Another Day in the FiveCore - Part 2: Reinforcements have arrived.

 A low pitched rumble approached. The noise was rising, a small dust cloud neared, and then, beautiful, sweet relief emerged from the cloud - two Ranger scout cars. The lead Ranger was crewed by Anders (driver) and Caldo (gunner). It was the transport for Vandro's squad of marines. The following Ranger, the true reinforcements held Mira Ashwood and her veteran squad of grunts. It was crewed by Vera Thorne and Jaye Wun, driver and gunner respectively. 

Vandro's squad had been holding onto their position for two hours now and dusk was approaching. It was decided to set up a perimeter and try to find out what the hell was going on at this farm. What were these things, and what did they want? A more heavily protected science team were on the way, but wouldn't make for another few hours. 

Ashwood and squad de-bussed. Raines and Brax took up positions on top of the farmhouse while Ashwood, Drayton and Quade took cover behind some logs and crates. They had good arcs of supporting fire. Raines and Brax would radio down anything they saw. Thorne drove the Ranger around and parked it further down the entrance track, covering the field where Christensen's squad had been massacred earlier in the day.

Vandro's squad took up the right flank, grouping up behind the crates with Simmons covering a blind spot behind the grey out buildings. Anders kept the Ranger close, also covering the open field.

Three creatures charged headlong into withering fire from the marines and the Ranger. The heavy machine gun did a lot of damage, killing one of them and knocking another one down. Hopefully the science team wouldn't take those few hours to arrive. 

Three more creatures prowled through the field on the left flank. Seeing the rustling of crops the Ashwood's marines readied their weapons.

The Ranger and marines opened fire, killing two of the beasts and sending another one scurrying. They got too close. Ashwood warned the marines to not let this happen again.

Simmons came on the comms to announce the appearance of three more of the creatures at the rear of the farm. The marines were surrounded!

Some of the creatures charged at the marines. On the left flank one of them got caught in reactionary fire from Wun in the Ranger, it decintegrated in a hail of gauss fire. It wouldn't be troubling anyone every again. On the right flank an advancing creature came under fire from Kreel on the truck. It went scurrying away. Meanwhile Simmons engaged the beasts facing the rear and stopped one in its tracks. It took far too much ammo to achieve that though.

It was this point at which I remembered a thing called Reaction Fire. My understanding is that an enemy caught moving within 4 of a figure can be shot at with kill dice from that figure/another figure. Any movement over 4 can be reacted to with only shock dice - no killing but you can shock and send them to cover.

Recovering from the shock of the fire one of the creatures managed to jump up onto the truck and tussle with Kreel. Claws ripped, tail stabbed, Kreel went down in a pool of blood.

 

Another creature ran at Simmons and was shot at ineffectually. 

On the left flank Raines and Brax rained some fire down on the creatures, sending a few of them looking to stay alive. It looked like the marines might be able to hold off this onslaught. 

Caldo tore into the charging creature with the Ranger's HMG. The rest of Vandro's squad withdrew back into the farm complex. Quade turned to support the right flank and fired his auto cannon on the beast that killed Kreel. 

Disaster! Another three figures started hulking up at the rear of the farm! 

As the creatures prowled forward around the rear of the farm Brax and Raines opened up a storm of fire upon them, sending a few running the other way, instinctively trying to avoid the stinging fire. 

On the left flank one of the creatures ran through Ashwood's fire to take Quade down. He managed to bring his auto cannon to bear and got of some rounds but it wasn't enough. The spearlike tail tore through flesh, muscles and organs. His frag armour did not protect him this time.

Simmons retreated to the roof of the farmhouse. Anders drove the Ranger into the courtyard. The marines on the roof poured enough fire at the charging creature to stop it in its tracks. It was getting close though. They all were, and there didn't seem to be an end to them.

The creature that killed Quade charged at the Ranger but was taken out by heavy reactive fire from Ashrood and Drayton.

 

More creatures were running at the marines, sensing weakness. More heavy reactive fire stopping them in their tracks. But not stopping them far away enough. Things were looking dicey. Vandro commed Ashwood - it was time to circle the wagons and get the hell out of there. There was no way they were going to hold out until the science team arrived. 

Pulling the Rangers in close, it was time to embark and drive like crazy. All marines ran over, shooting wildly behind them, hoping to keep these beasts at bay. 

They were everywhere! No matter how many you killed, they just kept coming. Bloodthirsty predators, hardened warriors, what were they? It was going to require more for the science team to get hold of some of these for study. 

Pedal to the metal, it was time to get out. Flooring it both Thorne and Anders managed to evade hitting any of the creatures. It was time to head back to Fort Nelson and regroup. Warning the local population? Well that was a call for command to make. Vandro, Ashwood et al. could just report what they had seen and get ready for the next round. Command wouldn't want to cause a panic, the local sector govenor might agree, but ultimately the marines had bigger guns and better troops if it came down to it. 

Five Parsecs Campaign Turn 2. Communication Breakdown.

 Welcome back, a year later, for the continuation of my Five Parsecs campaign. I have been excitedly writing down the existing characters and rolling up three new characters. My crew is six humans all with various backgrounds. There are the original three characters from the first game, then the person who joined, and the other two grunts. Each of these are now a full character with a background and possible abilities. Some of the names changed though.

Augustus Holmes (Blue top, rifle)
Origin - Religious Cult
Motivation - Glory! Defeat the biggest and baddest!
Class - Hacker. Re-roll one hack/intrusion per mission
True Believer - On a BAIL result, move 6" towards nearest enemy.

Aralay Brenk (Red had, blades)
Origin - Primitive/Regressed/Out in the sticks
Motivation - The hunt for tech of any kind
Class - UCS agent. Add a goon with rifle on 1 or 6 on 1D6 if fighting mutants, dissidents, anarchists.
Counter Attach - May reroll when attacked in brawl.

Ward Roberts (Orange Armour)
Origin - Lower class mega city
Motivation - Order. Disorder is bad
Class - Bounty hunter. Find a single use patron on 1 or 6.
Free auto rifle

Oslan Baratski (hood and bag)
Origin - Industrial world. Resourceful but probably a filthy red.
Motivation - Power. Wants to be on top
Class - Trader. Roll twice on trade table and pick best.
Psionic - Premonition. Each campaign turn, pick one enemy and DON'T roll for it. OR pick one and roll twice.

Mao Yung-Zu (Oriental hat)
Origin - Military brat. High parental expectations.
Motivation - Freedom. Lots of space left in Fringe Space
Class - Traveller. Roll 1D6 on a new world to generate a patron.
Talent - Tough. Ignore first hit each game.

Estelle Phillips (mask and bag)
Origin - Dystopian hell hole
Motivation - Find the best tech
Class - Scoundrel (basically does nothing)
Lucky - When a bad thing happens, roll 1D6. On a 6 they escape with no ill effect.

A few months on the go and the crew of The Pelican were ready for a restock and refit. They also needed work, and besides, some time planetside would allow them to breathe air that hadn't been recycled countless times. This would be nice. 

Ward Roberts was still recovering from the gun wound from the scavenging job, and Augustus Holmes was assigned to guard the ship, local law enforcement being what it is. The rest went out to find a job and try to trade for some upgrades. Luckily they managed to find someone willing to pay them to do something, although it might be dangerous.  

In a break in the woods there lies a small, hidden enclave. Local law enforcement don't venture there out of either fear or due to the right cash going into the right pockets. Neither is good. Both put public trust in these lawmen at somewhere between zero and nil.

A small group of renegades who have been trying to stay below the radar, but one of them went missing a few months ago. They tracked their missing person down to a press gang, who basically kidnap people and sell them to any military or paramilitary organisation will pay. This led to a skirmish, and the press gang now feel like they can cash in, report the existence of this group and sell them all off. To avoid this, the renegades tasked the crew of The Pelican with destroying a communications array. It should be lightly guarded by a couple of armed gang members, but it was a small operation.

To begin, the crew advanced in two groups hoping to catch any defenders in a cross fire

Unfortunately they were too slow about it and one of the defenders caught them out in the open. He fired off a few rounds and hit Estelle Phillips...

 who crumpled and fell to the ground. Augustus Holmes promised to come back and check on her, if they survive that is.

Ward Roberts and Augustus returned fire and the enemy fell. Unsure if seeking cover or injured they stayed where they were just in case.

Meanwhile another ganger got caught in the open by fire from Mao. Nothing came of it though with the shots kicking up little plumes of dust and grit.

Another ganger attempted to flank the crew but took fire. It was also ineffectual but slowed his advance as he thought better of moving away from cover.

At the same time Roberts and Holmes took more fire from the ganger, who had shot Phillips. Holmes panicked and retreated behind a nearby clump of trees.

Another ganger advanced to get into better gun range, but took fire from Aralay Brenko and Oslan Baratski, going down in a hail of bullets and blood.

Another gang member came under fire from Baratski, panicked and retreated around the rocky outcrop. Brenko and Mao dashed up to close the distance and get behind the rocks.

Mao took fire from a ganger but it went wide, he still wanted to find cover though, just in case.

More shots rang out and Roberts took some hits, bullets punching through his armour. The trauma modules kicked in to try and save him as he led there bleeding.

The gang member responsible for the most carnage tried to advance on Holmes. Unfortunately for the ganger Holmes had rallied and opened fire first, knocking him back again.

The panicking ganger retreated further away from Brenko, especially considering she burst round the corner, handgun blazing! Slugs found another gang member and he toppled, unmoving to the floor, a red pool seeping out underneath him.

Brenko then charged up to the formerly panicking gang member, blade swinging! She forced him back, desperate to escape her humming blades. In the background Baratski managed to set up explosives on the communication array.

In an attempt to support Brenko and Baratski, Mao ran out of cover to charge over to the communications array. He took fire, panicked and ran back into the cover of the trees.

The earth shook as the explosives detonated, rendering the communications array unusable, and turning it into so much scrap metal! Mission accomplished, although it was not a cake walk. The remaining gangers ran, fearing the attention the explosion and resulting smoke plume may bring, while our hardy crew took a moment to take stock and check on their wounded comrades. 

Upon reaching Robterts, Holmes discovered it was too late. The trauma modules on his armour had not reacted well enough to save him, and the armour itself was too damaged to use without serious repairs. Phillips on the other hand while bleeding heavily was able to use the med-gel to seal the wound and has a big scar across her face. On the bright side she might be more useful to intimidate people now. 

The walk back to town was a sombre one. Ward Roberts would be missed. Brenko's comm unit beeped with an incoming call and their contact arranged a time and place to meet and get paid. 

I didn't enjoy this game very much. I feel like I rushed into it (with days and days of planning) and wasn't familiar enough with the combat rules. I had excitedly rolled up enough characters to have a full crew of 6, and then did all of the campaign turn stuff, ignoring that one of the crew probably shouldn't actually be allowed to be on this mission. I rolled up the mission which looked promising, although I forgot that the original target was to destroy a "nano fabrication machine" (communications array seemed better anyway). They had originally traded for a thing that basically allowed me to ignore 1S result in the game, which I should have done. That was all fun. I enjoyed it. But the game itself, I ended up referring to a badly printed PDF of the FiveCore 3rd edition rules, while trying to look at my character book, and remember all the benefits I had. It made me wish I was playing Starport Scum a little bit. In fact, why can't I play Starport Scum mechanics with the Five Parsecs campaign structure?

The combat in FiveCore is brutal. People go down quickly, whereas Starport Scum seems to be more about telling heroic stories with almost impossible to kill characters.

Bug Hunt with 5Core

When did I buy 5Core? Not sure. Within the past few years. How many times have I played it? None times. Starport Scum is my go to small action fighting, and recently I thought I would bust out Clash on the Fringe, the original sci fi rules that I bought...and have since never used. But, while re-reading it, my copy of Five Parsecs from Home (also unused) fell out of the folder. I started reading that...then realised it is only a campaign making book, and the skirmishes need to be played via 5Core. So I set about reading those. To be honest, there was a lot in there, and I am not sure. I like some elements of it. Maybe even loads of elements. I am just unsure about it. Maybe I am scared of trying something new. 

Thus I decided to go bug hunting. Next game I will try and do a bounty hunting thing.

Another day, another hunt. Across the galaxy there are countless small settlements, where people from all backgrounds eek out an existence on the fringes of society. This place is another nameless-armpit-of-the-galaxy settlement. A few families with a ship and a dream. Places like this draw little to no attention from anyone other than the odd pirate or slaver raid. That is, until they do draw attention. 

In a room, in a basement, on another planet, equipment beeps. Listening posts like this are all over the galaxy, programmed to flag up certain words, phrases, or strings of code. One such string of transmissions contained enough to be sent on to an actual human. This desk jockey in turn pushed it up the line. And so on, and so forth and here we now were. A detachment of marines sent to the ass-end of nowhere to investigate.

Two squads of marines advance through the woods to find the small settlement.

At the lee of a mountain range, the small settlement seemed deserted. It was time to move on in, searching each building and the spacecraft.

I set it up that each turn, the marines would have a turn, then I would roll to see if a xeno spawned somewhere. Then, when they search a building, a roll of 1 would find a civilian, whereas a 6 would find a xeno.

One squad advanced up to one of the buildings.

One squad advanced cautiously up to the settlement spacecraft.

For activation then, to see what I would be able to do this turn, I rolled 1, which is "scurry". All my squad can activate and move, but may not fire or anything.

While searching the building a xeno burst out of the wall! Contact! 

So the marine who made a search action rolled a 6. Searching is instead of firing.

One marine backed up and opened fire, sweat dripping! It was Johnson's first combat mission. The xeno scurried for cover.

Hutchins, 1st squad's plasma gunner crept around the building to open fire again on the xeno, causing it to climb behind the building to shelter from the high powered fire.

In game terms, I rolled a 1 on a kill die, which means it was "knocked down" and would need to rally if it wanted to activate.

Suddenly the xeno ran up to Hutchins, causing him to panic and retreat into the woods. 

This was a brawl. Each rolls, and if attacker wins by 1, then the defender panics (retreats 6 inches). Attacker can then move 3 inches and brawl again. The xeno has the ability where it can roll two dice and pick the highest.

The xeno then moved on to attack Johnson, causing him to fall back behind the building.

This was a "follow up". It is quite powerful. I asked Ivan from NWG on Discord and he said that technically you can "follow up" as many times as the dice allow, so I could have done it a third time, but didn't.

Seizing the initiative again, the marines open fire...

This was actually because the turn type that the xeno rolled was a "Firefight" meaning no-one moves and everyone who can shoot shoots, on both sides. Because xeno can't do ranged fire, I allowed him to charge and attack. Four marines had LOS to the xeno so could fire. You can't shoot over another character's base. Time to get smaller bases amiright?!

...knocking the xeno down.

Xenos have an ability called "tough" where if they are knocked down, or out of action, then they can re-roll the kill die and if they score 1 or 6 then they aren't knocked down or out of action. If they get 2-5 then the original result stands.

Taking advantage of this momentary respite, Martinez unloaded almost an entire clip, splattering the alien across the sand, acid blood sizzling around its disintegrating corpse.

This might be the point at which I realised that if you are shooting at a target in the open and are within 12 inches then you add another 1K to your roll, doubling the chance of a kill.

With the immediate threat gone, second squad regrouped and carried on advancing to the building on the western edge of the settlement. 

Likewise, the main part of first squad advanced to the landing pad to take a closer look at the space craft. It looked like it had been mid-unload and the colonists are just...gone.

Second squad searched the building only to find a terrified settler who explained that he thought all the others were dead and he had been essentially holed up inside for two standard months eating nothing but ration cubes, waiting to be found and...well it didn't bear thinking about. He then scurried off, the isolation having done a real number on him. Poor sod.

While searching the spacecraft first squad again found another xeno! It was time for another showdown, but this time with a traumatized civilian in the mix!

Almost reflexively, Martinez let rip with another few bursts of fire! It caused the xeno to pause, and look for an easier target!

Again, the xeno was knocked down, but that doesn't sound too good in battrep narrative speak.

Recovering quickly, the xeno stormed over the half loaded truck right at Smith and Brown. Smith tried vaporizing the xeno with his plasma gun, but missed wildly.

This was reaction fire, when I discovered that you can only react to an action with one other figure. Shame.

The xeno leapt at Brown dismembering him without even a second glance!

It then pounced on Smith who also went down under a flail of limbs and assorted other members.

Johnson and Martinez both opened fire on the xeno as it approached them, both falling back with discipline, covering each other.

The xeno managed to catch Hutchins, who managed to fight free and fall back in an attempt to join his comrades. More marines joined the fray and this xeno was blasted apart by concentrated rifle fire.

Or at least I think it was. I don't remember it being killed, but it definitely was. Maybe even in this brawl by Hutchins. 

 

The civilian made for the mountains, likely to die of desert exposure or dehydration.

As members of first squad approached another homestead another xeno appeared! They had just gotten rid of two of them, how many more are there?!

This is the only time a xeno actually spawned. If there were no xenos on the table and it was their turn, I rolled and on 1 or 6 one spawned. Then a die roll to see where.

Lightning reactions from the Johnson, Martinez and Siebert allowed for enough fire to cause the xeno some problems, but not eliminate it.

Unable to get a break, Hutchins goes toe to toe with his third xeno, but this time in the struggle, while managing to shoot off a limb, the acidic blood sprayed all over him, killing him.

Getting better at this, second squad advanced up to the final home and uncovered another xeno. However, rapid reactions, and pinpoint fire made quick work of this one.

Upset at the loss of Hutchins, Martinez opened fire a final time, shredding the xeno in accurate fire. The settlement had been searched, cleared, and would now likely be ravaged by scavengers, picking on the corpses of the fringe worlds. There were likely enough supplies here, and a functional ship and vehicles to keep someone's crew flying for a while now. It wasn't everyday a settlement just disappeared.

I enjoyed this game. 

1. I regret facing xenos, because I would have liked to experience a real firefight. I will, however likely return to this settlement with a couple of bands of scavengers to duke it out properly. 

2. I love the 1 and 6 mechanic with dice. I like the kill and shock dice mechanic. 

3. I LOVE the activation structure. I can really get behind activation systems that limit how many you can activate, or if all then what they can do.

4. I will actually finish reading the rules to see if there are any pre-made characters that I can use. 

Nordic Weasel Games produce some good looking, run to read rules. I love the little narratives at the beginning of his books. Starport Scum is my all time favourite, but this was fun. And has potential. If combined with Five Parsecs, then I might have a game on my hands. I might also use it at school with the kids...if we ever go back.