Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt

 

Hello humans!

An entity on the NWG Discord offered to host a cooperative Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt campaign, and I thought it would be a good way to force myself to actually play a game.  So far, it's working!

Lock and load, Marines!  It's time for a Bug Hunt!

Bug Hunt is a tense game of trying to achieve objectives while (hopefully) avoiding swarms and swarms of xenomorphs, bugs, space-zombies, or whatever other sorts of monstrous hordes.  You start with three "characters", that can gain experience and advance their abilities.  But you also get "support".  This comes in the form of a squad of soldiers that joins you on missions, plus a chance of other assets, like a scout team or a sniper or more squads of soldiers.  The more dangerous the mission, the more support you might get.  Unfortunately, the "better" the support, the higher you have to roll on 2D6 to acquire them.  On an unlucky streak, you might end up with nothing! (Except for your one starter squad.)

Hey, I can see my house from here!

Without going into the high-level details, let me just say that this is the map, with the redder areas being the most heavily infested by alien horrors.  I chose a green area because it seemed smart to start easy, although that area was "swarming", meaning there were more aliens in it than normal.

My team included Albrecht, Bevins, Conrad, and the "free" Fireteam.  Because this was a "Priority 1" (i.e. "low priority") mission, I got one Support Point, which I spent on a relatively easy to acquire squad of Colonial Militia.

Every Campaign Turn, you can send your characters out for training.  Albrecht and Bevins passed the Marksmanship training, giving them each a permanent +1 Combat Skill bonus.

Stay frosty!

At the beginning of the game, there aren't any aliens on the table, just Contact markers (aka "blips").  Unfortunately for me, there was one right outside of our deployment zone, and we were greeted by five aliens! (It would normally be just 4, but "swarming".)

Boo! Hissssss!

Because this is a "5 Parsecs from Home" spin-off, it uses the same sort of initiative, and I rolled to see how many of my units got to go "first".  I got lucky, and my Fireteam and my Colonial Militia got a head start, and managed to completely kill all five aliens before they could attack!

Machine gun to "BRRRRRRT!"

My forces advanced as quickly as possible.  Two of the Objectives were relatively close, the black box from a crashed hovertank, and an area near a doorway that needs to be scouted.  Conrad accessed the hovertank, but five more aliens spotted her.  Luckily, we were able to mostly neutralize them, though only two were killed.  The other three were either wounded (which is almost as good as dead) or Stunned, which just delays them for a turn.

Go away!  We're trying to get to that Objective behind you.
What are you even doing in the kitchen?

At start of every round after the first, a die is rolled for each level of mission Priority.  If any come up with a '6', a new Contact spawns on a random table edge.  Rolling only one die, I didn't have any new Contacts wander onto the table.  However, every round, the Contacts move in a random distance in a random direction, and when this happens, they might also split into two different Contacts.  This did happen a couple of times, but they remained at the back of the map, so I didn't see them.

They're inside the room!
You're reading it wrong, man!
Oh, yeah, you're right.  They're way in the back.

You can see the blue tokens here.  These are "Tactical Locations", which are control points that can allow you to hinder the alien forces.  I didn't mess with them in this mission, though.

While all of this was happening, Bevins was strolling down the left half of the map to the third Objective, some supplies from a large, green crate.  He didn't meet any opposition, and picked them up without a problem.

This should have been a close-up of Bevins.
But there he is near the left Objective.

Finally, with all of the Objectives completed or collected, Albrecht called for an "evac" and everybody ran for the landing zone.  All of the remaining Contacts were still on the back of the table, so escape was pretty easy this time.

Marines! We are LEAVING!

This went pretty well, but it was an easy mission with Objectives that were relatively close to me.  The next mission will likely be more difficult.  The other players did pretty well on their missions, too, though the post-battle results would have the aliens retake one of the sectors.

My characters earned XP, and with the XP gained during character creation, two of them manage to buy a Reaction (initiative) increase! Yay!

Again, this was pretty easy, but I still saw some combat and it was tense and I had fun.  There's a lot of random, though, so it easily could have been more of a challenge.  I'm looking forward to my next mission.

Tired of stand-up fights, and looking for a Bug Hunt?  Get it HERE!

Ĝis la revido!

Jason "Ludanto" Smith C;E