Which system for this scenario? Any views on Blasters and Bulkheads?

[Hobgoblin]

I'm hoping to tap into the hive mind here! For my son's birthday, I'm planning to run a fairly elaborate skirmish game for three players. The rough scenario will be this:

• Two rival bands of raiders (space pirates/freebooters/whatever) are seeking to seize treasures from a heavily guarded location.
• Two players will play the raiders with the third playing the defenders.
• The defenders will far outnumber both raiding bands put together, but will be mainly 'mooks'.
• This might mean 20-30 defenders against two bands of five or so raiders.
• There will be some surprises - possibly live alien cargo in storage or 'wandering monsters'
• The set-up will involve some indoor or underground complexes on a separate board

So, my question is this: which system will work best for this scenario?

All the players are familiar with Mutants and Death Ray Guns, but I think the large number of defenders will result in the game getting bogged down in that system. I have Pulp Alley, Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes and Rogue Planet, and probably various others I've forgotten. But before I shake the dust off one of those rulesets, I thought I'd seek opinions as to whether there's a ruleset that would work better than any of those - and whether one of those would work better than the others.

My initial thoughts are these (again, I haven't played any of these games for a while)

I've never played Rogue Planet with more than two players, but it does use groups as essentially single figures (the individual models are effectively just wound trackers).

The asymmetry in numbers might preclude Galactic Heroes because of the card-based activation system.

Pulp Alley's Gang rule might allow the defender to have 25 mooks and a leader - but I'm not sure how this would work in practice. But it looks like the front runner for now.

Any thoughts or pointers gratefully received! I'd be more than happy to buy another ruleset for the occasion if there's one that's ideally suited for this sort of game.

[Mammoth miniatures]

You could give planet 28 a read through and see if it will do the trick. It's designed for narrative games and asymmetrical gameplay should work well. also the PDFs are free on wargames vault.

[fred]

GH I assume has the grunt rule lick FoL so you activate groups of 3 rather than individuals for the grunts

[Hobgoblin]

You could give planet 28 a read through and see if it will do the trick. It's designed for narrative games and asymmetrical gameplay should work well. also the PDFs are free on wargames vault.

GH I assume has the grunt rule lick FoL so you activate groups of 3 rather than individuals for the grunts

Ah, yes - it probably does. I'll look over the rules again. I definitely need a system where a fairly big batch of the defender's forces can be activated at once. I have something like 40 red-armoured orkoids (mostly Mantic) that I painted up last year for a big game with friends, so they're ready-made as the defenders. I was planning to add black and white insignia to them anyway, but I can vary the insignia so that they're in readily available groups of five or three or whatever.

[has.been]

I would recommend Galactic Heroes.
All the gamers need to know is;-
Easy task  success = (modified) 5+
Hard task  success = (modified) 8+

eg  They want to open the door, as it is unlocked you say, 'Easy'
      They next door is locked, so then you say, 'Hard'.
Give each player character cards upon which is all the info they need;-
     Gun ranges, character traits, throw modifiers etc.
This will give you the time to think on your feet & control trips/traps/wandering monsters etc.
Use the Jokers to introduce anything random. See 'Bad day to give up the booze' report.
In that the arrival of arrival (& departure from the area) of transport was 'controled' by jokers. 

[Hobgoblin]

I would recommend Galactic Heroes.
All the gamers need to know is;-
Easy task  success = (modified) 5+
Hard task  success = (modified) 8+

eg  They want to open the door, as it is unlocked you say, 'Easy'
      They next door is locked, so then you say, 'Hard'.
Give each player character cards upon which is all the info they need;-
     Gun ranges, character traits, throw modifiers etc.
This will give you the time to think on your feet & control trips/traps/wandering monsters etc.
Use the Jokers to introduce anything random. See 'Bad day to give up the booze' report.
In that the arrival of arrival (& departure from the area) of transport was 'controled' by jokers.

Thanks, has.been - that's a great summary.

Now that I think of it, all three of the players have played Galactic Heroes at ours before. The two concerns I have, though, are that the game will end up with the defender acting for a large portion of it (if I want 25 or 30 figures on his side, he'll be drawing double the cards of the other players) and that keeping track of wound and shock tokens will get messy with so many troops on the table.

What do you reckon on those points?

[Tom Reed]

Be worth taking a look at FUBAR. You can stat out the different units and the rules are simple...and free.

[Hobgoblin]

Be worth taking a look at FUBAR. You can stat out the different units and the rules are simple...and free.

That's a good call. I've really enjoyed FUBAR every time I've played it. The 'raiders' would probably have to be one-man units with five hit points, though (to allow for the asymmetry in force sizes). I'll definitely have another read through the rules - it's a great game. Thanks!

[has.been]

1) Give the defender standard stats (easier to remember)
2) Number (or if you have time name) all the defender's figures.
3) Give the defender a sheet/card with a space for each numbered/named figure.
    Use the space to record (i.e. put tokens on)  for wounds/shock etc.
    also have a space to put a token on. That will tell you which has moved this turn.
4) Only give the defender a limited number of cards, say ten.
    This will both speed up play & concentrate the defender's actions on crucial areas.
    As umpire feel free to give the defender some extra cards (2 or 3) occasionally.
    Explain this as 'A sudden rush of bravery' or 'The sergeant is shouting' or some such.

Hope this helps.

[fred]

In GH Grunts only have 1 wound so will get removed fairly quickly - which will help with counters

[Hobgoblin]

Many thanks, both - excellent points and food for thought!

I've just been reading through the GH grunt rules and the Pulp Alley gang rules. I'm probably leaning slightly towards Pulp Alley at the moment, purely on the basis that the rules seem to accommodate larger figure numbers without 'stretching'. The gang ability in PA is more like Rogue Planet's "figures as hit points" system, so is probably a little less fiddly to manage. I suspect the ability of grunts to act individually could slow things down quite a bit in GH. The single wound would help, but I think shock might complicate things.

Also, the 'mob' rule would allow the defender to get even more troops on the table fairly manageably - and I've got some irregular-looking Gorka Morka orks painted to match the heavier, more regular Mantic types. So the defender could conceivably have four gangs, two mobs and a leader for 31 figures in total, but for the same points as each of the two attackers.

Against that, I'll really need to read up on how PA plays, because we've played it much less and it's been quite a while since the last game. So GH's definitely still in the mix.

Am I missing anything that works against Pulp Alley in this context?

[Hobgoblin]

Another thought: if we use FFoL, I could play rather than referee, so that the defender has two commands over which to split the troops. That would allow larger numbers of grunts without bending things. I wonder if that might change the character of the game, though, by encouraging the raiders to cooperate.

Mammoth miniatures - I did have a look at Planet 28 (which looks great - I'll pick up a copy once I've reconciled my Wargames Vault/DriveThruRPG log-ins!). I wonder if the relatively high hit points per figure might count against a game in which one side has a lot of miniatures.

The game itself is shaping up: dozens of orkoid defenders (possibly with a Mekonish leader if time allows!), a raiding party of motley aliens and some off-world dragoons riding exotically coloured horses.

[Hobgoblin]

And another query: I see from scanning reviews of Blasters and Bulkheads that it's designed to allow large numbers of henchmen. Does anyone have any experience of that game, and if so, how does it handle more than two players (specifically three!) and asymmetrical numbers?

Thanks in advance!

[Hobgoblin]

Well, we played the game yesterday, using Pulp Alley. And it worked a treat! It ended up as a four-player game after all, as I thought I'd better run the defenders, who were defending plot points rather than trying to resolve them. That gave each of the three players a league. When one player lost his fairly early, he took over the defenders - and the game was finally concluded in a three-way battle over the major plot point.

I was very pleased with how the Gangs rule played out - quick and intuitive, but allowing the defender to have 22 models on the table rather than five or six. I ended up giving him a heavy gunner with Long Blast rather than two Mobs, but I reckon the game would have played just as well with 31 troops on the table (Leader, four Gangs, two Mobs).

Best of all was that we were able to give the Pulp Alley rules a thorough workout, so that this group is now fully up to speed with those as well as Galactic Heroes and Song of Blades/Mutants and Death Ray Guns.

My son and I were so impressed with how things played out that we've decided to work on some mini-projects in the form of fantasy Pulp Alley leagues - a good excuse to use up some of the myriad spare miniatures languishing in the lead pile.