Space Station Zero - Campaign Aspect

I've been tooling around with SSZ for a lil while now.  I'm still super impressed with the combat aspect in regard to having a generic skirmish system for quickly rolling some dice.

Now that I have those mechanics down, over the long weekend I decided to have a look at the exploration/campaign aspect... which of course is the game's main, intended usage.

After a small amount of reading  (I didn't bother with anything more than a cursory glance at the campaign previously, though i'd seen a couple of battle reports on YT)  I set out into the station.

I set up the first map and started rolling...

Map 1  is more or less just a bug hunt (weak robot drones) but also has environmental dangers, so you have to kill the critters, while avoiding getting poisoned, and hopefully also turn off the poison vents.

Map 3  has different type of critters, much faster but still quite weak. And you have to turn off a runaway reactor before it blows up at the end of turn 4.  You get some very helpful loot at the end of this one.

Map 4  has swarm critters which are more resilient, but lacking strong attacks.  Was easy enough shooting them down though there is an option to deactivate them.

Map 2  is largely environmental dangers.  There are ambient lasers zapping the crew as they traverse the corridor, (weak) gun drones appear almost immediately too.  Again shooting out the drones ended the scenario though there is an option to deactivate, which I did attempt to do.

On to Map 6 which has slightly strong critters, gun turrets, and a virus bomb which goes off at the end of turn 5.

Here the virus bomb did go off, as I only achieved 9 of 10 Reaction rolls, and I lost all of my crew except the Medic so I called it a day.

Thoughts...

The path through the station (moving from map to map) contains random paths (dice roll determined).

As I'd been focusing on the skirmish aspect of the game my crew was quite beefed up pertaining combat.  In my run of the campaign thus far it was generally easier to focus on blasting the enemies away rather than aiming for the deactivation controls.

However, I can definitely see how the alternate crew/ship types (scientists, medical etc) have greater purpose or functionality within the campaign setting when it comes to achieving objectives, and especially when you have time pressures that with Total Party Kill you in so few turns.

I think it would be accessible to non-hardcore gamers, primarily due to its mechanical simplicity.  I did occasionally forget environment checks but only infrequently, and having a second person in on the experience makes that far easier to monitor too.  It could easily produce a fun little story on games night.

As per previous history I've done a reasonable amount of Blackstone Fortress as my exploration medium, but... I really like this.  It's simpler - probably... more linier, so it might be a little less replayable... maybe.  Blackstone contains a lot of depth, but that also makes it far more an endeavour to set up, and realistically less likely to make it to the table.

Another aspect I like is that it's very terrain light.  I've assembled a little workshop of barricades, structures and features, but it works incredibly well with a minimalist board setup. Sparse fabrication workshops or hanger areas are quite common in the scenarios so far.  And you could always bulk the board out if desired, but you really don't seem to need to. which is brill.  You need to apply a little more imagination, i.e. in Map 2  the corridor's walls were there in my mind but there was no way I was making a full on grimdark brick structure for that.  I also found that complete board edges weren't required etc.  It definitely heads toward the 'theatre of the mind' approach.  but it works.

Anyway, this has definitely been worth exploring now that I had a bigger lump of time to spend on the scenarios.

Until next time...