Greg Priebe has been working on a supplement for Combat Patrol(TM): World War II to play Star Wars themed games. Most of the conversion is pretty straight forward, but last Friday we started working on rules for Jedi and Sith. This game featured clones vs. battle droids. Each side was supported by two Jedi type figures. The droids had General Grievous and another figure. The clones had Obi-Wan Kenobi (since he was run by a club member, named Don, we called him Obi-Don Kenobi) and Anakin Skywalker.
In this scenario, both sides were advancing near a village on a desert moon to seize a cache of Kyber Crystals. After placing the crystals on the table, we randomly determined which board edge we would enter.
I was one of the clone commanders. The battle droids got a jump on us early. In Combat Patrol(TM), movement speeds are determined randomly. My clones were getting very slow random movement allowances, and the droids were getting average or better ones. My clones apparently were being extra cautious or the ground was rougher than expected. The droid commander, rinding his jet-powered pogo stick thing, pushed out ahead of his forces, since he drew two cards for movement, rather than one.
In the meantime, the droids advanced steadily against Obi-Don and his clones. The heavy battle droids were rated as “green” for shooting, but they had a high rate of fire from their arm-mounted blasters. Despite their high rate of fire, the heavy battle droids didn’t seem to have much effect on Don’s clones. While his clones advanced, Obi-Don and Anakin jumped out ahead to battle droids with light sabers. Don’s Jedi did exceedingly well, killing a pile of droids.
In Combat Patrol(TM), after getting a hit, players draw a second card to determine which figure in the target area was hit and whether it was protected by any cover. Being uphill provides some cover. Despite being uphill from the droids, my clones rarely seemed to benefit from the cover, as Jim seemed to be getting a lot of head shots. I was getting torn up pretty badly. Then several of Jim’s droids advanced up the hill and moved into hand-t0-hand combat with my few remaining clones. I was outnumbered, stunned, and in many cases wounded. He mopped up my clones easily.
At this point, I was down to two clones and the clone platoon leader remaining, but an extra half squad of reinforcements entered the table. They too were moving slowly, but they stopped for one activation and fired at the droid command on his electronic pogo stick. I killed him. Suddenly all the droids were out of command and were pinned. In Combat Patrol(TM), a pinned unit can only activate on the black cards from the Activation Deck. (Half of the cards in the Activation deck are black, and the other half are red.) All of the droids (except their Jedi-type figures) were pinned, which helped us a lot!
On Don’s and Bill’s side of the table, while Obi-Don was slicing up droids like butter, General Grievous advanced into the village. My clone commander had been hit twice by droids. Both hits were just wounds, but my Endurance was now just one, and any hit would cause the platoon leader to be killed. If I died, all of the clones would be pinned, just like all the droids, and our advantage would be lost. I took cover in a small building. As Grievous advanced, he was taken under fire by Don’s clones.
Don’s clones killed Grievous. At that point, we were in possession of three of the four outcroppings of Kyber Crystals, Bill’s droids were largely a pile of spare parts, and Jim agreed that he was not going to be able to take another outcropping. The game was a clone victory!
We didn’t get to test all of the Jedi rules we’ve been developing, but we’ll get to more of them in the next play test.
This will eventually be another free supplement for Combat Patrol(TM). Watch for an announcement!
