I got to play in the War Rocket demo at Dundracon yesterday & it was great fun.
TMP link
2 seperate scenarios were set up: rescue the princess from a land base & defend a line deep space of satellites from destruction.
The Galacteers (the faction with the cool 50s retro Flash Gordon rockets) were the princess rescuers & the satellite defenders. They were fighting against the Zithians with saucer ships.
Andrew did great terrain pieces & even had to scratch build some of the Galacteer ships since they hadn't been made yet.
The rules were very easy to learn & after about a 10 minute explanation we were up & fighting. The key differences between the 2 fleets were manauverability, armor & firepower.
The Zithians were pretty lightly armored & had light guns, but could pretty much move in a straight line in any direction & then rotate anyway they wanted at the end of their turn. So extremely manauverable, just like you'd expect saucers to be. They also had a pretty good movement of 14".
The Galacteers had to "bank" their ships when turning. All the ships were based on hexes. The Galacteers could only turn 1 hex face & then had to move 2" before they could turn again, with each hex face turn cosing 2" of movement. But they could keep moving/turning/moving/turning as much as they had movement for. Their fighter class ships has a move of 16", so they did pretty well turning around. But the 2 larger class ships, moving 12" & 8", were sluggish, & took forever to turn. But, the Galacteers' larger ships had a bit more armor. & the largest class ship had 3 different weapon systems, 1 that fire 180 degrees to the front, & 1 each that fired to the sides & somewhat to the front.
So, all this meant that if the Galacteers were able to get the Zithian saucers in their sites, they had a good punch to shoot them down. But the Zithians were really tough to catch.
The move order was done from the slowest speed ship to the fastest. For all the Galacteer ships except the fighers, the Zithians were able to move out of their firing arcs, since the Zithians moved 14" & after the 12" & 8" Galacteer ships. But a ship could go on "overwatch", do nothing at all for a turn & then reserve it's action to go before everyone else on the next turn. This is important due to how the shooting & damage works.
After movement, all ships fire simultaneously by placing a token on the target ship. The ships we played with had 1-3 shots (tokens) to place depending on their class & firing arcs. Other than the heavy Galacteer ship, all other ships on both sides had a 60 degree forward firing arc. There is no "to hit" roll, you just place the tokens on the targets. I think this is a nice bit of streamlining to keep the game moving.
Once all the shots are place, then damage is determined. This menas that all shots are designated before knowing any damange result, eliminating the "I keep shooting at that ship until I kill it, then I move to the next one" syndrome.
For damange, you count the number of shots on the target ship, & cross index that on a table against the target's hull armor. That gives 2 numbers, the numbers needed to roll equal to or above to stun or destroy the ship on a d10. I think 1 shot against a ship with 1 pt of armor needed a 7 to stun or 9 to destroy. 2 shots needed a 5/7, etc. So, at least with the ships we played with, the smallest class fighter had a chance to destroy any of the ships. I think the best numbers you could get was a 1/2.
Destroying a ship took it off immediately, but its own shots still went off. Stunning immobilized a ship so it couldn't move or fire for the next turn. After that it would be fine again. But if it was stunned again while already stunned, it was destroyed.
For the saved "overwatch" option metioned before, those ships get to designate shot & determine damange all at once. So, overwatch would allow slower ships to have the chance of going before the faster ships, & destroying the faster ships before they can move.
I played the Galacteers defending the satellite line. & we made the tactical mistake of moving out to attack too soon, so the Zithians were easily able to get behind us & shoot up the satellites while our big ships were still turning around. Luckily, one of the Zithian players decided to attack our ships instead of going for the satellites, which meant the Zithains weren't attacking the satellites. I think this saved us.
The game came down to 1 Zithian ship trying to destroy the last satellite while the whole Galacteer fleet decended on it. The Zithians missed damaging the satellite a few times, & finally were destroyed before they could take it out. So victory went to the Galacteers. The Galacteers also saved the princess on the other table, so it was a clean sweep.
So my thought…
The Galacteer turn/move 2"/turn/move 2" was a bit fiddly using tape measures. Having a 2" long stick would have helped that out. But the differences in manauverability had a big affect on the game & fit the faction's ships well.
For combat, the weight of fire, & swarming stunned ships, was key. I like the "designate all 1st" idea. & combining all the fire on a target into 1 roll really sped things up.
The scenarios were well thought out & definately have something more interesting than the "line up the ships & shoot" type. & Andrew did a great job making the terrain out of scrounged parts.
I liked the idea that the game can be used for both deep space, atmospheric fighter combat, & nap of the earth games with land based objectives. It was a fun game & I'd definatley play it again. & the figures that Hydra sent out were beautiful. We each got 1 Galacteer & 1 Zithian fighter as promo packs.
So definately check it out if you want a fun, beer & pretzels type game. It was very evocotive of the pulp space genre. & my friends & I were joking that the only things missing were being able to see the strings that ships were hang off of, & a sparkler shooting out the back.
enjoys painting Waggas in a variety of colors...
