stolen from boardgamegeek.com
sounds great, cant wait to get a copy
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09-06-10
Well I'm almost done reading through my copy of AE-Bounty (one of the perks of being a playtester for Darkson Designs, although I had no involvement with this particalur game what-so ever) and I'll have to say I like it.
AE-Bounty is Darkson Design's second game and uses the same game mechanics as AE-WII (their Weird War II miniatures skirmish game). However this time the setting is a pure space opera style sci fi setting. The look reminds me of a bunch of the 80s to early 90s era sci fi Star Wars wannabe with rubber suited aliens. One comic book series that particularly reminded me of this was Alien Legion, a sort of French Foreign Legion in space made up of a myrad of aliens. In this game however you control a crew of mercenaries, pirates or bounty hunters made up of various aliens. Pre-release scuttlebutt mentioned it being highly customizable and will offer rules for fighting in the tight confines of space ships and even cover the dreaded explosive decompression.
To start off with, the book is well laid out and I found it a little easier to look up things than AE-WWII. The background story and fluff seem a bit flat and generic. Not as rich and exciting as the Weird War II setting of AE-WWII (but then, that's Weird War II, and that's just tough to beat). Basically big galactic government that offers a period of peace and prosperity amongst it's vast citizens collapses resulting in anarchy, piracy, and war amongst the chaotic breakup. Pretty much the setting of a lot of space wargames. A bit generic and was intended to be so, as it leaves lots of room for the player to work out their own campaign setting without having to cross too many 'historical continuity' issues. This does give a lot more freedom than AE-WWII however.
Next the core rules. Well I'll admit, I've skimmed through this due to the fact that it's basically the same as AE-WWII. If you currently play AE-WWII, you'll have no problem what-so ever playing this game. There's a few things I noticed where they included updates to the rules that came from issues of OTW (that's Over the Wire, Darkson's online magazine supporting AE-WWII and now Bounty) like suppression with AoE weapons and the special ability 'Get Up and Shoot!'. However, unlike AE-WWII, there are no rules for vehicles. I suppose it was more of more of an issue to stay focused on low-levl gunfights and duels but I wouldn't be surprised if vehicle rules come out shortly afterwards. Given how similar the rules are to AE-WWII it wouldn't be that hard to adapt the rules to include vehicles.
If you're unfamiliar with AE-WWII, the rules are an action point based alternating activation system. One of the key mechanics of the game is the Drive mechanic which covers morale. Units have a number of points representing their 'willingness to fight'. Unit casaulties cause other units to loose Drive points, also some weapons and enemy units have other means of removing these points. When a unit reaches 0 Drive, it breaks and routes. Commanders must spend time raising faultering drive values of units to keep them in the fight. When units route off the table, this further reduces the Drive of other units and thus can result in a total collapse of an army if one is not careful. This mechanic makes games fast, furious, and often realistic as games don't often result in a total war of attrition resulting to a handful of models struggling to win. The game is also Objective based, where scenarios call out Primary Objectives for winning conditions and players draw cards for random Secondary objectives (that they keep to themselves). At the end of the scenario, the player with the most objectives wins.
Now, for what makes Bounty different from AE-WWII. The unit creation, called Crews instead of the AE-WWII term Detachments, uses the same pointless system of as AE-WWII but is much more generic and customizable. The factions are simply Bounty Hunters, Mercenaries, and Pirates. Each faction has it's own selection of unit templates and has their own Faction Objectives. Yes, there's a third set of objectives that you have in the game. Each faction has it's own 'quota' of kills. Bounty Hunters get lots of credit for each Individual they take out as a casualty. Mercenaries get credit for every enemy kill they make and Pirates, being scavengers and the lowest form of life in the galaxy, get credit for every kill on the table (friendly or enemy). So now there's another element to this game where you want to kill as many enemy models before they Route off the table, making this game much more bloodthirsty than AE-WWII.
Like the Detachments in AE-WWII, each crew has a list of how many units of each training level you may choose from. Furthermore each Crew has a choice of how many Dirty Tricks they may get (Bounty's version of Special Orders, which if you're not familiar are like Feats that are selected prior to the game and revealed when they are played to add some surprising advantage into the game). There are also a list of trade-offs to customize each Crew to increase the number of models, quality of models, or number of Dirty Tricks in the game. You can essentially play with a Crew of as low as one super powered model all the way up to 15 low-life Green thugs.
Each unit template has a fixed stat line and a number of special abilities but also comes with a number of selections for weapons and gear. So you may pick what armor and weapons the unit will have. There is a large selection of weapons with various special effects (some of them non-lethal, which will gain you more credits for capturing live units). Once you've selected you're gear you may then select the alien race template. These modify the stat line and add additional special abilities to unit. Once you're done with that, depending on whether your Crew allows it, you may select a number of Hero Templates (just like AE-WWII) to further modify some Individual units.
Overall, a very customizable system where one has lots to choose from and there's lots of trade offs between quantity and quality. Like AE-WWII, Darkson Designs has their own line of models (which they'd love for you to use) but do not restrict play to only using DD models. The Darkson models generally are multi-piece models that come with extra parts for customization. Making your own alien bounty hunter figure looks to be pretty fun. I hear that Darkson Designs will also be providing sets of loose weapons for more customizing potential. Overall, you won't need very many models to play this game either.
Now the scenarios are where Bounty really starts to stand out over AE-WWII. There's lots of scenarios, more than what's in AE-WWII. Some are simple re-writes of existing AE-WWII scenarios and others are all new. The scenarios are broken into two groups Regular Scenaros and Space Ship Scenarios. Regular scenarios are pretty much like your traditional scenarios in open ground with a variable amount of terrain. However you are subjected to random environmental effects that can range from nothing, to darkness, to hostile effects like poisonous rain.
The Space Ship Scenarios is where this game, I predict, is really going to shine. This may require terrain of a different sort (probably more in line with Space Hulk). Rules cover fighting in close quarters particularly tight hallways where stray shots can have hazardous effects to your health. Also rules on doors add a whole new dynamic to gun battles in space. Grenades tend to bounce around a lot so they are very unpredictable. Powerful weapons have the potential to damage sections of the ship resulting in loss of light, gravity, life support or even blow a hole through a bulkhead resulting in decompression. If a decompression occurs models must make Strength tests to resist being sucked out. Each turn they fail, they are drawn closer to the hole in the bulkhead. Once they reach the hole, they're gone. Loss of life support will kill Green models fast as you loose 1 Action Point and must roll to resist falling unconcious each turn you are exposed to vacuum. Also there's rules for fighting in Zero-Gravity.
There's also a set of Campaign rules, but I haven't gotten that far yet in the book. I wouldn't be surprised if they're much different than the AE-WWII rules however.
Overall I'm quite pleased with this and am looking forward to the Pre-Order Package with Starter Set. I'm thinking about busting out my Space Hulk set just to try out the Space Ship Scenario rules with my tiles. Also this is getting me seriously geeked to consider Litko's Hallway System terrain. If you like playing AE-WWII you will find this game a cinch to get into. If you're looking for a small scale skirmish game where you have lots of freedom to create your own teams, customize your models and like using your own imagination, this game is for you.
