Skirmish Rules Testing: Part 7 - Albedo ACP164

Presentation

ACP164 is Buck Surdu's SF version of his WW2 Combat Patrol card-driven rules for the new Albedo wargame on Kickstarter. A quick-start version of the rules are currently available to backers as a PDF with a PDF card set. Didn't take long to print the cards out and stick onto card stock. The rules are pretty well laid out, and as it is the cards have most of what you need to know. I made rough equivalences between the ACP164 weapons and SA80/AK47 etc.

Set-Up

My standard set-up was used, with 10 encounter points to be randomly diced for pairs of insurgents as they cam into sight. As with almost all my games I converted the rules to Hex, one (4cm) hex = 1inch in the rules. Figures were my standard 15mm, not ACP164 28mm (not yet painted!)

How It Played

Cpl Hore and the team (EDF) got a fair way onto the main drag before coming under fire from insurgents (ILR) on the roofs of the two central buildings. Wade and Jones were caught in the drainage ditch, Hore and Kronfield raced to a building roof to give covering fire, whilst Wall's team provided the fire base. A few lobbed AGL rounds missed their mark, there was a lot of running out of ammo on both sides as rounds flew, and even as the ILR took casualties their morale held up. But in the end the body armour meant that most ILR hits were ineffective, but the EDF hits were deadly. 

A UGL round bursts harmlessly in the street, but one ILR already down

With the first obstacle cleared Hore pushed on, but he and Kronfield were on point then another ILR pair opened up from behind one of the houses on the south side. Luckily the RPG failed its reaction role, as did Nufail the ILR commander. Hore and Kronfield returned fire, taking out Nufail. Wall and co did a rapid right flank, came up behind Mahamadou and his RPG acting as a club was no help against their SA80s and cold steel.

Mahamadou taken in the flank

No sooner had the EDF regrouped when an ILR pair on the compound roof opened up, wounding Wade. Wall managed to take Olasyar and his PKM out, but Hore was beginning to feel the pressure and his team got an adverse morale check, with Wade and Jones becoming stunned whilst Hore and Kronfield decided that the only way to save their exposed comrades was to charge the enemy team by the compound gates!

Hore and Kronfield charge the compound!

Luckily Wall saw the problem and in a fast move managed to get his guys to the gate just before Hore, but incoming fire from Jandol wounded Wilson. 

Wall & co pile in!

McDowell and Gallagher went into the melee, but the ILR ML199 had a massive edge against the EDF L1-56 in melee, and both were forced back. Wall took a morale test and whilst McDowell and Gallagher stayed firm back at the ditch Wilson had had enough and fell back to the sheep pen. Meanwhile Wade and Jones had managed to pin Ali on the compound roof, but by the gate Jandol and Karwan now had Hore, Kronfield and Wall all right in front of them. Luckily BOTH of them rolled out of ammo. 

Returning fire the EDF took out Jandol. Karwal took a reaction test and got a CHARGE, and so Butch Cassidy style charged out of the gates into the withering fire of the three EDF soldiers and it was game over. The ILR had lost 9 , EDF had only 2 wounded. The game lasted about 8 turns.

Karwal's final charge!

Rules Impressions

As previously mentioned I had Buck's WW2 rules on my to-play list, so it was nice to be able to try them out in their Albedo/SF version - and I must say I really liked them. The use of the multi-purpose cards worked really well and meant that there was hardly any table look-up.

Sample prototype ACP164 cards. Almost everything is on them, some elements are dual purpose, and you may need 2 cards to resolve some issues - e.g. one to hit and one for damage, creating more randomness. They work well.

The double random activation worked well, with fire-teams not individuals activating. The random movement was also good.  I did seem to get a lot of out-of-ammo cards at the start, but that eased. ILR morale also almost always held up - so they had to be killed one by one (which probably reflects the "Japanese" morale they've been given to start with). Cover also looked like it was going to be problematic, with lots of cover saves, but again they eased off. EDF body armour kept their casualties low, but they certainly suffered worse morale wise.

There are probably fewer DMs then I'd ideally like (to/from different heights, aiming) , and in the current version no spotting rules or suppression (but pin has a similar, even bigger, effect). 

Overall

Overall I'd have to give them 8/10 - but I might need to edge the Danger Close rules up to 8.5 as with the sets as they are I'd marginally prefer the added detail in DC - but ACP164 gives a faster game and would certainly be better for "playability" - and once the final rules are out they may also be at 8.5 or even 9. They've certainly also given me some new ideas for my own set.

All in all a great game, with probably the best balance of hits and morale effects so far.

Albedo ACP164 Kickstarter

The Albedo Kickstarter from Sally 4th that I mentioned in an earlier post is now live!

As mentioned then Albedo is a superb hard military/political SF story/comic from the 1980s, it just happens that the worlds are populated by anthropomorphic critters, not humans.

Sally 4th who are doing the Kickstarter have released a starter set for each side on pre-order (now order, mine have been posted), so that you don't have to wait til the Kickstarter deliverable to get playing.

They've also released a quick start beta rule set. Interestingly the rules are a version of Buck Surdu's Combat Patrol rules. These were on my list to check out, so now I'm play-testing the ACP164 version rather than the currently available versions - they are already on the table and playing well, and use a neat card activation/decision/DM system for everything. Full report to come.

So if you like SF, or even just modern skirmish (they also have a superb terrain set for built up areas), then back the kickstarter now!

Skirmish Rules Testing: Part 6 - FiveCore

Presentation

FiveCore is a rules family/system from Nordic Weasel Games, available through WargamesVault. As well as the Core book there are loads of supplements with additional and optional rules and even different ways of doing things (e.g. activation, damage). I picked up several which looked like they'd be useful (which was probably a mistake). Good production quality and each individual book is well laid out.

Set-Up

No major variations, most weapons covered in generic terms. Used FiveCore's Sandbox supplement to set up a presence patrol scenario, with patrol points to be visited and encounter points which may, or may not, contain enemy.

How It Played

Note: Doing these run-throughs is taking up a lot of time, and spare evenings have been hard to come by lately. I've also found that within the first couple of turns I have a feel as to whether I'm going to get on with the rules or not, so I'm no longer going to play every rules set to the end of the scenario - also saves me boring you with repetitive description. These descriptions will probably also be more high level.

Insurgents just visible on the two roof tops - and man down in the ditch!

The patrol set of and almost immediately came in sight of the first encounter point. That was a dud but as FireTeam 2 turned the corner onto the main drag the next one spawned a group of 4 insurgents who I put on suitable building tops. They took out the point man who was moving down the ditch and the others took cover and started returning fire. Several UGL rounds were lobbed onto the roof tops but kept missing. Eventually the weight of SA80 and Minimi firepower took the insurgents out and a flanking attack by Cpl Hore and his #2 wasn't needed.

Rules Impressions

Whilst all the options were nice in the end they were totally overwhelming - perhaps I should have just stuck to the core book. It was nice to compare though their standard move/normal/fire turn type (neat idea, especially the move turn where everyone can move but can't be shot!) with their action-points based system. Whilst the idea of rolling Kill and Shock dice was nice, the constant changing of your dice mix was a real pain. The 1 and 6 for results instead of even just 5 and 6 also seemed to increase the mental gymnastics. 6S for suppression from an MG was nice though. Killing was very hard (6s on Kill only), and there are very minimal DMs (probably just as well) for cover - you're either hiding (so out of sight) or not.

The patrol mode worked quite well, and the encounter spawning, and I could see myself using the Sandbox book as a campaigning ruleset regardless of the main rules.

Overall

Overall through I though they were too complicated in presentation and too fiddly in the mechanics, so I'd only give them 5/10 - maybe 6/10 if I had only read the one book!

Skirmish Rules Testing: Part 5 - Black Ops

Presentation

Probably the glossiest rules set in this sequence, a 64 page book from Osprey. Layout pretty good, but like most commercial sets lots of words between the main rule tables.

Set-Up

Black Ops is all about stealth so I decided to change the set up. Rather than a presence patrol through town I now put a big compound in the middle of the table, with lots of cover to approach through. The TV crew were now "hostages" in the compound, the boss and his main crew were asleep, whilst guards patrolled outside and  in a sangar on one of the block-house roofs.

How It Played

The attacking Brits moved in two groups, coming from SE and SW and converging on the back gate. The random guards drifted close, then away, then finally the sangar spotted Fire Team B, who immediately took casualties. The shooting caused a nearby guard to walk over and a firefight developed around the small sheepfold, but eventually the sangar was taken out, and the guard. Despite the firefight and lots of noise markers though the enemy leader stayed sound asleep!

On the other corner a guard drifted around the corner right into the rear-guard and was shot dead - but still the boss snored.

Now it was time to get into the compound. The grenadiers put smoke rounds up over the wall and filled the compound.

Cpl Hore made a dash through the smoke whilst his 2ic took a gun group to try and get on top of the sangar to provide covering fire once the smoke cleared. The insurgent boss finally woke up but with all the smoke his team had nothing to fire at. Hore and co burst through the smoke and were lucky to get two initiatives before the enemy and took the boss and his 2ic out, liberating the prisoners. The two remaining enemy on the roof, and the one guard behind the compound decided it was time to bug out!

Rules Impressions

The random activation as OK but meant you couldn't plan things, and the single action on activation gave limited options. Firing seemed pretty lethal, with guys going down all over the place, hitting on 4+, 3+ if aimed, saving only on 5+. The observation test is very weird and I needed the Internet to try and sort it out. It looks like is actually a REVERSE observation test - you take it to show that you are still hidden, not to see if you've been spotted. UGL rounds were pretty useless, needing 6+ to be on target.

The random walk for the guards worked well, but what surprised me was how poor the much vaunted noise mechanic appeared to be. The problem seems to be that the noise count is halved for hard cover, and halved again if further than 12" - so the boss hardly hears anything. Nice idea, just doesnt seem to be executed well.

Overall

A bit disappointing given that they are Osprey (but in some ways not surprised) and are likely to be one of the more heavily played sets tried here. I might bring through some modification of the noise mechanic (although interesting that there's also a version of that in AK47), but otherwise nothing much for me in it, Overall 6/10 (just).