Global Marshals intelligence has discovered an underground safehouse of the notorious Blossoms cartel. A Special Enforcement Team (SET) arrives to destroy the safehouse just as a cartel thug crew returns home from today’s robbery. Now the thugs scramble to preserve their hideout and destroy nearby evidence.
My friend Mark and I got in a game of FiveCore by Nordic Weasel Games. We rolled everything randomly including force composition and scenario.My son (age 9) set up the terrain and named our troopers.
A lawless slum in Containment Zone QN7.Mark ended up with a squad of riflemen led by two leaders, accompanied by a light machine gun and a sniper.
Mark’s team from left: Almight, Baku, Deo, Bob, Deku, and Jotoro.Due to some strange rolls I fielded a well-armed crew of just a single rifleman joined by two light machine guns, a sniper rifle, and two grenade launchers. My side also had the quality advantage, but lacked any leaders.
My team from left: Reginald, Jeremy, Gus, Jeffrey, Gas McDoobie, and Bob.We decided Mark’s team would be a global marshals “justice” squad deployed against my team of successful lowlife hitmen thugs.Next we rolled for objectives. My team needed to move into base contact with objective markers 1 and 2, while Mark’s needed to destroy objective marker 6 with demolition charges.
The view from my table edge. Objective marker 1 is the green one at top left. Marker 2 is the yellow one in the middle, and marker 6 is the one beyond it in the ruins.Instead of points values, FiveCore balances forces using a victory point handicap. Since my SET had three more heavy weapons than the cartel thugs plus the quality advantage, Mark started the game ahead by 6 victory points! I had my work cut out for me.So naturally I started the game with a blunder, moving Reginald the machine gunner into an exposed position.
Oops.Sure enough, SET machine gunner Deku shot Reginald dead in the first turn.
“Reginald! Whyyyyyyy?”Meanwhile thug grenadiers Gus and Gas pushed up along their left flank, taking care to avoid SET Bob’s sniper nest.Both teams traded fire for a few turns as each of us tried to move in on our objectives.FiveCore allows any of your models that didn’t shoot in your turn to perform reaction fire on your opponent’s turn. When firing, you roll a weapon-dependent mix of shock dice and kill dice, looking for 1s and 6s. Results range from the target flinching behind cover, to fleeing, to falling down, to outright dying.For a while both teams jockeyed for position and forced each other to duck back under covering fire.Then Thug Bob destroyed a data cube at objective marker 2.
We like to keep our client records confidential.With just a stash of black market VR slash films left to destroy, the thugs got reckless and rushed the remaining objective marker.
Fortune favors the bold?Meanwhile, SET rifleman Almight managed to slip in during a break in suppression fire and reach the demolition target!
Detroit Smash!After a furious firefight, Jeremy the sniper forced Almight to panic and flee from his objective before he could arm the explosives, while the other SET rifles managed to kill Thug Bob dead.By a spectacular stroke of fortune, Gas McDoobie managed to survive SET Bob’s sniper fire long enough to torch the VR stash! He perished shortly thereafter.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.Nearby, Jeffrey the machine gunner avenged Reginald, plastering Deku’s viscera against the ruined wall.
“Reggie owed me money, you monster!”The thugs had a shot at winning, as long as they could keep the SET from detonating their hideout!But then Almight managed to recover and arm the demo charge.
Tick tock.We called it there. I couldn’t see a way to disarm the bomb in time. Jeffrey, Jeremy, and Gus promptly vanished into the endless hab stacks of QN7.Having both achieved our objectives, our outcome was down to body count, and Mark’s was higher. He won by so much he could have subtracted his handicap VP and still beaten me.We had a blast. FiveCore is light on mental arithmetic. With random generation of everything, a pick up game requires almost no effort beyond remembering the rules and making tactical decisions.Next time we will each custom build a team and one character without consulting each other, and let the VP handicap take care of balance. We also plan to try out the Man to Man alternative activation rules. Stay tuned.