The Battle For New Terra (Part 3): A 5150 Campagin

Here is Part 3 of my Transatlantic campaign game of THW's 5150: Platoon Leader. I have built everything I needed to play out of recycled materials found on the rig, and scrap parts from the metal junk baskets.   

Location: New Terra
Mission: Attack, Destroy all PEFs
Star Army Investment Level: 5
Hishen Investment Level: 2

Troops.
Locke: Star, Rep 5
Rocket Launcher, Rep 4
Plasma Rifle, Rep 4

Squad 1
Leader, Rep 3
Troops, Rep 4

Squad 2
Leader, Rep 4
Troops, Rep 4

Squad 3
Leader, Rep 4
Troops, Rep 3

Board Setup

 This mission, Locke kept Squad 3 in reserve.  Locke, the two weapon teams and squad 1 all enter the table in section 8, triggering PEF checks all the buildings from sections 7, 8 and 9. Each of them no spawning any enemy.

Squad 2 entered the board on section 7, triggering PEF checks in the building in Section 4. This also results in no enemy.

At this point, the 3 PEFs are generated via the normal rules, Section 1, 2 and 4. all get one.

PEFs are formed.

Squads moving up the street.

Next turn, results with all the PEFs moving towards someone. The PEF in 4, moves into the building and triggers an insight test with Squad 2. Bad case of nerves.

Locke and Squad 1 moves forward and triggers an in site test with the smaller building in section 1, getting a result of a full squad.

Locke and troops were able to react first, and very quickly dispatched the Hishen squad. After finishing moving just a little further forward, they triggered the last two PEFs in sections 1 and 2. One was a bad case of nerves, and the last one automatically requires a roll on the reinforcements  table.. resulting in a big fat "Nothing"

Star Army Wins, and this results in the moral of the Hishen being reduced to zero and automatically ending the campaign.

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Final thoughts..

 All though not clear in the rules, the rules do say that for PEFs that fail to produce anything when approaching a building, says that if you enter that building after you need to resolve the PEF again in the building. But it doesnt say to lay a PEF counter down, I have been placing blue tokens on it to remind me. Going forward, I will treat these as a special kind of PEF, that you need to clear in order to obtain the victory conditions of the attack mission. I had 4 blue tokens on the board and I just ignored them.

The low IL of the Hishen did hamper things a lot. As I rarely got any spawns. But Its a good level to allow you to learn the game. I increased it to 2 this game, but as luck would have it.. I got seldom got the PEFs to actually trigger, although I had a ton of re rolls.

Again, I would like to say if you are just starting to get into wargames/miniatures this 5150 Platoon Leader is an ideal ruleset due to the simplistic nature. Although its too simple for me in the big picture tho.. not enough variety in the results. But, 5150: Star Army, although the same basic game concepts, with its more detailed rules, a little more clunky rules offers me a pretty good game complexity that I like.. Picture it as Platoon Leader as 5150 Basic, while Star Army is 5150 Advanced. I have yet to try 5150: Battalion Commander.. That one is on my list to try out hopefully in a few weeks.