Gaming with Kids: Starcrashers! 6/1 Painted fleets

[eilif]

Just finished up the first wargame ever with my 5 year old son!

I used a slightly simplified version of the "StarCrashers" ruleset from Ironhands.com.
http://www.ironhands.com/starcrashers.htm
It's a nice simple game that focuses mostly on exploration via the revealing of blips but also has combat.   Written for use with measuring sticks but I modified it for use with a hex grid.  Also, instead of giving each ship 2 actions I gave them one move and other actions (attacking, revealing,etc) simply occured as they became possible.

Here's a view of the game. All units started from the neutral yellow starbase. My son is playing the ships he painted and I'm playing the two that have been spray painted blue.  


My son goes to investigate a blip and finds the "Emmisary" (currently under the base) which will net him one credit when he is returned to the starbase.


I reveal a blip and it turns out to be a pirate ship (red ship).  My ship is crippled by the pirate and one credit is looted away from me but my compatriot cripples the Pirate and takes the credit back and earns a credit for crippling it.


A couple of turns later one of my ships reveals a blip and gets sucked into a black hole where it spends the rest of the game trying to escape.


The end of the game turned into a race for the last blip.  I got there first but the blip turned out to be another pirate who promptly crippled my ship and looted a credit from me.  My son crippled the Pirate in the next turn netting him the credit for the ship and the credit the Pirate had stolen.  The game ended with him defeating me 8 to 4.

All in all it was a fun little game. It probably took us about 25 minutes to play.  We only had 2 ships per side and 8 blips and the game could easily handle more of each.  The game swung back and forth as we flipped blips resolved the situations and collected our credits.  I think I would like to make an even larger board for next time.  

Occasionally, someone will post here and other gaming forums looking for ideas for gaming with school children or starting a kids club. This combination of fun rules and cheap spaceships seems like the perfect option for such a situation.  The rules are easy to learn and an organizer could easily make 4-6 boards and more than enough ships for all of them from one roll of gaming paper and one bag of spaceships.

Here's some of the counters we used for "blips" representing.  Mines, Asteroids, Black Holes, Ray Storms, Pirates, Credits and others.

For those interested in the game components:
-The board was a second hand Axis and Allies board. I glued "Gaming Paper" (basically thin gift wrap) black hex paper to the back side and flicked on a bit of white paint for the star background. http://www.miniaturemarket.com/ggp0302.html
-The Counters are mostly from the "Sedition Wars" game (a great deal currently at $30 for 50 figures and a game)
http://www.amazon.com/Sedition-Wars-Battle-Alabaster-Board/dp/B00B2WL3C4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463942488&sr=8-1&keywords=Sedition+Wars

[Michka]

What a fun looking game. I have to admit I'd happily play this with my adult friends. I love a simple game with quick game play and loads of surprises. I'll be looking up those rules and getting a bag of cheap spaceships.

[eilif]

What a fun looking game. I have to admit I'd happily play this with my adult friends. I love a simple game with quick game play and loads of surprises. I'll be looking up those rules and getting a bag of cheap spaceships.

I feel the same way.  It's a fast and fun game.  The core of the rules is pretty solid and I think it'd be an enjoyable game for adults too.  I'm going to try and involve my wife next time.

I'm not sure what the replay value would be after a few games with experienced wargamers, but it's got some nice "advanced" options and it seems like an ideal system for house rules and additions.

I'm probably going to pick up some of the EM4 Silent Death ships also.

[Daeothar]

Great stuff. I especially like the use of that hex-paper. Now I'll, have to search for an EU distributor...

I'm always in the market for great little games with a minimum of rules. I do believe I actually have this set saved somewhere.

[eilif]

At my son's request we played again tonight.

Upped it to 3 different ships per side, 12 blips and used the proper 2-actions per ship rules.   To keep the blips random we took 2 of each kind and 4 pirates.  Then we turned them face down and he randomly picked 12 which we took turns placing. He seemed to enjoy being involved in the preparation.

Gameplay was easy peasy and took about 30 minutes.  He had to be reminded of the special ability of each ship, but other than that it was very simple.  Putting a corresponding blip on the page next to each description helped me remember which was which also.

He won again 8-6, though I did stop to help him repair one of his ships.  I might not be so nice next time...

[beefcake]

Very cool. Might try to play a 3way game with 2 of my kids. May be doing another order from em4 soon then. 3 lots of those ships should do for some variety (and to stop the kids fighting over which ones they want) Now to check out those rules. Nice modifications to the rules you made.

[Daeothar]

I especially love your repurposing of an existing game board. That's a great idea which has been filed for future reference for sure. I'm sorely tempted to swing by the local charity shop on my way home now, to see if I can pick up any suitable games for cheap...

And since I have bucket loads of extra X-Wing tokens anyway, I'm already covered in that department too. Hmm...

[eilif]

Very cool. Might try to play a 3way game with 2 of my kids. May be doing another order from em4 soon then. 3 lots of those ships should do for some variety (and to stop the kids fighting over which ones they want) Now to check out those rules. Nice modifications to the rules you made.

A 3 way game (or even more) should work fine. I already hinted to my wife that maybe she should play with us next time.  The EM4 ships are nice in that there's alot of different models to cover different types.  

As for the rules, except modifying it for hexes -which I'll be keeping- I've pretty much gotten back to the rules as written.   Playing on a hex board is much smaller than a full tabletop as envisioned by the author. The 2 simple rules I think I've settled on for hexes include:
-3 hex movement
-Combat when adjacent.  I may expand this to one hex.

The gameboard idea has worked really well.  I kind of wish I'd kept the box as well to keep the ships and counter box in it. X-wing counters are a great idea.  I have a feeling that most gamers have some sort of tokens in their possession already that will be good for this game.

[Daeothar]

Yeah; over here we never even use the Crit tokens, and those are even hex-shaped too...

[eilif]

Played a third time. Except for the fact that I just realized we've been doing combat wrong and acommodating the hexes we're almost playing the rules as written.

No additional pics, but I've got some additions in the work.

-I also broke down and ordered 3 sprues of the EM4 Silent Death Spaceships.

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Science_Fiction.html

Each ship on the em4 sprue is unique but it looks like each sprue has 2 ships in 6 general styles.   They'll end up being my fighters and bombers.  That will provide 3 of each for each faction which should be enough and will give each faction a slightly different look.

Oh, I finally won a game but he's still asking to play again and he wants to paint more spaceshps!

[eilif]

Just found this in my piles of gaming stuff. I think I built it a long time ago intending to paint it up for Full Thrust.  It used to have a flight base, but that's long gone.  It will be the Starbase for Starcrashers, one of the most important elements of the game.

Mostly Robotix parts with a few shoulders from MW clix figures, 4 SM backpack vents and one or two other bits.
Just finished priming it dark grey.
Here's the recently basecoated ships I mentioned earlier.

[Daeothar]

Awesome; that's a great looking star base you have there! 

[eilif]

More progress and pics.

Here's the ships my son painted up.

He's halfway through painting one of the rectangular ships and then he'll have a full set.

Thanks Daeothar, if you think that's nice, wait till you see it painted!

Here's the two other factions I basecoated some time ago.  These are both kind of a disappointment.  The aqua ships were painted with a satin blue spray that comes out pretty shiny and that makes it harder to paint. The dusty blue ships were painted with a chalk texture paint that was super flat, but quite grainy.  Not great for ships, but I think it will be great for industrial terrain as it should look great when drybrushed and should "grab" a rusty wash quite well.

I'm still going to use these, but I'll be sticking with simple 2 color schemes and not investing too much painting time.

Here's the Trivial pursuit board sections that will expand the playing area by 50%


I've just finished painting the 2-color schemes on all the ships and the starbase. I'll take some pics and get them up tomorrow or the next day.

[The_Beast]

Not trying to rain upon parades, but I will point out a few things, just so everyone's aware.

The 'smaller' ships were actually from ICE's boxed Silent Death The Next Millennium. ICE went south, but Silent Death is attempting a resurrection. EM-4 is a legitimate source in the UK, but I believe the plastic sprues are available from Metal Express for those of us who're colonials. Metal Express Statement

The bigger ships are actually IP infringements; some are SD, but some are rip-offs of other media. For instance, in the advert image-of-twelve, the second from the left, orange, is the Liabe from Message from Space. The delta wing is from the same movie, though I don't think it had a name.

Now, personal opinion, IP litigation is a blunt weapon that can actually restrict innovation. Occasionally, however, I have to wonder about outright thievery. *shrug*

Please note, I have a few bags of the Chinese-made ships in the basement. Oriental Trading company, who has a store in Omaha, NE, USA, named Nobbies, used to sell them as well.

Doug

[eilif]

Yep, I'm aware of the IP issues.
EM4 is a legal source wherever you live and I've ordered three sets of them as well.

The larger size (2-3 times the size of the original) copies have been sold in the USA in the 144 plastic ships variety and the set of 12 larger painted PVC versions for well over a decade now.  If you don't protect your IP you loose it.   The owners of SD have had a very long time to take action and haven't.

I really like the large versions of these models, but I would encourage anyone who purchases them to buy the legal versions as well.  Together the large and small versions can be a great way to make unified looking fleets.

Thanks for the info about "Message from Space".  Pretty cool to know the origin of these two ships. As a kid in the 80's I had what is apparently a "Liabe" that I got in a vending machine and it was a favorite toy of mine.

It appears that at one time there were even larger scale model kits made.
Liabe:


Looks like the Delta design is (or was called in the US) a "Comet fire".