Mars Code Aurora

[Phil Sherlock]

Hi

I saw some interesting looking rules called Mars: code aurora, but I cant find much information about how they play.

There are a few videos on Youtube, but they all seem to be by the same bunch of guys and they are in French and my french isnt good enough to follow what is being said.

 

Has anyone tried them ?

Thanks

 

Phil

 

Today is a good day to diet

[Mike Headden]

I’ve had an email from North Star to say my pre-order is now “in the post.”

Once they arrive I’ll sling something up here to give first impressions.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Phil Sherlock]

Excellent , Thank you

Phil

 

Today is a good day to diet

[Mike Headden]

Guess what arrived in the mail just after I posted the message above! 🙂

Well, I’ve had a coffee and a read through of the rules since the previous post and am happy with what I’ve read.

Though, proof of the pudding, so to speak, will come once I get stuff on the table.

There’s nothing particularly startling in what Mars: Code Aurora does, as far as I’m concerned, but it seems well laid out and explains things in an easily absorbed manner.

It is very PvP focussed , with rules covering head-to-head and multiplayer games, but the card driven activation system which can see some units not getting an action probably generates enough randomness to allow solo players some scope.

The reaction orders (fire on a moving enemy, intercept a moving enemy, intercept a charging enemy) mean players are potentially involved throughout the game..

Shooting, melee and various other actions are decided by a number of 50/50 decisions. The exact method is left to players to agree. D4/6/8/10 etc with low is fail and high success, odd is fail and even success, draw cards, flip coins – if it allows a 50/50 outcome go for it.

I like the mechanism for deciding actions not covered in the rules, with tokens affecting success swapped backwards and forwards between players.

The game assumes a 90x90cm battlefield with lots of terrain. Targets in the open are dead … things walking!

Troops are ranked level 1 to 3 and are either infantry or vehicles. Rank 1 infantry are grunts, rank 3 are dreadnaughts while a rank 1 vehicles is a quad bike or similar while level 3 is a cybertank or alien bio-equivalent.

With 25 points to spend on a standard squad you probably aren’t going to have many level 3s!

Each force must have at least one officer (rated, you guessed it, 1 to 3) who can motivate a number of other troops equal to their rating.

I can’t think of a figure I have that wouldn’t slot into one (or more) of the factions.

The factions are based on their motivation and are:

Domination (Bots, Necrons, etc)
Science (Hi-Tech, hacker types)
Corruption (Chaos, Undead)
Equality (Freedom Fighters)
Order (Space Marines et al)
Brutality (Orcs, Barbarians, Super Mutants)
Hunger (Bugs, Tyranids, ravening swarms of any type)
Greed (any of the above motivated by Greed rather than basic motivation, a catch all).

The one thing I find odd are the drones, one per player, who automagically prevent firing with 10cm of themselves. You can rip each other heads off in the zone but no ranged weapons work inside their area of influence. They trundle about randomly when their activation cards are drawn and when the 3rd drone activation occurs the turn ends. Perhaps I’m being dim (feel free not to agree with me) but I don’t see the point. However, once again, time and actual gameplay will tell.

So far I’ve only spotted one “see table xx” typo.

Overall, a nice set of rules, well produced and laid out. They should give a decent game which I’d expect people to pick up pretty quickly and which should play out pretty quickly too.

Would I take this over 5 Parsecs or Enderain? Possibly not but I can see me playing it with my grown-up older son over those two.

A welcome addition to my stable of rules.

YMMV 🙂

 

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Phil Sherlock]

Fortunate timing so !

 

They sound interesting based on your first read through.

I am looking for something that would handle small scale fights between colonial marines, aliens & Predators.

Today is a good day to diet

[Mike Headden]

I’d say Colonial Marines are Equality, Predators are either Science or Brutality and Aliens are Hunger. Should work no problem, IMHO.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

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