In April my mate Gareth introduced me to a sci-fi game that I’d never heard of; Core Space. I’ve always been a bit of a sci-fi fan and while not a huge sci-fi wargamer, one of my all-time favourite board-wargames was the Bug-Hunter version of the classic “Sniper!” WW2 game, while the superlative Stargrunt II by Ground Zero Games remains one of the best platoon-level wargame rules ever made, regardless of its sci-fi setting (and is free to download at this link). In the 80s I also dabbled in the Dark Side with a bit of Warhammer 40K when it first came out (usually played using the old Games Workshop Spacefarers rules) and I still regret giving away my old army of Space Dwarves (they’re probably worth a fortune to a collector now). There was also of course, my slight X-Wing addiction within the last decade…
I’m ashamed to admit that there are whole departments of my wargames collection that have never made it on to this blog and in fact haven’t even made it out of their boxes in decades, so I really must eventually get around to digging out my old 25/28mm sci-fi figures (mostly Denizen, Grenadier, GZG and Alternative Armies models). As it happens, I’d already been looking around for some modular sci-fi corridor models in order to do some tabletop Bug-Hunter, so Core Space also scratches that itch.
So ‘Core Space’ piqued my interest and I was immediately impressed with the overall production-quality of the game; the excellent cardboard scenery, the figures and the simple and aesthetically-pleasing ‘character dashboards’ for keeping track of character and game information. I was also impressed with the simple and elegant game-system, particularly the escalating level of threat and opposition the players face as they progress through a mission.
You get a lot of stuff in the box for your money: a 2 foot-square neoprene printed game-mat, enough cardstock scenery to create the layout above (the windows and doors have been popped out, but you can pop them back in again if you want to incorporate rules for opening/closing/locking/unlocking doors, smashing windows, etc), lots of additional plastic clips to enable a wide variety of different layouts, 20 plastic figures (two crews of four ‘Traders’, three civilians and nine ‘Purge’ baddies), heaps of loot/equipment tiles and a drawstring bag to hold them in and all the essential game-equipment (special dice, plastic character-dashboards, hostility-track, coloured pegs, range/move-ruler, ship-tiles, event cards and even some coloured plastic clip-collars to pop over the bases of figures to remind you of whose side they’re on).
Each player controls a small crew of ‘Traders’; the generic name given to small independent ships’ crews, scratching and scavenging a living from the remnants of civilisations, settlements, space-stations and ships that have been abandoned (or semi-abandoned) to the Purge. Each crew consists of a Captain and up to six Crew and as with most RPGs, each character belongs to a certain ‘class’ (Soldier, Hunter, Tech, Support, Crewman, Augmented, Machine, etc.) and this will give them a certain selection of skills to develop. Each character will also start with a certain level of innate skills and career-path (there’s also a points-system and an online tool to help you create complete characters from scratch and print off character-boards for them, which means that you can easily use your own figure-collection). Each character and their skills are tracked on a ‘dashboard’, which can then be modified by using a dry-wipe pen and coloured pegs.
The common enemy to all players are The Purge; an evil cyborg horde, driven by mysterious and unidentified overlords, intent on overrunning all sapient life in the galaxy and adding their victims to a horrific living biomass. The Purge are the game-driven threat that is managed by the game’s rather clever mechanisms. The threat-level will increase with time, as well as with the firing of noisy firearms and random events (which can also decrease the threat). So as each game progresses, your presence attracts ever-increasing numbers of the buggers that eventually become impossible to deal with (non-player characters managed by the game, also include civilians, gangers, Galactic Corps cops and others, who might become enemies, allies or simply a distraction for the Purge). This leads to a very exciting and interesting game that invariably ends with an ‘Aliens’-style desperate fighting withdrawal to the ship and extraction (hopefully!) just as guns jam or run out of ammo!
On the right is the character dashboard of one of the two Captains from the starter-set, Arianna Sabrine. She’s already a well-developed character even before we start adding to her skills. Looking at the character-board at the top; the black circles within the white dots show her baseline stats and skills, while the empty white dots show her potential level, which could become available as her career continues. So if we look at the top line, her baseline Health is 5 (five black circles), but could eventually increase to 7. For the time being her Health of 5 means that she starts the mission with five green pegs. Her baseline number of Actions that can be taken in a game-turn was 2, but as her career progressed, I was able to increase this to the maximum of 3 (the red pen splodge indicates the newly-added Action). Her baseline number of Skill-points is 4, but she could potentially increase this to 6; four purple pegs are added to her dashboard at the start of the mission. She has earned three Career-points above her baseline thus far (indicated by the three red pen-dots) and has reached the end of that row on the dashboard, which enabled me to add one to her baseline Actions.
Also on her character board is a pop-out tile with a footprint and the number 1. This means that Arianna gains an additional 1 inch of movement with each Move action. However, the pop-out tile is the Armour slot, so she will lose this ability if she equips herself with armour. I must say that I find her ability to move fast, especially now that she’s able to take three actions (only two of which can be a move) VERY useful indeed, so I’m reluctant to give her armour. The number ’57’ is her points value if you do such things and the eyeball symbol shows her innate Level 1 ‘Reflexes’ skill (more of which below).
In the middle of her dashboard is her Inventory Slot, which can only hold a small number of items; if you can’t fit it in the slot, you can’t carry it. You’ll note that Arianna is presently fully-loaded, carrying a pair of pistols (her Level 2 Weapons Expert skill actually allows her to wield two pistols, but she was carrying the extra one to hand to her crewmate who was trapped in a bar during the last mission), a sword and a med-stim for when it goes wrong. This limited carrying-capacity leads to some very careful decision-making. Each character ideally needs to carry a ranged weapon and if like Arianna, they don’t have an innate mêlée ability, a mêlée weapon as well. This then doesn’t leave much space to carry an objective item and all the other good stuff you might find along the way, as well as extra ammo, stims, med-packs, grenades… Decisions, decisions… I’ve only played a few games, but I’ve taken to carrying ammo and med-packs with me at the start and then dropping them off like breadcrumbs along my extraction route, on the assumption that I’ll need them on the way out!
Below the inventory is her Class board (‘Hunter’). This shows symbols which relate to particular skills. The colour indicates the group of skills (blue = Ranged Combat, green = Close Assault, red = Endurance, purple = Stealth, orange = Cunning & turquoise = Tech) and the number of empty dots around the symbol shows the potential skill-level, while the filled dots show the achieved skill-level. As Arianna started the campaign with four Career-points, she initially had four Level 1 skills marked on her Class board: Marksman (blue crosshairs), Weapons Expert (blue pistol), Combat Expert (green fist) and Fade to Black (purple silhouette). As she’s picked up three more Career-points along the way, I’ve added three more dots, increasing her Marksman, Weapons Expert and Combat Expert skills to Level 2. She also has an innate Level 1 Reflexes skill (green eyeball), as shown on her character board; these innate character skills can be added to the same skill on their Class board (if they match) to increase the skill-level up to a maximum of 3. If she uses a Level 1 skill, she must remove a purple peg, while Level 2 skills cost two pegs and Level 3 skills require three pegs. There are also a precious few ‘Passive’ skills which can be used without spending a peg and can even be used if the character has used all their purple pegs.
As with video-game RPGs, the game revolves around looting anything and everything that isn’t nailed down and actual mission objectives can often be casually ignored for simply hoovering up as many credits as you can in order to keep your ship flying and your crew equipped and up to strength. And who doesn’t love a bit of larceny? To aid in that, the game also includes that essential ingredient to any video-game RPG; the Loot-Crate. These can pre-loaded before each mission with a random selection of goodies (as can other furniture items, such as wall-lockers), including occasional special items that can’t be bought from one of the many arms-dealers between missions.
I should add that the logic-flowchart (or ‘AI’)-driven NPCs and Purge enemy mean that this makes a truly superb solo game for those of us with no friends. It also means that you can play with another player cooperatively against the game, or do the dirty and fight them as well as the Purge, it’s up to you. Four will normally be the maximum number of players, but there’s no real reason why even larger games shouldn’t be possible. For more than two players, it’s recommended that you add a second helping of Purge models to the game for every two additional players.
Like all good ‘Plastic Crack’ games, there are plenty of expansions such as additional Crews, which include more lovely model figures, as well as their character boards, new rules, faction-specific event cards, lots of new kit/loot and additional scenarios. I’ve just got the Shootout at Zed’s and Galactic Corps expansions, which add a criminal gang and law-enforcement/military element to the game, plus some new scenery in the form of Zed’s Bar and a particle-transmitter-teleport thingy, plus various bits and pieces to add to the standard selection of scenery. There are also further expansions for more dangerous Purge types, Rogue Purge who have broken their programming, factory workers, scientists and MASSIVE scenery packs which add three-dimensional city-scapes, post-apocalyptic landscapes and alien ruins to the options. There’s also a whole new side-shoot in the form of Core Space: First Born, which adds a whole new race of universal enemies, in the form of a race of ancient aliens who have slumbered for 3 million years and are now rather grumpy at having been woken up…
Being lonely and having no friends, I’ve just embarked on the introductory Perseus Arm Campaign from the starter-set rulebook as a solo game and will post the games here as I work my way through it, starting with Mission 3 (as I shamefully played the first two missions and a couple of games before it with… gulp… unpainted figures…). There are also absolutely heaps of official and unofficial free scenarios, campaigns and mini-campaigns to download when I’ve finished this one.
In conclusion, Core Space is an absolute hoot and being a very ‘sandbox’ sort of game, it’s enormously adaptable and convertible to other things. There are stacks of unofficial resources online for converting it to Aliens, Star Wars, Stargate and other sci-fi settings and I’ve already had some ideas for my own Aliens version. The Escalating Threat mechanic is perfect for Aliens and I can also see it being ideal for a small group of Rebel Scum raiding an Imperial stronghold against ever-increasing number of Stormtroopers, or SG-1 raiding a Jaffa outpost and then trying to exfil back to the Gate. It’s also perfect for a ‘Falling Skies’-type post-apocalypse/alien-invasion setting (hopefully without the irritating teenage characters), with badly-equipped Human resistance and alien allies fighting Earth’s alien invaders while scavenging Earth’s wreckage for supplies. Gareth is even playing at 15mm, having built his own modular scenery and created his own characters, using a campaign taken from another system, in a more classically Cyperpunk setting.
So I highly recommend getting Core Space, but perhaps hang on for a few months, as now I’ve bought the game, they’ve just announced a 2nd Edition called Core Space: Evolution…
To my surviving reader; Be Not Afraid. I will still be a dyed-in-the-wool historical wargamer. These sci-fi posts will be a bonus! 🙂
