ACP164 Shipboard Action

 

Ahead of painting up my ACP164 Spacers and as part of some testing for a Star Patrol(ACP164)/Cepheus hybrid I've been playing some short sharp shipboard actions. A crew of 6 critters (2 typically staying on the bridge) trying to fight off a boarding action by 3 armoured droids.

As ever the ACP164 card mechanic gave a nice slick game and the morale draws through in some nice curve balls - although perhaps the droids should have been less susceptible.

One thing I did decide was that an SMG/Shotgun close range of only 3 squares just seemed too short in the context of confined spaces, but conversely the movement rates (often 7-9 squares) were too much so I doubled ranges and halved movement and the net result was a far better game I thought.

Out of the 3 games I played I think the critters won all three, for no loss on the first one, one casualty on the 2nd and 2 casualties on the third (with a third critter curled up sobbing in the corner). Since the critters were being played as "PCs" rather than NPCs I'd given them higher Resilience and pulled them out of the fight once they'd had 3 hits so none of them died (although the auto-doc might be busy).

All worked pretty well I thought, now just need to finish off the Star Patrol(ACP164)/Cepheus idea.

Salute 2021

 A good trip down to Salute, meeting up with Adrian and Nick. Guess it was about half the size of a "normal" Salute, most of the traders seem to be there but wargames themselves were pretty thin on the ground - a few nice tables which I've captured below. My purchases were mainly around scenery (esp 10mm) so nothing that really stands out.

Probably the best looking wargame there in my view

Reference shot of some flatpack MDF 28mm sci-fi crates I bought

Another nice table, cigar box mats and hexon roads!

A pretty stunning 3D Stalingrad - think it won best in show

Nice looking dungeon crawl

The SHADO Skydiver and S.I.D, nice models!

The rest of the UFO game with Interceptor, Aliens and Moon Shuttle

And just to prove that the wargamers may not have been the saddest people in Excel that day, a neighbouring hall (and most of the eateries and walkways) were full of Star Trek fans in full cosplay mode.

Roll on April 2022!

Waterloo 60 Article in Miniature Wargames #464

 

Miniature Wargames carried the whole of my 6 page article on our Waterloo60 game in the latest issue (464), with some lovely photo spreads and Dale's piece from Poland too! There was also a really nice intro from editor John Treadaway on what we did as well. 

Solomani/Terran Name Generator

Faced with possibly having to name the whole 480+ crew of the Deepnight Revelation (well maybe only some of them) I started looking for a better way to generate "ordinary" names since the standard (including my own) Traveller Word Generators are very hit and miss - particularly for languages you know! A quick hunt on the web found that https://forebears.io/ had lists of the most common 1000 first and last names globally. Whilst the list is bound to have some biases it certainly seemed to be pretty representative, with strong showings from China/Africa/South America - far better than most "baby name" lists. So I screen-scraped the two lists and dropped them into a little Javascript app that just randomly matches a first name with a surname. The list didn't have any gender information, so you'll have to check that yourself if it's vital, but otherwise I think the app generates really usable names - and moves nicely away from the Anglo-Saxon centric naming that can dominate in some SF RPGs.

You can find the app here:

http://www.taunoyen.com/traveller/solomaninames.html

Next step will be to add it into my Traveller Word Generator so you can get Vilani/Galangic first/last names matched with Solomani last/first names!

Star Patrol/ACP164 take on Five Parsecs encounter

 

I played out the same Five Parsecs encounter but using the ACP164 rules - with weapon tables from Star Patrol - the "generic" SF version of Buck Surdu's Combat Patrol rules (also the basis for ACP164), and which are available as a free download from Sally 4th (although you'll need to buy a set of cards).

Things got off to a reasonable start with Toki and Squirrel going left flanking again, and Toki getting into a good enfilade position as the warbots emerged form the trees. Paddy started getting damage on the warbots, but their +2 armour meant they were slow to kill. As the third bot emerged from the wood almost right beside Toki Squirrel raced over, got a double activation and emptied his shotgun into the bot - nice weapon at close range (3 shots at 3"). The combined fire of the crew took the other two bots out, but this time the Hakshan Investigator had got itself in a better position and after a brief exchange of fire delivered a knock out shot to Frenchie. Erma then leapt up onto the roof of a building to get a good shot while Bloody went right flanking. But as Squirrel moved along the wood edge to get behind the alien the Hakshan scored a headshot on Toki and she was down. Squirrel burst round the corner behind the Hakshan, let rip with his shotgun and the murderer was down.

So more bloody than the Five Parsecs version, but how much was down to rules and how much to a better position for the Hakshan it's hard to tell. All played nicely though and I think this is the way to go with Five Parsecs - particularly given that I barely need to think about the ACP rules nowadays.

The Hakshan is about to be surrounded

The typical ACP Endurance of 3 does make characters very vulnerable though, OK for NPCs/large skirmish games but less so for PCs in an RPG, so tempted to set them to 5 or many even 7. I note that the "personality" characters in the Star Wars supplement for Combat Patrol have these sorts of values, so the precedent in there - and its something I need to sort out for another ACP164 project I'm working on.