Quick first Rogue Stars game (new game with pics!)

[vodkafan]

Thanks to my friend has.been on here I had the pleasure of my first wargame in 6 years this morning  
He had set up a Rogue Stars  scenario and sorted out two teams.
He had wrote reference sheets for each team.
This isn't a blow by blow battle report, I don't have all the team stats and everything, it is just a bit of an overview. I am sorry there are no pics or anything, I am at work now and don't have the rulebook in front of me. I am just excited to be contributing to the thread!

The terrain was an alien planetary landscape. The object of the action was a piece of machinery right in the centre which was not working.  To add a bit of tension dotted about the place were giant alien plants which randomly spat out harmful spores in all directions. The range of the spores was decided by dice throw on a D10 so varied between 1" and 10". There were also various abandoned vehicles and cargo pods dotted about to serve as cover.  

His team were defending and had to get the machine working again so they started the game there. The machine was just out of range of all the spore shooting plants but was otherwise in the open; The machine itself gave a bit of cover to the defending team.
His team had 4 members armed with light projectile weapons (2 were armed only with pistols) and various skills, but none of a technical nature. One was an alien with psi abilities. None of them had armour but they all posessed some sort of refraction thingy which was a sort of shield I think.

My team were 5 in number and consisted of 1 human leader and 4 robots. 3 of the bots were identical and were pretty dumb (non-reactive) but had "tough 2". The other robot was marginally better armed and smarter. The human leader had a zap rifle, force shield, was agile, and fast. An added advantage I had was that all the robots were impervious to the spores.
My mission was simply to stop his team repairing the machine.
I had the initiative at the start.
I chose to come in from the edge of the board with the most cover. I split my team into 3, with the 3 dumb robots advancing frontally at fast speed, the human leader off to the right and the smarter robot wide off on the left flank in an effort to sneak up and get around the back of the machine. I held the initiative for quite a while, sometimes throwing 1 die and sometimes risking 3 dice and managed to get 2 of my dumb robots well forward and my human leader into cover where he could observe, although my opponent collected about 8 reaction points from my fails. The other robot was advancing so slowly (2" at a time) on the flank that he never took part in the action in the end. The firefight started quite quickly when my lead dumbot was spotted and the defender successfully took initiative away from me. He moved one of the pistol armed men out of cover to fire at my dumbot , and missed. He then spent all the reaction points and moved his SMG-armed leader out into the open to fire at my dumbot and took it out with the first shot. The shooting rolls took us a few minutes to work out. I had been counting on "tough 2" to let my bot carry on fighting for a while so I was surprised when it was put out of action so easily.
I got initiative back again and used my leader with his zap rifle with 2 dice to fire at his leader, failed one roll but killed her with the other.  He took a morale test but his team all passed.  With the same character I then fired at the team member working on fixing the machine and killed him.
As time was short we left it at that and I was declared the winner.  The lessons we learnt were that combat is deadly and if you don't have armour then don't get out of cover!
I really enjoyed it though and look forward to another game.  

[Juan]

Very interesting AAR; thank you a lot. I am now worried about the lack of armour of some of my characters...
About the Reaction dice, I though you can use them only when the active character fail its activations, without the possibility to save them for a later use.

[vodkafan]

Very interesting AAR; thank you a lot. I am now worried about the lack of armour of some of my characters...
About the Reaction dice, I though you can use them only when the active character fail its activations, without the possibility to save them for a later use.

 Thanks Juan. I will have to read my rulebook and check up about the reaction points; we had them as little black counters and we did save them up. Maybe we had that wrong.

[Manchu]

Cool write up, it sounds like a fun scenario.

Juan is correct about reactions: For each activation roll that the active player fails, the non-active player gets a d20 to attempt a reaction and must do so before the figure that the active player was trying to activate performs any actions. It might help to clarify that this mechanic is supposed to represent the enemy taking advantage of the activating figure hesitating.

[vodkafan]

Ah thanks Manchu. If my friend has not already seen this thread I will let him know.

[vodkafan]

Oh on reading my rule book properly I have just realised that the squads we used in our first game were taken from the sample squads at the back of the book.
So my squad was Zegak and his Battle Brothers, and my friend fielded Viven Roo and Her Fans.

[Manchu]

Cool! what minis did you guys use?

[vodkafan]

Cool! what minis did you guys use?

They were all minis my friend had to hand already painted. Viven Roo was an East Riding Miniature I think :
http://shop.eastridingminiatures.co.uk/jba3-147-p.asp
Zegak was a cloaked GW Cadian sniper (the standing one)  and 3 of his battle brothers were Copplestone "not-terminator" robots. I didn't recognise the other miniatures.

[vodkafan]

My friend and I had our second Rogue Stars game last night. Once again I forgot to take pictures. We are still learning the rules and yes, there was a lot of page turning and referring back to our rulebooks but it was a rich and fun game.
Not going to do a write up right now because I am fired up to get converting and painting my first proper couple of teams instead!
Suffice to say we are going to stick with these rules, I think they are well worth persevering with.

[vodkafan]

Got another game in 10 days time, I will be sure to take pictures this time....

[vodkafan]

We played our third Rogue Stars game last week.  I took pictures! But, the game occupied my attention and I just took a pic whenever I remembered to, so that the pics don't really reflect the important hinge points of the game...

The scenario as always was worked out by my friend has.been. It was a different type of game to the previous ones played, this one was All Out Battle [20] (p33 in the rule book)
in Dense Terrain [7] (p34)
the confusion was Dud (grenade) [3] (p35)

here are pics of the battlefield, left and right halves looking from my end:




Here was the background:
The Ul-LA-Torne (alien mercenary scum) are beginning to become a nuisance with their incursions and depredations of the population. The local Governer Shal-BRA-Eeth IV has formed a militia to rid him of the problem. These are basically farmers in uniform . The technology available is low, but he has managed to supply each brave civilian with a musket and a stun grenade each. Two of the muskets have been modified to fire two shots (a tweak of the rules) before reloading. They carry no armour of any kind.
They are up against a band of nasty cutthroat aliens with modern weapons (played by GW Eldar!)
I was given the choice of combatants and, moved by their desperate plight, decided to take the militia.
No mercy or quarter is to be expected.  

Here is my team:
 

And their stats:
(as a race, all the locals are diminutive (p48), agile [level3], fast [level2] tech [level 1] and stealthy [level1] )

 The leader sKy who has fought once before and survived, so is considered a veteran  60xp  
he has medic level 2.
Musket, knife and self propelled stun grenade

ha-WA-ii 35xp, 2-shot musket, knife and stun grenade

cob-ALT 35xp 2-shot musket, knife, stun grenade

rAy 35xp  musket, knife, stun grenade

eYEs35xp musket, knife, stun grenade


unfortunately I didn't get a pic of my opponent's crew sorry

more next post

[vodkafan]

 For convenience we came in from opposite ends of the table. We were allowed to deploy up to 12 inches in. There was plenty of cover, and I figured that with my small size, agility and speed my boys could make a good showing if they could get close enough to the enemy.



In the centre of the battlefield was a cluster of buildings  that would become important. Between the buildings there was a line of sight to the other end of the table that would in fact become a terrible avenue of fire and death.   (you can see this better in the second pic on the previous post)


In confidence I spread my little chaps out and advanced the width of the board initially without difficulty. Then I started to fail activation dice rolls and gave many reactions to my opponent. On the left hand side my leader sKy was in slightly exposed position that gave a couple of clear shots to the aliens. (in the first pic of previous post, he was behind the clump of vegetation with a blue thing at the centre) I gritted my teeth. He missed!  I failed activations and he moved a second mercenary up to the same position and fired. (They were behind the formation of upright crystals in the first pic) He missed again!  I should have then got sKy into better cover but two of the alien scum in one place was too good a chance to miss, so I rolled three dice, intending to throw the grenade sKy had managed to prime. Alas, I failed two of the activations and he quickly moved a third alien scum around behind me and shot .  sKy fell wounded, primed grenade in hand.
My opponent took the initiative and moved the same mercenary forward on the extreme left. At my first reaction I attempted to shoot him with ha-WA-ii, who had been hiding behind an aquarium plant. But he didn't make his die roll and was cut down  dead.
Things had happened very fast.
I felt exposed with the flanking movement on my left and so moved eYEs up in the middle  to the square building with the sort of chimney on it and coBALT up to the corner of the rectangular hanger type structure with the orange door to provide cover. They were both in the avenue of death.  (To be honest now I cannot remember the exact sequence of dice rolls but this is the gist of what happened next)
eYEs primed his grenade and crept to the forward corner. Around the corner to his left were the two aliens standing together who had been firing at the unfortunate sKy. But eYEs had been spotted by the fourth and last alien and was shot and fell  wounded even as he threw his grenade. The grenade exploded but the two aliens, wearing armour suffered no ill effects and one of them, enraged, came over to stand over the fallen hero and shoot him at point blank range. He missed! He was shot at long range  by the musket of rAy, who was between  two pieces of machinery, and the alien scum fell wounded beside the militia man.

My opponent gave up his initiative to clear all his stress points.
 For once, I rolled 3 successful activation rolls. coBALT primed and threw his grenade at the two downed combatants, (even though eYEs was only wounded) which put both OOA.  I couldn't risk the alien recovering. For his last action I skedaddled coBALT around the side of the hanger building under cover, as he was too exposed.
 On the far left I spent an action trying to make the leader sKy recover from his wounds, but he failed his roll and hence slipped into unconsciousness. His primed grenade, linked to his mind, would then have gone off in his hands. A sad end to our veteran.
The failed activation allowed the alien on the left to advance unimpeded across my rear and approach  rAy, who was now trapped behind the cover of the machinery.
coBALT sneaked around the hanger and tried to fire at the aliens but suffered a CRITICAL FAILURE, which meant he was out of ammo.
The alien scum were now mad as bees in a jam jar and were out for revenge. The fourth alien and the one on the flank surrounded rAy and executed him.


coBALT was trying to get into the hanger to look for ammo. (two tech rolls needed) But while he was at it the fourth alien went around behind him and calmly shot him in the back of the head at point blank range. The battle was over.


Hope you have enjoyed my AAR as much as we enjoyed playing it!

[has.been]

Many thanks for the photos. My wife keeps telling me to take pictures of 'those pretty games' but I never seem to get around to it.
For those interested the 'machinery' bits were 1/300th Sci-Fi buildings & as stated figures were from existing collection. I am however having such fun with Rogue Stars that I am painting up teams specially for the game.

[vodkafan]

Many thanks for the photos. My wife keeps telling me to take pictures of 'those pretty games' but I never seem to get around to it.
For those interested the 'machinery' bits were 1/300th Sci-Fi buildings & as stated figures were from existing collection. I am however having such fun with Rogue Stars that I am painting up teams specially for the game.

Thanks for all the green tea!

[manic _miner]

 Nice looking game.

 Green tea and blue Aliens .