Laserburn: Aftermath

Byakhee Rich & I played a game of Laserburn today (Weapons Factory), here’s some thoughts:

• How do we play this game again ? (After 6 months)
• Even after 30 years of playing them of and on, its still difficult to follow the rules. They’re all in the rule book but just not in a logical or sensible order – they need editing.
• Setting up gang rosters – we forgot to amend Initiative stats for the weapons and armour
• Initiative, surprising how big an effect the modifiers had
• Game was dominated by the three guys who had a chance to hit anything (it would have been four, but he got shot in the face in the second round)
• Anybody of regular skill level with an inaccurate weapon can’t hit a barn door at 5 paces (cruel)
• This affects tactics – I certainly wasted three guys who were flanking for most of the game and had little input
• Cover isn’t much use
• You’re harder to hit moving at walking pace
• Move, shoot, move (into cover) is a good option
• Out of sight is the best option (How not to be seen)
• Being in the open is a death sentence, being out of sight is best because then you can’t be shot !
• Take a chance (on me) and do the reaction roll (Rich got lucky on that many times…but when it really counted !)
• Duckback ! Where the hell is that in the rules ? Turns out it is on p10, but we couldn’t find it when playing Grrr
• Left leg – the most common location for being hit
• Laserrs vs Armour = no damage
• Morale & Unit coherence, applied by the players not the rules, maybe they need to be beefed up
• Along with the deployment rules these are all missing because it is more like an adjunct to a RPG as opposed to a wargames system.

Next up, some photos of the game. 🙂

(Now editted for the typos, and a new link added)