"AAR for No Stars in Sight using 6mm 40K figures" Topic

AAR at link

I pit a small squad of Storm Lords Space Marines defending a farming collective against a host of Khorne Berserkers and Minotaurs. Who will prevail?

I blow the dust off of my Epic scale (6mm) forces (based singly for really little skirmish games) and try out the new rules No Stars in Sight and have a really fun, nail-biter of a game. I include all of the stats that I used for the 40K troops, including making up a few rules to add flavor. (Unfortunately, I got some things wrong too. Oh well.)

You can see the previous review of the rules here: link

At the end I discuss some of the areas of the rules that I tripped over.

Dale

Brilliant AAR Dale, enjoyed it and your joy in playing it (also like your solo mentality to it :)
Ivan is, I believe, going to look at a few genres for the game too.
Agree these are brilliant rules.
Question, do you think (I use small 3 foot square tables as well, but use 28 mm figs.) The movement measurement for 15 mm would work?
Cheers those little 6 mm figures bring back fond memories.

WW2 is for sure but down the road. There might be a proper team based large-scale version but that'll require some adaptations.

The movement distances are based on distances between terrain features. If your table has a lot of clutter on it, you'll likely do just fine.

@Zargon Thanks for the compliment on the AAR.

Solo Mentality = Crotchety Old Guy

For me it is about the aesthetics of the figure scale to the ground scale. If you don't have a problem with the standard move being 3" for a 28mm figure, then the 15mm scale will work for you.

As you have noted, I use 6mm figures and 15mm scales, so I like the looks of the "longer" moves and ranges that 6mm skirmishing gives you. I need an outsized base so my fat fingers can grab the base (not the figure) and I like the effect that it gives that the men are more spread out in 6mm than in 15mm, despite the base sizes being the same in both scales (3/4" rounds) and the intervals between figures being the same (1", per the rules).

To me, 28mm figures 1" apart moving 3" is akin to Napoleonic spacing moving in slow motion, not SciFi. But that is just me. What matters is does it look right to you?

The key to the game is that the D6 rolled for success when crossing gaps between cover is directly tied to the distance moved. So if you decided to double the move distances, you would have to double the dice rolled, or roll 1D6 and double the result. Otherwise the math of the game becomes broken.

I have 28mm 40K figures that I want to blow the dust off of, but I would use double range, double dice on a 4' table. I think 3' could work, but the buildings better be small (like, outhouses) or they will dominate a 3' board.

Note that all of the above is conjecture on my part having played many other skirmish rules (and that I pay attention to scales and math) and not because I have an amazing amount of experience with these rules after having played them once, and screwing a number of things up at that!

I think you will enjoy the rules if you agree with the core design principles of the author (which I outlined in the review). To me, modeling the degradation of the combat effectiveness of a unit is fascinating and pushes my button of wanting to know just how many are dead, wounded, or simply cowering, yet in an easy and manageable way. When I calculated, in the AAR, that the two surviving Minotaurs would have had an activation roll of 1d6 – 6 points it was a real Aha! moment for me. I have never played a game that said "Yeah, they are alive, but so what? They cannot do anything now."

Please read the author's comments on the AAR, as he clears up a lot of the gray areas for me, including the critical one, which is "what counts as a casualty". Given how I should have played it, units would have degraded much faster than they did.

Dale

I might add that for players who want more activations per round, one easy tweak is to roll two dice for activation, picking the higher of the two.

I like to gamble though :)

For activations, I take the alternate activation methods: you get the activation points of your roll, until you roll equal to or less than your stress.

Awesome AAR! And now I want to get some epic stuff, base it singly, and play 40k skirmishes.

@Grignotage For the races that GW did not make (Dark Eldar, Tau, Sisters) check out Onslaught Miniatures. Great figures. Most of the Epic I have now were purchased as odd lots off of eBay. The only thing I paid dearly for were Eldar jetbikes.

I mostly use my 6mm skirmish troops (and board games) in the winter, when it is too cold to go out to the man-cave. When it warms up, I go back to the 15mm and 28mm collections. So that's why I love them. I can play them in the very small space that won't irritate the wife too greatly, and it can usually stay set up.