Five Parsecs From Home is a popular solo adventure wargame – an excuse to play with all your (scifi) miniatures, all by yourself, no need to match schedules with your busy friends. I picked this up because I like to play with miniatures, and don’t get enough games going because of challenging schedules (primarily, my own). There’s a fantasy version, Five Leagues From The Borderlands, too, but I haven’t played that.
Things I’ve used
I’ve been resin printing a lot of small groups of models, 5-8 per team. That’s a lot of fun, as you can go for a lot of variety.
I initially struggled with getting good options for some of the key factions in the game, until I found the official 3D printable options by Titan Forge on My Mini Factory.
I quickly realized that I don’t have enough 28-32 mm scale terrain, as I’ve been focusing on the Heavy Gear scale (12-15 mm). What an excuse to print more!
About the game
Once you get your forces on the table, the actual gameplay is very fast. Maybe the fastest miniatures rules I’ve ever played!
That’s not only a positive – your actions can feel meaningless, when so few things actually affect the outcome of dice rolls. I am considering adding a few things like concentrated fire and flanking to spice things up a bit. But the upside is that the game is so fast, you can easily play a couple of games in one sitting.
A big thing in maintaining that pace is that there is no book keeping during gameplay. You should remember who got the first kill, and which of your own force’s models became casualties during the game. That’s everything, really. There is no counting of hit points or wounds, nor tracking victory points. You do need some counters to remember who’s acted.
The initiative system is a highlight. For each of your hero models, you roll if they go before or after the opposing force. Outside of that, you can decide the order. It’s very tense!
Co-op
The rules work as a co-op game, too. You split your models into two (or more!) crews and face off against the AI opposition. We played the standalone expansion, Bug Hunt, with a friend, and that worked very well. The slightly larger scale of Bug Hunt – there are simply more models on the table – obfuscates some of the issues I have with the rules.
The between missions book keeping is also streamlined in Bug Hunt, compared to base Five Parsecs From Home, making it more viable to go through that with a friend simultaneously. You do need a relatively large number of enemy models, though.
Alternatives
Another game I would recommend for this sort of play is Flying Lead. It has slightly more detail and book keeping, but still a lot more character than something like Warhammer 40’000 (which I love – I just don’t like the actual game all that much). Five Parsecs’ focus on generating a narrative for your crew of space rogues is a delight, though, but most of that happens outside of the mission proper – arguably you could use all of that with another rule set for the conflicts.
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