It's been a while since we played some Stargrave, but it is becoming one of our 'regulars' alongside Bloody Big Battles, Warmaster and Warhammer 40,000, although we still sample a few other systems from time to time, as regular readers of this blog will have seen (the quest for a good set of colonial rules continues, for example).
We decided to dip into another homebrew mission that Kelvin dreamed up - he is creating them quicker than we can play them! The setting was an abandoned settlement on an ice world (I was quite impressed by how much terrain we can now assemble for something like this).
The objective was to hunt the Hermit, in this case played by a Reek from my Star Wars collection. A summary from the briefing follows:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it
Pagurus Titanicus is known for grabbing bits of debris to build itself a tough outer shell, and there's plenty of debris among the dead stars. There's loot too, and rumour has it this monster is carrying treasure on its back.
Two loot tokens were placed as per normal, and a third placed on the back of the Hermit, which begins the game at the centre of the board. The Hermit moves in the creature phase and has a number of special rules which apply to it - for example, it can never be pinned in combat, and crew members can climb onto it.
Each crew secretly rolls to see if they will score XP for killing the Hermit, or keeping it alive. I rolled to slay the creature. I would earn 100 XP if successful.
I'd ditched my earlier stategy of using cheap hold rats (dogs) to attack in advance of my crew. They are fast moving and vicious, but in our previous game at Christmas achieved little for me. I'm relying instead on the cheaper Genestealer hybrid runners who carry pistols and knives and still move a respectable 7". They are free to hire, so their loss in a game is of little consequence.
Arnold, my power-armoured trooper, was expensive to deploy at 50cr for armour rental; he ended up being deployed in entirely the wrong place, and had to trek across the base to only get into the fray in the final turn or so. Disappointing. I'll keep him in the crew for the time being.
I'm not sure Medics are worth the cost in this game.
So what happened?
The 'Hermit' prowling through the ruins - a lone Eldar is close by but is focused on the loot marker, which I'd positioned on top of the stone plinth. The blue template in the background is actually a smoke grenade going off, to screen the Eldar advance.
My own crew sneaking through the ruins. My medic Carla Zane and Captain Dread are in advance - the pink risk token signifies Capt Dread has his energy shield up. Bringing up the rear is Tarko Three Arms, pistol shooting specialist and new boy on the ship (which means sleeping in a hammock in the shuttle bay).
Eldar in position overlooking the battlefield - the Eldar have a drone up on the left of the picture. Kelvin likes to get his grenade launchers up on a roof over-looking the situation where they can rain merry hell down on me. This time he favoured the use of smoke grenades as a screening tool although the smoke also let my crew get into close contact.
Apart from the Hermit itself, we decided to also have our relentless pair of Strontium Dogs as a possible encounter. Welcome to the diverse world of Stargrave. Both Wulf and Johnny Alpha made an appearance. Johnny got lucky and bagged the Eldar captain with a critical hit as soon as he came into the game. Well done Johnny! Yes, this is a Citadel Johnny Alpha from the 1980s which I found in a car boot sale for £1.
Things got a bit chaotic towards the end - here the Hermit is in the process of getting cornered and is about to be shot by Tarku who is on the building on the left. Three smoke bombs have now gone off. An Eldar robot has been taken over by my first mate Yang, using his Control Robot power. Big Arnold is in the red power armour, stumbling through the smoke at the top of the picture. Capt Dread with shotgun is on the building top right. This is the penultimate turn of the game.
Thoughts on the game
The game fitted nicely into the time slot available, which is one of the things I like about Stargrave. It does not drag on interminably. The Hermit veered towards one corner of the base, which was close to the other two tokens, which in turn focused most of the activity into one small area. This ended up being vicious for the Eldar, who took a lot of casualties.
High points of the game included my new pistoleer taking down the Hermit (already badly wounded by Captain Dread's shotgun) and the Eldar captain being taken out by the surprise arrival of the bounty hunter Johnny Alpha, who snuck up on them suddenly. This is the sort of thing that usually happens to me in Stargrave.
Unbelievably my crew came through with no losses, which is a first, but we only managed to recover one loot token, so you could argue we lost this one anyway.
We both agreed the Hermit was a little too easy for a crew to take down and that further loot tokens would have improved the mission and avoided the risk of all the action concentrating in one area (not that this was entirely a Bad Thing IMHO).
You can read the full mission, now play-tested, on Kelvin's blog. Feedback has been incorporated into the mission following our game. If you end up playing it, do let Kelvin know how you got on!
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