Figures For Rogue Stars

Just a gallery of miniatures I have painted up for use with Rogue Stars, especially my Merchant crew. You can read about their first adventure in this Rogue Stars AAR.

La Capitana and her old pal Rogue

She is from the Urban War militia line - so are most of her crew. Rogue is from Reaper. These guys are the "core members" of the crew and have the best equipment and stats.

Chief and Doc

Both are Urban War sculpts. These are my specialists with Tech 3 and Medic 3 respectively. Chief was the unlikely hero of the first adventure - at least until Rogue went down. Both Chief and Doc took some rough hits in that caper but fortunately came out none the worse.

Grenj Aminbrim and Klaus K

Grenj is also from Reaper. He is just hired muscle but he does tote the crew's most impressive weapon so far ... a lowly SMG. What do you expect from Merchants? Klaus K, another Urban War sculpt and probably my favorite of the bunch, is a psyker.

Chief and her Buddy Bots

I'd love to give Chief a couple of drones and have been dreaming up some houserules for them to act as equipment/pseudo-characters. I am not sure about the name of the product line for these guys. There were part of a Kickstarter that I did not back but I ended up getting all the miniatures via ebay for a song.

attack of the ravagers!

The Ravagers are Reaper's not-Terminators. I would like to use them as an Antagonist Squad or maybe something like hostile terrain (a la Zombie games). Speaking of which ...

fishbats

Rogue Stars locations need some fauna. These are Angel Minnows from Maelstrom's Edge. I love these little guys - they are so creepy and bizarre. They are probably going to have psychic powers.

Rogue Stars AAR - The Great Escape

I got together with my friend Mike yesterday to finally try out Rogue Stars. For general information on how Rogue Stars works, check out my overview here. The game does not require a referee but our friend Scott was hanging out, too, and cooked up a fantastic scenario for us.

Uncharacteristically for a romantic like Mike, he elected to play - in his own words - a bunch of fascists: a squad of Star Cops mostly comprised of lean, mean crime fightin' machines courtesy of the Syntha from Urban War. I brought a squad of Merchants in way over their heads, also mostly from Urban War (13001: "Militia with Pistols") with a few Reaper models thrown in for more sci fi flavor. The gist was, a lightly armed and armored freighter crew against coldly efficient bully bots.

Scott's scenario revolved around Mike's police force trying to capture a corporate spy before she flees his jurisdiction and hightails it off-world. The spy probably went undercover as a member of my crew, dragging the poor smugglers into a fine mess. I could get 8XP by successfully escorting the spy to her shuttle. Mike could get 8XP for arresting her before she escaped his jurisdiction, or a lesser amount for arresting her beyond his jurisdiction. Putting opposing Characters OOA would yield the usual amount of XP.

Modern Art?

The Star Cops deployed at (1) and my Merchants at (2). In order to call in the shuttle, I needed to get somebody to the Control Station at (3) and make a successful Tech test. The shuttle would arrive d20 actions (not counting reactions) after the successful Tech test; only the referee knew how long it would take. Meanwhile, Mike would try to arrest the spy before she stepped onto (4), which was beyond his jurisdiction - he could pursue her into that territory but of course they wouldn't be able to hold her and it might cause a diplomatic incident!

Here's a picture of the board with (4) in the lower right:

terrain courtesy of our awesome buddy Doug

Note that the Control Station was not yet in place.

Mike started with initiative and led the charge with his MG-toting heavy bot. I seized the initiative pretty quickly and started moving my crew up to the barricades but it was slow going. Here's the extent of my progress after a few turn overs:

oh man look at those Merchants go

Out front, hiding behind that crate, is my ship's engineer. Just below her, standing at the end of the barricade, is the spy - a non-com model from AT-43. The fellow standing further down, with two stress markers on him, is Rogue (so-named in honor of the game and in recognition of his resemblance to a certain 2000AD character) who was laying down cover fire for his crewmates as the big bot loped toward the hapless merchants.

ouch!

Rogue poured fire into the big bot with both pistols, resulting in the first significant event of our game: the arm with the built-in MG became permanently crippled. This more or less took the big bot out for the rest of the game. Whew! Rogue paid for it with his plasma pistol and therefore lost his ambidextrous edge. A more than fair trade in my estimation!

Mike started moving the rest of his squad toward the center of the board to interdict my path to the control station. The Merchants were making painfully slow progress at this point, frustrating the ship pilot and resident psychic prodigy Klaus. With four actions - critical success on one activation - Klaus teleported directly into the control booth ... and promptly realized he had no idea what he was doing! So much for calling in that shuttle ...

"this is a freakin' Blood Bowl trophy, not a control panel!"

Meanwhile, the engineer crept up with the spy. Obviously, she would have to call in that shuttle herself:

"if you want something done right ..."

Mike's force was now in place, commanding the center of the board, making movement really tough for me.

"sir, are you classified as human?"

With his remaining laser pistol, Rogue snapped off a shot around the corner - two pins, arm disabled, and laser rifle dropped (symbolized by D6)!

"negative, I am a meat popsicle"

The organic police lieutenant promptly chastised Rogue for his criminal proclivities, putting him OOA. The winged copbot shed its pins thanks to Mike's "Cool Under Fire" tactical discipline, picked up its rife, and got back on the beat. Rogue did manage to buy the engineer some time to make it over to the control booth, where she swatted Klaus out of the way and hacked into the comm systems, hailing the shuttle.

"the problem is, it's a Blood Bowl trophy"

Meanwhile, the Ship Captain headed over to carry Rogue out. She doesn't leave crew behind!

"feeling blue, Rogue?"

Rogue aside, things were going a little too smoothly for these plucky ne'er-do-wells. Mike's bots started firing in earnest, closing in on Klaus and the engineer in the control booth. The brave engineer darted out and put the police lieutenant OOA but paid for it immediately, also going OOA. Thankfully, the bots took losing their organic commander worse, allowing me to seize the initiative - but to little effect as Klaus could not manage a single shot at the bots standing ten feet away. Psykers are twitchy after all. Mike roared back, inflicting a wound and two pins on my erstwhile useless ship's doctor. This made it difficult for me to seize and then keep initiative for quite a while and things were looking desperate!

Fortunately, the shuttle finally arrived:

no time travel quips please

Mike was dominating initiative and things were looking especially grim for Klaus. Mike's copbots retrieved the cuffs off of their fallen commander and got into position to block the path to the shuttle. There was nothing left but to go for broke and get the spy moving. My luck changed and I rolled three successes, moving her past the copbots and just a step past their jurisdiction!

"that was a close one - hey why are you still firing at me??"

Mike was determined to make the arrest and snapped off some called shots at the spy's legs, only managing to graze her. I activated her again - I needed to get into contact with the shuttle with an action to spare to embark. There really was no other option. I didn't have the actions to make it in one activation so tried to get some cover. But Mike would not give up so easily, and ordered his copbot past the jurisdictional border. "Is a robot equipped to make that kind of decision?" Mike pondered as he prepared to roll a shot ...

++++ jurisdictional authority exceeded +++

... the result was a weapon malfunction! The jurisdictional conflict must have fuzzed the bot's programming, allowing the spy just enough actions to get into the shuttle and blast off!

We agreed to pick up our wounded and leave the scene peaceably, given there was egg on everybody's faces at that point. Well - except for the spy! She used my crew first as figurative cover and then, when the cops started shooting up the place, as literal cover. But the wily agent managed to get away. I guess we ought to bill her employers.

We really enjoyed the game and especially the story that unfolded as the game progressed. Mike felt the start was a little slow but given that I was basically playing a non-com crew of traders with light armor and armament, and that I needed to traverse a fairly large board, I was glad for the room to maneuver. I think it is really nice that you can play something besides commandos in Rogue Stars.

I don't think a review written after one game played is worth much but I am looking forward to playing Rogue Stars again, and hopefully soon!

Robot Wreckage

I held out for a long time but finally purchased the Battle for Zycanthus starter set for Maelstrom's Edge. While I don't have any plans to play MEdge itself, many of the Spiral Arms Studios models really caught my imagination. I'm especially fond of the fishbats ... er, Karist Minnows, which will stand in for alien/demonic/mutated wildlife in Rogue Stars, Frostgrave, TNT, etc. But that is a story for another day. Today is all about dem bots!

The ME starter box comes with three kinds of robots: two Hunter-class Warmechs, two Scarecrows, and eight (!) drones, the last of which can be assembled in crawler or flyer mode. Fair warning - the Hunters and Scarecrows are pretty fiddly models; each Scarecrow leg is in three pieces, for example. Spiral Arms explains:

We've broken our models up into lots of parts and given a fair few spare parts so that you can push yourself out of your comfort zone, learn new skills and create some really unique models.

This actually came in handy for my purposes as I decided to use the Hunter-class mechs and Scarecrows to make objective markers. I wanted these bots to look like they had collapsed decades if not centuries before, laying exposed to wind, grit, and sun. Much of that is down to weathering techniques, of course, but starting with a good pose is fundamental. That said, I did not really take full advantage of the various options on the sprue, especially for the Hunter-class bots. These guys have lots of cool parts!

Oh man, look at those bots ... not going ...

As usual, I used a Vallejo basing paste, Dark Earth in this case. I also used a bit of cork on the first Scarecrow's base, to subtly mix up the texture/color ... and provide an armrest.

... it won't be a stylish marriage ...

I primed all the markers reddish brown and transitioned to gray-blues via Russian Uniform Green. The Hunter-class wrecks are a bit darker than the Scarecrow wrecks.

... I can't afford a carriage ...

I washed the models using Vallejo Sepia wash - the 200ml jar, which is the thicker "dipping formula" rather than the stuff in the smaller bottles. After some drybrushing, I settled on picking out a single detail: the red lens of its eye.

goodnight sweet prince

I used TAP Red Tone wash to give the other Scarecrow's flamer tank some color, this time before the drybrushing. Note also the cool double-antennae backpack option.

I've fallen and I can't get up

I wanted the other Hunter-class to look a bit more in-tact, to really show off more of the model's details. If I had a third, I would do one that was buried more deeply. There are also many more weapons configurations for the Hunter-class; I just wanted a more uniform look for this project.

damned lazy robots!

Stay tuned for more raids on the cool sprue from Battle for Zycanthus! We'll get to those fishbats pretty soon ...

Rogue Stars - Antagonist Squads & Nova Troopers

Coming up with a backstory for the Loor Scouts from CP Models got me to thinking about the Lurker/Threshold mechanic from Strange Aeons. You can check out my overview of that game here but the relevant part is, one player controls the protagonist warband, made up of Characters that develop over a campaign, while the other player controls the baddies, which are just one-off warbands written up for that particular scenario. The occasional Strange Aeons villain - called a Nemesis - can level up and otherwise develop just like the protagonists do. But for the most part, bad guys are there to fight and be fought.

In the spirit of adventure sci fi, where dashing (anti-) heroes regularly blast through scores of nameless mooks, the same kind of idea could apply to Rogue Stars. The Loor Scouts, for example, are great one-off antagonists. There are any number of reasons they might be after your squad: Did a deal with the Triad go sour? Perhaps your Space Cops have been ordered to bring them in? Or maybe it's just one of those troublesome misunderstandings that happen so frequently in busy spaceports? They can be dropped into a campaign as mysterious assassins, ruthless pursuers, or plain old thuggish nobodies. This could eventually become another scenario table for Rogue Stars - roll for which Antagonist Squad you'll be facing. But if I'm going to get to that point, I will need a few more potential entries.

Nova Troopers

"Nova" is the generic name for several branded security personnel system packages. Smaller corporations and even cash-strapped governments buy these packages to meet their paramilitary-level operational security needs. Despite a wide variety of detail-oriented brand differences, "Nova" product systems all have two features in common.

First, these systems use a tiered training regimen. Customers pack off one of their own employees for a period of training by the vendor corporation and, for a discount to the package price, a combat assignment subcontract with the vendor. If the trainee survives the subcontract assignment, he will return to instruct his original employer's other security personnel, for each of whom that employer must purchase a license from the training vendor. The vendor-trained employee is then placed in command of his own trainees.

Second, the vendor supplies arms and armor. Initial and continuing training is tailored to the vendor's branded equipment although in reality the differences across brands are fairly superficial. "Nova Troopers" are instantly recognizable throughout the galaxy thanks to their aggressive-looking blasters and distinctive combat armor. The armor itself is essentially a cheap alternative to real powered armor: a self-contained, miniaturized exoskeleton-driven battlesuit that provides solid protection but is susceptible to damage that can significantly bog down the wearer's movement.

"Nova" product systems owe their popularity to their effectiveness. Nova Troopers present an impressive and intimidating spectacle and their presence is often enough to deter violent criminal activity or quell unrest. On the other hand, Nova training does not produce leaders - perhaps by design - and their gear tends to look better than it actually is.

Nova Trooper 32XP

Combat Dress
Exoskeleton
Heavy Blaster Rifle

Six Nova Troopers make up a 200-point squad. "Promote" one to Corporal by giving him Danger Sense and Veteran. The squad uses the Militia theme and the Hive Mind tactical discipline. This write-up was inspired by the not-Storm Troopers available from Reaper in metal as well as their economical "bones" material. Search the Reaper site for "Nova." They offer six different poses.

Rogue Stars - Loor Scouts

Here is another Squad for Rogue Stars, this time courtesy of the Alien Federation line from CP Models. I am unaware of any official background information, so drafted up my own.

I imagine the Loor as a remarkably unified race, socially speaking, that evolved precious little capacity for interspecies empathy. As a result, they tend to understand relations with non-Loor as a predator/prey binary. This may also explain their apparent indifference to the laws and customs of other sentients. By contrast, Loor revere their own ways and severely punish infractions. Exile is the harshest sanction; Loor do not leave their homeworld by choice.

Those who survive exile (most commit suicide) always find their way into the Loor Triads. Non-Loor know practically nothing about the Triads except that, by some quirk of psychobiology, members of one Triad do not recognize any other Loor as part of the "true" Loor species. Some experts theorize this strange phenonenon, which they consider an analog to sociopathy, is related to coping with the trauma of surviving exile.

Others believe it is part of the life cycle of the Loor species as a whole: Non-Loor paleontologists have discovered extremely limited evidence of Loor evolution in the fossil record of the planet they call home. Could they have originated elsewhere and merely adopted (conquered?) the current Loor system? Perhaps the small gangs of Loor lurking around spaceports throughout the galaxy are scouting for a new homeworld.

Already perceived as xenophobic gangsters, the Loor are therfore sometimes also considered infiltrators and even potential invaders. Escalated Triad activity has triggered system-wide panics, usually resulting in pogroms and at least one small war. Perhaps the Triads are secretive because they are hated; perhaps the reverse is true. In either case, the Loor are effectively a galactic underclass - tolerated at best and never welcome.

Loor have limited control over the pigmentation of the flexible scutes covering their bodies and the scales of their hands harden into horny talons at the finger tips. All healthy, unmodified Loor have the following traits: Claws, Reptiloid, and Stealth 1. Loor disfavor most clothing and armor but are eager to trade or steal other technology, especially weapons.

The Squad detailed below reflects a typical Triad scouting party. Unlike their exiled forbears, these Loor were all born into the Triad and hatched together from the same clutch. While females are by far the more populous sex on the Loor homeworld, female offspring are the rarest in Triad broods. Sometimes, a clutch will yield no females. Females that survive to adulthood are accorded tremendous security but have little to no personal freedom.

The next rarest offspring in a given clutch are sterile male "runts" - Loor born smaller, weaker, slower, or defective in some other sense, apart from their sterility. Fertile males are more common than "runts" but less common than sterile males overall. Fertile males monopolize all positions of authority in the Triad. In any given clutch, only one fertile male may breed. How the breeding male is determined is unknown, perhaps even to Loor.

As a rule, there is little conflict among clutchmates. They appear to perceive themselves as a single genetic unit, although fertile males from the same clutch are in fact not genetically identical. Fertile males tend to consult with one another but the breeding male has final say. While sterile males are content in servile roles, no clutchmate is actually considered expendable. In this Squad, for example, the runt is slower and less stealthy than his brothers. He has been afforded a less sophisticated, noisy weapon but at the same time equipped with a refraction field generator.

Theme: Pirates

Tactical Discipline: Cool Under Fire

Loor Breeding Male 51XP

Claws
Fast 1
Leadership 2
Reptiloid
Stealth 3
Needler Rifle
Veteran

Loor Fertile Male 41XP

Claws
Danger Sense
Fast 1
Reptiloid
Stealth 3
Needler Rifle
Veteran

Loor Sterile Male (Tech) 37XP

Claws
Fast 1
Reptiloid
Stealth 3
Tech 1
Needler Rifle

Loor Sterile Male (Medic) 36XP

Claws
Fast 1
Medic 1
Reptiloid
Stealth 3
Needler Rifle

Loor Sterile Male Runt 35XP

Claws
Reactive
Refraction Field Harness
Reptiloid
Stealth 2
Flamer 

Rogue Stars - Rebs Squad

Although I did pre-order ("nickstart") all the North Star figures for Rogue Stars via Brigade Games, I have been pretty excited about using Mantic's Rebs faction from Deadzone. These guys are absolutely perfect for Rogue Stars. So here is my first attempt at a Squad, trying to stick both to WYSIWYG and Mantic's existing fluff, where available.

I picked the Bounty Hunter theme and I think Opportunists (+1 to Reaction rolls) fits a group with no bonuses to winning Initiative. I struggled with whether Yrtl should have two Monowire Blades and whether they should be taken "Built In" but ultimately went with a less literal approach. The other question I struggled with was skipping armor for Matilda. I went with the far cheaper Stealth option, which matches her sniper flavor.

I am already concocting backstories for these hoodlums, just by virtue of Squad creation. This is exactly what I love about low-model count rule sets. You can really dive into the personalities of your minis - again, I think an appropriate term for this would be "RPG Creep."

Please note that I have included pictures - all from Mantic's promotional materials - only in order to give the reader something to judge my efforts against. I certainly don't hold out these photos as mine (they aren't) or mean to suggest that I painted these figures (I didn't). I probably will paint my guys up pretty similarly to Mantic's pictures, however - so just imagine these guys with a much worse paint job.

Yrtl (63XP)

Teraton

Ambidexterity
Light Combat Dress
Monowire Blade
Big
Fast Draw
Flamer Pistol
Psionic (Teleportation)
Tough 1
Weapon Master 1


Tchak Jack (33XP)

Sorak

Assault Rifle
Difficult Target 2
Free Disengage
Light Combat Dress

Chomp (32XP)

Grogan

Danger Sense
Kevlar Jacket
Machine Gun
Marksman 1
Tough 1






Matilda (42XP)

Human

Fire Into Melee

Knife

Laser Rifle/Accurate Weapon
Marksman 3
Stealth 2






Doctor Pral (30XP)

Judwan

Martial Arts 2

Medic 1
Medpac
Psionic (Encourage, Guidance)
Tech 1

Rogue Stars Overview

I was not excited for Rogue Stars until reading through a copy of Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes this past fall. Having purchased, digested, and ultimately disliked the revised edition of SBH back in 2014, I had pretty much written off Ganesha Games. But whereas Revised was a near miss, Advanced turned out to be a near hit - thanks to reactions. So I pre-ordered Rogue Stars hoping that Andrea Sfiligoi had continued along the design trajectory toward my preferences.

He did not disappoint!

oh man look at those space men go

By using a d20, Rogue Stars has plenty of room for modifiers and can afford to eschew stats altogether. Characters (i.e., models) are defined entirely by Traits. Each player has 200XP to create a Squad of 4-6 Characters and must spend 30-70XP on each. Squad creation begins with selecting a theme. What kind of Traits and equipment are available to your Squad at the outset depends on which theme you choose. Themes come into play elsewhere - for example, Pirates and Mercs get extra XP for looting treasure chests. Finally, each player chooses a Tactical Discipline for their Squad, a special rule that applies to all the members, such as being able to re-roll a morale test.

Expect Squad creation to take a while - Rogue Stars is chock full of Traits and all kinds of equipment. Themes help narrow your choices but there is still a lot to think about. Folks who prefer a WYSIWYG approach over hunting down the most competitive builds will find plenty of options for bringing to life whatever miniatures they use. I have no idea whether there are game-breaking combos in Rogue Stars and honestly don't care; I plan to use this game to tell stories rather than run tournaments. But I have no doubt that some mouse will find the cheese, given such a wealth of options.

There are three tables - mission, location, and complication - for rolling up scenarios. Each has twenty (!) options. Aside from just terrain and weather, there are also rules covering gravity and exotic atmosphere conditions. There is a whole table for determining the consequences of firing projectile weapons aboard spacecraft. And there's another table for randomizing what sort of wonders and perils you might face while exploring a derelict. There is plenty of support here for having all kinds of space adventures.

Once the Squads are assembled and the scenario is set up, players roll off for initiative. The winner is the active player. The active player attempts to activate her Characters one at a time by taking an activation test - rolling up to three d20s. For each roll that is 8 or above, after applying modifiers, the character may perform a single action. She may use any or all of her available actions but the Character gets a stress token for each action performed. Each stress token grants a -1 modifier to subsequent activation attempts.

The active player can attempt to activate any or all of her Characters as many times as she pleases. But the more dice she rolls, the more rolls she may fail. Each modified roll below 8 grants the non-active player a Reaction Die. The non-active player may used Reaction Dice to attempt to activate his Characters. If he succeeds, his Characters can act before the active player gets to perform any actions with the Character she is activating. So "reactions" are really more like interruptions. Just like with actions, Characters take a stress marker for every reaction they perform.

One very important type of reaction is making a Take the Initiative roll. The non-active player needs to roll a 16 or better, after modifiers. He becomes the active player if he succeeds but the newly non-active player removes all stress markers from her Characters. Losing the initiative is the only way to remove all of the stress tokens on all of your Characters. The active player does not have to wait for the non-active player to roll a successful Take the Initiative reaction; she can simply pass initiative whenever she chooses.

Everything in Rogue Stars is a d20 roll and that includes combat. The basic TN for a ranged or melee attack is 10 - but there are many, many potential modifiers, taking into account everything from cover to weapon quality to making called shots. (Yes you can go for the headshot, at a 30% penalty. And yes, headshots can be lethal.) If an attack is successful, the target determines hit location (unless it was a called shot) makes a damage roll. This roll is modified by the amount of damage the attack inflicted, whether the target is protected by armor, whether the target is already wounded, etc. The result may take the target out of action (OOA), or may result in pin and/or wound markers, or may require a roll on a further table that breaks out the wound by hit location and wound severity. That includes Character death!

Melee is a somewhat more complicated than ranged attacks. Being outnumbered, knocked prone, making Powerful Blows, and trying to disengage ... there are rules covering it all. But my prediction is, ranged attacks are sufficiently deadly to render melee rare absent boards truly covered in terrain. Then again, there is teleportation in Rogue Stars ...

As a final note, you don't get your money out of a d20 mechanic without critical failure and critical success. Rogue Stars covers both for all sorts of rolls, including Activation. There is even a critical failure result for firing a pistol in melee - you manage to shoot yourself in one of your legs, of course! That's an example of how gritty these rules get and no doubt there are lots of things to remember. Fortunately, Osprey has promised a QRS is on the way as one is not included in the book itself. Probably due to the constraints of the series, Rogue Stars also does not use the usual SBH  mechanic of set distances.

I am really looking forward to playing Rogue Stars in 2017! The older I get, the more I want to play low model count games with a heavy narrative ("RPG creep"?) and this ruleset seems perfect for that. I know some folks are already put off by the complexity but I don't think Rogue Stars really qualifies as complex. The structure of the game itself is as streamlined and intuitive as SBH. I know that is small comfort for gamers allergic to modifiers. If you're one of them, best to stay away. But Rogue Stars is a great bet for anyone looking for a simple game that is crunchy enough to really bring the character out of the minis.