wrap. Cutting small sheets, I rolled each figure in wrap with a bit of tape to keep it in place. The key is to make sure it’s lightly snug and not wrapped too tightly. For plastic figures especially, you can inadvertently bend or snap off fragile parts like rifle barrels so don’t wrap too tight. Some figures can even be wrapped two to a sheet, particularly prone figures by having the bottom of their bases facing each other. I dumped them in hard plastic containers, sealed the tops in packaging tape, and was good to go.
It did take some time. Don’t expect to do this in a night. Set time aside to do it. At a leisurely pace, I was able to get about 300 figures completed in a week. I cranked out a lot of figures just watching TV an hour or so a night. You certainly want to get this on your to do list for early packing though. Vehicles and tanks were done similarly, but I made sure to remove turrets and wrap them separately.
How did they ship? Just fine. Granted you have to be prepared to snip tape and unwrap a ton of models (more things to do while watching movies). But I can say my figures, both metal and plastic, made it across the world in one piece.
So if you have the time, consider this a solution for packing your miniatures. While you can buy expensive cases that can keep your figures snugly packed individually in foam it can be costly. For a budget (and a ton of models), wrapping minis in bubble wrap is a cheaper workaround.
Geek Ken 