Enderain

[Ithoriel]

Got a copy of this delivered today.

It's a rule set that looks to be aimed at the same sort of game as 5 Parsecs From Home, Station Zero, Stargrave, Kill Team et al.

First impression is of a nicely produced rulebook with some interesting sounding mechanisms (time will tell), a couple of oddly marked dice used to spawn and control npc's, a plastic frame to track a team's wounds and experience gain, a pack of initiative cards that  I will sleeve and 3 quick ref sheets.

More when/ if I get a game on the table!

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Looking forward to it

[Ithoriel]

25% discount until the end of the month - £29.99 rather than £39.99

[Ithoriel]

Single turn playthrough by the authors here - https://youtu.be/99kiBW3HXUY

[Ithoriel]

The acrylic tokens and templates I ordered from counterattackbases.co.uk arrived today and very good they looked.

Well, one solo game under my belt so treat this with appropriate caution!

I used the character creation rules to recreate my "Freetrader: Destiny's Child" crew, as best I could. By chance, there are currently 8 of them and a bot so they fitted requirements nicely.

As designed, Solo play is basically a scavenger hunt, unless I'm missing something (quite possible!) though there are options for Story Points to add a bit more depth.

So, Mila "Call me captain!" Voronezh lead the rest of the crew into the wastelands on the planet of Imperial Mercy, one of the Throne worlds of the Imperium of the Sentient mind, to an area where several derelict space raft were abandoned. They were on the hunt for any Loot or Data that could be used or just sold to pay the bills. To quote Mila,"Running a spaceship ain't cheap, people!"

With an idea in mind already of what the crew were it was simple enough to match roles and powers to their backstories but I do feel that starting with a blank canvas might induce analysis paralysis! Definitely worth creating a team in advance of any game if doing it properly. Destiny's Children are, I suspect, stupidly overpowered for a starting crew in Enderain.

That said, they got more of a mauling in Enderain than they do in 5 Parsecs!

As well as the 3 loot tokens there was a data token, held by an NPC (optional rule) who could be sweet talked or threatened into handing it over. I decided that only the captain could sweet talk the guy but any character could threaten him. Threats were less likely to work. Once any character had threatened him, sweet talking was not an option! Loot tokens were within the three derelict starships, which would have to be broken into.

A die roll saw the crew starting within 6" of one corner.

Half a dozen NPC's were spawned using the dice supplied and off we went.

NPC's are hard to take out of the game completely and more spawn fairly regularly and the random triggering of NPC's using the special dice means you never know which are immediate threats.

Some people have described combat as fiddly but if you can add, subtract and count to twelve I don't see that it should pose a problem, tbh.

It is equally tempting to play initiative cards you will wish you had later and to hoard cards for a future your team doesn't have!

Apart from the captain, all the crew were wounded, three seriously, and one was dragged off table "Out." They had retrieved all three loot tokens and successfully bullied the NPC into handing over the data. Having a big, burly, blue skinned guy teleport in front of you and snarl,"Spill the beans or I'll wring your scrawny neck!" will do that, I guess.
 As a one-off I didn't bother with experience.

Overall I liked the system. It is clearly closer to Stargrave or Kill Team than to 5 Parsecs so it depends what you are looking for. In Stargrave I feel like it's one character and some cannon fodder, here it felt like all the characters were important, even the two Recruits. Maybe that's just me.

I do find myself wondering if I could graft Enderain's combat system and 5 Parsecs campaign generation together.

Anyone else played and have a view?

[jaztez]

Great write up!  I am biased, as I co-wrote them

Just to clarify a couple of design goals to back up what you've said:

1. We wanted everyone to matter and to get character progression and emotional attachment into the game.  If you had seen the upset when Amy's recruit "Dave" got mown down in the jungle when he was left isolated, after being rescued and saved in the previous game, then you'd know how we built our own emotion in!


As you said so well, Stargrave is about 2 figures and the rest are pretty generic and replaceable.


2. The combat system (fighting) is pretty much the same as most - hit -save - opponent - hit - save - loser does X.

For shooting, we built in enough differences to allow for 80+ different weapons to have unique profiles and to each feel a little different.

Hope that helps, and I'd love to see some photos of a 10mm game of Enderain as I am a 10mm Pendraken obsessive!

[Ithoriel]

Well, first up, thanks for co-writing them jaztez. Playing mainly solo these days when it comes to miniatures games I can see me having quite a bit of fun with these rules.

Sadly, no 10mm photos from me, I mostly do my sci-fi gaming in 20mm these days, with very, very occasional Epic 40k or Battletech in 6mm when there are others to game with. Some 10mm Enderain would be cool though.

Enderain currently has my favourite combat mechanics, 5 Parsecs my favourite campaign system.