Horizon Wars first game

I've been talking about Horizon Wars for a while, but on Sunday Martin, fg and I finally got down to trying out the rules.

We played a set-piece battle with 20 points a side. Martin fielded two mechas, a recon drone and a heavy artillery unit, plus three bases of infantry.

I fielded my "Mad Max" force with ten bases of infantry, four bases of bikes, and six 'technicals', all classified as some form of infantry in the game, and due to the way the points system works, each costing a point.

As with most first games, we probably didn't get everything right, and we most certainly didn't play all the rules - in particular neither of us used the Recovery action, which would have made the game last much longer.

We did, however, learn a couple of things.

Mechas are powerful, but can be vulnerable if unsupported. Even with a high Firepower, it can only target one enemy unit per activation, which means it can succumb to horde tactics.

The downside to playing the horde is the amount of book-keeping required, as damage is scored against a unit's stats and there is no 'hit points' per se.

For the next game I think we might want to play with a smaller force and on a smaller area, so we get can down to the nuances of the rules.

Also, the Heavy Gear kickstarter that we backed arrived and I got my sprues. The plastic is a bit softer than I expected, and even the smallest mecha has eight parts, which need to be glued together, so it will take me some time to get all of them assembled. They also came in blacj plastic, which may present a problem when it comes to painting because I want to paint them 'light sand' instead of the canon red. Well, one step at a time then.