Trying out Power Legion

On Monday night I thought I'd play out a little skirmish between the Fantastic Four and the Frightful Four in order to get to know the Power Legion rules.

The Frightful Four on a rampage try to find the energy disk.

I had only read through the rules once, late at night so had a pretty vague idea of how they would work. I used the stats that have been put together on the blog Dinahcatofdanger  and printed these off. I then set up a city-scape in the lounge and started to play.

The Fantastic Four arrive on the scene

The scenario saw the Wizard and his cronies the Trapster, Thundra and Sandman looking for a revolutionary fusion energy disk that was being transported in a crate in a truck. The Frightful Four had to locate which crate it was and then escape off the far side of the board. Getting in their way would be the Fantastic Four.

Sandman has got the energy disk.

In order to discover the disk, a character had to be in base to base contact with a crate and roll a '5+' on a d6. Of course, in the first turn the first crate turned out to contain the disk. It was up to the Fantastic Four to stop the baddies escaping with it. Then I rolled a 1 for Reed Richards' activation, which meant a turnover in the first move. As I hadn't read the rules properly, I forgot all about the 'fate' rules which would have given them another opportunity to activate.

So the Frightful Four started moving further off the board. Mr Fantastic activated and moved forward, but he rolled a 3 which gave him only one action. Then the Invisible Woman rolled a '1' which meant a turnover. Ah ha! I said, having read the rules a bit more. Mr Fantastic's leadership attribute allows her to re-roll this die! So I did this and rolled - a '1'! Things were not going well for the goodies. They survived the next round of villainous attacks, and finally started to do some damage. The Human Torch temporarily blinded the Wizard and the Trapster, and Mr Fantastic used a gadget to intimidate Thundra. While she was reeling the Thing charged her, only to miss! 

Battle is joined.

Sandman then hammered the Thing and staggered him. Wizard and Thundra recovered and between them staggered Mr Fantastic. The Human Torch and Invisible Woman proved totally ineffective in the next round, and then I had to call the game quits as it was getting late. If it had played to a conclusion I would say that the Wizard would have got away scott free with a new power source and a number of the FF would have been laid up in bed for a while.

Observations:

1. I roll crap dice.

2. Once the teams got into combat they became very static. I tended to allow them to stand off and blast each other. Only the sluggers - Thing and Thundra - moved during the combat. To be fair the Torch and Invisible Woman never got into a position where they needed to move away, but it did seem that putting all their actions into the offensive, rather than movement was necessary. I never 'banked' an action for a defensive move later, and I think the best use of this facility will be something that I pick up in time.

3. Not only do I need the basic stats on the cards for each super, but also a summary of what their traits allow them to do. It was pretty awkward flicking back and forth through the book to confirm what the various traits enabled me to do with my actions. This will be even more important playing with first-timers that I'm roping into a game.

4. The game seemed to take a long time. Most of this was because I was constantly rifling through the book to see what I could do and trying out different things.Once I've got the hang of it I can imagine it will move much quicker. I definitely want to pick which heroes and villains I want to use and practice with them regularly so that I know their capabilities without having to look them up.

I wonder if playing with a single hero vs a villain and then working my way up is a better idea? The game is not complicated.  I found it much easier to get to grips with than Supersystem for instance. The different dice for different levels of ability works really well. It is just knowing the stats and traits of your characters that is important. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into them again this weekend.

Nate