Space Pirates!

[Mezillious]

A friend of mine who as come along to the occasional Space Crusade Nerd Night said to me the other day "How's the Space Pirates game going?" and I thought - what a fantastic idea!

So for this week's game, I have bought a sheet of clear plastic which will cover the entire table and I will draw a grid over it to represent space. Each marine team (including a librarian) will start in their own vessel which will move through space in the same way that the dreadnought does, only a bit faster. The ships will then dock with the board pieces which will be spread throughout space giving the player a tactical choice of where to board the ship. There will be more than one board section so it will involve players returning to their ships and heading to the next board piece.

Rules:
- Ships can only be operated by Commanders
- To dock with a board piece, the vessel must line up the door section to the area of the board they wish to breach. They must then roll 2 red die and score 2 or higher.
- When the ship rotates or turns, it must pivot around the rear 4 squares (imagine a dreadnought at the very back of the ship and the dreadnought rotates as normal)
- The act of breaching a ship uses the Commander's turn - i.e he cannot leave the vessel until his next turn (I may change this to he may leave but not attack, depending on how it works in play).

This game will use a bunch of extra chaos marines but there will be no re-inforcements - the primary mission will be to capture a chaos lord who has 2 or 3 squads of Chaos Marines under his command. The Chaos forces will occupy one 'space station' and the alien forces will occupy another. Secondary mission will be to destroy the dreadnought.
The minatures will be placed at the beginning of the game but will not move until the ship has been breached so blip tokens will not be used.

Anyway, I'll post pics later in the week and let you know how it went - any feedback is welcome or other ideas you think of to incorporate.

Mez

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Nice ideas here

I'd be tempted to make 2 minor changes before using the rules myself

Mezillious wrote

- Ships can only be operated by Commanders

This would mean that once your commander died your troops are trapped, instead I would mark 1 square in the shuttle as the 'control square' and whichever marine the player places in that square controls the shuttle

Mezillious wrote

- To dock with a board piece, the vessel must line up the door section to the area of the board they wish to breach. They must then roll 2 red die and score 2 or higher.

Unlike the larger Space Marine Assault Ships your shuttles don't have the docking claws required to brake through the hull of another space craft. I would designate several Airlocks/Docking points on the main board pieces which the shuttles can latch onto and board once the controlling marine has used his action to initiate the docking procedure    

BTW: WotC did some nice Starship floor-plans for their D20 Star Wars miniatures game which would be really nice to use for this scenario

[Mezillious]

I like the rule about docking at specified docking gates, i'll try that out. Part of the reason for the commander piloting the ship is that in all the games we've played only once has anyone been left with any units that weren't their commander, we tend to play pretty conservatively with commanders.
What are your thoughts on the Commander or pilot being able to move/attack after docking the ship?

[Mezillious]

I never got around to posting the pictures from this game but it worked quite well. The green squares are hatches on the hulk where the marines can dock.



It actually worked really well, however I only got 1 chance to try it out. Once everything settles down again I'll have to give it another go.

Mez

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[Mezillious]

That's a nice looking template, I might have to use it!

I hadn't thought about enemy ships but I was considering defence turrets located at certain points throughout the map.
Maybe the turret needs to be manned in order to fire. The ships would be given am armor value - say 3 - and a heavy weapon - maybe you lose 1 marine for each point of damage you take while not docked at an airlock.

[messyart]

Look at the Arvus and use that.

A land speeder would never suffice for that kind of role.

Mostly 'cause, you know.. Land speeder.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Agreed - A Landspeeder is a anti-gravity skimmer, not a Space Ship and it certainly doesn't have anything to allow it to dock with a Space Craft like a shuttle does

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[darklestat79]

That all being said I really liked the idea on this thread and I had a thought that might be cool but I don't know if it's a good one. If your going to lay out space like that and are allowed to go to different places. maybe you could lay out different size plants and moons that players could go to. Then lay out those plants on a side table to able to lay out the landscape once they have landed there. Maybe the have to go there and answer an S.O.S from a down ship or something. Just an idea.

This may also be a good place to answer this question. Lets say your on a plants surface theory you can see across the board. but the planet is huge so players could not see that far what modifers or rules should you use for line of site. this answer would also help me when making open areas of hero quest. Thanks to anyone who can answer this.