A Long Time Ago....

 A whole lot of Sci Fi goodies at a very good price!

For a complete change of pace - if you recall I mentioned that this year I was looking at skirmish style games so as to ease myself back into some figure painting - and as I had a small balance remaining on my Christmas Amazon gift card, I decided to take advantage of the low price and purchased a copy of Mantic Games ‘Sci Fi Dungeon Crawler’: Star Saga.

To be honest I was attracted to this for three reasons - the figures, the terrain pieces and the fact it is a square based game reminiscent of Hasbro/GW’s Space Crusade or GW’s classic Space Hulk. This has done the game a slight disservice as there is rather more depth to it than the two mentioned. There are a number of expansions available that add to the experience with additional figures, scenarios and rules etc.

Some very useful terrain types including terminals, weapon racks, crates and a couple of holding/stasis tanks - “Looks like love at first sight to me. Oh he likes you Burke!”

Another useful part of the game is the ability to play it solo which is rather handy and is something I will explore in due course.

All very ‘epic space opera-ish’ looking

My copy cost £35 and represents really good value for money. To give you an idea there are 35 figures (28mm I believe although possibly slightly larger), 36 terrain pieces, 33 board tiles and even a brace of Aliens style sentry guns! On top of that there is a bewildering array of game cards and counters, range rulers, a flame template, the rules and a mission book.

The terrain pieces are rather nice as are the figures although I did look at some of the latter with a wry smile. I have to say that the whole package represented great value for money and I will certainly get some fun out of it, maybe not it the way the designers intended though.

Two excellent rules sets - designed for small numbers of figures

I have a few ideas around how to use the figures from the game - the upcoming Stargrave (from the Frostgrave stable) for one as well as Galactic Heroes and even a few other odds and ends I have kicking around. I am even looking forward to painting them as something a little different. I also have a long term skirmish rules plan in mind but that will be for another post at some point.