Play Report: OPR Grimdark Future FTL – with my kids

 So, we started playing One Page Rules: Grimdark Future – FTL Fleets in our home. And it was quite cool. Let me tell you how it went down between me and my two sons (almost 9 and almost 4).

The Combatants

While I only had one of my projected three gamepunk-fleets finished, my older son had not been idle and had (inspired by what I was doing) made spaceships himself. His own fleet was the Blaze Fleet, consisting of four ships created from scrap parts that we had lying around the workshop. He does have an elaborate back story for his people (beaver-like aliens seeking Earth which they know from received transmissions) but let's not get too deep into the details. The fleet consisted of three heavy ships and one medium ship according to the OPR rules.

My younger son had watched me play Sword of the Stars and liked the ships of the Zuul. He asked his brother to make him some and the result was another fleet of three large and one medium ship cobbled together from stuff lying around (and lots of hot glue). The specialty of this fleet was ramming – every ship had the Reinforced Ram upgrade, which would definetly come in handy.

My own fleet was cardboard-printed. The ships were mantis ships from FTL. As I was trying to gauge, what works in the game and what doesn't (for when I need to battle real enemies, not my kids) and went for a somewhat rounded fleet composition with lots of smaller craft: One medium ship as a flagship, three light ships armed with rocket pods (which would rule against squadrons but my enemies had none ...), two light ships designed for ramming (love those!) and four squadrons of gunships (to be ready for anything).

The Battle

Our dinner table was the battlefield. In the center we placed a round container lid as a central planet. A large D20 was the moon. Some boxes and stones were an asteroid swarm. Four red D10 were objectives placed in orbit. In addition to these standard objectives according to the rules of OPR FTL, each fleet had their own-set goals for an extra victory point: The Blaze Fleet had to keep its flagship alive, the Zuul had to fire on the planet each turn, the mantis had to destroy at least one capital enemy ship.

Turn 1

As my ships were smaller than both enemies, it didn't matter to me that my older son won iniative and my younger son came in last. I split my force: The five small ships went to intercept the Blaze Fleet, firing a first volley of rockets and doing one point of damage to one of the capital ships. The gunship squadrons went ahead and charged into the smallest ship of the Zuul fleet and started harrying it with their light weaponry. My flagship made a beeline towards one of the objectives and fired its plasma cannon, the mightiest weapon in my fleet, at the Zuul formation. To no effect.

The other two fleets also split up: The Blaze Fleet sent two ships towards my formation of light ships, opening fire. Their other two ships went towards the Zuul fleet and the objectives.

The Zuul fleet attacked in two directions as well, sending one ship towards the Blaze Fleet and three ships towards my mantis fleet.

Turn 2

The two ramming ships were in ramming position! So they did their thing and dealt tremendous damage to the front ship of the Blaze Fleet coming towards them (a medium ship, the smallest of that fleet), ramming it into the ship that was following. The missile ships meanwhile swerved hard to the right in order to follow and hopefully support the embattled flag ship of the fleet that was all alone in the vicinity of a victory point.

The Blaze Fleet fired upon my ships and even sent a rocket barrage to my own rocket ships, dealing damage to one caught in the blast despite it being in cover behind an asteroid. The Blaze Fleet also engaged the foward ship of the Zuul, firing all they had. Their flagship collected a victory point

The Zuul gathered a victory point as well and fired on my flagship once again, dealing heavy damage.

Turn 3

Things were getting serious. My two ramming ships did their thing again, driving back the much larger enemy craft. My flagship broke apart when it was rammed by the slow but deadly Zuul ship that was coming towards it. The Zuul medium ship, still followed by my gunships, stopped to turn in order to get back into the fight. The clash of two of the Blaze Fleet's ships and one of the Zuul ships ended with said Zuul ship being destroyed and dropping an objective it had gathered before. My rocket ships got into the fray, hoping to regain the victory point that my destroyed flagship had lost and perhaps even conquer one from the enemy.

Turn 4

The last turn was deadly. My two ramming ships sacrificed themselves, killing their opposing ship and badly damaging the capital ship that was following. The other side of the Blaze Fleet killed off their Zuul opponent and collected its victory point, upping their score to two. Two of my rocket-armed ships kamikaze'd into the badly damaged Zuul heavy ship they were facing off against, destroying it and themselves. My gunships failed to destroy the badly damaged medium ship they were engaging though – my last rocket armed light ship could not risk gathering up the two floating objectives infront of itself because it would have been rammed apart by that ship. Thus, the Zuul flagship could slowly swoop in and gather up these two victory points.

The aftermath

The Blaze Fleet lost one medium ship and won. They collected two objectives and fulfilled their secondary objective of having the flagship survive. The Zuul fleet came in second, with two victory points from objectives. They lost two heavy ships. My mantis fleet came in last with one victory point from a secondary objective. Three squadrons and one light ship were the only survivors.

What I learned

Ramming is fun and very effective. If I had played for victory, my fleet composition would have been dramatically wrong: Had I taken bombers instead of gunships for swarms and had I not taken missile volleys but more punchy weaponry on my three light cannon ships, I would have dealt a lot more damage. Positioning is something you always have to keep up with: As ships have to move half their movement before pivoting, you have to be careful not bump into your own crafts.

The game was great fun. We will do this again. Probably soon. So I'll have to get the other two fleets ready...

Tabletop Punk: Wargaming with zero budget

 When I was a teenager, being into Warhammer was really money consuming. I was never good at painting minis but I did want to build an army, and play – and thus spent several years worth of pocket money to make my Dark Elf army. Later I played BrikWars with friends, which was much more fulfilling. But all of that is in the past because it's 2023 and you no longer need money to play a tabletop strategy game. In this series of posts I will do a play-by-play on me making the recommended starting 300-point-fleets for One Page Rules: Grimdark Future FTL.

There will be three types of build to make here:

The Scrap Fleet

The Scrap Fleet made from found objects. Inspired by Ana Polanšćak and this post of hers. If you can turn a nerf gun into a spaceship, anything is possible! This is also for you if you actually enjoy painting models.

The Papercraft Fleet

The Papercraft Fleet. Papercrafting is kind of difficult at this small scale but we'll see what we can do. My son wants a Star Wars Fleet so I'll start with Star Destroyers. Leave it to some Japanese dude to make these things on the sub-3-centimeter-scale...

The Cardboard Fleet

The Cardboard Fleet. Similar to papercrafting but less 3D: I Intend to just print out dop-down-views of ships several times and then layer them on top of one another in order to give them at least some depth.

Of course, the most simple thing would be paper standies. This would also be my recommendation to anyone who wants to make an infantry-based tabletop army at zero budget. But I like to craft things so these three fleets will be my way. Also, my son wants to craft his own Scrap Fleet. I may also have to mix methods – I am as of yet unsure how to make tie fighter squadrons for that star destroyer without using beads. There is no way I can papercraft a spherical thing at that scale.

The basic rule is that I won't buy anything for any of these fleets. Only things found in my workshop/around the house/in the garbage are allowed. I can still use our printer and I can also use paints I already have. It's also possible that my friend Justin will paint some of my ships because it's something he likes doing and he is a thousand times better than me.

Anyhow: Be inspired. I doesn't cost money to get into the game. At least not necessarily.

Here's some rules. Here's some templates. Now go out there and build fleets!

Supernatural Labyrinth- and maze media

 A very specific genre of fiction that I absolutely adore is the supernatural maze or lanbyrinth. Technically, most of them are mazes – but I do like the word labyrinth more, especially in my German mother tongue, where it remains "Labyrinth" rather than "Irrgarten" (maze).

Giovanni Battista Piranesi - Le Carceri d'Invenzione - Second Edition - 1761 - 14 - The Gothic Arch

Over the years I have, of course, created several pieces of transcendental maze in media – both as static dungeons on paper, procedural generation things in computer games or even that story-book-experiment I once wrote/designed. And of course my board games, of which there have been several iterations. But what about regular media? Books? Films? Board games...? Here's some I have read/watched/played over the course of the year. And no, Maze Runner doesn't count. Go home, creeps who read YA like a religion. And if you're actually a young adult: How the fuck did you end up on my blog?

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsky

Can't have this list without that book. The story itself is, of course, a maze. As are the layers upon layers of fiction. Are we in the baseline reality of that dude researching an obscure, possibly nonexistant found-footage-film? Are we in that film? Are we the editor? The crazy old man who had been writing about the film? If they ever make this a movie, they should just go full found-footage and ignore any of the framework. But they probably wouldn't, would they? Difficult read, but it has some glimpses of mad genius shining all throughout the entire crazy thing. Love it or hate it. I love.

Maze by J.M. Mcdermott

At first glance, this is a straightforward story of people getting sucked into a mystical/magical maze. They appear to be from different epochs or worlds and fight a very bleak fight to survive in that crumbling ecosystem full of monsters where humans can just barely make themselves a niche somewhere in the middle o f the food chain. Terrifying at points and then you realize that some of the events don't link up right on a time line. I strongly suspect that if one were to draw all the story's strands on a map, it would itself form a maze with time-loops and everything. I don't have the stomach to work this book like that. It's good.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

What a great book! As far as supernatural mazes go, this one definetly has the most stylish one, consisting of endless halls of marble statues and reliefs that are affected by tides of an ocean below. And there is an ecosystem of birds, seaweed and fish there, which allows the amnesiac main character to survive. Great world building, good main character, nice resolution. The story is straightforward and that's a good thing. Definetely a recommendation from me.

The actual art of Piranesi

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an archaeologist and architect and combined these two skillsets into his artbook Carceri d' Invenzione in 1750. When I first saw these etchings in a gallery in downtown Hamburg when I was a teenager I was fascinated. Later I encountered them in a museum and that's when I heard the name Piranesi the first time. The places depicted are immense, small human figures are seen on some of the walkways and the architecture is recognizable as mediterranean but expanded to a size that is today echoed by high fantasy media. I love 'em and you should too.

Das verrückte Labyrinth

The favourite board game of my childhood. The fact that this design allows for a nearly limitless ways of maze generation and as it stays in constant flux throughout a game it doesn't matter if things link up or not. Each player will just make their path if need be and so new passages keep opening up while old ones get blocked. You can play this very nastily but usually it's worth to just keep your eyes on the prize and go to your next treasure. This was one of the things that inspired me to make my first maze-boardgames. I still like to play it with my kids – we have the original version from the 80s. There are even Harry Potter themed ones now and while I'm usually very much averse to that kind of cash-grab-rebranding in this case it's oddly fitting.

Dave Made A Maze

A film! And with a premise that seems tailor-made for me: Guy who can never finish his creative projects (!) likes to craft with cardboard (!) and makes a maze (!) that is walk-in (!) and much larger on the inside than on the outside (!). Exploration (!), death (!) and hilarity (!) ensue. The film is lovingly made but somehow less than the sum of its parts. This ain't no Shaun of the Dead. But it's still not a bad way to kill the 100ish minutes of its running time. Just don't expect to like most of the characters or the plot resolution too much. Dave, you're a twat.