Traveller: Striker 1e Playtest!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

STRIKER
WARS

AN UP THE BLUE! LIMITED 
Production

Well, to me, it is OK to mix genres that entered my little young life at around the same time - 1980-ish. It is likely that I bought the game [or convinced mom to buy it for me] because of the box image and description, and it was certainly at the old Allied Hobbies at Montgomeryville Mall in Montgomeryville, PA, USA, where it was purchased:

Like many wargame projects from middle school, I found myself a bit overwhelmed at the complexity of the rules, commitment to sports and that fascinating discovery... girls!  Still, the sci-fi genre was firmly established as a creative outlet orienting around the future. Nevermind that so little of it makes any sense realistically or scientifically or what have you - stories get TOLD in the Far Future, whether it is A long time ago or 5,000 years into the future in the Traveller Universe.

Below, Ral Partha and Martian Metals figs, mercs and Zhodani respectively.  I painted them at the time with Testors enamels, and today they are mounted on bases that cost exactly 1 cent!

It was a long time coming, with several false starts - I would read through part of the books, then find that as much as I LOVED the first several pages, including the strong narrative of a game, I couldn't push on into the mechanics. 

The last strong attempts were made in spring of 2020, during "The Late Craziness" as I like to call it [CLICK], followed by a break of at least two years. Then, there was a sudden, unexplained urge to get into 1e Traveller in winter of 2023 which pushed me to get moving on my Striker forces [CLICK]. That has gone quite well, and with regular forays into the Traveller-verse I finally built up enough drive to [again] pick carefully through the rules and create a Player's Aid, which I find essential for these old rule sets.  And thus a 4th or 5th draft that was workable was completed:

...and it only has a few key items that were overlooked, which will be corrected - more on this anon!

With a draft in hand, and some encouragement and assistance from similarly afflicted gamers over at the Fb page [CLICK], I finally found the stars aligning [pun intended] to throw down an initial playtest. I used Scenario #7: Flank Attack from One-Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas. While there are MANY scenarios suitable for modern combat in that amazing book, this one suited my availability and the CONOP that was in my mind: a small force of 20 Strikers against 37 Zhodani Home Defense Soldiers. 

As I was putting the scenario together, I then realized I needed a worksheet, one that I would continuously refer to and create from. This is due to the ruleset ultimately being an elaborate tool for a Traveller RPG Referee / GM. This was also done, with the momentum picking up as I got closer and closer:

This involved quite a bit of work, as a first-timer with the rules, to decide on weapons that were different from each other but comparable in lethality and range, along with armor, organizing squads and teams, etc. Going forward, it will be a lot easier to use the worksheet as well as modify the weaponry.

What yet *another* task complete, I put the forces onto the table, impatiently tossing some adequate and unimpressive terrain down so I could FINALLY get this 40+ year project going!  And here we go...

Scenario #7 is quite simple: two equal forces face each other, one on a large, strongly defended hill that is pinned by enemy to the front while a flanking force attacks on the right flank [shaded area]. As this did not suit my figure collection, or my desire for an asymmetric fight, I created a Zhodani Home Defense Conscript force of two Sections, 37 figs in four TL 12 Squads.  S1 top, S2 bottom, PL to left.

And a quick close-up of the Martian Metal figs. They are solid, not spectacular.

This faced a smaller attacker composed of 20 Picked TL10 mercenary Strikers [how fitting!]. I organized them into a Section of 2 Squads. Top is Squad 2, average quality to be the base of Fire, bottom is Squad 1, High IN to maneuver better:

At center is the PL with some more shooters. Bottom is the Assault suits:

Below is the Platoon Leader with a Team:

Below are the shooters for the base of fire. Great sculpts, as you'd expect from RP!

This match-up is very much in the theme of the rules, as well as making things interesting. Can a smaller, lower Tech Level force win a fight against a larger, higher TL force that is almost twice as big? Let's see how the Striker 1e engine works here!

I set up per the scenario, with all Zhodani upon the hill, altho I gave them a likely deployment of two teams covering the road, with the PL's Team and 1 Squad in reserve, back of the plateau. 1 Section below, 1 Squad back, 2 Squad up:

2 Section on the right, with 1 Squad top of hill, 2 Squad covering the road. Behind is the Rally Point, the 2nd Transcendental Center of Elbiz, in the Sword worlds.

I also decided to give the Zhodani Camouflage, a penalty of -2 to Spot them. Until you Spot the enemy, you can only use Recon by Fire, which has a large penalty.

For the attacking Strikers, I put the base of fire on the small hill, three teams to pin down the Zhodani Home Defense Force:

This included 2nd Squad and the PL's Team.  1st Squad is prepared to attack the Flank from the cover of concealing terrain.

For terrain, all hills and the two templates, and all green bushes are Concealment. This gives a 1 bonus to troops in them for morale, and a 1 penalty for Spotting and Fire against them. More importantly, it prevents them from being automatically Spotted, which turns this into a deadly game of shoot'n seek! 

The fight developed gradually. 

As all were Concealed and Stationary, they needed an 8+ on 2d6 to Spot each other at least; the Zhodani were also Camouflaged, which made it a 10+! This would drop by 2 for either side if the Team Fired. Interesting point of dice-rolling friction, the Zhodani failed to Spot any Merc Teams [abysmal rolling, a 3, 5, and 6] while the Mercs managed to Spot one Zhodani Team, rolling an 11! They proceeded to Hit 2 and Forced Back the other 2. Immediately, I noticed that Recruits were easily Removed on any Wound, Light or Serious. "I got an owie - bye!"

Having fired upon the Zhodani, their Spot number went down to 6+, and the Zhodani managed to spot 1 [ONE!] Team. This team withstood the Fire quite well, taking one Light Wound. In Turn, the Mercs then began to Spot more and more Zhodani, as they were Firing, so were an 8+ to Spot. 

The Fight then quickly escalated!

After 2-3 Turns, the Zhodani and Mercs had a solid firefight going across the valley. But the combination of higher individual Quality and Team Initiative Forced Back or Routed 3 of 4 Z Teams from the fight - and the 4th was Suppressed. The Mercs sustained a Serious and Light Wound, not much to attain Fire superiority and inflict 13 casualties! 

As a result [below], the Zhodani had to use a Code Word ["Ephemeral"] to start the advance of their Squad 1 reserve, and the PL with his Team of 3.  This gave the Merc Squads confidence to also Move up using Code Word "Starbird".

This turned out to be a bit of an error - by moving 4/5 of the Merc Teams, they lost their Overwatch / Defensive Fire, and made it too easy for the Zhodani to advance as well. Below, 2 Squad's advance:

Below, 1 Squad's advance to the edge of their Concealment.

Below, the last Team of 2 Section is encouraged to see the PL's Team advancing!

...While 1 Squad fills the gap left by 3 Squad's hasty retreat! A Suppressed Team is all that is left opposing the Merc advance into the valley.

Below, remnants of 3 Squad, lightly Wounded Regulars.

Another Turn sees the Zhodani reserves in position.

But so are the Mercs!

This time, it was easier to spot everyone, as the rolls were 6+ due to the Moving. Another sharp firefight developed, and the Zhodani again got the worst of it. This resulted in several more Wounded Soldiers, and several more Routs.

As I didn't have a "Force Morale Check" number in mind, I just conceded for them when only the Elite and Veteran Leaders were left, with the PL Seriously Wounded.

This was a fascinating playtest!  A simple firefight in the brush, looked and felt very realistic.

Positives:

- The varied wounding of Soldiers helps you to realize how a few people hold a small Unit together and keep fighting while others leave.

- The relative effectiveness of weapons shaped decisions and tactics. The Zhodani 4mm Gauss rifle outranged and out-powered the TL10 9mm Advanced Combat Rifle; the Mercs had to use Disposable Sabot rounds to counter them.

- The mechanics of Spotting shaped the firefight's development. I was hoping that the Zhodani weapons would enable them to hang tough, but the opening 5-3 firefight went decisively  in the Mercs favor. As the Z had a win, sitting on the objective, they could have held Fire; however, I felt that having 4-5 Teams would be enough to take down the Merc Team that was spotted. They took out half the Team, which passed Morale and kept fighting.

Overall, it felt quite real, partially because there's a lot of professional instead of "game" language in the rules, but also because it is a more granular game: you game out the wounding and removal of Soldiers, the relative effectiveness of weapons, and Spotting is important - one can get some free chicken with good spotting rolls.

The total experience of getting this game going reminded me a lot of my mom's cooking. She was a serious cook, and used old-school complicated recipes from Betty Crocker. Sure it takes more work up front to make Beef Wellington with Napoleon's for dessert. However, it is more flavorful when you're eating! This is just what this game was like.

Basically, the RPG elements give it a lot more "feel", and pressure a PL to push on to get into better range, better terrain, work for Fire superiority, maneuver against the objective, etc.  While they represented a fair amount of work for me to do the first time, it will be only a small fraction of that effort next, time, and there WILL be a next time, I assure you!