""Starfist: First To Fight" - Any Useful Gaming Ideas There?" Topic

Anyone read this book?

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Description:

"'Marines, we have just become a low-tech deep recon patrol . . .'
Stranded in a hellish alien desert, stripped of their strategic systems, quick reaction force, and supporting arms, and carrying only a day's water ration, Marine Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass and his seven-man team faced a grim future seventy-five light-years from home. The only thing between his Marines and safety was eighty-five miles of uncharted, waterless terrain and two thousand bloodthirsty savages with state-of-the-art weapons in their hands and murder on their minds."

Major spoilers here: link

So . . .

If you have read it, could you tell us (without any major spoilers) if there are any good gaming ideas within its pages?

Thanks.

Dan
TMP link
TMP link
TMP link

From the description above, the plot seems a lot like Outpost Gamma, but with the humans on the move, and with more advanced natives:

TMP link

Dan

I have read the entire series. They are a good read. The writers both have Marine Corps background (though the marines in the books have a sort of combination earth marine background, heavy on US and British marine units). There are a few good skirmish possibilities in it, mainly when they first stumble across a real aggressive alien force which pretty much defeats a lot of their high tech gear. The human on human stuff is usually so one sided as to not be very good fodder for gaming, but you could (think US vs Insurgents, but the arms reversed, with tanks usually fairing poorly against the marines). The Force Recon books, a splinter story line with the same backgrounds, has less skirmish options (more sneaky stuff), but there is a tendency to be more focused on all the fiddly bits than the combat itself.

Without blowing too much info, the marines have basically an invisibility suit, so barring knowing what to look for, they are pretty much impossible to spot. Weapons are plasma rifles (The aliens, however, are amphibious and have as a personal weapon an acid shooter (think flame thrower for effect) and do eventually field some pretty impressive vehicles. The have been developing the aliens over a few books, so they add details as they develop them.

There is a lot of focus on downtime and training. There are a few big similar force battles in some of the books, but the marines are so above what the armies are fielding that they are usually a significant force multiplier in the conflicts.

And the authors are not afraid to kill a main character, which is a nice change. After all, the Corps never dies.

It is a good series. I also have read them all and they do keep it near future. The aliens are fun in 11-14th century Japanese sort of way. They do not appear in every book, so there is quite a bit of human on human action. The marines start out as the official First Contact team and slowly the threat from the aliens is developing. I keep expecting an all out war to develop with in the next few books. The marines out class their enemy, however, they are usually out numbered. A few of the books seem to be filler and since there are two authors they sometimes don't keep the story aligned.

Vince

So . . . for the "First To Fight" premise (stranded on a desert planet) . . .

* What figures would you use?
* How many for each side?
* What rules?
* Would you have extreme weather conditions affect play?
* Would the marines' victory be based on whether they could cross the board completely to the other side, as they try to reach the outpost?

Thanks.

Dan

If you want to redo the end of First to fight you'd need a fireteam of near future style marines. Pig Iron, EM-4, or even AT-43 would probably do. You might like to make them more desert like though.

For the natives you need something like GW rough riders. IIRC the natives were akin to arab light cav with "primitive" firearms and a few captured weapons.

The scenario then would be played from the climax of the book when a native patrol finds our small group of marines. In the book they only had a handful of men (I want to say 5 or 6 -- including a company clerk). They'd need to navigate from one board edge to the other. The edge they are going to should be rough terrain where horsemen can't go. This didn't really exist in the book, they dealt with it in another way. The rest of the board should be farly flat with gullies crossing it like makeshift trenches, and a few larger wadis where the marines can make a stand.

The key for the marines should be balancing movement with stopping to engange native cav units (which should show up randomly at first with a large force arriving later.

It's been a while since I read this one (I am through book 4) so I could be off on the details, but it would be a fun, tense scenario.

Another Dan

Not read any of the series, so I am basing this suggestion on what I am reading here.

You might consider Ambush Alley Games (AAG) for rules sets. Either Ambush Alley (AA) , or Force on Force (FoF) could be adapted. AA if you want the OpFor to be less organized and more reactionary, letting your marines drive the action and somewhat setting the pace of combat. AA is also designed to handle very random appearance of the OpFor.

FoF, which is uses AA as a basis, would be good for pitting two armies with actual military doctrines and training against one another. This makes it much more likely that both forces will be in 'the driver's seat' and be reactionary (at different times) during a game.

Both are scenario/objective based systems and are quick to run and (in general) easy to use and provide very dynamic games that both sides are actively involved in. None of this one side doing everything while the other side sits idly by waiting for their turn. As a bonus AA is easy to do solo gaming with. (I've not tried FoF solo so I can't speak to that.)

If you are not in a hurry, they even have a Sci-Fi specific variant in the pipe. Otherwise do the conversion rules yourself. I'm currently running a 40K/Void variant based on stats I put together.

A couple of last things regarding AAG systems. One, both systems are abstracted a fair amount, so that might be a turn off for some. Two, many people consider them to be 'simple' rules, however they have a depth of complexity I find refreshing, without all the charts and hoopla of many more 'complex' rules.

As far as victory conditions go, I would probably set something up based on milestones; such as making it to outposts along the way. This is because, unless I was planning to have them get some kind of reinforcements along the way, it's going to get harder and harder the 'farther' they go, primarily due to combat losses. Additionally you can break it down into many games and make a sort of mini-campaign. Each session (or two) could be getting to another outpost. And outposts might give you an excuse to allow them to heal wounded, re-supply, or even get new equipment.

Just my $0.05; inflation, ya know ;)

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