Played my first game of Five Parsecs.
The set-up for my crew is at link
The first combat generated was for a sweep across the board, picking up a loot box en-route. The opposition were 3 Warbots and one Hakshan Investigator.
A good shot from Erma (the crew chief) took the Shell Gun bot out as soon as it emerged from the wood. Toki (her 2ic) got into a shooting match with the warbot leader and kept it stunned enough to eventually get close enough to kill it. Erma and Sciuris then took the 3rd Warbot out – some good 1s and 2s meaning that the Bots hardly got a shot in.
Frenchie picked up the loot box, a nice 5Cr.
The Hakshan Investigator had been watching all this, but never really had a bead on anyone. She tried to pick the team off as they moved towards the wood but again the activation pattern meant there was never a clear shot. She moved round almost to the board edge and ultimately had to step out of cover to catch Erma just as she moved along the edge of the wood. Right on target and with a kill roll, but Erma's luck meant she just managed to dive for cover. The near-miss incensed the team and Paddy and Bloody just advanced forward letting loose with their shotguns, and the poor Hakshan had 5 stuns before they finally took her out.
The crew manage to exit the far edge without further incident and the first battle is a nice success for no loss.
Rules Impressions
That all went pretty well. The combat rules are basic, D6 per shot with 3 DMs (range, cover, aim), so it moves along quickly. Results seemed more "realistic" than Stargrave (which has an opposed roll system which just doesn't seem/work right to me). The ability for some characters to activate before the enemy is a nice touch and some tactical thinking needed about dice assignment. The toughness stat and armour save seemed OK. Surprised that a stunned character could still fire with no penalty (except no aim), be tempted to house rule a -1 per stun. Having a +2 combat skill (like Erma) made a huge difference (3+ to hit not 5+).
Broader Impressions
As a run-through all fine. It must be said that the campaign wrapper has a whole lot of dice rolling (about 15 for the post-battle!) and is calling out for an app! Combat-wise its deliberately light weight, which is fine, but I'll run the same scenario again with ACP164 to find out whether that actually takes much more time and whether it gives a better feel for the encounter.
Whilst I like the overall campaign idea of Five Parsecs I think that the fact that it is background-less, or at least the fact that I'm not invested in any background, does mean that the battles do just seem like they'll be a set of standalone encounters – even though the crew evolves between them.
I'm suspecting that the ideal system for me may be something like:
- Traveller's Third Imperium/Spinward Marches for background
- Five Parsecs for the campaign rules
- ACP164 for the combat
Would probably be a good thing to set up on Roll20/Virtual Tabletop for when I'm away from home too.
Once I've done the ACP game I'll probably do the next step on the campaign in "pure" Five Parsecs and then if I'm still of the same mind try my hybrid model out.
More pics and slightly fuller info on my blog at link
seeks miniature gaming happiness by checking out a sci-fi boardgame to see if it is worthy of being adapted for miniature gaming.
