Friday, September 1, 2006

THW 5150 Game Report

A buddy and I had a quick little pick up game last night. We decided to try out Two Hour Wargames new Sci-Fi rules, 5150.


I'm not a THW rules expert, although I've fooled around with some of their older games like Chain Reaction and Muskets & Mohawks in the past. These rules are faily similar to Chain Reaction in their core mechanisms, but include a campaign system (something other THW rulesets have received a lot of praise for).
I am NOT one for lawyerly rules, and can't make it through three pages of most board (or, perhaps, BORED) games rule sets, but in the past, I have found THW rulesets to be too imprecise and poorly worded for me. I've had a hard time figuring out what the real intentions of the rules were, although I kept fooling around with them because there seemed to be some interesting concepts in the rules. 5150 is the best I have seen from them in this regard. They could still use some improvement, but I would call them of average clarity and after one quick read-through, I felt ready to try the rules. There was one subtle wording I found that I missed out on by reading the incredibly active Yahoo group (only inactive players make an In Sight test, a change from CR2).
We ran just two identical squads, a Rep 5 leader and four Rep 4 squaddies, all with Range 48" Targets 1 Impact 3 weapons. He ran figures from his Ratskins Necromunda gang, and I used my Superfigs G.U.A.R.D. Tac Team.
He immediately got three turns of unanswered movement, sending two squaddies up either flank and his leader up the middle. I finally got active, and shot up his left flank, taking one of his guys Out of the Fight, and leaving each of us with one figure Hunkered Down.






My Hunkered Down guy rallied, and I tried to finish his off but only drove him into the central building, where he Rallied and took up position in a high window. In the mean time, the guys on my right flank show up, shooting one of my squaddies out in the open. The Ratskins leader gets Knocked Down a couple of times, but is still okay.



I sprint for the central building and my leader gets Obviously Dead from the Ratskin in the window, and a lot of fire is exchanged, leaving him Hunkered Down.



One of my squaddies gets into the central building and makes it to the Hunkered Down ratskin. Reports differ on what happened next, but he wasn't heard from again. In the meantime, the Ratskin leader is behind the same building, waiting to make his move.



My squaddies have the front door covered, but the sneaky Ratskin leader Fast Moves through the back door and into combat! Unfortunately for him, he gets the worse of it. One of the last braves makes a move on my other squaddie, and goes down, too. The remaining Ratskins (or Ratskin) fail their morale and Go.


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