Get to Da Checkpoint! is live (Survive the jungle)
Update: Get to Da Checkpoint! (previously known as Get to Da Choppa!) is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 20 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game, or combine it with other games by Great Games.
Our preview post below was published on July 22.
Get to da Choppa! is a solo dice game which has been available as a free print-and-play and is now being brought to Kickstarter by Great Games. The campaign will launch on July 27. In this game, you are playing as a squad of soldiers on a Top Secret mission who got lost in the jungle after their chopper crashed. You will have to face UFOs, Nazis, dinosaurs, zombies and drug lords, among others.
Before starting the game, you first pick your scenario. The game is then played on two boards, one featuring the location track your squad will go through during the scenario, and the other, the squad sheet on which you will track the ammo and supply packs you own, the enemy firepower, and the action spaces you will allocate dice to after you roll them.
You start by placing your squad pawn at the beginning of the track on the main board, and by taking 12 meeples representing your squad members. First, you must see if they all escaped the helicopter crash unscathed or not. You will roll three dice, and an ‘injury’ table then translates the results into wounds or casualties. Then the game proper may begin.
On each turn, you roll 9 dice. You may re-roll any number of them up to twice, but the 1s don’t get re-rolled. Once you are done rolling, all dice get allocated with the corresponding box on your squad sheet, according to its value. First, the 2s are resolved, and allow your squad to try salvaging ammo and supplies. You draw “salvage” cards for as many dice as you have in the “salvage” box and resolve them –not all of them benefit you though! Then, the 3s allow you to march for as many steps on the location track as there are dice in the box. Then you resolve the dreaded 1s. The first die makes you draw an encounter card. Enemies have two stats: alertness and firepower. However, all additional “1” results will add one to the firepower stat of that enemy. At this point, you may try to sneak past your enemies with the 4s that you allocated to the “Stealth” box: if you have at least as many dice as the alertness of the enemy, you can pass it without a fight. It comes at a cost, however, as you have to fall back by one space on the location track.
Now, if you didn’t hide, it’s time to fight! You take all the 5s in the “Engage” box (and as many additional dice as you are willing to spend ammo prior to the roll) and roll them. Each die will inflict 0 to 3 hits to the enemy, depending on what you rolled. All hits will be subtracted from the enemy firepower. If there is any firepower left, then the enemy will roll that many dice. You then check the “Injury” table to see if any squad members got wounded or killed. Then, regardless of your losses, the enemy is considered defeated, unless it’s a boss, in which case, a second round begins. If you don’t defeat it by the end of the second round, the boss leaves the fight but goes back to the deck, so you may encounter it again. Finally, the 6s in the “Command” box act as wild: you may spend them as an additional die in any phase, or you may spend them to re-roll injury or combat dice.
You lose the game if all your squad members die. If you win by reaching the end of the location track, thus completing the mission, your score is given by the number of survivors (although you may use an advanced scoring system to have a more fine-grained score). You can also tweak the difficulty to increase the challenge.