The premise of the game was three freshly-emerged tripods standing by their cylinder, preparing to move off and wreak a little havoc among the Earthlings, but as numbers were somewhat light at our gaming session (there were only six of us) I only ran two Locusts. The cylinder had landed in the middle of the table, and opponents were coming in from all sides. The Martians spent the first two turns standing by the open end of the interplanetary Uber, waiting for the enemy to approach within combat range...
On the third turn, they turned in opposite directcions to take on their foes - both deployed Black Smoke to stymie the Earthlings and take them down a notch or two...the right-hand Locust's BS managed to hit both planes on his side...
While the left tripod moved down the left side of the cylinder, the right one gained some distance between himself and the cylinder. He needed some room between himself and his opponents to use his weapons again...
The left tripod's pilot had already been wounded a couple of turns before - as he turned to face his opponent to use his vaunted Heat-Ray the next maneuver phase, he received the second hit to his pilot, ending his attempted conquest of the Third Planet...
...fairly little damage but vanquished nonetheless.
The remaining tripod deployed Black Smoke again, trying to seriously damage the Pfalz, while the Nieuport closed in on the 'pod's unshielded side...
Between the Pfalz and the Nieuport, they managed to take down the second tripod in fairly short order. Certainly shorter than I had imagined...
As we were using my embryonic cylinder, I wanted there to be some sort of house rule about the 'pods recharging energy in close proximity to the cylinder. So if they were within a close-range distance of the cylinder, I had them recharge one energy cube without having to play the Recharge Action Card - they still had to be Standing Still and not doing any other action. I think, however, that when we play again, I will increase that recharge option to include Moving, as the Proximity Recharge didn't work the way I was wanting it to - again, no other action can be taken, but moving along near the cylinder should up the opportunities for powering up the tripods.
After the game, we talked about a potential other house rule option for the cylinder; I would like flying over the cylinder to somehow affect airplanes. The concept of an energy field surrounding the tube off which the Martians can leach power might have an effect on traditional engineering, perhaps something like an EMP where it causes the plane to Stall on its next maneuver card (and every subsequent card it's above the cylinder). We shall try some sort of detriment next time we use the cylinder in a game...
Even though the Martians were fairly ineffective, it was a fun game - now to get cracking on finishing up the cylinder!
All the best,
Matt
Bookmarks