I opened my final Christmas gift today. "I'll play any wargame you want" - from my wife. So we set up and played Perilous Tales. She picked Firefly characters for the heroes.
The Scenario: Another ruffian has stolen Mal's cargo and taken a prisoner. He fled to a lonely ice moon called the "North Pole". He was sending ransom demands to Mal when suddenly all transmissions stopped. Mal and his crew have landed and are tracking them down. But what happened to the bad guys?
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| The setup. Black markers are the unrevealed Threat Markers. |
With 2 players, we went with:
Team 1: Leader Zoe, Jayne, and Wash
Team 2: Leader Mal, Simon, and Inarra
We picked our traits this time, didn't roll for them.
The objectives were also picked:
1) Rescue the Prisoner
2) Find the Loot (Recover Equipment)
3) Steal the Truck (new one): The red truck is special to my wife. It had an additional loot marker in it. Anyone could successfully interact with it and drive it off the board.
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| Team 1 at the top, my team at the bottom |
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| Half the team. Forgot to photo the others. |
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| Who is the prisoner? |
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| Jayne searches for loot, doesn't find anything. Wash tries the truck, and finds a loot box already in it! Zoe won't go to the building because it would trigger a marker. |
After the first crew searched, Mal's crew went to work. Both Simon and Inarra found loot boxes.
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| Mal rushed to the prisoner, triggering a Threat Marker. |
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| It's "Unsteady Ground". Mal stays on his feet and unmasks the prisoner. |
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| Hey, Preacher. Let's get you out of here. |
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| Simon drags his box back to the truck and jumps in with it. Preacher jumps in the truck (later I moved him to the bed). Inarra makes it back to the truck but can't get on board. |
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| Everybody starts piling up on the truck. Jayne takes overwatch. |
At this point we were feeling very lucky. The 4 back Threat Markers had barely moved. We had only triggered 1 marker so far. We knew that if Wash got into the driver's seat of the truck, it would trigger a reaction.
So Wash, with his "handy" ability, climbed into the passenger seat and hot-wired the truck. The Villain phase was minimal. So next turn he slid into the driver seat.
TRIGGER! It's the assistant boss, Number 2. A giant evil Christmas Tree with all sorts of special abilities. It attacks Wash in the cab. And it rolls a 10 for difficulty!
(Yes, it should have rolled Advantage for the first attack. But Wash was in cover (behind a closed window), so it should have had Disadvantage. So we rolled 1 die for the difficulty. It was a 10. Just to be fair, we tried again. Another 10.)
In both games so far, every big-bad-guy has rolled fails for difficulty multiple times. I know it is just an anomaly, but still...
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| Attack, Miss. |
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| Attack, Miss. |
An absolutely pitiful showing for the evil monsters. Now it was our turn. Jayne took careful aim with Vera and shot great big holes in the tree, wounding it. Zoe (who took Brute as a skill) ran up and engaged a giant, whipping-branches, Christmas tree in hand-to-limb combat. And then proceeded to cut it down with her hands!
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| Zoe starts chopping at the evil tree |
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| Clark, where is the station wagon? |
With the tree out of the way, our band is able to start moving. Inarra managed to get the loot on the truck, but stayed on foot. But at this point, 2 hazards had been revealed, and the truck had to pass between them. "Unsteady Ground" and "Mired". For Unsteady Ground, we said that anybody who failed their skill check would fall off the truck. Wash would just fall out of the seat.
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| First round of movement, and Preacher falls right off the truck! |
Finally, the Threat Check caused a minion to spawn. An Evil Snowman popped out of the snow right on Inarra! Oh No!
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| But Inarra took "discrection"... |
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| And slides away from the snowman before he can attack. |
On the Villain activation, another snowman spawns, this one on Mal. He rolls exceptionally well, clawing Mal for multiple wounds.
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| Ow! |
But next hero phase, Jayne and Zoe blast multiple rounds into one snowman, putting it down. And Mal scores 4 wounds on his snowman. Just like that, they melt back into the snow.
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| No more bad guys |
All that is left is for Wash to drive us off the board before the Threat Level gets to 10. The other Threat Markers just can't catch up. But Wash has to drive through both boggy ground and lots of bumps.
Just before leaving the board, Wash hits a big rut. (Unstable Ground). He fails and is knocked out of the driver seat.
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| "Ace Pilot" forgot his seatbelt |
Final Hero phase. Inarra daintily steps off the board. Mal, Preacher, Simon and Jayne leave. All Wash has to do is get up and drive the truck off. He gets up for his first action, does an Unstable Ground check, and falls over again. Maybe Zoe should have done some inspiring talk on him.
Instead, Zoe slings herself into the front seat, shoves Wash to the side, then passes all her skill checks to drive the truck off board.
AFTERMATH:
So, in retrospect, this one was too easy. Part of it was luck of the setup. Some of the threat markers were too far away to have an effect. And the ones we did draw were mostly minor. The one big baddie we drew blew his dice rolls.To make this a better game in the future, I would change one thing: Make the Heroes get the truck back off their starting edge. Give the truck faster movement (6"), but that would take them back through the other Threat Markers. Or at least make them exit the starting half of the board.
This is who they were supposed to see:
