Battlesuit take 2

A few weeks ago I tried out a solo play of the old Steve Jackson Games game from the 80s Battlesuit.  Inspired by this Anthony and I had a 2 player run thorough with my 15mm Laserburn figures standing in for the counters.

Battlesuit came out in 1983 and was a sequel of sorts to Ogre and GEV but this time the focus was solely on individual power-armoured soldiers.  The map is much larger than the usual metagame map and has a series of contures and woods marked out: rather than hexes, movement is point to point.  Soldiers also have limited jump capability which means they can fly over terrain or hover in mid-air which is great for spotting but does make you a target for everyone on the board!

Soldiers come in a variety of levels of toughness and there is an option for unarmoured regular troops but I don't think they'd last long.  There are also rules for drones which can help with targeting or can fire on targets.  As each soldier moves all the opposition can target them with reaction fire once per turn which means a sacrificial trooper can be handy to draw out all the enemy fire before the rest of your force moves.  Damage to battlesuits means they become progressively weaker and may have to deal with shock and panic when they're hit (one of Anthony's soldiers accidentally blew himself up in a panic when he was shot!!).

Finally soldiers can target the enemy, giving a bonus to shooting for themselves or colleagues.

So, how did it play out?  We both initially advanced quite cautiously, trying to use cover and taking long-range pot-shots at each other.  Some lucky dice rolling on my part caused some early damage to Anthony's troopers and we both knocked out our heavy weapon support early on.  The timing of reaction fire proved crucial... use it all too soon and the enemy is then free to move around at will.  

I eventually threw caution to the wind and had 2 suits hover in the air, risking being shot but giving them line of sight to the skulking enemy, and this proved decisive, quickly knocking out a couple more of  Anthony's suits (in addition to the one have accidentally blew himself up!)

The verdict?  It was a fairly simple but effective system which makes for a good evenings game.  I've certainly played games with much more complicated reaction and targetting rules which didn't play nearly as well.  The only thing we struggled with was establishing line of sight, mainly when soldiers were possibly in the lee of a hill.  The rules include a strange system for working this out which involves plotting positions and heights on grid sheet (included in the rulebook).  This seemed a bit daunting (I expected to have to do some trigonometry at one point) so we didn't use it but relied on common sense.  In hindsight I think it wasn't as complex as I'd thought and we should have given it a go.  

A good rule set given the simple metagame format... I think you do need to play it with someone who isn't too rules-lawyerish though (thankfully Anthony and I play in a much more easy-going style!) as the interruption reaction fire and LOS rules rely on mutually cooperative players I think!