Fistful of Lead

Fistful of Lead core rule book
from Wiley Games

Fistful of Lead (FFoL) has been on my radar for a while now. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but my first game of it seems to have been a Revolt in Austria run by Jon Lundberg at Historicon 2023. Number One Son and I played in that game and had a lot of fun, although I don't think I was quite convinced about it at the time.

Since then, I've run several public games for unexpectedly large numbers of players. This got me thinking more about which rules were suitable for large numbers of players in games like this, as well as convention games. I ran I Ain't Been Shot Mum for six players, which felt like I was stretching it, and I ran Blood Red Skies for nine players, which it handled well. Thinking back to FFoL, I decided I wanted to try it again, with the idea of me running it in mind.

Thus it was Number One Son and I returned to FFoL at Historicon 2025, playing in Never Easy for Easy Company by Ed Watts.

We enjoyed it. Definitely "beer and pretzels" skirmish game, but I think that helps it play well with a higher player count, but it didn't feel too simplistic for two players. I assume the number of figures each player controls helps here. And I didn't appreciate it at the time, but FFoL seems like a simple but solid rules system that allows it to expand into lots of different genres.

FFoL Galactic Heroes

I picked up several of Wiley Games FFoL sets and supplements, but had my eye on Galactic Heroes, their Science Fiction supplement. It's a full rule set, but essentially expands the core rule book into the science fiction setting.

Figures in FFoL have a basic stat, and then are customized with one or more traits. The Galactic Heroes has stat blocks for several recognizable Sci-Fi properties. I took this as a chance to break out my old WotC Star Wars Miniatures.

Number One Son and I sat down and played a game of Princess Leia leading a squad of rebel fleet troopers against a group of stormtroopers. We played a scenario out of the Galactic Heroes book- the rebels had a droid with half of a set of secret plans. Four other droids were moving randomly around the table, and one of them had the other half. Both sides were trying to collect both halves and get off the table.

Number One Son played the stormtroopers, and won decisively.

I guess Number One Son enjoyed it, as he went and ordered a freakin' AT-AT for our next game! It's intended for larger "action figures," but it scales perfectly with the 25mm Star Wars Miniatures.

Interestingly, as I looked around for scenarios for our next game, I looked through Sci-Fi Skirmish Scenarios by John Lambshead. I've had this book for a while, but don't particularly run a lot of Sci-Fi Skirmish games. Looking at it through the lens of a game like FFoL, it was such an amazing resource. It's got 36 scenarios (randomized as a d66 table) with random events and a couple of campaigns. Any of these scenarios would have made a great FFoL game.

I looked for scenarios I could use the AT-AT in, and selected Scenario 2.5, "Smash the Icon." As written, two cults are fighting, with one cult attempting to conduct a lengthy ritual and the other cult attempting to stop it. I reskinned it as Imperials attempting to upload recon data from a downed AT-AT before the rebels could stop them.

In addition, Number One Son brought out a Lego rancor figure with worked pretty well with the figures, so I added the Wandering Monster random event.

I changed the scenario a bit for FFoL. Uploading data was a 5+ Task, and the rancor was activated and controlled on a Joker, which seemed to be FFoL's way of handling similar things.

The game was much closer. Number One Son pulled a Joker first turn and immediately devoured one of my troopers, but he couldn't roll above a two on his data transfers, giving me time to recover. Leia with her laser pistol, more accurate than everybody else's blasters, got hot for a bit and took out multiple stormtroopers, but in the end, a stormtrooper got the last data uploaded before she could get in range of him, giving Number One Son a turn 8 victory.

All in all, a very fun game I suspect we will be playing more of-- I'm already thinking of some historical games we could try with it.