0109 - Converting the team to version 4

The alpha is finally here. It came out the same day my new primer arrived. I think Free League did this knowing that there are only so many hours in a day and they wanted to prevent me from painting my new Team Yankee miniatures. It almost worked.

As it was, it took me two day to prime the models and it was two days well spent. So far I love the rules. They seem to be fast paced yet gritty. I love, the inclusion in the rules of the need for food and water. Sure, the others had these but they seem to have dramatic effects in the game and I have a sneaky suspision that this will become a problem for the team in the future. I also like the A-D die system and its integration in such things as weapon quality. Simple and elegant way to model wear on anything you really care about.

I like the barter rules and the ability to raise and lower the price by 10%. Very reminiscient of my own hosue rules and I find the soulution to the price in bullets to be more reaonable the abitrary dollar amounts. The fact that the characters start out with a lot less equipment I find a nice change. Both the v1 and v2 rules were way to generous on this point and I generally only allowed 10% of the amount they would normally have for new characters. Without that, the challenge becomes how to transport all the stuff and not how to survive on very little.

What I do not like is the DISCUSSION about the back story. I believe the team at FL needs feedback about how the games works for the fan base, not their personal opinion on the back story to the exclusion of the constructive feedback on the rules.

Like the earlier version, if you do not like the back story, don't use it. I hated the back story for the v2 and never used it. Instead, I went back to my favorite version in v1. I have no intention of changing it for my ongoing campaign and I believe the discussion about the global view to be to high-level for the characters. For those fighting for their lives in Poland the "how" they got there takes a back burner to just staying alive. This is my opinion and you are centerainly welcome to yours and I will not debate you on it. To each his own.

I have to be honest at this point and say I have not even read the back story yet, as it is the rules that interest me and not the fluff (apologies to the FL writers who wrote the backstory-). I wanted to take them for a test drive and try them out. In order to do so, I created v4 versions of the characters using the archetypes. The relative lack of equipment here is great, as it plays into the campaign, with the characters bailing out of the burning OT-64.

I used the following archetype for each character:

• 2LT Jade Marshall (US Army – Aviation) - The Officer with Tactician speciality
• 2LT Wayne Logan (US Army Medical Corp – Nurse) - The Medic with Combat Medic speciality
• SSG Michael Griffin (US Army – Ranger) - The Operator with Sniper speciality
• MAJ Edward Harris (US Army – Engineer) - The Mechanic with Combat Engineer speciality. The Officer did not really fit to a hands on guy like Ed
• SPC Walerian ‚Wally‘ Losinski (Polish Army – Support) - The Mechanic with Mechanic Speciality
• MSG Eduard Lyubomyrovych "Potato" Potapenko (Soviet Army – Airborne Infantry) - The Gunner with Machinegunner speciality
• SFC Jack Robinson (US Army – Armor) - The Grunt with Load Carrier speciality
• SSG Micheal Macron (US Army – Infantry) - The Grunt with Rifleman Speciality
• AGT Sukhikh Klara "Klasha" Kirillovna (US Government Agent) - The Spook with Psy Ops speciality

I admit that I tweaked some of the characters. Mostly this involved changing theri weapon loadouts or bumping a Coolness Under Fire to better represent their actual Initiative. Just a few tweaks but it would not be our game if we didn't tweak it.

I used the group equipment options to get a backpack for Klasha (guess Spooks carry everything in their pants pockets), an underslung grenade launcher for Robinson, two more belts for Potato's PKM and some other equipment the team was needing.

I like that they have so little, honestly, because this reflects what they could grab as the scramble out of the burning OT-64. Since I wanted to learn the in's and out's of the combat system, I have removed the injuries from all the characters. Now they get a fresh chance to get wounded.

Now that all is said and done, we can drop them back into the ambush.