Monday, August 18, 2014

Soldiers vs. Insurgents using Five Core

To finish the weekend, last night I played a game of Five Core using the basic rules, plus the Stealth option from the Tactical Primer supplement. In this mission, a group of four soldiers must neutralize a group of six insurgents. Four of them are inside a large house and two are outside, patrolling. Fireteam A is on the top portion of the map, fireteam B is near the bottom.


The soldiers advance cautiously to the insurgents' base. This is the defining moment, when they are ready to open the doors shooting. One of the patrollers is far away (maybe relieving himself?) while the other failed his roll to detect the soldiers.


Fireteam A moved inside through the door at the top. However, an insurgent opened fire making the soldier duck back. Fireteam B entered through the front door and shot down one insurgent. As the firefight continued, both patrollers moved closer to the action and were taken down. One soldier from fireteam A was knocked down and one from fireteam B was taken out of action. Due to these losses, the soldiers started retreating under fire.


Fireteam A retreated through the house, while fireteam B used a narrow street. The remaining insurgents came in pursuit. When the soldiers were about to leave the board, the insurgents managed to hit them, knocking both down. Game over...


Two soldiers were out of action, the other two were knocked down. Rolling on the recovery table, neither out-of-action soldier was badly injured, so I assume they would be taken as prisoners.

Conclusion
I did not take note of the total playing time for the game, but it did flow well, thanks to the few dice rolls and tables. Three nice bits from the rules that I would like to highlight are: the simple reaction fire mechanics, the ability to peek around cover and the action roll, which makes turn sequence a little unpredictable.

In this specific scenario, I thought I should add some extra figures to the "enemy" to compensate for my overall knowledge while playing solo. This was not the case, however, as I played with the basic rules where all figures are essentially equal. The battle might have worked differently if I had added skills for the soldiers, or allowed them to ignore a few shock dice to simulate better training.

5 comments:

Spacejacker said...

I played my first game yesterday, using my characters for 5-parsecs (several skills) vs unskilled gangers. It went amazingly well. My new favourite rules. 5 Parsecs from home highly recommended!!!

Ricardo Nakamura said...

Hey Spacejacker! I picked up 5-parsecs on the weekend but have not read it yet... although I am already impressed to see a 90-page book that is mostly campaign rules and ideas.

Sean said...

Just caught up with the blog. Some good stuff on here Ricardo. The trifolds work pretty well, but I still like your flats the best. Tons of character and style. Thanks for the link back. Happy Photography!

Ricardo Nakamura said...

Hey Sean, thanks!

Weasel said...

Glad you liked it! I was concerned about making sure as much "meat" as possible was in the rules, since it was going to be priced a bit higher than many people expect for a PDF