Let's Review: Rogue Stars

What is it?:

Rogue Stars is a 28mm scale science fiction skirmish game that’s part of Osprey’s “blue book” collection.

The setting:

The setting is a galactic empire that is falling apart, with pirates, mercenaries and others going up against the last few militias and police, while others are defending themselves or perhaps taking advantage of the situation. That’s all that’s really said but you can get some more from the sample groups and persons. For me, the art reminds me of Titan A. E., which is a fun little flick that you might get a kick out of. I enjoy it because it kind of subverts the expectation that humanity will be a power player in galactic affairs.

However, since the system and rules are flexible enough, you can easily make up a setting that fits your models or ideas better. That means I’m using it to play some Raygun Gothic stuff.

 

The system:

Like a lot of systems I’ve been seeing these days, or maybe I’m just reading too many supplements for FrostGrave lately, this one uses a d20 for almost everything. However, it does a lot of things differently than I’ve seen done. To begin, when you want to have a model act, you have to make a roll to see if you get to go. You can roll up to three dice for this but it’s a gamble, as if you fail to make a roll, that gives your opponent a chance to react for each failed roll. And when a model gets to roll for a react, assuming they make their rolls, they get to take their actions before the model that was (is) going to act. While interesting, this is going to screw someone like me, who rolls at or below average. Now, this system is really unique and makes choosing who you want to act (or react) a very important decision, not to mention that you have to choose how many dice to try with. However, it can also mean that you could spend a game with a model that never gets to act or even having your entire force blasted off the board before they get to act. So, yeah, interesting idea but given the variability, or should I say, unreliability of dice rolls, is really going to screw people over.

The random rolls continue, as when you actually hit someone, you have to make another roll to see what kind of damage you do, and then another roll to see where you hit them (because we have hit locations), and then see how badly hurt the place you hit. While this will speed up the more you play, it makes your first few games drag out. Not to mention that there’s a lot of modifiers and tokens that you have to keep track of.

When it comes to making your force, you have a ton of options. There’s almost fifty Traits that models can have, allowing you to make any sort of alien or human. There’s also a ton of weapons, both melee and ranged, equipment, and armor. You can pick up just about any model in your collection and use it in a game. But, that depends on your Theme. There’s ten Themes, giving you a list of Traits you can pick, and what weapons and equipment your models can use. The way these are listed in the book is terribly done and I had to make my own reference sheet, which is why I know how many Traits there are (next up is making a full list of what weapons and equipment each Theme can use, when I get time). I don’t know if this was done for balance, because it really doesn’t feel like it, more like the creator was really focused on making it a THEME, if you get what I mean.

How many minis do I get in my team? Well, you get 200 points to build a force of 4-6 minis, with a minimum of 30 points per minis and a maximum of 70, or so. Unfortunately, this means that your teams are going to have models that do one thing, really. Not doing it the best, just having one thing that they’re going to have a focus because you can’t really give them everything they need to really be good at it. Well, that’s really my feeling on it. I mean, you team would probably be about five minis, which gives you roughly 40 points per model, and the lower end armor that you want is 14 points. Add in a single weapon (which you want more than one, because you’re going to have them dropped or knocked out of hands), and that’s going to be almost half your points for a single model. Of course, you can make one big bad model supported by some cheaper ones, but remember that you don’t know if that big guy is going to be able to act. Ever.

One thing I feel compelled to mention is the lack of rules for vehicles. Personally, I don’t feel the need right now but this the one thing I’ve heard from at least one person everywhere I asked. I mean, yeah, I have some minis on motorcycles that I’d like to use but I don’t think that the games lacking without them.

 

Is it worth it?:

Yes.

Okay, yeah, I kind of made it sound bad but it’s $20 and does work out of the box, so to speak. For the problems it does have, you can modify things easily enough to make it work for what you want. For me, that’s upping the teams to 250 points and maybe modifying the Themes a bit. Not too much work. I do wish that the book had spent a bit more time with an editor and maybe had some more play testing but it’s not too bad. While the creator has mentioned that there’s going to be an expansion (to the point where it’s something of a meme about how it’s coming “soon”), I think moving it up to the hardback section and fixing and expanding things, like Gaslands, this game could be a real success. So, maybe pick it up now, help fix the problems, have some fun, and see what happens.