Anyone Still Playing Starship Troopers?

[Roebeast45]

I've been building a collection of MI minis and was wondering if MI versus MI battles were possible with the existing rules. I'm thinking about an anti-Federation revolution game. I haven't played it yet but a lot of the rules seem to be very bug vs MI centered.

[Conquistador]

The board game?  Conversion is an intriguing idea.

The Mongoose miniatures game?  Sold the books off, so no.

Is there another miniatures rules set by that name?  I would hate to have missed something!

My first SST games back in the dark ages of the 1980's (maybe a bit earlier) were using the Star Guard rules...

Gracias,

Glenn

[Jonas]

We have played it a little bit and also tried converting the rules for VSF.

I guess we are going to play some more SST again in the future, but probably depending on if I ever get my MI painted.

I would think MI vs MI games are possible. The rules are good, but the army lists are broken, so unless you are planning to play against some powergamers I would think you could just bend it to whatever you feel work for you and your group.

 

[maxxon]

Yeah, I painted up troops as a project earlier this year and we played a set of games.

Here's one of my game reports:
http://www.smallcuts.net/blog/?id=1271

Pure warrior bug forces are really boring to play, IMHO, but with more variance in the bugs you get a more interesting (and balanced) game. It still won't be a shooting game, though, as the bugs don't really get any worthwhile shooters.

In a shooting game there may be some balance issues as the light infantry are really really cheap and they put out huge volumes of fire for the cost.

[tnjrp]

Yep, we tried Mongoose's Judge Dredd "conversion" game and it didn't really work that well -- it ended up as a very boring massed shooting dominated one. Now there were probably a lot of issues aside of the mechanic in that one but regardless, the rules did seem to be rather strongly geared for MI vs. Arachnids specifically.

[maxxon]

Yep, we tried Mongoose's Judge Dredd "conversion" game and it didn't really work that well

Well, Battlefield:Evolution is pretty much the same game with just a couple of minor tweaks so I guess they thought the basic mechanics would work in a firefight too... though that game is dead too.

There are a lot of good ideas in the game system, IMHO it is let down by poor rulebook organization (finding stuff can be really difficult) and the insistence to micro-model every single doodad in the source material like a gazillion different types of grenades which leads to information overload which leads to grinding gameplay to halt.

[tnjrp]

As I recall, one of the low level mechanics bits that changed between the box set version of SST and Bf:E is that in the latter, only one reaction per turn is allowed. In and of itself however that would've made only a minor difference to our experience of the game. One supposes some other features of the forces, terrain or whatever were tweaked as well.

[n815e]

I played that game a lot, it is a fun game.
Mongoose's website still has the Signs and Portents magazines for download from that time.  Lots of new/experimental stuff to try, including a rebellious human colony list.
Every so often I paint up 6mm forces to return to this.  Once I've got enough, I'll start reintroducing it to my group.

[The_Beast]

Actually, the second Avalon Hill SST based on the movie wasn't half bad; we had some movie toys to substitute for a few of the standees.

Never thought of as a blue-on-blue game, though. I'll have to dig it out.

Doug

[6milPhil]

Being on the cutting edge of modern gaming I started an ST project this year and will be having troop on troop games, but I'll not be using the Mongoose rules, probably use some of Akky's rules, or FUBAR.