Interview with Hugo about Mars: Code Aurora
It's author Hugo a.k.a. Minus will briefly introduce it to us.
Thank you for your time, can you tell us something about yourself and your wargaming history?
Hi. Yes no problem. I am 40 years old, and I live in eastern France with my family. As you can guess I am a miniature games player. And now, I’m also a game author but this is not my main activity, I work in the car industry as a living.
I started playing miniatures games around 1999, with W40k 3rd version, and a bit later my big love during this era: Mordheim.As time passed, I played more games. Games Workshop games first, with WHFB, Battlefleet Gothic.
But I also discovered other games, from smaller publishers. And wow, that was a blast for me. Suddenly I had access to so many settings, so many miniatures ranges, so many game styles and mechanics. Since then I like to try new games as soon as I can. Quite happily, I found out that there was a gaming club nearby, and the people there were really open to any kind of games: they played any scale, any theme, any historical period. It’s in this club that I met Samy who’s the other author of Mars: Code Aurora.
We immediately became friends and discovered a common passion within our hobby : we love to create rules, to write scenarios, to imagine campaign systems and to tell storie. It didn’t take long before we started writing our first game together. It was called Red Button Nation, and was released as a free pdf on a blog (in French only). It was quite a big surprise when we started to get comments from players we didn’t know, and they sent us photos of their games.
Then a few years later, we started working on a new project, which became Mars: Code Aurora.
There is not much information on the project website. I understand the first French version was released in 2018?
I would rather say that 2018 was the time I started writing the game and posting about it on internet, if I remember correctly. The first version of the game was released in 2020 and it was self published using a print on demand service. It was the year of the lockdowns due to the Covid pandemics. As you can guess we had no opportunity to show the game neither in shops nor in conventions for quite a while. So we created a facebook group, to share info about our game, post photos, articles and so on. I think like one month later I was contacted by Studio Tomahawk and beginning of 2021 we had the opportunity to publish the game more professionally. The book got less expensive, and it was available in flgs, making the game more accessible. From that point the FB group started growing up, getting more and more members.
Hardbook is now available in English and French. The ebook is only available in French. For the english version, the publisher is Northstar so it's their decision to make a pdf version or not.
What are the design goals for Mars: Code Aura, what do you want to achieve?
There were two main axes that guided the writing of the game. First of all, the idea of making this game came to me after I moved into a new house. I was unpacking all my miniatures from the boxes, and realised that I had a lot of models, from different ranges. And I felt like it would be cool if I could pick models from this treasure chest, and play games with them regardless of their brand.
The second point is that based on all the games I had played so far, I wanted to keep the game flow as simple as possible. When I play a game, I like to play. Not to read my rulebook. I mean, I love reading books but before the game, not in the middle of a shooting phase. Based on our experience, since we made a lot of demo games now, people who are used to play miniatures game can play by themself in less than one round.
How does activation system works?
It is quite simple. At the beginning of the game, you prepare an activation cards deck. Each player gets as many cards as the number of models in his warband. You then add three cards for the drones. Shuffle all the cards together, and then pick the card on top. If it is your color, you can choose any of your models that has not been activated this turn, and make him do his actions. It is also possible to give reaction orders: your fighter saves an action to interrupt an opponent action, like for example fire on an enemy that moves in line of sight. Then you pick the next card. If the card you pick is a drones card, you move the drones that are on the table. And as soon as the third drones card is picked, the turn ends.
Thus you don’t know when you play a model, if you will also play the next model or not. And due to the drones cards, you also might not be able to activate everyone. This forces the player to make choices on every activation. Sure, you can keep your officer or your vehicle safe in cover, but at some point you have to activate them, or you take the risk to not use your best units.
Can you tell us something about the game setting? What is the role of the Red Planet and do we get a different look at the universe?
Part of the miniatures agnostic games doesn’t have a related universe. But since we had our own setting in mind with Samy, we naturally included it to the book. We wanted a setting that would create a lot of tensions and possible reasons for skirmish, ambushes and gunfights. Samy and I are both fans of sci-fi, but also post-apocalyptic worlds. Mars: Code Aurora is a mix of both.
The story takes place in an undetermined future. Humanity screwed up, and based on the predictions of the most powerful A.I. the life on earth is expected to disappear. Eleven Archs, huge flying cities, have been built in order to colonize Mars and save the human race. Ten of them landed as expected, but the last one broke in two and crashed far away from landing area. The terraformation is in progress, but there is no breathable atmosphere yet, so everyone is forced to live in the Archs, with too many people for too little space.
The book describes the most important organization, but players can of course imagine theirs. The goal was not to create the most original setting in the world, we wanted to provide a context that would justify why all these people would want to shoot each other to death, and why the combats are skirmishes rather than army fights, or simply launching a nuke bomb to clear space. The point is to have a frame, where the players can include their own groups, their factions, their stories.
We have seen very cool creations from the French community; I hope we’ll continue to see more from newcomers.
Can we use the mechanics of the game without modification in other game environments or genre? Talking about settings as Star Wars, Mass Effect, Infinity, or even Starfinder and genres like post-apo, bolter-porn, space-opera, space-fantasy, cyberpunk, elfpunk, etc…
Absolutely. I was about to talk about it. It is possible to play Mars: Code Aurora in our setting of course and either use the factions we describe or those you can imagine, within this universe. But if people want to use another existing world, or create one by themselves, no problem for me. By the way, in the last pages of the book, we made some proposals for alternative backstories.
Are there mechanics you would consider innovative?
There are so many games available today, that I am not sure there are real innovative mechanics now. In any game. What makes a game unique in my opinion is the combination of the mechanics, which one you use, how they combine.
Maybe one rule that is quite innovative is the universal actions rule. In addition to the classical actions we find in most games, like moving, shooting, picking an objective, the fighters can do literally anything during the game. Do you want to start that truck parked behind the tower? Do you want to use a cable to jump from a roof to another? Do you want to push this plasma reactor beyond its capacity to make it explode? You can do all of this thanks to the universal actions rule. It was inspired by roleplaying games.
What mechanics are you proud off? Any special mechanics you really like and want to pinpoint?
One starting point of the game design was: can I solve any action with only one dice roll ? Compared to roll to hit, roll to wound, save, counter-save, counter-counter-save, damage resolution... You see the point.
And, yes, it works. And I went even further, since the result to get on the dice is always the same. Half the results are fails, half are successes. The number of dice is the only thing that changes. No tables to learn, no values to learn. This makes the game fast, and you can immediately compare your chances of success, for example when you have two available targets for your gunshot.
Sorry, but our French is not the best and digging up information in English is almost impossible. Jindra, our best French speaker, watched one of the videos and was intrigued by the neutral drones. What is their purpose in the game?
At the beginning of the game each player places a drone miniature on the table. The drones are NPC characters, they don’t belong to any player, they are there to disturb the players plans. The drones are attracted by the shootings. The problem is that as soon as a model is at 10 cm or less from a drone, he cannot shoot unless he moves away.
The aim is to force the players to move their troops, because the best weapon with the perfect line of sight becomes useless as soon as the drone comes close enough.
In the setting of the game, the drones are everywhere to control the population. There is lots of tension between the protagonists, and everyone on Marsis aware that there are conflicts and military actions. Yet no one wants to be accused to start an open war in front of the drones cameras, the risk is too big.
Also we noticed, there is quite a huge pool of dice for combat resolution, which is quite fast on the other hand. Is it design goal to use plenty of dice.
It is not that we use a huge amount of dice. It is simply that the number of dice is the only thing that changes when you roll. So yeah it can happen that you throw a bunch of dice, but it is not always the case. For example, a standard shooting weapon on an average infantry model will need 3 or 4 dice, while a heavy weapon on same target twill use up to 8, 10, 12 dice. I think the biggest weapon of the game on the weakest model in the best conditions and in open fieldis 19 dice. Ok, that’s a lot, but in game you will rarely use this weapon on that target because it is overkill, you have better to do with this fire-power. In general you roll 1 to 10 dice. Sure, compared to games where you only launch 1D20, that’s a lot. But as a former W40k ork player, I don’t think it’s too much.
Are there any requirements for models, scale, or basing and how many models we will need?
Unless you try to make extreme lists, you will need around 8 to 12 models. The game was designed with the most common scales in mind, lets say 28-32mm, and we give bases size recommendations. But the most important is to have coherent miniatures sizes. The game works perfectly with 15mm scale, all you have to do is divide all the dimensions by two. I personally don’t play that scale, but some of my testers and people on the FB group only play the game at that scale.
What is the role of vehicles in the game?
Fire power. Definitely. There are no transports in the game. What I had in mind when designing the rules were war-walkers, like Infinity tags, W40k dreadnoughts, Star wars Legion rebel and imperial walkers and such. It is also possible to use small sized tanks, like a space marines razorback or an AT-43 Kharman trike. For example I have a squad that you can see on the website and for which I use the Genestealer cult buggy and truck as rank 1 and rank 2 vehicles. Land speeders also do great armoured vehicles with the small but fast rule.
Vehicles are there to shoot the opponents to pieces or rip them out. Or both. Vehicles can also be used as mobile cover for your infantry, because they block lines of sight and cannot be taken down by light weapons. But beware because infantry have access to heavy shooting weapons too, and vehicles are also very vulnerable in close combat.
Indeed. We wanted the game to be truly generic. We wanted that the players could use whatever miniatures they want, and let them interpret our factions the way they like.
This is why in the army lists you won’t find copycats of 40k or other games factions. Instead, we worked on archetypes. What kind of factions, what kind of gameplays do we find in games? There are warriors that are fearless. There are fighters that are killers at shooting but weak at close combat, we have fast running creatures, we have elite factions while other are numerous, some are specialised in one kind of combat, and some are polyvalent. We mixed all these ideas and created seven archetypal factions whose names sum their style and the idea that leads their mind: Domination, Science, Violence… It’s the player’s choice then to decide which list fits the best to the miniatures he wants to play.
And for each of these factions, we described one protagonist in our setting. For instance, Santahanna is the most powerful corporation in tech and research activities, both economically and politically, and is the pure incarnation of the Science faction in the game. But there are hundreds of other enterprises or military organisations that you can imagine to play with Science list.
How does scenario builder works. My experience says it’s not and easy task especially to build nonlinear scenarios.
Mars: Code Aurora is perfect for narrative scenarios and we encourage players to create their own. Is there an interesting terrain piece on the table like a mine entrance, a bridge, a cool looking machine? Make it the centerpiece of a scenario!
But on the other hand, we know that not everyone feels comfortable with scenario creation, and sometimes you simply don’t have the time for this. So we made a mission generator that is included in the book. Pick a six-sided dice (or download the cards from our website), and in less than two minutes you have a scenario ready to play. First, roll the dice (or pick a card) to determine deployment areas. Roll again for first player, the result will give a mission for him, and a counter mission for his opponent. Roll once more for the second player, you get his mission and first player countermission. Each player then chooses a secret mission, and you’re ready to go.
Every player gets 3 ways to gain victory points, for a total from 0 up to 6. In the end, the player with more points wins the game. In addition to this, there are tactical objectives on the table that don’t give victory points but bonus in-game. With your mission, countermission, secret briefing and tactical objectives, there’s always something to do!
What are the strongest points sales wise of Mars: Code Aurora? There are tons of Sci-Fi games on the market, what is the key point to sale the book?
That’s a tough question. Haha.
I have explained some of the features of Mars: Code Aurora.
I would add that based on the feedbacks I received from players one strength of the game is that it is very accessible. The archetypes based factions allow playing a wide variety of models. The recruitment is fast, you can make your list in a few minutes. You will need only around 10 models so it won’t take you forever to get them painted. The terrain size is 90x90 it will fit on most tables. And the game is easy to learn.
And like most miniatures agnostic games, it only costs you the book to try it, you most probably have all the miniatures you need for a game. And if you like it… well then you have a good excuse to paint the models in your drawer or to buy brand new boxes!
I am sorry to ask, but problem of many of French rules translated to English is simply proofreading. And Studio Tomahawk, your distributor if I understand it well is part of the problem. How do you addressed this?
To be honest, I am not aware of proofreading problems with Studio Tomahawk’s book. Simply because the ones I have are in French, so... I cannot really say.
I have read the book many times, but I am not a native English speaker, I essentially tried to find structure problems, I checked the profiles and so on. But I am not so good that I can correct an English book. I have to trust Studio Tomahawk and Northstar on this.
Any final words, can we expect any supplements, new books?
There is already a mini expansion that is available in French, it is a short campaign of 5 scenarios, with background to explore a little more the not so quiet life on the red planet. And we have just finished the writing of another supplement, that will introduce more background, scenarios, and also two new factions.
I hope to be able to release it in French in a few month, and maybe in English a little later.But that’s not all up to me.
What else can I say? Have fun! Oh and join us on FB or Discord, we want to see your paintjobs, pictures of your games, and read your stories.
Thank you very much for this interview, we wish you success with English sales, which are now available in Czechia via Piece of Terrain.
Thank you for your interest in our game! It’s always a pleasure to share about it.
Dalcor and Jiron asked on behalf of WASP blog
Foto: autoři Mars: Code Aurora
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