Space Station Zero: The first game

Well this was a massacre. I need a name for my team and right now The Muppets seems apt.

And here they are. To recap, from left we have Globnick, engineer; Vashtar, soldier; Packman, medic; Betty, the leader; DeeDee, ace pilot; Misloi, engineer; and Axon, soldier. They've all been given various bits of equipment and abilities, literally all of which I completely forgot about except for their weapons.

I'll attempt to explain the game mechanics on the fly rather than write a wall of text describing them in one go. I didn't take too many photos while playing this mission, so I had to recreate some scenes using my memory of the game and notes I scribbled down. And because this is an introductory game it won't be as funny or engaging as I'm hoping the actual write-ups will be.

At its most basic, Space Station Zero has a system based on D12s. You roll the number of dice for a given skill and any even numbers are successes, while odd numbers are failures. It's one of the things that made me get the game as there's no need to fanny around trying to work out modifiers or adding up wound scores.

Here's the setup at the start of the game. The Muppets are on the right in their starting position, having played the music, lit the lights and entered the Docking Bay Access Port. Two teams of three ancient robots are hidden behind scenery, but worse than that, the towers on the bottom, top and to the left are spewing out poison gas and must be shut down as fast as possible.

Betty decides that Misloi should head for the bottom tower accompanied by Vashtar for protection. She tells Globnik to head for the top tower, taking Axon along. Betty and Packman will make a beeline for the left tower while DeeDee provides cover. While the robots present some danger, they're old, slow and can only punch things, so as long as the Muppets stay out of their way they should be fine. 

Simple, right? Hahahahaaaaa....

Because of the poison gas, each team member has to make a Life Save 3 roll before doing anything else. This means they roll D12s equal to their life stat (all members have a life stat of 4) and need three successes to pass. Failing it means they lose life points. Happily Misloi passes her Life Save roll and immediately moves 4" towards the bottom (or from her view, the left) tower. Once moved she can perform an action: move again, shoot something, or interact with something. As her mission is to shut off the gas, she simply moves another 4" which gets her closer to the tower but not close enough to try shutting it down.

With Misloi's activation over I have to attempt to retain initiative by rolling a 6+ on a D12, which succeeds. It's Globnik's turn to head for the tower, and after passing his Life Check he also moves 8". To retain initiative again I need to roll a 10+ and fail miserably, so now it's the robots' turn to move. The first one double-moves 6" to confront Globnick, and happily the robots lose initiative. 

It's Betty's turn to activate and she immediately fails her Life Check and takes a wound. Seeing Globnick might be in trouble, she moves 8" (she could have moved 10" but I forgot that she can do that) to take up position near the pallet of pipes. I retain initiative and activate Axon, who also fails his Life Check and takes a wound. He moves 4" towards the red robot and takes a shot at it. With a shooting stat of eight, he succeeds with six shots, the robot fails its save completely and is destroyed. Yay Axon! Unfortunately initiative passes to the robots and they manage to keep it twice, using their turns to move towards the Muppets.

Regaining initiative, I decide to leave DeeDee, Vashtar and Packman where they are and activate Misloi again. She catastrophically fails her Life Check and drops two life points, going from 4 to 2! Christ on a bike! Despite inhaling a double lungful of poison gas, she moves 4" so she can attempt to switch off the gas in one tower. To do this she has to take a Reaction Challenge Test 3, and as her Reaction stat is 6 she should have a good chance oh no she failed it. And then I fail initiative, so it's the robots' turn.

One moves straight into Betty, takes a swing and hits. Betty somehow fails her save roll and takes another wound, leaving her on 2. Awesome. To add insult to injury the robots win their initiative roll, so the one closest to Globnik charges in and smacks him across the face. Happily he not only rolls successfully to prevent damage, he also causes a wound to the robot. Thanks to the robots rolling a 1, the Muppets regain the initiative.

We need a heavy hitter, so it's Vashtar's turn. In what will become a depressingly frequent occurrence, he fails his Life Check and takes a wound. He then fires at the robot attacking Betty and takes it out! Vashtar is one character whose skills I changed a bit. I thought it was silly to have trained soldiers only able to shoot once like the medic or the engineers, so I decided before the game began to let him shoot twice in one action at the cost of losing his movement for the turn. His second shot blows the droid attacking Globnik to bits. One robot team down!

And then I lose initiative, and one robot moves 6" towards Misloi. The robots roll 11, keep initiative and another one moves 6" towards the centre of the board. Then they roll a 12(!) and the third one also moves 6". This is not looking good for the Muppets, but then their opponents fail and it's the pirates' turn.

OK, let's speed things up a bit before you all die of boredom. Globnik fails his Life Check, reducing it to 3. He double-moves 8" which puts him close enough to the right tower to attempt a shutdown on his next activation. Initiative is passed and Packman also fails his check, dropping to 3, and then double-moves to get close to Betty so he can attempt to render medical aid next turn. 

A roll of 10 means the Muppets keep going, so Axon shoots at one of the two robots at the top of the board and destroys it, and then in a turn of events that usually takes the sacrifice of a chicken the Muppets roll 12, Vashtar passes his check(!) and takes out the second robot. With one robot left, Vashtar takes his second shot and gets an amazing six even numbers out of eight dice! Unfortunately both the odd numbers are ones, so it's a critical failure. Awes.

Could things be turning around? Nope. Needing another 12, the pirates fail and the last robot moves 4" to get in Misloi's face. It punches her in the chops and she fails her save, dropping to 1 life point, but her counterattack smashes the robot to smithereens. With the aggro-androids out of the game, all that stands between the Muppets and victory is the poison gas. And it means no more bloody initiative rolls. 

Misloi, who's the only team member in a position to shut down a pump, FAILS HER CHECK AND COLLAPSES. She's out of the game. Globrick also fails his check, dropping to 2, and then fails to shut down the bloody pump. It's at this point the name "Muppets" sprang to my mind.

But wait, what's this figure I almost knocked off a piece of scenery? It's DeeDee, who I've completely forgotten about and who's apparently been holding her breath for the past 20 minutes. She passes her check, and as she has a jump pack, she moves forward 4" and drops down within an inch of the pump. She attempts to switch it off and succeeds! Where the engineer failed, the ace pilot came to the rescue. Amazing.

Man, I really need to get these last two pumps sorted because the way I'm rolling dice all the team will be dead. Betty passes her check and moves 8" towards the top of the board. Packman also passes and does the same, completely forgetting to render aid to his leader and her gravity-defying cleavage. Globrick fails his check, drops to 1 life point, and then again screws up the shutdown process. Why is he in my crew when he should be used for target practice?

Axon also fails his test. Should I buy new dice? He drops to 2 life points and moves 8" towards Globrick's tower to render aid should the yellow idiot drop the ball again. Vashtar stays where he is for now.

Betty fails her check and is down to 1 life point. Yes, my leader is on the verge of going out in her first game. She moves 4" up to the tower and attempts to shut it down AND SHE DOES IT! Two towers down, one to go! 

In a turn of events that came as absolutely no surprise to me or anyone who's ever interacted with me in any way, Globrick fails his roll, takes a nice deep breath of poison gas, and promptly collapses. Both my engineers are out of action and, worse, in grave danger of being drop-kicked into the sun.

I should have moved Packman up to attempt to heal one of Betty's wounds, but in the excitement I forgot. Instead I rolled terribly for Axon, and he drops to 1 life point. He moves 4" to the pump but as he's further than 1" away he can't do anything. DeeDee passes her test and moves 8" towards the same pump, and Betty FAILS HER TEST and falls face-down on the metal flooring. Don't worry, her boobs cushioned her fall. Oh crap, will Faust read any more of these reports now his fave mini is out?

I need to get the three closest team members to the last pump and close it down. Packman drops another life point to 2 and moves 8" to the tower but will have to wait to attempt to shut it down. DeeDee passes her test and also moves 8" but can't do anything. Axon fails his life test and he's down for the count.

I'm not sure whether I had to perform rolls on Vashtar, but as he's so far away from the action he can't take part anyway. 

Packman fails his bloody check and drops to 1. Yes, I'm in danger of losing FIVE of my crew in their first mission. DeeDee fails hers for the first time but manages to win the game by successfully switching off the pump. Game over, man, game over!

Holy crap, what a ton of fun. Considering this is the first tabletop game I've played since around 1993 I found the rules relatively easy to follow but on the other hand I did make several errors which made things a lot tougher for me.

For starters, when you shut off a pump the Life Check drops by one dice; in other words, it gets easier. It's bloody obvious but I either missed that part of the rules or just forgot it. If I had remembered I'd still have lost Mirsloi but would have probably hung on to Betty, Globnik and Axon.

I also forgot about the characters' special abilities. Betty has the Sneaky Scoundrel attribute, meaning she can force the opposition to reroll a successful initiative roll once per turn. This would have come in handy at least twice when the robots kept winning those rolls. Both engineers can increase any weapon's strength by 1 dice at the start of a combat challenge so I could have been using 9 dice for Vashtar and Axon and 7 for everyone else. Both soldiers can reroll any two failed combat dice, and Packman has a Medi-Bag which means he can roll 3D12 and each 6+ gives a life point back to a character. I really need to remember this stuff next time I play.

Oh, and now for the aftermath. It is possible to bring your KO'd crew members back by rolling a single D12. A roll of 1 or 2 means they're dead for good, which is what happened to Globnick, Axon and Betty. Misloi did come back from her poison-induced coma but with all her stats reduced by 1. Awesome. Three dead and one stupider. What a way to end the game.