Gaea Prime: First Defense or "X-COM Please Don't Sue"

 

Let's face it, whenever I see a new sci-fi skirmish game, it seems like the first thing anybody asks is "Can it do X-COM?"  If for some reason you're not familiar with X-COM, it was an old computer game of tactical skirmish combat that explored fending off alien infantry, raiding their crashed ships, and researching the remains to reverse-engineer all of their cool tech to use against them.  Great game.

Gaea Prime: First Defense is basically that: GP's first encounter with alien slavers raiding the Earth for resources, and the adventures of GP's armed forces as they kill the aliens and loot their bodies for research fodder.

Here's how my first game went...

Weasel-Hammer: White Scars vs. Orks!

 Hello, Humans!

This September is Weasel-Hammer month!  What does that mean?  It's a loosey-goosey campaign set in a lost corner of the Warhammer 40k universe, but mostly played with Nordic Weasel Games games.

In the fractious and war-torn Mustelida sector, some kind of Warp disturbance has cut off that region of space from outside communication and travel while dark forces begin pouring in.  Whatever Imperial elements that happen to be trapped there are the only hope for Humanity!

"In the grim derpness of the far future, there is only w... weasel!"

Laserburn: Nostalgia Kills

 Sometimes you can't truly appreciate what you have, or what you've lost, without going back and (re)discovering it for yourself.

Laserburn is one of those things that bears experiencing. It's a sci-fi game from 1980, which if you're reading this in 2020, was about 100 years ago.  This was apparently before the time of common word processors, or technical writers or editing I guess.  Clearly this was type-written and then copied to make books.  But who am I to talk?  I was alive in 1980.  How many beloved games did I write? :)

I actually didn't get into minis games until much later, so I don't have any nostalgia for the game, but I'm also kind of a gaming hipster, so I at least had to try it.  Here we go.

Knyghte, Pyke & Sworde: Objective Battle

 Hey!  It's minis time again!  Finally!

I asked some folks what I should play next, and they said KPS again, so don't blame me.  Unfortunately, the short notice prevented me from painting up new guys, which really is a shame, but I decided instead to mix it up by playing an "Objective" battle this time.

I'm playing both sides, as usual, Blue vs. Red again.  To get objectives, each side rolls twice on a table, in the open, but then secretly chooses one of the two objectives.  The objectives are then revealed, and both sides roll for deployment type.  Blue ended up with "Find the Loot" (secure one of three random tokens) and Red got "Slay the Leader" (kill best opposing Captain), and for deployment I rolled the relatively boring "All Forward", which is just a normal "everybody starts on their side" setup.  The game will only last 4 turns.  That doesn't sound like a lot, but man, there was so much blood in so few turns!

TSoY: Maybe it's Me?

Previously, on The Shadow of Yesterday...

DUN DUN!

"What's going on here?  Where are the minis games?"

I know, I know.  This is just something that I have to get out of my system.  I've got plans for another minis battle report soon.  Maybe next weekend.  My gaming table is my work desk now, so things are more of a hassle to set up.

Anyway, Pedro, outcast member of the Red Company, and his Ratkin sidekick, "Chaser", have shacked up with a clan of bandits in the wilderness, and in a night of drunken camaraderie have agreed to help them knock over a guarded coach carrying valuable cargo.

TSoY: Some of My Best Friends Are Thieves

Another RPG recounting?  Is this what I'm doing now?  I don't know.  It's kind of neat in the moment, and it's a chance to try these games that I'll probably never see in action otherwise.

This is another "adventure" set in the World of Near.  In the previous adventure, Pedro "The Butcher" Vina was hurt pretty badly, and wandered off into the forest, losing track of his ratkin companion, "Chaser", who was last seen trapped in a hallway with approaching soldiers.

I decided that, if this were a TV show, the next episode would pick up from Chaser's point of view, so that's what I did!

TSoY: The Thing in the Tower

I used to be all about the RPGs, but at some point I lost my knack for them.  I might (maybe) be an OK GM, but I am just awful as a player.  Still, I like RPGs and I own a bunch that I've never played (which I'm sure you guys can relate to), so I decided to try the whole "Solo RPG" thing which for some reason feels really new.  I don't know.

First, the game I'm playing is "The Shadow of Yesterday", or rather "Solar System" using the "World of Near" supplement.  I honestly don't know how best to describe the system, but it seems pretty fascinating to me, and the setting is kind of cool, too.

In a nutshell, it's a fantasy world 100 years after a near miss from an asteroid ripped off a chunk of the planet to create the moon.  The world (especially the formerly great kingdom of Maldor) has a bit of a fantasy post-apocalypse vibe.