If you wat to have a great time getting your butt kicked by the game system, Five Parsecs: Bug Hunt is a good way to go.

It's in the Five Parsecs from Home family of rules done in the old NWG format so it's very printer friendly but lacks the flash of the Modiphius book. Like the current edition of Five Parsecs, it's based on 2e with some mechanical tweaks. In this case you start with a team of three military operatives and you roll for extra support and weapons for every mission. You face waves of blips that spawn enemy melee types (bugs, zombies, cybernetic nightmares) and try to accomplish your objectives before calling for evac. It's fun, brutal, and when your military folk muster out you can add them to your crew of Five Parsecs from Home.

I am new to miniature gaming. I picked this up for something to use my minis with since solo gaming is all I have time for now I love that I can use whatever I have instead of having specific sets.

The rules are enjoyable and fairly straightforward. It took me two games. (1.5hrs for the firs and 1 hr for the second) to get the rules down. The randomness of it gives good replay value and keeps it challenging. You'll get the most out of it if you create a narrative to gowith each game. I also recommend finding a group to share your battle reports with if you like playing with people but don't have time to coordinate schedules.

5 Parsecs Bug Hunt is a stand alone set of eules based on the 5Parsecs From Home solo RPG skirmish rules. You do not need any other NWG products to play this game. Everything you need to play is contained within this set -Bug Hunt. However, i highly recommend checking out ALL other NWG titles, they are full of great rules and inspiration that can be used across the different rule sets that you can plug and play to your hearts content.

On with the review.

As always with Nordic Weasle Games, the rules layout is excellent, logical, and eady to follow. Where alot of shiny over produced photo heavy expensive rule sets lose themselves and leaves the players scratching their head, tryinv to hunt down a single sentence of rules lost in 10 pages of guff, there is no fear of this happening with NWG titles, and Bug Hunt is no different.

Following from one proper read through, i set up a game with my newly painted, based, and varnished figures, and after just a few turns, i felt completely at home with the turn sequence and moving and shooting rules etc.

It was then, at this point, i realised i was physically grinning to myself. This rarely happens with a solo set of rules and should speak volumes for these rules. I am havung so much fun playing out encounters and the follow up RPG lite campaign turns as well. If you like more RPG heavy campaign turns i highly recommend purchasing Starport Scum and the expansions as well as obviously, all the 5 Parsecs rules and expansions. These titles have amazing rules and details and ideas for deeper RPG play that could easily be incorporated if you were so inclined.

The Rules

Its easy, set up your encounter by following the detailed encounter set up guide. Get your two sides together, the humans, and the bugs, imagine you are in a Hollywood scifi saga where creatures who are ill disposed towards human incursions in space/planets, pray to the dice gods, set your face in an expression of grim determination (stubby cigar optional), say something like "bugs dont surf" and hope for the best.

Bughunt will let you fight movie amd videogame inspired games solo and have great fun.

The rules are intuitive and become second nature after just a few turns.

The bugs on the board are first represented by contact markers which either move directly towards the nearest humans or in a random direction, once the marker is detected, a dice will be rolled according to the specific profile for the bug type included in the rules - there are many profiles for different types of bug enemies, then that many bugs will spawn on that marker. From then on, the bugs move directly towards the nearest human at a predefined rate in their phase.

Humans

Typically you will follow, in the campaign two to four main characters. Typically 3.

Then according to the mission prority rating you spend the priority points on additional troops - such as a 4 man fireteam. You automatically get 1 free 4 man fireteam to accompany the main characters in the encounter. You can spend points on additional combat teams or non-combatant specialist teams if you want, who have their own unique bonuses on the field of battle.

You will usually have 2 or 3 objectives to complete and then you have to call in evac which is not guarenteed to turn up when you want. The idea is to try and keep your characters alive whilst completing objectives as bugs continuously spawn and hunt you down.

There is also a difficulty system whereby you can make it easier or harder, if you so wish as well as variable encounter priority setting. Sometimes you will be fighting a low priority encounter, or medium priority, or high priority respectively. Obviously higher priority will be a harder fight but you will have more support points to buy support teams etc.

What is even better is that you only need approximately 20 miniatures per side.

For the humans you will need a couple of characters, a few 4 man fireteams, and a few groups of different specialists such as a recon team, engineer team, sniper, etc etc.

Overall, superb - soo much fun on your own! Highly recommend.