I'm more than a little excited. Way back in the early 90s, a very non-grimdark, real dirty cyberpunk set game called SLA Industries was released... is "grimpunk" a thing? I think it is now. It was a roleplaying game with sourcebooks dripping with evocative lore: I read them cover-to-cover more times than I can count. And the art!Recently I happened across the fact that the game has been kickstarted as a miniature wargame called SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1. Kickstarter challenges aside, Nightfall Games has released a pdf of the rules for less than five Aussie Dollars. So how does the system stack-up? What makes it different from the thousand other skirmish systems out there? Here are my early impressions.
The Game Turn
There are four Phases: (1) Maintenance, (2) Initiative, (3) Main and the (4) Commercial Break - that's how they are listed in the book, but after playing the game, I think it's easier to think of Maintenance as the fourth, not first thing that happens in the Turn sequence. Not to worry, it doesn't really change the way the game's played any.The Initiative is pretty standard - a roll-off, sometimes with modifiers, and the highest-scoring player goes first during the Main Phase. During the Main Phase, players take turns to activate units. An Active Unit completes all its actions (of which there are typically two) and the play then passes to the opponent and goes back-and-forth until all Units have been Activated. The Commerical Break is where victory points are awarded and conditions checked - that may mean the end of a scenario. I like the Maintenace Phase idea, I could see that resulting in some interesting compromises and decisions during the gameplay. The Maintenance is where lingering effects (e.g., bleeding) take their toll - meaning that you'd be well served to address such problems ahead of your next Turn.
Actions
Units can normally perform two Actions per Turn, but not of the same type. Action "Types" include Movement (e.g., Advance, Run, Charge), Combat (Ranged or Melee attack) and Interact (e.g., flick a switch?). Normally Movement Actions must be performed before Combat. Again, pretty much normal stuff. Oh yeah, movement is measured and shooting has ranges :-)Unit Profiles
Units have a Move, Melee, Ranged Attack, Defence and Fear stat. The base rules describe half a dozen Factions (with a little more depth than you're standard shooty, meleey, toughies etc), each with 4-ish profiles apiece.
Something a bit novel is Fear. It acts as a debuffer when Units are combatting one-another at close ranges. I thought it was a great idea: I like the thought of a Patrol's ability to hold the line suffering as horrific adversaries close in. More about that later.Units also have Hit Points and Armour Points. Tracking hit points has never really appealed to me and my initial reaction to seeing Armour Points included was similar. BUT there is some interesting thing here: Armour soaks damage and the remainder then is removed from the Unit's Hit Points. By way of an example:
A Shiver Pacifier is fired upon by an Autorifle wielding Scav Maurauder. Scav Autorifles do 4-points of damage, two of which are soaked up by the Shiver's Body Blocker armour, which has two Armour Points. The Shiver's Hit Points are reduced by 2-points, from 5 to 3, and the Shiver's Armour losses 1-Point.
Should that Shiver be shot a second time, his armour would soak 1-point (reducing it to scrap) and 3 Hit Points (4 damage - 1 soak) would be removed, bringing him to zero - meaning he will likely die. More about that later...
So two shots from a nasty assault rifle type thing will take out a human armoured target. Works for me. As you'd expect there are plenty of different weapons, all their own ranges, damage and special modifiers e.g., +1 damage vs an Unarmoured target or a successful hit allows for an additional, bonus shot.
Equipment
There is a lot to choose from: over 20 distinct Melee weapons and Armour types, about 40 Ranged weapons, various Combat Drugs (an important thing in the setting), Gadgets and Grenades... heaps of stuff with lots of variety without resorting to simple 'bigger = more damage" type formula. Mind you, that could prove to be something of a challenge while playing, trying to remember each piece's special attributes etc, but probably no worse than many other games. Oh yeah, Equipment is costed (Credits), is sometimes scarce (meaning some pieces aren't available to some Units/Factions) and comes with an encumbrance (so a single Unit can't just rock up with a flamer, cannon, machine-gun and sniper rifle).
Skill Checks
Skill Checks are quite straightforward: both the Attacker and Target roll (typically) 2d10, sum their rolls, apply modifiers and compare. If the Attacker's sum beats the Target's, then their attack was successful. Modifiers are things like cover, Point Blank, melee pile-ins/assists and Fear. Having a versus system keeps everyone involved which IMHO is a good thing. And now for something innovative...Margins of Success (MOS) and Ratings
Those Skill Checks I mentioned - when comparing the Attack vs Defender, the larger the difference (aka the MOS), the more damaging the attack. E.g., a "Compelling" MOS (a difference of 5-8) adds an extra 2-points of damage to a successful Melee attack or an additional 1-point on a ranged attack. Take that example above a little further, a Compelling MOS with a Combat Blade (normal damage of 3) would boost the blade's damage to 5-points, enough to slay an unarmoured human outright. So damage can be boosted to account for differences between the attacker and defender etc - nice.Also, those MOS can yield Ratings. Ratings are akin to Command Points employed in many games - a notional limited resource that can be used to perform additional, more powerful or altogether special actions. Each Faction starts a game with a small supply and further Ratings are earned when Skill Checks yield large Margins of Success.
SLA has this concept of Bullet Tax, which encourages melee by awarding more Ratings and boosting Damage more for melee rather than ranged attacks. It's actually consistent with the setting and I quite like it, making for a more heroic, exciting game.
Abilities
Those Rating Points can be used to cash in on both general, Equipment and Faction-specific Abilities. There are heaps, everything from Adrenaline (adding extra inches to a Run), Pure Grit (boosting melee attack/defence), adopting an Overwatch stance, Medic!!! (healing comrades - so that Shiver who was stabbed might just get the help he needs to survive yet), deploying Equipment Caches or booby-traps and even Propaganda (giving Rating earning boosts). Some abilities can be employed at any time, whilst others only in certain circumstances. Seriously, there are tonnes of Abilities detailed, I'd guess over 30 in total, and I'd say they add an immense amount of colour to the factions and game. The Faction-specific Abilities are very thematic, really sticking to the source material.Sounds great, so what's the catch?
Well, there's none really - nothing that I'd call a deal breaker at least. The book is well laid-out and edited, includes decent examples, lost of depth and hasn't gone over-the-top with meaningless detail. There are also six scenarios included and they actually make use of the game's innovative mechanics and unique factions.The game also references vehicles and the Ebb. It was a shame that the base rules don't include vehicle stats - apparently, they're available if you buy the hardback book and/or miniatures, that include unit details in a card. The Ebb, which is like a force of nature than only a few can control, allows for all sorts of magic, warp or psychic powers. The book details over two dozen Ebb-related things, but much like vehicles, doesn't provide any stats for Ebb-enabled Units. Similarly, the SLA Industries World of Progress includes Operatives - mercenaries or independent contractors in the employ of SLA. Those Operatives include various races and skill-sets... things that, if available in the game, could really make for something very special. Alas, in the pdf that's available, they're not.
What next?
Just this weekend I trialled a 12-inch square terrain square, with the Cannibal Sector, soaked in hundreds of years of grime, ruin and pollution, firmly in mind. If I can find the time, I might go about making some more - 9 such tiles would provide the standard 3x3-foot battleground for the game.
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| All manner of crud in that picture! I'll likely do a bit of a tutorial one day "How to sweep up crud from your shed and stick it together" |
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| Here are some Chaos types making their way to a picnic or whatnot. Filthy! |
I suspect I'll work on the tiles some more, maybe try my hand at creating a QRS and some Unit Cards (the RPG Unit Card Generator has served me well previously) and see if I can talk some of my gaming buddies at Axes & Ales to give it a try. Not sure what I'll do about minis just yet... mmm...
Post-script: We played a game...
I offered to try and GM a game between two of my mates, James and Brendan. James played Carrrions (using GWS Tyranids as proxies) and Brendan Shivers (using Tau). They played a loose adaptation of the Prime Time scenario (victory goes to the highest remaining Ratings at the end of Turn 6) using the terrain readily available at the club on the night. Both guys used vanilla 120-credit lists as follows:
So it was a classic shooty (Shiver) vs meleey (Carrien) match-up, with both sides trying to trump one another and control the board's middle which had the added bonus of awarding additional Rating Points when held.
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| The Prime Time Zone was the three cratered terrain piece in the table's middle. The Shiver deployed from the screen's bottom-left, and the Carrien from the top-right. Terrain courtesy of Knights of Dice and Axes & Ales. |
So what did we learn?
Our basic math skills suck: you'd think the act of adding the results of two d10's together, adding some modifiers (only adding, not negating!) then working out the difference between the two player's results wouldn't be too difficult. Maybe it was the beer but on more than one occasion we had to resort to counting our fingers!
Comprehensive Unit Cards are a must: granted we were newbies when it came to the rules, but flicking through the book etc sucked - so much better if everything was laid out on a single card. A bit of google-fu and I found an official-looking Card that would help some but to be truly useful, it should have references to the Unit's Abilities - faction, traits and equipment-based - as well.
I was thinking of something like this (a quick mock-up on a PowerPoint type program):
Damage Resolution was quirky: we weren't using any of the many alternative load-outs that the equipment list provides for, so I suspect that my impression was somewhat biased. It felt kind of right that a Shiver could wipe a Carrien off the table with a single attack. On a single attack it was possible, if not unlikely, however, two hits on the Juvenile Carrien would certainly mean game over. I suppose it is just bloody and mechanically it's quite different to Kill Team's hit-toughness-armour-wound sequence. Not wrong, just different.
Abilities - There are heaps: I am sure that knowing how and when to mix-and-match your Abilities is one of the games' fundamentals. We struggled to know how to do so - well it was our first game - but I can see it being lots of fun. It might be useful to differentiate Abilities e.g., label some as Passive, others Active or Situational...
How did the game play? The Carrien made their way from the North to the objective in the middle of the table using a pincer movement, with their lack of ranged attacks mitigated somewhat by the ruined buildings through which they scampered. It took 2 Turns for the Shiver to get to decent firing positions, but they didn't have the weight of fire to hold back the horde.
The movement mechanic was interesting - the Carrien could move (a base) 6" and ignore difficult terrain vs the Shiver moving 4" and reducing to 2" in difficult terrain. That was pretty telling. I thought the Fear mechanic would have made more of a difference, but because it has a 6" range, it
During Turns 3 and 4, both Players were getting into the swing of using their Rating Points e.g., boosting combat dice by using the Pure Grit ability or movement range using Adrenaline. By Turn 5 both sides had taken some casualties - it struck me that the Shiver Elite were holding their own - the extra point of damage afforded by the Combat Shotguns meant that they could (if they were lucky) take out a Juv Carrien with one shot.
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| With the Carrien Alpha securing the Rating Zone, the rest of the horde moved in for the kill. But those Shiver weren't pushovers! |
Of course, we made a few mistakes with the rules as we were learning - like the use of the Shiver's Pacifier Baton's Stun Ability - that may have swung the game some, however, I think the terrain layout favoured the Carrien more than the Shiver.
Did we enjoy it? Yes, we did. It wasn't overly taxing mechanic-wise and the whole trade-off decisions regarding when to use and how to earn Rating Points was quite novel. Roll-offs for each Skill Check added to the excitement so that was a thumbs-up. Book-keeping sucked, but it wasn't particularly overwhelming or anything. If the game is suitably promoted and supported by the designers, I could see it being a real contender in the sci-fi skirmish market, it has a lot going for it. I'm looking forward to another game in before too long and maybe even acquiring some of the models one day.