We had a second game of Starship Troopers last night. My warrior bugs faced a platoon of light infantry. You know, the guys from the movie that get to die a lot? Well, they performed much better than their Hollywood counterparts.

The bugs got slaughtered again. They did manage to take down a few troopers with them, but on the whole it was a resounding success for the humans. While I still like the rules and the play went much more smoothly than last time, I'm beginning to question the balance of this game or at the very least the viability of pure warrior forces (which is all I have painted at the time).

As this was an introductory game, I didn't play as hardcore as I could have. And quite frankly I thought the light troopers would have been easier targets. I deplyed the bugs on rocky crags that took me a couple of turns to get down from all the while being shot at and I didn't use one of my tunneling assets. But still... I was completely floored by the sheer volume of firepower the light troopers put out.

The thing with the SST rules is that troop quality has no impact on shooting. Shooting is determined purely by the weapon used, and the light troopers still have the same Morita rifle that the better trained cap troopers have and consequently put out the same volume of fire...

...except that you can buy three light troopers for the price of one cap trooper. Now to ease all those of you who have itched to object: yes, the Condensed Training special rule tries to address this, but on the whole I didn't see it matter all that much. If the bugs want to be in command, you can usually fit 3-5 bugs in the smaller firezone too.

Which is usually enough, given that a full squad of 12 light troopers will kill an average of four warrior bugs in a single shooting action.

12 light troopers have pretty much the same point cost (160 vs 150) as 10 warrior bugs. In a single turn's worth of shooting, the troopers will reduce the bugs to two warriors, which is basically a non-entity that will be shredded in reaction fire if it dares to close.

Yes, they will be shredded in close combat. Except that they have the bodies to take casualties, step back and just blast the offending assaulters to shreds. And this game has no morale rules...

The only tactic that really seems to work is the tunnel assault because the light troopers are not fast enough to dodge the tunneling blips. But even this is limited by the availability of the tunneling assets and the limited number of bugs that can emerge from a single hole in a turn

I will definitely need to get my other bugs painted so I can try a little more varied tactics than a mad zulu charge...

maxxon