So the second challenge my crew faced in Space Station Zero was Challenge 5: medical bay (note: spoilers for the challenge follow).

So the challenge is to survive the many homicidal medical drones who will try to drag the crew members to one of three medical exam tables where they will be almost instantly dissected and killed. Before that happens the drones must be destroyed or disabled. With six crewmen, that means 18 drones.

Rather than do eighteen robot miniatures, I went the “pog” route instead. I did paint up one robot, strictly for photos for the blog. But regardless that’s a startling number of opponents. And unfortunately, everything went wrong.

Crimson, the medical officer, was quickly dragged away to one of the tables, while Kaine and his two soldiers Grimlock and Stanovic were tied up by others. The dice, especially the activation rolls, went very much against the crew and while Grimlock and Kaine were able to fight their way off the tables the first time, the eventual third wave of drones was able to overwhelm them and kill them both.

Even though the challenge hadn’t run its full course, with three out of six out of play, and those three the best combatants, I decided to call it and move on. Out of curiosity I rolled the post-game outcome and Crimson and Grimlock would have both stayed dead while Kaine fully recovered.

So I think a restart is in order, with a new crew and perhaps a better sense about how the game is played. In hindsight what I should have done was draw each trio of drones away with the captain and the two soldiers while having the others try to disable the drones at their control node. Since they have as much of a chance damaging the drones on the drones activation as their own, my crew’s activations could be reserved for the disabling crew.

BTW. here’s a closeup of the robot, a “dwarf mining robot” I picked up on Thingiverse.

Thanks for reading, and comments welcome!