High Frontier 4 All
Hermes Fall
Setup
Modules:
- Core
- M0 (with update from HF4 Module 4 Exodus Rules)
LIVING RULES (relevant changes):
-
Updated Altruism Rules
§ V4c. Special Rule.
• Research Auction Operation (I2). Instead of the research auction (I2g), take the top card of a patent deck for your Operation, including bonus supports (I2g). This costs a number of Aquas equal to the number of cards taken. The academia hand limit (I2a) still applies to solitaire games. With the Marketeer faction privilege, … -
Updated Hermes Fall Rules
§ V5b. Setup. As per Altruism (V4b), with any Modules, with the following changes:
Patent Deck Setup. Set aside the Mass Driver thruster before setting up the Patent decks per V4b. Then add it to the five-card Thruster stack and reshuffle. -
4G3. Module 0 Solitaire Variant (Justin Grey)
When playing any solitaire variant that includes Module 0, use the provided solitaire political assembly. This changes the laws (O5), with the design goal to make all Ideologies relevant, and to reduce the randomness and luck-factor of the experience, so one can plan better for victory. The revised setup, and the new Laws and lobbies are:a. Setup. Place an additional delegate of your faction color into centrist. All Solitaire Module 0 games must include all cards in each patent deck used. Finally, use a busted disk instead of a cube in the Sunspot Cycle.
b. Lobby. Pay 1 Aqua and Discard a delegate in an inactive Ideology to use its Law.
c. Indiviuality Law “Launch Contracts”. Boosting is a free action. This does not earn NASA any Aqua.
d. Equality Law “Subsidized Research”. When initiating a research auction Operation, you pay one for the top card of a patent deck and one bonus support (if it has one). If it has a second support that you want, you may pay one more aqua for this support.
e. Authority Law “Regime Change”. After an Event Roll, Discard a delegate here to change to or cancel inspiration. This may be the same delegate from a lobby action.
f. Unity Law “Sol Unification”. Lobby cost is 0 Aqua. Replace season blue Anarchy with International Assistance: FINAO cost is halved (rounded up) until the end of season blue.
g. Honor Law "Paleoconservative Directive II. During a fundraise Operation, the Aqua gained equals number of glory chits brought back to LEO (ticker tape parade (La) only).
h. Freedom Law “Free Trade Act II”. May sell 2 cards (including Black-Side) with a free market Operation.
i. Centrist Law “Mishap Insurance”. Unchanged from the Core game (O5g).
Potential grey area: 4G3a indicates that all cards in each patent deck is used. This has an effect on V5b. I read somewhere that the intent is to shuffle the Mass Driver into the top 5 cards of the Thruster patent deck; that is what I did.
Hermes Fall is a great little scenario for getting used to the core game loop while still using all of the core rules, plus the optional solitaire M0 update from Exodus (I printed a new M0 mat for solitaire use, but you wouldn’t have to if you didn’t want to)
First, a confession: I made mistakes. Several. Possibly dozens. Many were in my favor, others were not. Perhaps it should be an *, but the Hermes Fall is a fairly fragile scenario, if you ask me, so I’m not worried. The point of this exercise was to get used to running the game on my table. Which, I’ll point out, is easier than running the Tabletop Simulator mod, but the TTS mod does provide a nice action tracker so you don’t have to remember if that rocket movement you just did was the end of last turn or the beginning of this turn.
Second: I saved the planet! Hooray! I managed to get a rocket put together rather quickly, along with one of the more versatile generators, In-core Thermionic. I had a rocket on its way to Hermes a before the end of the first sun cycle. I couldn’t quite squeeze in the second mission in that second (of 3) blue phase, but I had the rocket ready and waiting there at the end of the last red phase – and on top of that, I got the glory chit back to Earth
Third: this game has a weird table presence. It is awesome in some ways. But, in other ways… For example, here’s the final board state, when Earth was saved and my crew had just landed (after spending at least a dozen years hanging out on Hermes a)
Exciting, yeah?
So, what’s next? Solo Altruism, likely with modules M1 (Terrawatt & Futures) and M2 (Colonization).
But I might check out the variant in the M1 appendix, Werner’s Star
This is a great game. The weakest part is definitely the ramp-up to getting your rocket off the ground initially. A badly-timed “Budget Cuts” event can ruin your day, and for a game so deeply rooted in hard science, this game has a ton of randomness about what patents you’ll be able to get
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