Striker

[Baltech Budapest]

I just received a copy of Striker in near mint condition. Bought it on eBay for £9.99 which was an absolute steal considering the condition it's in.

I haven't read it yet but it looks very complicated upon flicking through the books.

So I have 3 quick questions:

Does anybody still play it?

Is it worth spending the time to learn the rules?

For anyone who does play it, does it integrate well with your current Traveller campaign?

 

[Supplement Four]

I've never played it, but I've always wanted to. It's a war game in the old school sense. I think the rules are a bit intimidating at first, but the game is simple once you learn it. The main thing to understand is that the player doesn't really play his entire "side", as you think of in normal war games. Like in Risky, Axis & Allies, Advanced Squad Leader, and so on, the player plays every unit under his control.

With Striker, the player plays the commander and gives orders. Communication is paramount. Units may not follow orders if they can't hear them. So, the game is really played from the commander's perspective instead of an all-knowing normal player's perspective. The rules try to accommodate that type of play.

 

[atpollard]

From what I remember, the first book is the rules you really need, the second book is optional rules and the rest is about creating stuff.

So it can be played with a minimum of rules.
You can use the 'Stuff' rules to create more stuff for regular Classic Traveller.

Good luck.

 

[Dagrill]

I've never played it, but I've always wanted to. It's a war game in the old school sense. I think the rules are a bit intimidating at first, but the game is simple once you learn it. The main thing to understand is that the player doesn't really play his entire "side", as you think of in normal war games. Like in Risky, Axis & Allies, Advanced Squad Leader, and so on, the player plays every unit under his control.

With Striker, the player plays the commander and gives orders. Communication is paramount. Units may not follow orders if they can't hear them. So, the game is really played from the commander's perspective instead of an all-knowing normal player's perspective. The rules try to accommodate that type of play.

Excellent description, I've use it for platoon level mercenary combats, the C&C is crucial from what I remember, you have sections going off on the original orders whilst missing on opportunity to strike an enemy in the flank, the veteran characters are crucial.

Regards

David

 

[Baltech Budapest]

Thanks Supp Four and atpollard.

I might give it a try.
Yes, Book 1 is the Basic Rules so I might try with just that book.
If it works well then I will definitely try to link it up to our CT games.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

Thanks David also.
I knew some of you experienced gamers would have some decent feedback on it.
I did try a search on these boards for Striker before making the thread but there doesn't seem to be much talk of it.

 

[aramis]

If one drops the command/control rules, it's an easy-to-play combat system.

Azhanti High Lightning is the same combat system.

A lot of CTers used AHL/Striker in place of the Bk1 combat mechanics.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

If one drops the command/control rules, it's an easy-to-play combat system.

Azhanti High Lightning is the same combat system.

A lot of CTers used AHL/Striker in place of the Bk1 combat mechanics.

Didn't know that about AHL (never owned it or played it unfortunately).

This gets better, so I can use Striker rules in place of Bk1?

I only bought it for my collection as it was so cheap but knowing that info Aramis I will now be reading through it with a view to actually using it properly

 

[aramis]

Didn't know that about AHL (never owned it or played it unfortunately).

This gets better, so I can use Striker rules in place of Bk1?

I only bought it for my collection as it was so cheap but knowing that info Aramis I will now be reading through it with a view to actually using it properly

Yes, you can replace book 1 combat with it. Just remember that 1 "cm" is 10m or 6.66 deck squares (in traditional CT 1.5m) or 5 TNE squares (as they're 2m).

Damage works quite differently.

Realize: MegaTraveller worked from Striker.

 

[GypsyComet]

Realize: MegaTraveller worked from Striker.

To detrimental extremes in some cases.

 

[McPerth]

A lot of CTers used AHL/Striker in place of the Bk1 combat mechanics.

Me among them (with some minor changes to adapt for RPG), even while playing MT, as it was quicker to play.

Never played, nor had access to Striker, but I've heard it's quite good as miniatures play, as well as a system to design vehicles (AFAIK, both Robot and MT system are offsprings of it).

 

[Supplement Four]

I did try a search on these boards for Striker before making the thread but there doesn't seem to be much talk of it.

By doing a search in this CT forum using "Striker" in the subject field, I found 70 threads. You may find some of those useful.

Here's some threads you might want to read:

Converting from Striker to LBB

Here's TBeard's Striker Derived Combat System

More of TBeard's Striker Thoughts

Here's some Q&A on Striker



There used to be a good example of Striker play, taking you through a couple of turns. I can't find it. Too bad, because I thought it a very helpful Striker thread.

@Aramis: Wil, do threads disappear after a while?

 

[jec10]

Lots of good replies already!

Just to add my thoughts, I played CT/Striker as a wargame for resolving actions in a mercenary campaign rather than for regular adventure combat. As a wargame, you need to accept that Striker is a product of its time and that in many respects wargaming mechanics have moved on. As others have said, Striker has a unique command system that essentially makes the players roleplay the platoon commander (or, if you're really brave, company commander).

The essential point to grasp is that to get poor quality troops (or even average troops) to do anything meaningful, you'll have to LEAD (see Rule 10.C.) them directly with high initiative officers/NCOs. Thus it is essential that when you design your platoon or whatever before the game, you assign high initiative personnel to the officer/NCO slots. These guys you as the player have direct control over and you can instantly get them to do what you like (so if they are leading a squad, you can get that squad to instantly do what you like). Otherwise, you're into the incredibly time consuming ORDERs system (which is of no use for poor quality troops anyway). Most gamers soon get frustrated waiting eight to 16 turns for their little men to do anything.

Note that a Striker game requires a lot of prep work. You need to draft up the platoon-organisations for each side, assigning personnel to each slot and recording their initiative, morale and weapons. Most likely, given the paucity of designs in the rules, you'll need to design any vehicles and heavy weapons using Book 3. You need to set up the table and define all the terrain in terms of the classifications in Book 1 - so you'll need to decide if each patch of foliage is light or thick woods, with undergrowth or without, etc. What are the buildings made out of? How high are the hills? Draw (or use digital camera) a map and assign codenames to each feature so orders can be issued telling troops to move to Wood C or village X.

Although the designer suggests basing figures on fireteam stands, nowadays I use individually mounted figures grouped into teams. That way I can remove casualties (rather than using casualty caps and/or keeping a log as suggested in the rules).

There is lots more that could be said if you are serious about playing Striker. We have a sporadically active yahoogroup (ct-striker) where over the years we have discussed the pros and cons of various parts of Striker. You might join and use the search function to pull up some of our old discussions (just steer clear of the never-ending debate over grav vehicles!!).

And note that with TNE came Striker-II, a very different game by the same designer but modeled on his Command Decision WW2 miniatures rules.

There is, as yet no Striker-III, although maybe one day...

 

[aramis]

@Aramis: Wil, do threads disappear after a while?

Not exactly - but the default display is last two months. You can change that (and in some areas, watch the page count switch from 5 to 70 pages) with the pull-down on the lower left of the forum display pages.

 

[PhilB]

If one drops the command/control rules, it's an easy-to-play combat system.

I'd emphasise Aramis's point. I found a 7 year old could get a good game out of it if the command/control rules are ignored.

I still had to spend a moderate amount of time on organisation, but it wasn't much worse than something like Warhammer.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

Thanks everyone for the feedback and links. Appreciate that

 

[Bob Weaver]

Two friends of mine and I played game of Striker just a few weeks ago. My friends played the two sides, and I acted as referee. I wrote about it on my blog: http://deepinthestax.blogspot.com/2014/01/gaming-report-striker.html

We didn't get finished in the first session, but we plan to get back to it and get all the way through. We used mostly the Bk1 rules, as others in this thread have suggested, and kept the TL to 6, which seemed simple enough - figure out the important rules without getting hung up on the peculiarities of high tech weapons. I encourage you to keep all the command & control rules, which is really the heart of the game system. Also check out this podcast featuring Frank Chadwick, the author of Striker.

Cheers,

Bob W.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

Thanks Bob. Really enjoyed your blog post. Interesting that you got your groups 'feet wet' by starting of with a TL6 WW2-type game. If I delve into it myself I will probably start off with something similar to get things going.
Thanks also for the podcast link which I'm looking forward to listening to this week.
With my CT games I don't use miniatures at all and the narrative only nature of it really appeals to my group but since I got Striker it has got me a little curious about using minis for combat.
Thanks again

 

[jec10]

For those of you Striker gaming without miniatures, note that The Zhodani Base has an excellent counter rendering machine:
http://zho.berka.com/rules/war/tank_counter.html

 

[Baltech Budapest]

For those of you Striker gaming without miniatures, note that The Zhodani Base has an excellent counter rendering machine:
http://zho.berka.com/rules/war/tank_counter.html

Excellent. I have bookmarked that page. Thanks a lot.