Thursday 25 February 2010

HOF Fire Team: First Thoughts

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Earlier in the month I blogged some ideas for recreating the XBox game Ghost Recon in 15mm. Since then I've been play-testing HOF Fireteam and the two have run together.

HOF Fireteam
is perfect for episodic gaming, recreating the up close fast paced action of an X-Box or similar video game. It's fast and furious giving what is essentially a first person shooter on the tabletop.

Going back to Ghost Recon, I found that with HOF Fireteam instead of 3 -4 'acts' or 'chapters' laying out lot's of terrain as originally planned, you can simply move the action from decision point to decision point via waypoints (just as waypoints are used within the game itself). Each decision point being made up of one or more map tiles.

Course, you could just lay down one or more tiles and have an off the cuff game in minutes rather than hours with other systems.

Now you may scoff at the idea of tiles. Master Chef has long been an exponent of them but I'm just coming round to their benefits myself - one being that you can limit the playing area and direct the action - again just like a Video game - where you may be able to see the big wide world, but your actual path through the game is defined by the scenario - eg Gears of War.

'HOF-F' isn't a holy grail. But you know, after a brain heavy day at work I find it a welcome stress free gaming environment.

Cheers
Mark
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2 comments:

  1. So I'm guessing the waypoint mechanic would make a lot more sense to me if I'd actually played Ghost Recon? :)

    Like the rest of the mechanics though. And like you said... it'll be great for simple pick-up games when you don't want to set up a full wargame table.

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  2. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm working on some new sculpts for it too.

    But hey, don't hassle the hof!

    Try it out, don't be shy. I still have to, but my excuse is that I have no 15mm sf stuff!
    Rob

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