The Defence of Procyon III

Defending The Indefensible

The Defence of Procyon III is a living rebuttal of the old maxim that you can’t have too much of a good thing! Yes you can and this is it! Whilst on the one hand the 121 well-sculpted miniatures, 2 large double-sided boards and piles of different cards, counters and tokens might seem a good thing the sight of 5 full 20+ page rule books and 4 completely different player boards might start a few alarm bells ringing.

David Turczi is a game designer of rare genius. He is particularly noted for excellent solo versions of his games but more of that later. He created The Defence of Procyon III because “he wanted this game to exist” and contain a host of ideas and mechanics but much like a great artist with a huge canvas he should maybe have been told when to stop.

Going to Def Con III

Let’s look at what we’ve got. The Defence of Procyon III involves the struggle between humanity and an alien race called the Aethyn on and around the eponymous planet.
Procyon III had been industrialised to gain access to the heavy elements it holds. In the process of this an active alien artifact was unearthed. Unbeknown to the humans this was a “War-portal” of another alien race, the Naharan, who the Aethyn had fought in an ages-long war ending with them trying to rebuild peacefully in this distant corner of the galaxy. Now that this active artifact had been uncovered they envisaged the dreaded Naharan flooding back and raining death and destruction down on them (I feel it wouldn’t be that great for the humans on the planet either!)

So the Aethyn sent their giant space fleet, the Meld and landed their ground forces, the Principal on the planet with the aim of destroying the artifact. The Humans on the planet, the Expedition are desperately trying to defend and get their precious scientists evacuated into orbit and Jump away whilst their space forces, the Armada, close in on the planet and offer their support.

So What’s The Problem?

So far, so straightforward. We’ve got a nice scenario setting. Attractive, dual gameboards with Space on one of them showing the zones around Procyon’s orbit and a close-up Ground view of the Central City colony and it’s surrounding terrain and installations. Each of the forces fights its’ own battles against their immediate opponents: Principal v Expedition and Armada v Meld with a limited amount of crossover support actions: landing Marines or support ships and aerial bombardments.

The Principal try to force their way into the City where their Queen can sabotage the dreaded War-portal or if they can disable the defence pylons they can destroy the city with an aerial bombardment. The Expedition defend against this whilst also trying to evacuate their scientists off the planet to safety. The Armada and Meld can slug it out overhead trying to destroy each other, the Aethyn Mothership and/or the Humans Lunar Promethium refinery.

This sounds very exciting and it is. I’m getting excited and raring to go just typing this up. But there is a problem.

What Off Earth Am I doing?

The problem is 106 pages of rules! Not just one chunky tome that you use largely for reference and dip in and out of, after all most wargame systems have rulebooks that are even sold separately, but 4 sets of 20+ rules, one for each faction and another for solo rules. Each of the four forces takes actions and conducts combat in a completely different way so there’s no helping another player if they’re struggling with how to do things because you have no idea – your force works in a completely different way.

We have Hero Character led troops that can lay down defensive suppression fire. We have forces that only fight in areas dependent on the draw of a card, spawn new warriors necro style from the corpses of the fallen and attack by drawing black or white cubes from a bag. You can fly in space with forces activated by the play of a card given a number of actions on the roll of a dice but then fixed not luck combat. Alternatively one can choose between playing an aggressive Tactics card or defensive Co-ordination move with any combat results being by a drawing cards.

Sometimes hits are luck dependent, sometimes they’re automatic. Sometimes a Hero ignores the first hit, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you decide what targtes are hit, sometimes your opponent does. We’ve got dice, cards, drawing lots, hit point stacks, automatic shield tokens, automatic shield destructors. You want a giant space cannon? You got it! You want regenerating aliens? You got them!

In Space No One Can Hear You Scream “Stop Already!”

So here we are. We have a wonderful melting pot, brimful of ideas, mechanisms and systems that can blend together to produce a wonderful smooth system. But does it? In an interview with David Turczi himself, he stated that he wrote and re-wrote the systems, including going right back to the start on more than one occasion, to make

sure they all fit together wonderfully. But will we ever find out? Here’s the thing. To get the Defence of Procyon III to table requires a lot of commitment from potentially a lot of people and will they find the return of enjoyment versus the effort expended worth it? I’m not sure.

At 2 v 2 players, its’ core design, with one Space and Ground team facing off against the other you need to find 4 players willing to learn their own rule book to participate in a contest where they wiil wait a long time between turns and then not actually do a gret deal on said turn. Whilst the game is limited to 10 turns if no one has already gained automatic victory, I find the stated (already long) game time of two and a quarter hours ridiculous. That’s 3 minutes 22 seconds per faction per move! Even expert players, adept with the systems would strugggle to meet that. I found that whilst learning the various methods, turns could take up to half an hour. I tried to get it down to 10 minutes a turn but never achieved that. Even that would mean waiting 30 minutes for your next turn. In the rule books is suggests you use your waiting time to plot your next move which, in itself, is a bit of a red flag.

At 1 v 1 players it should move quicker but you’ve got to learn 2 sets of rules each.

Possibly the solo modes either as 1 player or a 2 player co-op human team against the Bot packs would work the best but I have not yet tried them.

So Rests The Case For The Defence

I feel there is a good, possibly great, game in here, unfortunately not many are going to ever find out. If you and your group play The Defence of Procyon III enough to get really familiar with it and fully explore all its intricacies I feel you will be rewarded with a rich, gaming experience.

For the othe 99% of us we are never going to know!