Galactic Heroes: Solo Play

I just played a quick solo game of Wiley Games' "Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes," to familiarize myself with the rules ahead of trying to demonstrate the game for other people at my FLGS next week.  I actually used the mission charts in Osprey Games' "Rogue Stars" rules to generate a mission, and then played everything out with Galactic Heroes.

The set up was simple: A gang of smugglers, led by the flamboyant, electro-whip-wielding Lillith, had to move three parcels of "Frigian Ice Jewels" across a snowy, ruin-dotted plain while evading Captain Crash Carter, his trusty assistant Doc Libra, and a squad of Stellar Legionaries.  Complicating matters, a snowstorm reduced all visibility to 12".  The smugglers were deployed in the middle of one table edge, while Carter and Libra deployed on one adjoining edge and the Legionaries deployed on the other.

During the first turn, Lillith used her jetpack to dart at Captain Carter and Doc Libra, hoping to distract them from the three troopers carrying bundles of precious gems.  Carter tried to take a pot shot at her, but rolled a 1 - Out of Ammo! Doc Libra pointed his Photon Wand at her and pressed the firing stud, catching her in a roiling cone of radiation, leaving her Shaken.  Meanwhile, her second-in-command, the cyborg Steve Austen, led the three jewel-toting regulars on a mad race across the tundra to safety, while the Stellar Legionaries fanned out and took up firing positions.

On the second turn, Crash unjammed his blaster pistol, and before she could react, Doc fired his Photon Wand again, reducing Lillith to a smear on the ice.

The rest of the smugglers quickly found themselves pinned down between two ruined buildings.  One of the Legionaries, Private Altax, took a bullet in the stomach from Dirk, a smuggler, quickly rolling over and succumbing to his injuries.  Before Dirk could celebrate, however, Crash threw himself over a ruined wall and shot the smuggler in the back, killing him instantly.

Flynn, one of the other smugglers, turned and fired point-blank at Carter with his auto-pistol despite being already injured by blasterfire, and successfully put two wounds on the Captain, knocking him flat on his back in the snow.

Doc raced over to try and perform first aid on the Captain (despite Doc not having the "Medic" trait, I decided on the fly that on an 8+ roll he could still negate one wound) while the Legionaries mopped up the remaining smugglers.  As Crash staggered to his feet, the Frigian Ice Jewels were recovered.

All in all, from set-up to breakdown took about an hour and I really enjoyed myself.  The game had a couple of great swings I wasn't expecting, both when Lillith unexpectedly bit the dust and when Crash almost followed her into the great beyond.

I did have a couple things I recognized as needing fixing - Crash's team had a distinct advantage in that while visibility was reduced to 12", that was still within short range for the Legionaries' blaster rifles, while the smugglers were all armed with auto-pistols - which had a long range of 12".  So a Legionary at the maximum extent of visibility could hit a smuggler on a 5+, but that smuggler would need an 8+ to shoot back.

Also, I definitely need to pick up a new deck of cards.  The one I've got, the cards are very cheap, very thin plastic and don't shuffle nicely at all.