I’m not sure what to call this scenario. I put it to my son to think of one, so he came up with the following:

1. We each have an objective we have to defend.
2. You have to ‘tap’ the opponent’s objective (roll, get 8+ on a D10) while defending your own.

Simple enough. We added that you could not successfully “tap” an objective with enemy units nearby just to prevent someone gunning across the map and ending the game turn one before anyone activates.

We started by placing objectives, then deploying. From the perspective above, I chose to try and push forward a battle rifle Vector on my right flank, hoping to get good angles to both defend my objective and take out key defenders of his. On my left flank, I placed my all purple assault rifle Vector, intending to use smoke, my medic, and a leader that can grant extra actions to push forward once I had cleared anyone in the way.

I found myself in a firefight quickly, with my left flank taking heavy fire from both his sniper and the elite troops he had holding his objective.

I managed to push my assault rifle vector forward and put them on overwatch. Between smoke and other shooters, I thought I’d be able to take out my obstacles and get someone onto the point. It uh… did not work. A few flubbed rolls on my end, followed by his medic bot doing its job, led to all four of the above troopers going down.

I leveraged smoke on the other side of the board to hide my melee beast: Lyra. Between her and a shotgun that made it through, I managed to put the hurt onto his men on the roof. I thought I had a way in–one more turn and I could get Lyra onto the point!

Did I mention Lyra was supposed to protect MY point? Oops. By pushing forward with Lyra, I left two battle rifles to protect my point, which my son managed to snipe before running a man straight onto my objective. Luckily, he failed the first roll attempt… unfortunately, the photo above is of both Rina (my leader, who hits on a 5+ with a reroll) and a remaining battle rifle troop uh… missing all of their rolls. My son activated again and successfully stole victory from the jaws of, well, murdering half my Impulse (squad). I guess I can’t call that “The jaw of defeat.”

It was a great match. Genuinely quite tense. When my son ran his guy up the objective, I had this horrible turn of consideration where I had to think of whether or not Lyra could make it back to peg a kill. Unfortunately, she was just far enough away that her 10″ move and three actions would only have gotten her into contact.

Which, funny enough, reassures me that a 4×4′ board is the right choice for the mobility I want. She was just barely out of reach due to the terrain in her way. This was the right level of movement tension I wanted. My son was able to make a mad dash for a win, but I couldn’t make the equivalent dash to keep in the game because I had pushed too close to his objective.

We also tested a new activation system! Kinda. I had this silly idea of giving each player a limited pool of activation points they spent per turn. You would use points until you wanted to end your turn, then give it over to your opponent to use points. The catch is that in each “Turn” here you can only activate each model once, so if you have one model you want to keep activating, you’d have to keep passing initiative over to your opponent. Also, when you hit zero, you skipped a turn.

After discussing the system with my son, we found some gaps. For instance: wouldn’t you then play a game of chicken to get your opponent to zero so they had to pass? Would that devolve into alternating activation or possibly full IGOUGO? It seemed likely to be the kind of system that would break in actual play.

Rather than that, we came up with a simpler solution: we continue to alternate activating Vectors, but there are no more “Turns.” You can activate the same Vector repeatedly, without exhaustion. Previously, you activated one, then on your next go-round, you activated the other. By eliminating this requirement, we did two things:

1. We fixed the “issue” of a Vector being wiped out, leaving a player with an overwhelming situation. This can happen in the game as models can die fast. I wanted to encourage risk, so being able to lose models without just losing the game is vital.
2. We made the game more dynamic and made each choice of Vector activation a real dilemma. Do I keep it even so I can advance my overall plan, or do I focus on the forward Vector because it’s in the more dangerous position?

On balance, this was a great match and I think the activation change really contributed to it. It opens more opportunities for exploitation and more robust decision making. I’m surprised with how much I’m enjoying this little game overall. It’s nothing fancy, but it has proven to be really enjoyable with each iteration. Next month I plan on us painting up whole new Impulses (squads) and exploring different tactics. My son is already chomping at the bit to get his Saurians printed and painted. I’ll likely be doing my Jackals or Space Rats.

A final note: the only things we saw in this game that need tweaking are cloaks and the sniper rifle. Cloak is too good of a skill–it makes you exceptionally hard to hit, so even up close his sniper was relatively safe. Conversely, the Sniper Rifle is underpowered. With only a single dice, it has a high probability of frustration. I plan to either remove its penalty for overwatch or give it a reroll of some kind.

I also need to expand the skill pool, but I suspect this will come with setting up new Impulses composed of different models with different impetus behind them. I’m sure I haven’t covered all of my bases here.

It’s a good start. I feel like the rules are hitting a proper “Alpha” where the core systems are now in place. It’s exciting and I’ve actually bothered to update a rules doc as I go, however loosely. I’m happier with both this and Desiderium than I have been with prior efforts.

Onto slicing up the next round of files.