Planetary Empires

So with winter coming around, and the likelyhood of more time inside and more gaming coming with it, I decided to finally go out and grab some of the expansions I've been eyeing up since they released. I grabbed the Planetstrike book a couple weeks ago, thanks to the efficiency of the new hobby store, and my girlfriend and I placed a small order during MiniWargaming.com's birthday sale, that brought in a few odds and ends for armies, some resin casting materials, and the Planetary Empires expansion.

I have to say, I am absolutely blown away at the simple brilliance of this expansion. I fully expected I was going to have a fair amout of reading on my hands, and lots of explaination to players looking to join, but shockingly not. The actual rules consist of 5 pages, a little over a page of which is a table and a chart. It was all so brilliantly simple that I immediately fell in love with the concept. Basically you have players randomly choose and place map tiles until you get to the size you want, then players choose and place structures until they feel there are enough, after that, each player claims tiles until they are all taken. A very methodical setup, and simple to boot. The most difficult part would be the structures, but there are only 4 types of structures, one of which is defensive, making the tile it is on and those around it more difficult to capture, and then the 3 remaining structures basically work the same. At the beginning of each game, you compare the like structures, the player with the most gets a bonus, if you own double the structures you gain double the bonus, triple the structures triple the bonus. The basic bonuses for the structures, are an additional 50 points for your upcoming battle, +1 for rolls to determine who goes first, and reserve rolles, or a D6 roll which you can add any USR from the main book to one unit in your army if you roll a 4+. From there you basically have the majority of the game, the only other things are that the player with the lower amout of map tiles gains a points bonus to represent the other side having to spread forces. After each game 'turn' anyone who one a battle may choose to attempt to capture a tile from the opponents which is done on a modified 2D6 role, with target numbers dependant on the location of the tile and specifics of the tile and the battle.

So my next task is to get the tiles and buildings primed, painted, and hopefully devise a way that I can keep the map fairly static during transport, but still modular enough that we can disassemble and re-use it in the future. What I'm going to go looking for this week is a magnetic paint, I had seen a video from GD Toronto where one of the clubs used it on a LoTR table to allow the goblins to scale the side of the mountain. I'm hoping I'll be able to use this on the square edge around the tiles and the edges, hopefully allowing the tiles to magnetize together somewhat, and then also be able to magnetize to a large board with either more of the paint, or some of the roll out sheet magnet.

If anyone has any familiarity with the paint, post a comment or drop me an email.