Meeple Trek

After catching the awesome 60's girl rock style band Jetblack Bullseye...

All coolness. (I love you, Kenley!)

...at Brooklyn's Knitting Factory on Friday night, I got all retro with my bad self this weekend and dug into Donald Featherstone's Skirmish Wargaming for some retro fun because there's nothing more retro than 40 year-old war-game rules, baby!

All grognardness. (I love you, Don!)

Keeping it retro, I used toys I had on hand - meeples for my minis and Jenga blocks for my terrain (wished I had LEGOs). The theme of the game was retro as well - Star Trek. Here's my landing party, wearing the classic colors of the old TV show. Commanding Officer (gold - Veteran), Science Officer (blue - Average), Security Officers (red - big one, Average; others, Novice).

Their mission: Beam down to Gobbledegook IV and locate the missing scientist who had been trapped under one of these piles of rubble among the alien ruins before the Gorn find him. (One phase needed to scan, six phases to dig him out.)

I used the "Sigma 9" Special Rules for the weapons and the solo guidelines appendix for how the enemies would function. The solo rules - new to the Curry edition - are 60's lounge lizard super casual, using percentile dice to decide "big picture" stuff on the fly. For example, for each phase, I determined there would be a +10% chance of the Gorn beaming down. My percentages also determined where they would appear. Below, you can see that, unfortunately for the Federation meeples, the green meeple Gorn appeared during Phase 5 in the freaking center of the table (lowest prob of that, btw)!

No need for a detailed AAR, here. The "red shirts" went down first, of course, and the other two Federation officers fared badly enough to warrant a hasty retreat without so much as an inkling of the location of the scientist they had been sent to rescue. The Gorn meeples probably ate him later. Still so much fun! These are skirmish rules that invite tweaking for period and theme without ever getting heavy, and I so very much appreciate being able to have access to them (thanks, Mr. Curry!).

Man, sometimes simpler is just better...