Sci Fi Romans and Fistful of Lead Big Battles

I recently picked up several of the Fistful of Lead rule sets, a simple yet flexible and fun set of skirmish rules.  The standard FFOL rules are designed for small skirmish but they do have their Big Battles book, which is what I tested out with a couple of friends. The rules are adaptable to just about any era but this time, we tried it out as a sci-fi game.

Years ago I had picked up a number of the old Void game Junkers figures which for some reason were designed as sci-fi Romans.  These inspired me to come up with a "Rome Never Fell" background for this game.

Thus, it is the year 2773 Ab Urbe Condite with the Roman Empire still the greatest power in the Solar System.  It faces only a few great rivals: the Han Empire, the Quechua, and Magna Gothia. This last state is arose from the Germanic tribes who were unable to migrate into the Roman Empire and who were the The Romans were able to keep the various Germanic tribes from migrating into the Empire and pushed them back into what we know as Russia where they expanded into Siberia. Currently, Rome is at war with Gothia over control of the large Central Asian buffer state of Chorasmia.  The Romans had overrun most of Chorasmia when the Goths intervened.

In this game, a force from the Royal Gothic Army with remnants of the Chorasmian regular army and some local partisans have been sent to retrieve a reknown scientist who had found refuge in a Zorastrian Fire Temple in a small oasis.  The Romans had gotten wind of this and sent a strong force to retrieve the scientist themselves.  To win, the scientist had to be found and escorted off a friendly table edge.  The scientist was in one of the four buildings in the oasis.  Each time one of the player's units entered a building, we rolled a dice to see if he was there.

The Gothic force consisted of three 5-man squads, a commander, Houbet Theodoricson, and an assassin, Die Valkyrie.

Their Chorasmian allies consisted of one squad of regulars, two groups of partisans, a commander, Tigranes Bey, and a Hibernian renegade sniper, Dimma.

There were two contigents of Romans.  The first consisted of two 5-man squads of legionaries, a mountain gun, a commander, Centurio Valens, and a gladiatrix, Nova.

The other Roman contingent was made up of two 5-man legionary squads, a 3-man squad of gladiators, a commander, Tribune Carinus, and a gladiator hero, Crixus.

Both sides were allowed to secretly place one land mine.  The Roman mountain gun found the Chorasmian mine on the first move, losing two crew members.

Despite this, the Romans advanced rapidly into the village.

The Chorasmian regulars ended up stalled in a face-off with the Romans over a goat pen.

The gladiator squad rushed the advancing Goths who went into cover.

Domma climbed a roof of one of the buildings hoping to set up a sniper position.  However, Nova was waiting for him and after a fierce fight, killed the rebel Celt.

The Romans had gathered around the Temple itself and a partisan squad charged them but were wiped out to a man.

However, this distracted from the Goths who advanced toward the Temple.

The Valkyrie was unleashed and seemed to devastate on Roman squad.  However, the luck of the gods was with them and their losses were soon recovered.  (FFOL uses a card mechanism that not only controls initiative but also acts as special events.  In this case, the Romans drew a card that allowed them to recover the two casualties they suffered.)

The Goths charged the wall surrounding the Temple and drove the Romans back.

But not before the Tribune discovered the scientist hiding within the Temple itself.

With the Romans preparing to withdraw, the Goths made a final push.

The last Gothic reserves were thrown into th fray.

A partisan squad amazingly won a close combat against the Romans and drove them away from the goat pen.

The Chorasmian regulars were now free to advance but discovered the Roman land mine and were routed.

Nova single-handedly destroyed the last of the partisans.

Despite heavy losses, the Romans held the line.  The Goths were reduced to firing their grenade launchers at the retreating scientist, hoping to gain a tie by killing him.  Despite repeated landing hits on the target, the Goths failed to kill him.  Tribune Carinus was able to get the scientist off the board with one hit point remaining.

Rebels of Space Deep - Star Wars using the Frostgrave System

There is a Facebook Group for Rangers of Shadow Deep, a solo/cooperative fantasy skirmish game by Joseph McCullogh based on his Frostgrave system.  Someone on the group recently posted an adaptation for Star Wars, called Rebels of Space Deep.  My group decided to give it a try.  We found it really matched the feel of the movies. 

Here's some pictures.  I should note that we are not big players of the various Star Wars games and so my collection of such miniatures is fairly limited.  We had to use a number of substitutes, in particular I have no distinctively white-armored Stormtroopers but used some Space Nazis instead.  I hope the purists are not overly offended.

The scenario we played involved a group of rebels attempting to find a droid in a vast junk yard just outside Mos Eisley on Tatoine.  The droid contained a file with a listing of all the Imperial informants and double agents in the galaxy.  The heroes had to find the droid, retrieve the file, and escape to their spaceship in a hidden hanger in the city itself.

Our heroes included a Jedi recently escaped from a decades-long imprisonment in carbonite, a rakish Smuggler and his Wookie companion, a dashing pilot, and a commando droid.

Our heroes boldly enter the junk yard.

The smuggler lucks out and discovers the droid in the first pile of junk he investigates.  (There were 6 clue markers set up randomly in the junk yard.  When a player investigated it, there was a chart to determine what was found.  It turned out the first clue investigated gave the result of the droid.)

The pilot proved less lucky and encountered some Womp Rats.

 The mission became more complicated with the arrival of a storm-trooper patrol  The Jedi met them boldly, and using his light saber parried every blast shot back at them.  The storm-troopers are all dispatched but not before alert the rest of the garrison.

The pilot hears a noise but fails to identify it.  It turns out to be more Womp Rats.  They nearly kill the pilot but the Jedi helps dispatch them.

Meanwhile, an agent of the Imperial Security Bureau surprises the Wookie but the shot is missed.

 The Wookie responds by picking up the wreck of a small dune buggy and smashing it onto the agent.  (The wookie player rolled a natural 20 on his strength check, I let him use this a Fight roll and it easily killed the agent.)

 The party is able to leave the junk yard thus ending the first scene.

The players enter Mos Eisley proper

But are careful to avoid the guards at the Hutt's palace

Imperial reinforcements soon arrive to stop them.

A fierce gun battle erupts across the square.

The Jedi strides openly towards the storm-troopers hoping to draw them away from his companions.  

He is successful but finds himself surrounded.  A surprising tought Imperial NCO brings the Jedi down to a single hit point.  

Fortunately, he is able to cut his way free from the storm-troopers.  The commando droid flings the Jedi onto its metallic back, rushing to safety, using his light saber to parry the incoming blaster fire. 

As imperial reinforcements begin to arrive, all of the heroes are able, at the last minute, to board their spaceship and escape.

The High Crusade

We ran a short, three night campaign based on an idea from the Poul Anderson novel The High Crusade, although I switched the setting from the 14th century England of the novel to 12th century Holy Land. We used Howard Whitehouse's new Outlaws of Sherwood rules. Here's a bit of a narrative using some pictures from the games:

The year is 1175, The village of Hurran on the border border between Syria and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem with a small Muslim garrison under the Kurdish warrior, Jahir ibn Batul. He has recently captured the brigand Kasim the Beautiful who has raided a caravan of Frankish pilgrims. A Frankish noblewomen, one of Kasim's prisoners, Lady Melisande, has fallen into ibn Batul's hands. Ibn Batul is waiting for further instructions from Damascus.

The village sa'ir, Soraya, has had a dream of fiery death coming from the sky. The local imam is not happy with this.

Further disputes are interrupted by the approach of a Frankish army. Under the command of the Hospitalar Brother Tancred, it is composed mostly of the retinues of the brothers Verney, Guy and Fulk, newcomers to Outremer eager to prove their worth on the Crusade.

Ibn Batul conducts tense negotiations while Brother Tancred endeavors to keep the Verneys from starting a war.

Suddenly, a great fireball streaks across the sky and crashes into the hills a few miles away.

Saracen and Frank agree to a truce to investigate. The combined forces set off.

The tensions between the two parties nearly explode during an oasis stop but Brother Tancred manages to keep the sides from open combat.

A shocking discovery, the fireball was a great iron tower that has fallen to earth.

Sir Fulk of Verney, the rash younger of the two brothers, investigates and finds a strange demon knight who he immediately challenges to combat.

Fulk, using his heavy mace, smashes the false knight. But then a wizard appears and point a magic wand toward him. Fortunately, older brother Guy comes to the rescue and dispatches the foul enchanter. With these evildoers dispatched, the tower is looted and the parties return to Hurran to carry on their personal dispute.

Realizing his garrison is overmatched, ibn Batul surrenders his prisoners to the Franks. He then attempts an elaborate scheme to frighten the Franks into retreat where some troops he has dispatched will ambush them.

However, ibn Batul is not aware that the pilgrim caravan that Kasim had attacked is still nearby looking for vengeance. The pilgrims are led by English yeoman, Wat the Brewer.

The pilgrims destroy the Saracen ambush force, only a few horsemen escaping.

No one had taken into account that the strange creatures might return.

The great flying disk descends, a voice coming forth from it in Latin and Arabic demand surrender of all they had taken from the crash.

A host of strange metal beasts are landed along with more of the flying automaton knights.

The strange invaders use a beam of magical light to shrink the villages and levitate them onto the disc. Then they make the mistake of trying to seize the Frankish women, Lady Melisande included.

Chivalrous Sir Guy charges to the rescue. Brother Fulk is not far behind.

This leads the Franks to rise up against the invaders. The longbows dispatch the automatons.

The metal beast are encumbered by the rocky terrain and destroyed.

Sir Guy rescues Lady Melisande.

Soon the lower deck of the disc is swarming with Franks and Saracens.

The Franks batter at the doors to the upper deck. Unbeknownst to them, the disc flies into the sky.

The Franks overcome the defenses on the upper deck.

Searching for the missing villagers, the Muslims unwittingly release an assortment of monsters from their metal cages.

The Captain of the ship is a woman! Never having known chivalry, she falls to the charms of Sir Guy.

She tells them that they have all been kidnapped and are heading to another sun, the outpost of her people, the Zenithians. A deadly reception is being readied for the Earthlings.

The Zenithian army awaits.

Ibn Batul has brought along a camel-load of Greek Fire that Kasim had hidden in Hurran. With this, they use an improvised camel device to deliver the Greek Fire onto the fuel tanks of the spaceport.

The sudden great explosion caused by what had been reported to be savages panics the Zenithians. They are routed and the Earthlings capture the spaceport.
Allahu Akbar!
Deus Vult!

To be continued....