Dadhammer: Stargrave Dead or Alive Skirmish Reports

I am slightly oversaturating my blog with game reports, but I have an excuse. Backlog! Well backlog and laziness, so I have two excuses! Backlog, laziness and it's fun to write game reports. I have three excuses! You know what, let's assume we all know where this bit is heading and move on to the gist of it. Here are two quick and dirty skirmish reports from recent Stargrave Dead or Alive games I played with the kids. Dadhammer at its finest :). 

Vexx the killer robot has been on the run for nearly a century. Will he survive crossing the mean streets of this nameless frontier town?

In case you've missed one of the greatest skirmishing games ever (I'm a shameless fanboy), Stargrave allows you to build a ten person band of space rogues. If you want to be very traditional about it, you can build a band of rogue traders. It's all up to you, if you feel it, you can also play space pirates, rogue robot researchers, a mysterious Jedi master space mystic, the captain of an organic starship, or anything else that tickles your fancy. Whatever you pick, the rules will support you in your endeavors. All you need is one miniature to represent a captain (or whatever you want to call your boss), another to be the first mate and eight fellows to represent the warband they command.

Stargrave is regularly expanded with new source books. Dead or Alive adds rules for bounty hunting space felons, scenario rules and expands the rules for solo play. On reading it, I realized this add-on is perfect for Dadhammer games (games with your kids). Managing one warband together against the board stimulates cooperation, lets everyone roll some dice and allows bored kids to leave the table without interrupting the game. Best of all: the basic Stargrave rules are very simple. You can make stats up as you play. This allows you to reduce (or increase) the difficulty without the kids noticing it. Having said all that, these are the two scenarios we played.

One of the great joys of playing skirmish games is that you can really stuff the table with scenery.

Dead or Alive game #1: Taking out Vexx

Dead or Alive has a few rules changes from standard Stargrave. The book contains twenty unique 'marks', each with its own powers, backstory and AI flowchart. It also has twenty locations with their own special rules (for instance a derelict ship, a star port or an abandoned mine) and twenty complications (like aggressive plants, herd beasts or magma geysers). For the first scenario I told the kids to pick a captain from the Stargrave miniatures in the display case. They picked Burna' Bot, because he looked pretty fierce with his orange body. They followed up by picking four squad mates (we played with a half size warband). 

A killer wardog attacks our purple haired runner, just as he was about to hack a data terminal.

We played the game using the 'Metropolis' scenario (in a distinctly Frontier Town looking setting). This allowed me to add a few moving vehicles, especially a truck, to the game. Our mark, Vexx, was a killer robot gone wild. It gave me an excellent excuse to add one of my Die Hard robots to the table. The mission itself started gently enough. A couple of wardogs attacked the crew, the crew took them down and a lot of (missed) shots were fired. We placed a gunner with a rapid fire rifle on top of a roof. She managed to shoot a few of Vexx's henchmen. 

Even in the midst of a high-tech gunfight, uncaring truck drives prove more dangerous than energy weapons, void blades and killer robots.

After the first few rounds of combat and shooting, our band was getting thinned out and Vexx and his henchmen moved in on us. We had missed a lot of shots and the enemy was eerily accurate (the (alternating) kid throwing for the enemy kept rolling 20s). Things looked grim indeed, luckily a miracle happened. In his haste to close in, Vexx didn't look over his shoulders before crossing the street and a gigantic container truck slammed into him (and a henchman). Both were utterly crushed beneath the unforgiving wheels. As the truck moved to the end of its move for this turn, the future of a third henchman looked grim indeed. We all congratulated each other on our sterling bounty hunter work and called it a game. Total playtime was about an hour and a half (just at the edge of the collective attention span around the table). As a funny aside, even though it looks –very– convenient, the truck crashing into the bad guys was a truly random effect. 

Dead or Alive game #2: The Hunt For a Natcha Broodmother

This scifi table is not covered in terrain I made to complement my Wood Elf army (in progress).

We played a second mission with a fresh warband. This time we brought a full group of ten models to hunt down a Natcha Broodmother, represented on the table by a Tyranid Lictor. This was more of a bug hunt, allowing me to use some spare 'Nids as themed henchmen. We chose a jungle scenario, which added rules for extra (non-affiliated) creatures and poisonous plants. I added extra aggressive plants to the mix and magma pools (both of these because I'd just painted the required models and really wanted to put them on the table).

Hiding behind a jungle temple (some standing stones), the Broodmother spawned more warrior drones.

This game was quite a thrill. While the Broodmother moved into cover and started spawning new drones, fast moving bugs closed in on our positions, while ranged bugs forced us to keep our heads down. 

Gunbot and the captain discovered the fury of slasher drones in the most unpleasant (and painful) way possible.

We lost some time healing the damage the captain and Gunbot sustained during an early close combat encounter. 

As the captain stormed forwards, the living jungle apparently decided to side with the intrepid warband, proving that even trees (and Bileworms) hate Broodmothers.

After the first few rather miserable turns, our luck turned. Our shots actually hit their targets, poisonous plants attacked the bugs and even the wildlife (including some passing Bileworms) came to our aid. To finish it all off, the Broodmother was hit by a violent spray of boiling magma. Taking advantage of her wounded state, we focused our fire on her and managed to defeat the creature. It was another fun game, also with about an hour and a half of runtime. All in all, these were two great starts of a lazy Sunday at home, with a lot of fun and a lot of dice rolling. If you're looking for a Dadhammer fix, or just want a fun skirmish game that can be played solo and with friends, I highly recommend Stargrave (and the Dead or Alive expansion).