Core Space Solo - Salvage Mission

[hentzau]

This is a battle report about the game Core Space from Battlesystems. Link to their site. Game is currently out of print but is being reprinted.

Arianna was out of options. She could feel the Ion Hope breaking down around her, and most of her “legitimate” crew had left after the past month with no paying gigs coming in. Her only option, now, was to become a Trader (with a capital “T”) and all that that entails.

The two remaining members of her crew, the Quell hunter Gak, and Roykirk, her lead engineer, listened quietly to her plan: a mostly abandoned station on the edge of Purge space that may hold some salvage they can grab. In and out, quick, before either the Purge or the corps showed up. Arianna would go for the main terminal in the hopes of finding something useful on there, while Gak and Roykirk carefully looted what they could.

What could go wrong?

[hentzau]

Turn 1:

The airlock door whooshed open, and again Arianna wondered, “Why do they all make that same 'whoosh' sound?" She looked up and spotted a maintenance tech look up in surprise. Moving forward confidently, she said “Keep to your work, we’re just here to pick up a final couple of things.” She moved past him and on into the room on the other side, toward the central terminal.

Behind her came Gak, moving into the room and giving the room a once over, with his eyes widening in surprise at what he found sitting next to the core generator...a frag grenade! While the tech was distracted by Roykirk moving into the room to the left, Gak quickly grabbed the frag grenade.







Mechanically, they way this plays out is that all figures have two actions. Both Arianna and Roykirk took both actions as move actions, and then used an effortless action to get one additional inch of movement. Gak took a single move action, and then did a search, drawing a random item from the item bag (one search per room) and pulled a grenade. He had a spare slot on his board, so he held onto it.

Because we're still in Relaxed mode on the hostility tracker, I don't roll for Purge yet. But I do still need to roll for civilian reactions.

[Daehawk]

Ohh sci-fi.

[Smoove_B]

Awesome. My copy just arrived. Really looking forward to seeing how your adventure unfolds! These components are A+. Would buy again.

[hentzau]

Turn 2

While moving toward the crate he wanted to search, Roykirk felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Quickly looking around, he realized why. Two harvesters, standing in the shadows at the entrance to this room.

The event card I pulled placed two harvesters at the entrance nearest a trader, in this case, Roykirk.

Knowing that his pistol would be useless against these things, Roykirk weighed running away or diving for the crate here, hoping to find something useful in it. He decided to go for the salvage, and moved to the far side of the crate and pulled an energy rifle. Nice! He hunkered down behind the crate and waited for the inevitable assault.



Gak continued to move across the station, into the chamber on the right, unaware of what is going on in the room to his left. Arianna moved into the room with the main terminal in it, stopping to Search a crate and finding a machine pistol, a magazine of ammo, and a med kit. She dropped her pistol and med stim into the crate and took these three new items.

While Roykirk steadied his rifle across the top of the crate, he muttered into the com link “Oh. Shit. Captain, I thought you said this was going to be a milk run!” as two more harvesters appeared next to the first two. Roykirk knew this was the end, as the harvesters scanned the room...



and locked onto the poor civilian in the next room over. The civilian, whose name was Butler, never even had a chance to scream as the 4 harvesters swarmed over him and put an end to him. Roykirk turned away from the carnage, looking slightly green but grateful they decided the poor tech was a better target than he was.





During the Purge phase, I rolled for two more harvesters to show up, and they showed up at entrance 4, so that could have been horrible for Roykirk if that civilian hadn’t wandered closer to the harvesters than Roykirk was when they activated. I didn’t pre-measure to know the outcome, I just eyeballed it and hoped I was right. And I was. So the harvesters went after the closest target not in cover, poor Butler.

[raydude]

Wow, that terrain looks amazing! And is that all cardboard? I'm guessing the "furniture" is meant to be put together and not disassembled again? If so, how do you store it all?

[hentzau]

Wow, that terrain looks amazing! And is that all cardboard? I'm guessing the "furniture" is meant to be put together and not disassembled again? If so, how do you store it all?

All cardboard except for the figures. And the core set comes with the 2x2 neoprene mat you see as well.

You could disassemble and re-assemble the furniture (for the most part...like the tables you have to glue the tops onto) but I would not recommend it. It would just make set up a pain, plus it would start to loosen up over time. The core box comes with some handy dividers that store everything in once you are done playing. And the terrain is sturdy enough I have no problem just dropping it into the box into one of the dividers. I'll try and take a picture of it tonight when I tear this down for another game.

[Smoove_B]

That's actually one of the things that sold me on it - the included storage for all the bits and how they figured it out. I'm still reading through the rules, but I'm hopeful I can set it up this weekend and just leave it for a while. The 2'x2' footprint is also a huge selling point. By all accounts, this seems to be a very well-designed and well-thought out game.

[NickAragua]

That poor guy. Just out for a stroll with a cup of coffee when a bunch of random space scavengers show up, followed by *killer robots*.

So do the bots come after your guy next turn, go away, or can you hide?

[hentzau]

Turn 3

Gak tapped at his earpiece after hearing Roykirk’s shout out something but all he got back was static. “Cap’n? ‘Kirk? You guys...” then screams from the other room. Gak paused, unsure what to do for a second.

Event card pulled was a Com’s failure, causing confusion amongst the traders and causing them to lose their effortless action.

Roykirk sees the harvesters through the doorway, sights down the barrel of his newly acquired energy rifle, and squeezed off two shots at the harvesters, both shooting wide. Hm. Might need to do some calibration on the rifle. The harvesters heads swivel as one towards where the shots came from, and Roykirk take a nervous swallow as he adjusts the sights on his rifle.

Arianna continues on her mission, moving up to the command console and extracting the shipping data she was looking for, trusting in her crew to deal with the situation unfolding in the other room.



Gak takes a moment to rifle thorough the crate, grabbing a large, wicked knife and a large unwieldy rifle with multiple “Danger” symbols all over it.



The rifle he pulled from the crate was a rare weapon, a Mayhem gun. Rolls 5 dice at short range only, so it’s a devastating weapon up close, but every time you fire it, you have to roll a combat die to see if you take damage yourself using it.

He then moves toward the doorway back to the room he came from, calling out “‘Kirk? ‘Kirk, are you...” and then sees the swarm of harvesters standing over the bloody remains of the tech. The harvesters, hearing his shouts, now turn and begin their advance towards him.



I’ve been rolling a die for the civilians to see what they do, but so far most of them have been just wandering around the ship, not interacting at all with the traders.

[hentzau]

That poor guy. Just out for a stroll with a cup of coffee when a bunch of random space scavengers show up, followed by *killer robots*.

So do the bots come after your guy next turn, go away, or can you hide?

The Purge follow an AI script, where they will target the closest non-purge that is out in the open, followed by the closest non-purge that is under cover. So during turn 3, when Gak moved forward to the open, he made himself the target for the harvesters.

[TheMix]

How giddy were you to be able to type "Captain Kirk" there?

[hentzau]

How giddy were you to be able to type "Captain Kirk" there?

Honest to god, didn't occur to me until I read it back after I posted it. Gave me a chuckle.

[NickAragua]

Ah, I see, they don't have guns. Well, at least there's that.

[hentzau]

Yeah, the purge (in the base set) come in 4 varieties:

• Harvesters -1 action no range, up to 5 on the board at a time, roll 2 dice for combat, one armor, can make immediate attack if they make contact during their move
• Devastators - 2 actions (linked), up to two on the board at once, 2 dice melee/3 dice ranged, 1 armor
• Assassins - 2 actions, 4 dice melee/2 dice ranged, 2 armor, will target captain over all other targets
• Live One - 2 actions,4 dice melee/3 dice ranged, 3 armor, can make immediate attack if the make contact during their move, will target captain over all other targets, once defeated will not respawn during this mission

The Live Ones have another horrifying ability...during the civilian phase, if your threat level is high enough and you roll a live one on the civilian die, that civilian was a sleeper agent that morphs into a Live One where the civilian is. Nothing like having a Live One right in the middle of the room you are hanging out in.

There are other purge in an expansion, but I do not own that yet.

[Smoove_B]

There are other purge in an expansion, but I do not own that yet.

Should I have shared the Black Friday sale they were having last week? I'm sorry.

[hentzau]

There are other purge in an expansion, but I do not own that yet.

Should I have shared the Black Friday sale they were having last week? I'm sorry.

I can lay my hands on it at my FLGS, I just went with more crews and the Galactic Corps first. Once our crews start getting cocky I'll grab it.

[Smoove_B]

Ah, ok. I also found a really good Virginia-based eBay vendor that is apparently a FLGS (I don't have one in my area) the carries Core Space stuff, but your local is probably better.

[hentzau]

Wow, that terrain looks amazing! And is that all cardboard? I'm guessing the "furniture" is meant to be put together and not disassembled again? If so, how do you store it all?

Here’s a shot of the box loaded up:



The round containers are mine, I use those for the pegs and some of the chits. Note that this does not include figures, it would be pretty easy to just dump the figs in if you didn’t paint them, but since I did paint them, I’ll keep the figs in a separate padded box.

[hentzau]

Turn 4

Gak looked through the doorway at the group of Harvesters facing him. Then he remembers the frag grenade he had just found. “Well, easy come, easy go” he says as he unclips the frag grenade from his belt and casually tosses it at the mass of Purge, landing right at the feet of the central Harvester. After the smoke cleared, not a single Harvester remained standing. “Effective,” he mumbled to himself as he turned around and headed into the next room to search.

Grenades are fun! Choose a target location, and roll the blue die. If you score a hit (50% chance) it goes off where you targeted. If someone was standing at that spot, you roll 5 dice against them, 1” away 3 dice, and 2” away 1 die. If you miss your first roll, it will deflect 1 or 2 inches away from the target point. Also, grenades and other items can be tossed as an effortless action, so you can toss a grenade or a knife and have two move or attack actions afterwards.

Roykirk moved quickly across the chambers to join up with Arianna. After that close call with the harvesters, he decides that numbers are better on this mission. Arianna moved over to a nearby crate, finding mostly junk but did find a havoc pistol buried in the bottom of it. She dropped her knife in the crate and closed it up.

Off in the distance, the metallic sounds of more purge moving through the station began to be heard. “Finish this up, crew. Final grabs and then head back to the Ion Hope! Be careful!”

A movement out of the corner of her eye caused her to spin and point her newly acquired Havoc Pistol at a young woman who was running toward her. “Please! Don’t shoot! My name’s Kaori, and I can help! Just get me off of this place before the Purge take me!” “Dammit. A stray. Just what I need,” thought Arianna. “Alright. Keep your mouth shut, your head down, and do what I say.”



On the civilian phase, I rolled a result that has the civilian offer to join your crew. If you accept, they become another character under your control. You can’t give them equipment, but they do come with one piece of equipment you can trade for, in her case, she had a pair of Search Goggles that allow you to do a search of a room as an effortless action, really nice. Unfortunately Arianna is was full up and wanted to keep her items so she needs to keep her alive and get her back to the ship to get the item from her. On subsequent civilian phases, you roll the civilian die and if you get another join, they leave your crew. If you get them back to your ship, you can then choose to hire them to be a permanent part of your crew. They start with no armor and one HP, so a single shot will take them down.

[hentzau]

Turn 5

Kaori’s shouts unfortunately attracted the attention of a devastator in the room next door, who advanced right into Roykirk.

Event card moved closest purge one move distance towards closest civilian. Roykirk was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fortunately, Devastators don’t get an immediate attack when they make contact.

Ariana moves forward slightly, to give her a better shot at the Devastator engaged with Roykirk, aimed carefully with her havoc pistol, and blew a good-sized hole in it. Glancing around, she spots a targeting laser sitting on the console and grabs it.

Roykirk, with a grateful nod to his captain, moves over to the unopened crate in this room and manages to find a flack jacket that he grabs up.

Gak moves deeper into the station and searches the room he enters, and finds a discarded machine pistol, still in working order.

The newest member of the crew, Kaori, looks through the door behind her and spots a Harvester advancing. She takes careful aim and eliminates it with her pistol, then moves toward the awaiting shuttle. Meanwhile, two more Harvesters show up on the southern corridor, and the last civilian, Ganeek, annoys Arianna by trying to trade a combat stim with her.

[hentzau]

Turn 6

Gak continues to move into some of the further rooms, moving into the rightmost room off of the main hallway. He hears some noise behind him and sees two harvesters that have moved up. Seems like a great time to try out his Mayhem Rifle! Takes aim but sadly missed. Discretion being the better part of valor, he moves further away from the Harvesters as they turn toward his shot.

Kaori, seeing the Harvester that just moved into the main control room, decides it's time to get to the shuttle, and sprints out of the room into the chamber to her right.



Arianna takes careful aim at the Harvester and makes short work of it with her pistol, then moves to follow Kaori, aware of the other Harvesters following on the heels of the last one. Roykirk takes a moment to equip the flak armor he had just found, and then moves to follow Kaori and Arianna.

The Purge continue to advance, with another harvester showing up at the far end of the complex.

[NickAragua]

Looks like we've worn out our welcome. That other civilian better clear out of here soon, too.

[Smoove_B]

Are you using the basic or advanced rule book? I'm finally done reading through the basics and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) building this weekend! Thanks for sharing some inspiration.

[hentzau]

Are you using the basic or advanced rule book? I'm finally done reading through the basics and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) building this weekend! Thanks for sharing some inspiration.

Everything here has been from the basic rulebook. The deluxe rulebook doesn't really have a lot of extra rules, biggest rule that I could see impacting you is diving through windows.

[Smoove_B]

Ok, I wasn't sure. I just finished the basic rule read through and right at the end they mention some item chits that should be removed as they're not part of the basic game play (Laser Cutter / Data Pad / Tech Pack).

[hentzau]

Turn 7

Roykirk pauses in his movement for a moment, when he hears an odd...buzzing sound. “Captain? Do you hear...” was all he was able to say before every vent on the station spewed out clouds of stinging, swarming gnat like insects. Everyone was soon uncontrollably swatting and waving at the pests, slowing them down.

Event card pulled is just what it sounds like...clouds of swarming insects that robbed everyone of one action and their effortless action, except the captain, she only lost her effortless.

Kaori and Roykirk continue to move into the rooms to the left of the main control room, trying to circle around the Harvesters that would attack them if they moved straight for the ship. Adrianna did a quick search of this room and found a tech pack, that she dropped her ammo to be able to carry, and then moved further around into the room with Kaori. “Gak!” she barked into the comlink. “Get your mangy ass back to the ship!”

“Soon as I *ka-choom!* can, Cap’n. Got some friends between me and the airlock.” His well-aimed shot with the Mayhem Rifle downed one of the harvesters facing him, even through the clouds of insects.


He sighted down the gun at the second Harvester, advancing into range, when he heard the sound of a weapon powering up behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees a Devastator that just moved into the room, powering up both arm cannon.



“Oh, bloody core!” he muttered as the weapons discharged.

On the purge turn, I rolled a Devastator spawning at the spawn point right behind Gak. On it’s turn, it took two weapons attacks against Gak. Two rolls of 3 dice vs 4 wounds. Did Gak survive??? Tune in to Turn 8!!!

[Isgrimnur]

[hentzau]

(For those interested, a used copy of this game just showed up on eBay. $60 shipped. Good price, depending on condition, which they don't really talk about...)

[hentzau]

Turn 8

Arianna heard Gak swear immediately followed by the sound of two energy cannons going off. “Gak? GAK!!! Are you OK? Report!”

There was a moment, maybe two of radio silence, as Arianna prepared to rush after her fallen comrade, but then...”Cap’n, I’m alright. Moving to the airlock. Meet you there.”

Arianna could tell by Gak’s voice that he was more than not alright, but she just acknowledged and hoped he had a med stim with him and hadn’t just loaded up on guns.

When I rolled the attacks for the devastator, the first one rolled up 2 hits, and the second one only one, leaving Gak with one remaining health. Odds were not in his favor of surviving that one, but he did. Learned a valuable lesson, always put some cover between you and the spawn points, because you can never tell what will pop out.



Gak aimed his Mayhem Rifle at the Devastator, and then noticed that the normally blue sensor in it’s “head” had suddenly turned amber. Also, the thing had stopped moving. “‘Kirk? You seeing this? They seem to have shut down!”

Roykirk replied “They probably lost contact with the Hive. It’s only going to be temporary. Keep moving and get your ass out of there!”

The event card that I drew was Hive Interference, giving us one turn of no Purge activity. That was REALLY fortunate. But the question is, do I get greedy and try and find more stuff, or do I run?

Roykirk moved into the the next room south of the control room, and despite his admonition to Gak, spent some time searching. Fortunate that he did, because he came up with a shield belt! More protection.

Gak likewise ignored Roykirk, and spent a moment searching his room and found a ballistic grenade. Liking his current group of weapons, he left it lay and moved away from the Devastator, tracing back his original path. “On my way, Cap’n. Don’t seal her up yet!’

Kaori and Arianna ran straight for the airlock, and found themselves right outside of it.

[Blackhawk]

(For those interested, a used copy of this game just showed up on eBay. $60 shipped. Good price, depending on condition, which they don't really talk about...)

That really does look good, and I could probably justify requesting it for Christmas, but I'm very put off by the lack of clarification of 'used' and the scarcity of photos.

[hentzau]

(For those interested, a used copy of this game just showed up on eBay. $60 shipped. Good price, depending on condition, which they don't really talk about...)

That really does look good, and I could probably justify requesting it for Christmas, but I'm very put off by the lack of clarification of 'used' and the scarcity of photos.

Yeah, I know. But it is like 33% off list at that price. I'd maybe ask a clarification on the condition, what used means.

[hentzau]

(For those interested, a used copy of this game just showed up on eBay. $60 shipped. Good price, depending on condition, which they don't really talk about...)

That really does look good, and I could probably justify requesting it for Christmas, but I'm very put off by the lack of clarification of 'used' and the scarcity of photos.

OK, I asked the seller, here's what he said:

All the pieces are punched out, half are assembled. 2 models are primed. All is in good condition. I'm also including the hard cover rulebook with it

With the hardcover rulebook, this is a great deal.

[Blackhawk]

Damn, I will think about it. It's a tight Christmas, but I might just be able to pull that off...

[hentzau]

Turn 9

Gak’s every intention was to move as rapidly as possible to the airlock, until he sensed movement to his left, and sighted an assassin moving into his room. There goes those plans!

The event card that I pulled placed an assassin on the board, and the roll of the die placed him right in the room with Gak, Dude has the worst luck. In addition to just being placed, the assassin got an extra action this turn, so there was no way that Gak could get ahead of him without him blasting him into so many Gak chunks



Gak, beaten and bruised, weighed his options in a microsecond, and in that moment of quiet, his training took over. He released the Mayhem rifle and pulled up his machine pistol. Taking a deep breath, he took a steady aim, and opened up with the pistol on the assassin. Riddled with bullets, the assassin went down in a pile and metal and acrid smoke. Smiling, he limped his way across the hallway into the same room with Roykirk, who was quickly moving toward the airlock. “You look like shit!” said Roykirk.

“Feel like shit,” replied Gak.

On this turn, I knew I wouldn’t be able to use my Mayhem rifle, because even if I did drop the assassin, a bad roll would also drop Gak from the feedback on the Mayhem rifle. So I used the machine pistol, which has 3 dice, and I used his Weapons Expert skill to fire it with another 2 dice. This is the first time we’ve used skills...all characters have some skills that let them do extra things in the game. You have to expend a skill point to be able to use them, and they don’t normally take up one of your actions.

Gak’s Roll:



4 hits, which is just what I needed. Gak dropped him, and moved on to relative safety.

However, gentle readers, here I must make a confession. When I was playing the game, I missed the fact that when I use the Weapons Expert skill to get the extra 2 dice, I cannot use move actions that turn. So, while Gak would have dropped the assassin, he would have had got stay there. Mea culpa.

Gak and Roykirk could see the airlock. What they didn’t see was the Assassin that moved into the room and took aim at Roykirk. The blast rang out from the Purge and hit Roykirk, but his flack vest took the brunt of the damage.



Off in the distance, they could hear the whine of a Devastator arm cannon and the scream of the last civilian, who wandered into the wrong room. Goodbye, Ganeek.

[hentzau]

Turn 10

"RUN!!!" Arianna screamed from the airlock, her hand on the emergency close button. Suddenly clouds of coolant began spewing out of the power core between Roykirk and Gak, filling the room with choking fumes. The ricochet of the blast off of Roykirk's vest must have caused a puncture.

Roykirk and Gak took advantage of the obscuring fumes and did just as their captain commanded...and ran. They reached the airlock door and piled through it as the captain slammed down the emergency close button. Arianna ran for the cockpit as Roykirk applied a medstim to Gak...and Kaori screamed as the face of Assassin appeared in the viewport. They could hear the sound of the energy blade slashing at the door. "Arianna!!! Hurry!!!" Roykirk screamed as the shuttle powered up and pulled away from the docking ring.



Mission Postscript:

So the crew picked up some pretty nice equipment. Gak and his Mayhem gun, and Arianna with a Havoc Pistol, both of which pack a decent punch at close range. Roykirk came up with two nice pieces of armor, the flack vest and the shield belt, along with an energy rifle. We'll probably end up giving the vest to Gak and the belt to Arianna. Our possible new crew member, Kaori, had a really nice piece of equipment with her...sensor goggles, which allows the wearer to search a room without using an action.

Selling off the remaining equipment, I ended up with 12 universal credits. I sold off the machine pistol, ballistic grenade, the tech patch, and the objective data.

Now at this point, I would have the option of hiring Kaori to my crew, and at that point she would become a permanent member of the crew. I would flip her card over, and assign her a role (I'm thinking I need a tech...). I can use some of the credits to repair damage to my ship, to upgrade some of the systems, and to buy other items.

So that's it. First mission successful (with an * for the rule that I botched on Turn 9...if Gak had not moved he would not have been able to sprint past that other Assassin and would have to deal with it to get to the ship. But I'm still counting it as a win.)

[Isgrimnur]

Just chalk it up to him having his Space Wheaties.

[hentzau]

Just found out that Battle Systems publishes a new Core Space mission on Mondays. They’ve published 12 so far.

Link

[Smoove_B]

They definitely seem to support the hell out of this game, that's for sure. Can't wait to see what they're going to come up with for the fantasy sets, because you know it's coming...

[hentzau]

They definitely seem to support the hell out of this game, that's for sure. Can't wait to see what they're going to come up with for the fantasy sets, because you know it's coming...

Absolutely. I know I backed their fantasy kickstarter based on the strength of the terrain kits alone, before I knew about core space. But if they throw a dungeon crawler into this as well? I'll be all in.