Mercs: A First Game Overview

Greetings once again InterWebs!!! The gaming group I belong to (which includes the infamous Mordian 7th) has decided to try some other game systems; we had been in a bit of a rut with our gaming and need to break out of it. For some of us Warhammer 40k has lost a bit of its luster.for us at the moment. Mordian 7th and I have decided to give the futuristic miniature skirmish game called Mercs a try. I had watched a bunch of coverage about the game Mercs on the wonderful Beasts of War website. While there was a cool global campaign day being held at a game store here in Colorado our gaming group had other plans for the day and we have basically just started to learn the game. We did however get in a game of Mercs a few weeks back to learn the system and have some fun.

What I love about Mercs:

1) The rulebook and a starter set was around $100.00 USD which I thought was not bad at all. There is no way a person could get into Warhammer 40k for that amount of money.

2) Mercs being a small skirmish game the total amount of miniatures that you can field is 5. There are scenarios when you could be playing with fewer than 5. Having only a handful of miniatures on each side the games go quick! Our first game (which was a learning game) went about 1 hour 40 minutes but the games seem to be able to be played in about an hour or less.

So the first Mercs game ever for us was to be a battle between the FCC defending a book listing all of their operatives in the area from the invading Kem Var team. Here are some various views of the battlefield before the combat teams of Mercs showed up:

The ever-popular overhead view:

You will hopefully note that the play surface for a game of Mercs is very small; recommended 2'x2' or 3'x3' at most. The small play area forces the 'action' to start soon, generally turn 2 or so; the small play area also leads to quicker game times.

Here are some more various views of the actual game starting with deployment of the Merc teams:

Kem Var setup:

FCC setup:

 The book that must be defended:

The Merc Minis stat-cards which are also used in the movement phase (see next picture):

Here we have some shots of the action heating up:

Rushing the FCC Boomer before he kills everyone with a grenade (which are very nasty in Mercs):

Kem Var leader gunning his way to the doors of the chapel and the book inside:

 FCC leader drawing a bead on the Kem Var leader attempting to enter the chapel:

Gunning down the last Kem Var attacker as he tried to enter the chapel and grab the precious book:

All in all it was a great time with the FCC finally defeating the Kem Var and making it away with the list of operatives. I found the rules to rather in depth with lots of little nuances to the rules. I found the use of pluses and minsues to hit a refreshing change and reminded me of Warhammer 40k 2nd/3rd edition. I will look to do a more detailed battle report on a future Mercs engagement. Now to get back to painting up my CCC Merc team which are nicknamed the 'Yellow Jackets' and their wonderful yellow and black armor. Thanks for stopping by and taking a look at something not 40k related! Take care!