Almost seven years ago, I had game with my daughter, who was six. Today, I had a battle with my 6-year old son. To keep the tradition going, I dusted off my 15mm science fiction miniatures. It was a battle between the gray corporate troopers and the shiny sliver cyborgs with their pet red xenomorphs. The cyborgs had the advantage in numbers, so to even things up, the Corporates had a large, missile armed mecha thing. I was too lazy to find my sci-fi terrain, so we just put some brik-a-brac in the middle of the table.
Rules
I used the same
rules as the original game back in 2011, but I added a few extra updates:
Movement:
To speed things up:
Humans & Cyborgs: 4"
Xenomorphs and mecha: 6"
Running is still 1D6 added to movement, but xenos can fight after movement.
Shooting:
Same ranges as before.
Mecha's rockets are same range as RPG but gets bast radius of 3"
The mecha gets to shoot twice.
Saving throws:
I added saving throws to the rules.
Cyborgs get a saving throw of a 1 or 2 if hit.
Mecha gets a saving throw of 1, 2, or 3 if hit
Mecha damage:
My son thought this up and I tweaked it:
All mechas have 6 points of damage.
If it fails above saving throw, roll a D6:
1-3 takes 1 point of general damage
4, missile launcher knocked out, in addition to 1 point of damage
5, a gun is knocked out, in addition to 1 point of damage
6, cockpit is hit, pilot wounded, mecha can't move or fire next turn; 1 point of damage
When damage reaches 6, mecha is destroyed.
Xenomorph control:
These rules don't really have any morale checks, but later in the game, I imposed some for my troops. There was a pre-game "discussion" with my son about the xenomorphs. According to my son, the cyborgs have control over the xenos. I respectfully disagreed. I came up with this rule for control of the xenomorphs, but it was never used.
During each cyborg turn, roll a D6:
1-5, Xenomorphs obey cyborg orders.
6, Cyborgs loose control.
The bugs will: 1-2, do nothing; 3-4, continue to attack the opposition; 5-6, turn on the cyborgs.
The cyborgs can only regain control on the next turn with a roll of a 6.
The Battle
My opponent holding some of his troops and getting his game face on. T-shirt seems to be apropos for this game:
Starting positions:
Objectives:
There really weren't much. Mine was to recapture the plastic bead storage facility. The cyborgs were to just kill all the humans. The corporate troops split up into two squads that were to go around the storage facility. The mecha was to engage the cyborgs on top of the facility.
Most of the cyborgs were arrayed on top of the plastic bead storage facility:
Cyborg general making his moves:
First squad engages with cyborgs who have a large missile-armed robot with them:
Second squad is attacked by fast-moving xenos. They managed to knock off a few at longer range before being overwhelmed:
Hand to tongue combat begins...
...*nom, nom, nom*...
Not looking good here, either:
Two surviving corporate troops decide its time to scram:
The mecha covers their retreat:
Cyborg general looking pleased. Couldn't quite knock out the mecha despite a hit to the cockpit and the missile rack, but game clearly goes to the bad guys:
