"AE: Bounty Rules Review (2012)" Topic

Pulled out a copy of these rules the other day. They are for sci fi skirmish (28mm but 15mm could easily be adapted) and have a campaign system for your space pirate/bounty hunter/merc crew.

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They generated quite a lot of excitement when they were released, locally, but seem to have died off a lot since then.

For a more enthusiastic review, here's one by Wargameguru when it was first released
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Hope this is helpful

I liked it myself when it first came out, but that faded fast after a few plays. As you said, the army construction rules are fairly restrictive, the game is missing some vital tactical elements (overwatch, or reaction fire, or whatever you want to call it), and it was depressingly easy to come up with some very cheesy combinations of gear and special abilities. Didn't care for the way suppressive fire worked either, much too effective at getting around the nearly-impenetrable defenses of heavily-armored models just by throwing enough spitballs at them.

Support for the game (beyond the e-zine) has always been kind of light, too. Very few new figures, and none at all for quite some time now. IIRC, the game's been licensed out to someone new recently, so there may be hope for a resurgence, hopefully with some major rules modifications and better figure support.

That's pretty much it for us too. It was a disappointment overall. I also wondered why it wasn't a completely open game to begin with instead of "pick something from premade lists". It couldn't have allowed any more cheese into the game the actual setup and wouldn't given it much more self-life in our group – or at least I would've enjoyed it a little more.

I think they came up with reaction fire later tho, but never tried or indeed even read what they came up with for that. At worst, they might've made playing at least the spaceship boarding actions sensibly really difficult.