Monday, October 24, 2011

Revisiting old rules: RFCM's The Company Rules

Ambush!

A scenario from an old set of rules -  the rules which got me back into scifi skirmishing: The Company Rules from RFCM (Peter Pig).  Years ago a friend was clearing out his un-played collection and I thought I'd give these rules a once-over.  It turned out that they got more than a once-over,  I was playing a lot of historicals and my scifi was going nowhere, after reading these rules my scifi turned around and again became my major focus.  These are deceptively simple skirmish rules with a number of great looking scenarios.

So here for your (and my) delight are the scenarios from "The Company Rules"

1. Ambush

Two trooper teams assault a base defended by two security teams.  Troopers win by destroying machinery (nominated in advance).  Defenders have a once-per-game chance of reinforcements, a friendly trooper team.

Attackers deploy from board edge, defenders start in buildings.

 The Attacking Garn Troopers
 Stinking Hoomies at the Security building trying to get a message through - HELP US!
 To heck with that plan, let's have a beer instead...
 Garn waste no time in attacking!
 Wait, maybe not.  The Hoomies put up a pretty stiff resistance
 Ah, Aimed Fire (before movement - so that's the Hoomie's game)
 The other Garn team advance and decide to dish it out, same as the Hoomies (AF+ = Lots of fire!)
 AAARGH!, dead Hoomies
 AAAAARGH, more dead Garn...
 Facing down the remaining Garn
 Uh Oh!  The Stinking Hoomies got their reinforcements, the wussies!
 A Last Stand, facing down a Garn terror team
 Last chance to open up with all they have
 While reinforcements rush in
 The Garn decide to get out of Dodge
 After taking more casualties, that is.
 The Garn reach one of their targets
 The Hoomie reinforcements rush to intervene
 The Security troops decide to follow-up too
 The Garn opt to blaze away while the Hoomies advance to contact
 Zonk! Whirl! Bleep!  Lots of firing, none of it goes well for the Garn who end up with hits
 Grrrrr
 Advance!
 Set demo charges (the yellow drone), and retreat. The Hoomies opt to blaze way in the open
 SPLAT!  Dead Garn
Game over, a fun, quick and deadly game.  

The Security troops scored well early, but only really got the edge once they got reinforcements.  If the trooper team had not arrived the Garn would probably have got a couple more objectives and the game would have been closer.  This is one of those scenarios where the attacker really has to hustle to achieve their objective, the defenders initially have the advantage, but once on the move they would have struggled later in the game.  The reinforcement are semi-random (event rolled on a dice), next time I may mix it up with robots or Law Troopers and see what happens.

Anyway, on to the next scenario...