Tuesday 12 March 2019

Silent Death - Introductory Scenario


Having painted up all of the little ships required to play the first introductory scenario in the original Silent Death box set, I decided I would give it ago. So, breaking out my new Cigar Box Battles space hex mat, I set them up and got ready to fly.

The first thing I noticed is that the scenario didn’t use torpedoes. While this makes sense for a starter game, it’s a bit of a shame as torpedo usage is one of the real tactical nuances of the game. Oh well, I’m just getting back into it.

On one side we had 4 little Pit Vipers. Super-fast, decent armour, puny weapons. On the other side, a pair of Thunderbirds. Fast, but low-armoured. Decent armament, but lacking the torpedoes which often make them a great choice in points matches. Before playing, I figured the Thunderbirds held the advantage.



The game started with the initiative roll, which was won by the Thunderbirds. If I had to pick one weakness of the game, it would be initiative. Basically, someone has to move first, and that poor fighter then becomes the primary target for the turn. It’s an issue also seen in Battletech. Actually, it is an issue that was brilliantly solved in X-Wing with its innovative movement system.

So, turn one saw a Pit Viper take a heavy hit, stripping it of shields and leaving it limping along. It was destroyed the next turn, while a Thunderbird took minor damage. However, then things went sour for the Thunderbirds. On turn three a Pit Viper got a lucky shot that destroyed the weapon on one T-bird. The T-bird was destroyed a moment later. After that, the remaining T-bird lost the initiative in three straight turns and was brutally hunted down and destroyed by the remaining Pit Vipers.

The whole game took about 15 or 20 minutes. And that is the great strength of Silent Death. It is very, very fast. Obviously if you add in more ships it slows down, and the use of torpedoes also slows it down a bit as ships tend to split up ttempting to dodge the torps. Regardless, even big games of Silent Death play out as fast as any wargame I can think of.

Despite not having played a game of Silent Death in twenty years, I remembered the rules almost perfectly, only having to check the book once. Looking at the next scenario, it is nearly identical, just using different fighters in another 2 on 4 match up. So, I think I’m going to skip the rest of the introduction and go straight to the main scenarios to get something a bit more meaty. First, I’ll need to paint up some more ships!


10 comments:

  1. A nice little game, though I must admit I hadn't heard of it before.
    The red and blue ships also look great on that mat.

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  2. It's about 20-25 years old now, and I doubt it ever reached far out of the USA, but overall, I'd still rate it is one of the best space games out there.

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    1. We got a copy of "Silent Death" over here in the UK when it was released, and enjoyed some games of it. However, our group was more in to "Full Thrust" from Ground Zero Games. We liked the synchronous mouvement, and the puzzle aspect of trying to work out where your ship was going to end up. The groaning of a player who'd just accidentally steered a capital ship in to an asteroid was all part of the fun.

      I recently picked up a set of these models from EM4 to use in playing "Battle Stations". They are, as I remembered, nice simple, clean and detailed little models.

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  3. Replies
    1. Yes. There are no solo rules, but it's not hard to play both sides.

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  4. Interesting. It looks like a fun game. Spent some time this morning looking at the Metal Express figures...

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  5. That was solved before xwing. Do your research please

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    1. If you would like to point out where the X-Wing system was used before, please do so. However, please be more polite with your future comments or they will be deleted.

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  6. What size hexes did you go for when you picked your mat? I'm in the market for one!

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    1. Those are the 1", so fit exactly with most hex bases - except Battletech. If you are using it for that, you might want to go with 2". Anyway, it's a great mat.

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