My 3rd game at Origins 2019 was my 1st game playing Tripods and Triplanes.
A close-up of one of the Martian vehicles. To be honest, I was a little disappointed with these. I was hoping for something that looked a little more like "War of the Worlds" (the original). Still, they're very well done, with considerable detail.
Martian vehicles have shields. If you look at the base of the one in the photo above, it has a forward and rear shield, but is not protected on either side. The way this works is fairly simple. The vehicles have an energy track. Each time they move or shoot they use one energy. If they go one turn without moving or shooting they recharge one energy. When firing at them, if your fire hits the shield the Martian player draws from the Martian damage deck. If the card has a lightning bolt in the upper corner the Martian vehicle loses the same number of energy points. Otherwise, hits against a shield have no effect. Hits against the unshielded sides score damage normally.
I'm flying on the side of earth - a flight of Germans D7s and a flight of British (Sopwith Camels?) planes. These are our opponents - one of each type Martian vehicle. I'm on the near side of the map, so the one I'll be going up against is a tough one - it's shielded everywhere except the rear.
Making our approach. I'm out of the frame to the right in D7 #1.
I missed a photo or two here, but we're now in range. I'm in the D7 in the center.
The Martian deploys the black gas. This gas is toxic, and in addition to being poisonous it's also corrosive, so it can not only injure the pilot it can also damage the aircraft. Martian vehicles are immune to this. The cloud stays in place until a plane ends a move in the cloud. The plane then draws for damage, and the cloud then dissipates. If more than one plane ends their turn touching the cloud, each plane draws for damage.
I pull a hard right, and end up outside of the cloud. Since I didn't end my move touching the cloud I suffer no effect. This is a little unrealistic - the cloud should damage a plane that flies through it, but this is the way the rule is written, so I escape damage. The vehicle that deployed the gas cloud now tried to use its death day. Fortunately, his target is just out of range. The death ray is very powerful, but also has pretty restricted firing arcs. In this case the target is just out of range. Meanwhile, the vehicle at the bottom is about to have some very serious problems.
The bottom vehicle took 2 short range and one long range shot. All hit the shield, but unfortunately for the Martian player ALL of the cards had lightning bolts, and added up to enough to take his energy to zero. Next turn he has no choice - he has no energy so he can't move or fire. Here's our opening.
We're swarming all over him.
A closer view.
I get a shot at the middle Martian on the shield - and success - I get a lightning bolt. D7 #2 gets a shot at the unshielded side.
The Martian trying frantically to recharge to get the shield back up. It's a losing proposition, though, with so much fire coming in.
With no shield the damage piles up quickly. I'm the D7 with the short ruler. We all score hits, and the vehicle goes down.
I'm just out of view from the bottom. Heading toward the other two vehicles.
The Martian we killed respawns. No one anywhere near him except Peter Landry down in the corner.
Peter's all alone back there. That's not even close to a fair fight, so I turn to go give him a hand. With the other 10 fighters swarming these two machines they ought to be able to handle themselves. Hopefully I can get back to where Peter is before he gets torched by a death ray.
The Martian turned to deal with Peter, giving me a clear run at his unprotected rear side.
And I choose a very opportune time to deal my first boom card of the day.
A closer view of my kill. On the downside, I believe Peter also had to draw a damage card due to being within short range of the machine when it blew.
Making a turn to the right as the Martian I killed respawns.
Meanwhile, the other machines are drawing a lot of attention.
Another Martian goes down to a combined British-German attack. And that's the end of the game due to time.
To the victor goes the spoils. One solo Martian kill was enough to place me first in damage dealt out. I also didn't get shot down in this match, which is kind of different for me.
I enjoyed this scenario a lot more than I thought I would. The Martians appear to be well-balanced. They are powerful, the death ray outranges the planes guns, and that cloud is a real bear to deal with. On the other hand, because of the energy rules they can't just walk across the map toasting everything in sight, and with each of them having at least one unshielded side they're vulnerable to swarm attacks. Based on my admittedly limited experience from just one game they seem to have a good balance between very powerful and also exploitable weaknesses.
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