Three Witches Vs. Pinkfluffdoodle IV

My inaugural Star Fleet Grammas game of Five Parsecs From Star Fleet went amazingly well. I decided to run the bare bones of a crew for this mission: it was Captain "Granny" Weatherwax, Commander "Nanny" Ogg, and Commander Magrat accompanied by a four-person security team with phaser rifles. The command crew all had phaser pistols. I rolled a 5 for the Mission Assignment, resulting in a Salvage Mission. In fact, I prepared for this game so long ago that the Salvage Missions supplement wasn't even available yet, and I had set it up from the Salvage Crew game instead. So, I  used the information that I had kept for the game. In this case, our intrepid explorers set down on Pinkfluffdoodle IV (one of my three generic sci-fi terrain themes) and set about resolving the Points Of Interest and Salvage.

Our Heroes

The initial set up indicated three Points Of Interest and two Salvage sites. Once I had these set up, I picked my deployment edge of the game board, made a roll, and had to deploy on a different, random board edge instead. This was not starting off well...

Set up: pink tokens are Points Of Interest, and purple tokens are Salvage.

The first turn saw a general sweeping advance into the survey area. One of the Redshirts investigated a Point Of Interest; it was revealed as a Hazard: Risk and was promptly vaporized for his efforts. His movement also triggered a Contact marker in a nearby terrain feature (shown by the blue token.) Another Redshirt managed to recover one of the Salvage markers.

You can tell it's Star Trek when a Redshirt dies in the first game turn

The second game turn involved Captain "Granny" Weatherwax moving forward to investigate the Contact marker; it turned out to be a four-alien salvage team armed mostly with carbines but also an auto rifle. As they were brandishing their weapons rather threateningly, the closest Redshirt took a shot with her phaser rifle and stunned one of them. Commander Magrat and Commander "Nanny" Ogg tried to do likewise with their phaser pistols, but both missed. On the far end of the sweep line, one Redshirt triggered another explosive Point Of Interest (a Hazard: Risk again) and was wounded for his efforts. The remaining Redshirt took a shot with her phaser rifle but missed as well.

Turn two brings an injured Redshirt and Space Octopi to the general confusion

Turn three brought a disaster. The alien salvage team returned fire, and took out Captain "Granny" Weatherwax. The Captain was down! The Away Team shot back, but only one Redshirt managed to stun an alien. There were still two of them there, slishing slowly towards the remaining Salvage marker.

Where did the Captain go?

The fourth turn saw a small firefight between the Star Fleet team and the aliens. In the end, the aliens were defeated and the exploration could continue.

Turn 4 ends with all aliens stunned and neutralized

The fifth turn saw nothing but slow advancement towards the remaining Point Of Interest and Salvage marker. It was actually a little anticlimactic after fighting the alien salvage team.

Slowly the Away Team advances into turn 5

Turn 6 was the last turn of the game, and three things happened. First, no more Contacts were triggered in the remaining two pieces of terrain. Second, the final Point of Interest was triggered by a Redshirt; it was a third Hazard: Risk and it wholly vaporized him. And third, the final Salvage marker was recovered. As there were no further terrain stands that had not been checked for Contacts, the game ended and the encounter was Fully Cleared.

Another Redshirt dies in turn 6

Captain "Granny" Weatherwax had sustained a head injury from the attack by the aliens. She will be in Sick Bay for two campaign turns recovering, and has lost .5 Reaction permanently. Each Salvage marker was worth 1 credit, and each Point Of Interest cleared (three in total!) was worth 1 Rep.

This game succeeded better than I had hoped. It really did feel like a Star Trek episode, right down to the Redshirts dying from investigating stuff. I do wish I had rolled lower for Contacts; out of 16 terrain items, I only rolled a single "1" to trigger a contact marker. On the other hand, the team lost almost half it's strength from a single Contact and three Points Of Interest. And regarding the Points Of Interest, they are an exciting, dynamic part of this kind of mission, but I managed to roll the same result three times in a row. I currently plan to run four missions on Pinkfluffdoodle IV before I move on to another planet. But don't hold me to that, I may enjoy this place so much that we spend some more time here.

My Star Fleet hack of Five Parsecs can be found here.

Five Parsecs From Home and the supplements are available here.