Episode 107 - Ye cannae change the laws of physics!

 First outing for the Grey Aliens from Copplestone Castings that Adrian bought me for my birthday.

Another Perilous Tales game with the original series Star Trek crew.  This episode's mission:

The teleporter was being serviced so Sulu flew them down to the planet's surface in the cardboard Galileo shuttle I'd started making the same morning (and not quite finished - it will hopefully have some nacelles fitted before the next game!).

The ruleset allows for random generation of the three objectives but I prefer to choose them to best suit the scenario, so we had Recover Equipment (i.e. dilithium crystals), Leave No Stone Unturned (i.e. explore the whole area and reveal all threat markers) and Escape!

Andy and I took control of three and two figures each, the first time we've tried two guiding minds controlling the Heroes - although of course they had communicators so could make plans together.

The Villains were Grey Aliens, one with a heat raygun, one with an extremely long finger, and three minions.

The playing area was set up with rocks and crystals:

...and the three perils for the location were:

McCoy took an uncharacteristically aggressive approach, killing the first alien that Uhura had wounded.  The Leader then appeared severely injuring McCoy.  The good doctor then spent most of the rest of the game unsuccessfully attempting to heal himself before failing several threat checks.

Fortunately, the rest of the crew did much better, picking off the aliens as they appeared and Uhura, Spock and Kirk each recovering an element of dilithium crystal.

Unfortunately, Spock did spend a couple of turns waddling around the board after his encounter with Big Digit.

Ultimately, the crew of the Enterprise crushed the objectives and lost no-one (the benefit of having no Redshirt extras in the away team perhaps).  Splitting the Heroes across two players worked well although I think I should have given the aliens the capacity for more wounds - none of them survived a turn which doesn't feel right, no point having the Pack Hunter characteristic without a pack actually forming.  So I'll try this again and increase the wounds to 10 for the Leader and Big Digit and 7 for the remaining three.

That said, the away team only just escaped intact.  Uhura was unharmed (keeping her distance and using the crack shot trait) but the rest had all lost most of their wounds, so it was perhaps closer than it looked.  Anyway, another fun game of Perilous Tales.

Episode 106: We're doomed. Doomed!

First game introducing Perilous Tales to someone else.  Andy controlled the Dad's Army characters and I ran the game mechanism and rolled for the villains - the Tentacled Aliens  

The mission started with another telegram from Colonel Pritchard outlining the three objectives:

The playing area featured a couple of buildings, a pond, some trees, the searchlight and three switches. The threat markers were set up in Standard pattern.

The villain and peril stats were as follows:

The Home Guard proceeded as a group round the back of the Nissen Hut, triggering and eradicating baby aliens (I may need to increase their number of wounds next time).  

Jones took some wounds when the Mother Alien was revealed but was healed effectively by Godfrey.

As a lurker, the Mother Alien retreated enabling the team to start activating the switches.  The Mother took a lot of hits but a horrendous roll on the Threat Level check saw her remove three wounds and more baby aliens appear.

Eventually, Pike managed to finish off the Mother Alien and Captain Mainwaring took a photograph of the body as evidence.  Meanwhile, Wilson and Godfrey located the radio in the Nissen Hut but then prompted the appearance of the ARP Warden, who attacked Godfrey viciously.  Unfortunately (for me as spectator), Godfrey successfully convinced Warden Hodges who he was, and the Warden joined the team.

Pike reached the 2nd switch and managed to turn it on in his second attempt, using the Last Ditch option.  Mainwaring ordered him onto the third switch but Pike failed again, and with the threat level now at 10, it was too late to turn on the searchlight.

Final score: 3 for finding the radio, 3 for taking the photograph, 2 for two switches, 1 for Leader surviving and another 1 for losing no team members.  Definitely need to make the aliens harder to kill.  And I failed to increase the threat level each time a switch was made and the photo taken.  But "a truly heroic performance" by Andy.

Second playtest of Perilous Tales - Episode 102: Mexican Slayride

Perilous Tales is a solo or cooperative skirmish wargame of thrilling tabletop adventures.  Beta versions of the rules are available for playtesting at the Planet Smasher website.  After last month's playtest with my Dad's Army figures, I thought I'd try it this time with the recently painted A-Team.

I wanted an Amy figure for the scenario but she wasn't included in the A-Team pack I bought, so I converted Crooked Dice's "Ripley from Alien" character. I took detail off the uniform and reduced the massive space gun to something more resembling an assault rifle.

So the full team looks like this:

I made up cards again with Nandeck which I could use to record the wounds taken with some plastic hearts I recently bought (originally sticky-backed for craft projects but an overnight soak in some white spirit removed that):

The objectives for the mission were as follows:

Nuevo Paraíso reflected a typical Mexican town in a typical A-Team episode:

...but of course not with the typical stereotyped A-Team baddies.  This time the soldiers of fortune had a Tentacled Alien and her babies to contend with:

I used some Villain and Location characteristics from the Perilous Tales rules:

The threat markers were set up in the Encircling pattern and the boys headed into the town.

A baby alien was quickly revealed, dealing 3 wounds to BA, who defeated it in hand-to-hand combat the following turn.  A second alien attacked Hannibal whilst Face and BA fell to the ground following a minor earthquake.  

With the wounds piling up, the A-Team started to take a more cautious approach, using their last action of each turn to get their Eyes Peeled, so they could attack the aliens as they were revealed before they had the opportunity to ambush the revealer.

This proved almost too successful.  The Mother and the remaining aliens were finished off either as soon as they appeared or immediately in the following turn.  By the 6th turn, the A-Team had killed all the Villains and exited the playing area a couple of turns later.  Three objectives completed at 3 points each plus a further one for not losing Hannibal and another for not losing any team member, gave a final score of 11, ranking "A" - "a truly heroic performance!"

I reset the scenario and downgraded Face and Murdock to Teammates rather than Leaders and tried again, this time with an Aggressive deployment of threat markers.  But got a similar result.

I then wondered whether I was interpreting the Eyes Peeled rule incorrectly as you are not allowed to shoot targets who are already engaged, as the newly spawning villains always are.  This was a much more challenging game, although bad luck played a part, with four "From The Shadows" results on the threat checks spawning an additional 4 baby aliens during the course of the game.  The Villains were defeated in the end but only at the expense of losing both Hannibal and BA!  The final score was still 9 as the three objectives were achieved, giving a "B" rank for "a tale fit for the telling".

This last time was a more challenging and hence more enjoyable game.  But then afterwards, I spotted that Eyes Peeled was the only time you could shoot a target who was engaged.  So I think I have some questions to take back to the playtest group.