Armour in Planet 28 and Brutal Quest

 Hi!

There seems to be quite a bit of discussion over on the Planet 28 Facebook page about armour in the game. 

Many folks, myself included, seem to be finding that when you gear up a character with Power Armour (or even heavy armour such as Vash of the Mechanicus has in my own games!) it makes it super difficult to damage them and they tend to act as tanks, trundling around the battlefield crushing all that they meet. Instead of waxing lyrical on Facebook and spamming the page with lots of random ideas, I thought I'd post a quick rundown of some ideas I have for dealing with the heavily armoured in games of Planet 28 and will post some ponderings on Brutal Quest another time once I've got my Dark Ages project properly up and running!

Setting the Scene

I've found that having a bunch of goons armed with pistols really isn't going to cut it when it comes to facing a power armoured opponent as barring a really lucky series of dice rolls, the armoured trooper is going to shrug off pretty much whatever gets thrown at it so tailoring the scenario itself to give the unarmoured a fighting chance is key. Allow your characters to have access to at least one gun or close combat weapon that will hurt even the doughtiest of warriors!

Maybe the skirmish is a pure chance but having a gun that will do significant damage is really handy, if necessary, write it into the scenario and have a cache of weapons hidden on the table and their acquisition is key to the characters chances. Have some mining gear lying around and do an A-Team construction with actions being spent to transform some corrugated iron into a device of mind boggling destruction, or at least converting some blasting charges into an impromptu explosive device. Think of Kyle Reese in Terminator desperately trying to damage the machine using home made explosives and sheer guts.

Have a think about terrain with an eye to making it difficult for the power armour clad figure to dominate and allow lowly scum to sneak up on them and stick an knife in an unprotected seal or have a set number of booby traps ala Predator which will have a bit of a chance to do in or at least badly damage the armour clad figure. It would need to be written into the scenario with the lowly armed and armoured troops knowing they have to fight off a veritable walking machine of destruction and setting up a series of pitfalls, spring loaded traps or whatever else to give them a chance against a more advanced and mighty opponent.

Guns Guns Guns!

If you are going to be facing heavy armour, get some suitable guns or at least weapons of destruction to hit them with! The rules for weapon creation in Planet 28 are pretty good and allow for all manner of fun devices of shooting, blasting or general carnage to be made.

Allow something like DumDum or Manstopper rounds from the likes of Necromunda. For say an extra 10 points you get a +D6 damage roll on the gun you are firing. It may not be much but it may just add enough to start damaging heavily armoured chaps or chapesses. If you want to add a bit of excitement, if you roll a 10 in your attack dice roll, it represents running out of ammo or the bullet being a dud and an action needing to be spent clearing the chamber or loading another clip.

What about having an underslung grenade launcher? It could be single shot with a successful hit causing D20 damage? It would be a one hit wonder but would force the heavily armoured trooper to keep his head down to avoid getting it shot off and stop him dominating the board. 

The Power Maul in the rules is pretty awesome for dealing with heavy troops in close combat and it's not too hard to imagine rebels or ingenious types repurposing mining equipment to bore through, cut open or blast apart Power Armour.

Tweak the Rules

I've seen Ash over on Guerrilla Miniature Games use a critical success as an opportunity to double a damage roll in Planet 28 and I really like the mechanic as it's simple and makes combat that bit more deadly so even a lowly underhive scabby could potentially poke a mighty Space Marine through the eye with a pointy stick if they are lucky enough.

Similarly what about allowing something like an extra D6 for every supporting model in base to base contact with an opponent, it could easily represent a proper scrum of kicking, biting and stabbing thugs trying to weigh down their armoured opponent using sheer numbers!

Another option is to look at Power Armour as very high tech and expensive to keep in proper running order with each time it rolls to save being marked on a piece of paper during the course of a game and afterwards credits needing to be spent to repair it or it starts degrading so instead of it being 2D10+5 it would loose a point of effectiveness for each previous successful hit it had stopped. For example if a model wearing power armour is hit 10 times in a game but nothing damages him, at the end of the game and during a campaign, they must spend say 2 creds per hit to repair it or the armour becomes 2D10-10 if they haven't paid for upkeep. It would mean that a character would constantly need to keep repairing armour between games or it's going to rapidly become no better than a flak jacket.

Another simple option is to downgrade the dice for armour rolls a bit so Medium Armour becomes D10+1, Heavy Armour D12+3 and Powered Armour 2D10 or something similar which would still allow the heavier armour to do its job and stop its squishy occupant getting turned to paste but penetrating damage is going to become more likely and even feeble weapons have some chance of doing some hurty things to the trooper.

Planet 28 is a really great sandbox set of rules that can be easily fiddled with to allow you to bodge all manner of interesting little quirks and rules that turn it from just a game into an almost RPG like experience without bogging down.

Tricks and Traps

As I mentioned previously, it can be written into the scenario that there could be say D6 traps concealed around the table and can be triggered by the defending player or indeed on a random dice roll to spice things up but there's also the very terrain itself as there's the opportunity to include covered pits, pools of acidic slime, rockfalls, hivequakes, sudden animal attacks, unexploded ordinance or any one of a hundred different unexpected events that could ruin the heavily armoured troopers day and give even the most poorly equipped a fighting chance against them!

I really need to get some more games played and will try including some of the randomly waffled ideas that I've come up with but I'd love to hear how other folks have dealt with similar situations in Planet 28 or indeed any other small scale skirmish game that they've played but in the meantime, All the best!