Fistful of Lead: Starfighters! - First Game

I finally find myself in the same country as my figures for a wee while, so I thought I should do something with them. I recently bought Fistful of Lead: Starfighters! on Wargamevault and thought it looked like good clean fun. So, I read the rules, which was a novel thing to do before a game and then I created data cards for some of my Brigade Models starfighters based on their stats in Squadron Commander: Reheat. I thought this would prevent me from creating near identical starfighters for both sides. I set up a standard encounter battle between the Bwendi Aerospace Patrol and an Albion flight. As anyone who has read this blog will know, the poor Bwendi Republic is constantly having to deal with incursions by the evil Kingdom of Albion, who are so ill-mannered that they do not use saucers with their cups, but drink their tea from mugs instead. What is worse, those mugs often feature decoration in the form of scurrilous propaganda and libel against our glorious president for life Colonel Throckmorton P. Gladiolus LVII.

The Bwendi force defending near space over Ztumsia Nova comprised four light but agile fighters perfectly optimised for dogfighting. Although comparatively lightly armed, these nimble craft were expected to be able to outmanoeuvre the three heavier Albion medium fighters with their much heavier payloads and greater armour.

The Bwendi flight comprised two lead pilots and their wingmen. Flight Officer Bravo Zulu of Pigeon Squadron was an ace with years of experience behind him. The rest of his flight were well trained regulars with some experience of mixing it up with the Albion spaceforce.

The Albion flight comprised three medium fighters led by a spaceforce regular, but one of their wingmen was a rookie.

The game was a fairly simple exercise in learning the rules, so I did not try to do anything fancy with the scenario or asteroid terrain or anything like that. In Fistful of Lead: Starfighters! initiative is determined by playing cards. Each player gets one card per starfighter and the initiative ranks are counted down from kings to twos (aces are wild). When the countdown reaches a card you have, you must play it, assign it to a starfighter and act with that starfighter.

Three Albion medium fighters (top) approach four Bwendi light fighters (bottom). The pale squares are missile markers heading towards the Albion fighters. Apologies for the washed out photo taken with my ancient phone.

The Albion pilots got the bounce on the Bwendi pilots and opened up their throttles to get into range, but failed to do so on the first turn. This brought the Albion force close enough for the Bwendi ships to manoeuvre into range and launch a salvo of missiles at their enemies. After that, the Bwendi starfighters consistently got the initiative. The Albion starfighters were able to shoot some of the incoming missiles, but they lost two of their ships in the process, barely getting a shot off thanks to superior Bwendi technology and shoddy maintenance by the Albion Erks (ground crew). Unfeasibly high damage dice rolls and failed shields rolls meant that the Albion force was quickly reduced to just the rookie remaining.

The rookie launched a full salvo of missiles at Flight Officer Bravo Zulu, who was unable to evade and had to eject just as the missiles reduced their craft to its component elements. The remaining Bwendi pilots turned their blasters on the rookie immediately and blew it apart. Once more, superior Bwendi technology and piloting ensured victory for the BAP pilots, and a Search and Rescue ship was able to recover Bravo Zulu in their escape pod. They live to fight another time.

I enjoyed this quick solo playthrough. I think there is a good game here. It has no pretensions of being anything other than Hollywood and that suits me nicely right now. I look forward to the time I can go head to head with a human opponent though. In the meantime, I shall have to look to the scenarios in the game and think up some simple way of randomising slightly how pilots act based on their circumstances.