Interlude: Gangs Of Tatooine

In addition to my love of "Five Leagues From The Borderlands," I am a fan of the parent system "Five Parsecs From Home." It is a science-fiction solo miniatures wargame that has spawned three add-ons: "Salvage Crew," "Gang Warfare," and "Bug Hunt." All three of the additional games are compatible with the base system and each other. It's quite an elegant system.

But before we get too involved with my current project, a little history is in order. The original "Five Parsecs From Home" was the science-fiction supplement for FiveCore, and was designed as a two player game with a reasonable solo play adaption. I really love FiveCore, and I played a couple of games of Five Parsecs as well. Mostly I was playing WWII with it, set in Manchuria in early 1945 and following a small group of chinese bandits trying to survive a crossfire between the japanese and the russians. Then I wanted to play british vs. germans in 1941 North Africa; I bought some stuff, started working on it, and then got wrapped up in other projects.

FiveCore WWII game set in Manchuria

Somewhere in there, a second edition of Five Parsecs was released, designed for solo play. I was pretty excited until I realized that it wasn't FiveCore Solo, it was a whole new game system. And so I put it away; later "Five Leagues From The Borderlands" was released using the same core rules, so I tried that out and it was pretty good. I spent some time playing it (and "Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago," and "Rangers Of The Shadowdeep.")

Recently, I started again with Five Leagues second edition (mostly what this blog is about) and my mind wandered back to "Five Parsecs: Gang Warfare." I had been playing the first edition of Five Parsecs from Home as Star Wars, following a small gang in some remote town on Tatooine. And I figured it's about time I started playing again.

FiveCore Five Parsecs Star Wars game in progress

Quite a while ago, years ago really, my friend Brian handed off a large quantity of the collectible WOTC plastic Star Wars miniatures. I was pulling from this cache to provide my forces; I liked the Star Wars setting, but I wanted something lower in power than the Jedi Order vs. the Sith and all that. Essentially, street fighting between regular guys. FiveCore was perfect for that, and the Five Parsecs from Home expansion was even more perfect. So I played a couple of games of Gangs of Tatooine, and moved on to other projects.

So now I am feeling that "Gangs of  Tatooine" itch again, this time for the new Five Parsecs: Gang Warfare. I still have all my old Tatooine terrain, I still have all my notes on the old gang (the Gamos Krayt Crew, to be specific,) and I have not just the core Gang Warfare rules, but a bunch of nifty extras I have acquired over time, because Ivan is a prolific writer. So there is really no way around it: I am just going to have to create a new gang on Tatooine using the new rules. Maybe I'll introduce them to you soon.

A bit of my Tatooine terrain; I have more, but never took pictures.

"Five Parsecs From Home" and it's expansions, including "Gang Warfare," can be found here.