Planetfall - Initial Mission: Beacons

 Planetfall offers a trio of tutorial style missions to help get new players to grips with the mechanics, and possibly earn some starting bonus resources without consequences for failing them like pesky injury roles and things. 

First of which is the Scout mission; Beacons. I set up a 2x2 board using the terrain rules and disperse 3 points across the board that need beacons set up, presumably for scouting out the initial site for the colony. We then proceed through the basic move and action phase, and instead of active enemies on the Enemy Step, we get dangerous dust clouds of some kind blow in from the centre of the board. It suggests using the tokens that were designed for the game (and that come included with the pdf version) however a little 20-25mm token felt a bit...weedy. We need to go BIGGER. So I whipped some up on larger 40mm bases with some very unhealthy coloured smoke on them.

 

With the board set up the mission could begin. That said, I found the included terrain set up rules to be a little...loosey goosey for my liking. It suggests dividing the board sections in 12 inch or so zones (or in this case, each board) and to just vaguely fill each with "enough" terrain to fit the theme rolled. Which, great and fine but I wouldn't really call that a good guideline. It was just "use what you have" with more words unless I'm vastly misunderstanding. That said for the next mission, I think I'll try it out with the terrain generation rules from 5PFH:Comendium (in which you decide a "main" centre of the board feature, and then do drops in each zone designated)

One objective marker was placed on the centre hill, with another in the rocky ground south west and another in the small forest area to the north west. I rolled to have the scouts come in from a random table edge and got an eastern result, so unfortunately they're going to have a bit of a treck. The objective being on the centre of the hill could also become a complication as that's where the dust clouds will spawn from!

Turn 1: I roll the reaction dice and get a 1 and a 3. The 1 has to be assigned to Luna (the raptor alien) as she is a a Feral Subrace under the books rules (or in this case a Deinon I think I called her as calling an alien co-worker a Feral feels a bit off!). This means that she can see an extra 1 inch distance in low visibility scenarios but must be assigned reaction roles of 1 if a single 1 is rolled due to her being impetuous. It does go on to say to ignore that for multiple roles of 1, but I like the idea of it so will be keeping that restriction for myself for fun. 

Given she has a Reaction score of 1, this means she will move in the Fast phase, then we see what smoke clouds appear, and then Kade (the jump pack scout) can make a move in the Slow phase.

The pair split up, with Luna heading south and Kade going vaguely north towards the hill after the first smog cloud forms. It rolls a random direction and 1D6 inches, and blows slightly west. 

Turn 2: I roll a reaction roll of 3 and 4 this time, so both scouts will act in the slow phase. Another dust cloud picks up and pushes south east towards the two rocks close to Luna, while the first cloud blows south. Luna pushes towards the southern most objective point, while Kade uses his jump pack to leapfrog up the hill and secure the first beacon site.

Given the Scouts main ability to to ignore terrain and leap in a straight line, I feel like the board generation in this case really was just set dressing, but who am I to complain.

Turn 3: I roll a 1 and a 5 this time, and with the 1 having to be assigned to Luna, it means she can scurry over to the southern rock formation to drop another beacon.

A third cloud picks up, as they vaguely start to circle around the hill. The downside of randomized movement on these things! I had hoped the larger size would make them feel a bit more dangerous, but so far I'm just unlucky. Or lucky. Depends on your view I suppose.

Kade once again leaps and bares north to the forest, but lands just short of the beacon point.

Turn 4: I roll reactions of 2 and 4, meaning the enemy clouds will go first. One blows entirely off the board, the other 2 mill around, and a 4th blows in and also just kind of, looms without getting much closer to either scout.

Giving Kade the opportunity to scuttle forward the extra inch or so and nab the last beacon.

With all 3 claimed, the mission ends and the colony earns itself 2 Raw Materials to help jumpstart itself.
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The book sort of flip flops between suggesting a 2x2 or a 3x3 depending on the mission type. It likely assumes 28mm, but I've seen that the author Ivan routinely plays with smaller 10-20mm or so minis, and due to space concerns (not a pun) I'm hoping simply throwing enough terrain down and using the measurements as written with the 15mm models works itself out without looking too silly. I know for ranges that tends to "look" better, but I've seen no end of anecdotal opinions of people saying it looks visually fine for 15mm models to zoom around a board while others suggest only halving or converting movement range. That said, I feel like 4 turns worked out fine, especially given the scouts have a 5 inch move to start and lacking enemies were simply using the Rush action every turn for an extra 2 inches. 

Next job, get my two colony Scientists painted up ready for Initial Mission 2, in which we play around and try out using hidden Contact Markers.

See you next time.