Firefly Adventures - Heroes 01

It is my birthday next week on the 24th of November. Now that I have finally gotten the probate sorted out with my mum's will and have received a very tidy sum of money, I splashed out on a few presents for myself. One of those was for Firefly Adventures: Brigands and Browncoats, a board-game with 28mm scale miniatures produced by Gale Force Nine, which I bought from Amazon UK. It is a game designed for 1-5 players, so as a solo player, that was a big draw for me. Secondly, I am a huge fan of the TV series and spin-off film.
Firefly Adventures is a co-operative, mission based, skirmish level game where the players need to use their different skills and abilities together to succeed. When you play Firefly Adventures, you'll follow one of the Job Briefings, which determines what your Crew needs to accomplish, how they might succeed and how long they have to work.
Some jobs are easier and faster, some are longer and more involved. What type of Job you want to tackle is up to you. You can work a single Job or play a story of multiple Jobs. In a Story, you'll use the credits you earn from one Job to equip the Crew for the next Job. Each Job will detail how to set up the map for that Job, how long the Timeline should be and how much you'll be paid for completing the Job.
I'll go into more detail into how the game is played in a later post. For this post and my next one, I want to showcase the miniature figures. The game comes with 20 plastic 28mm scale figures, all of which are unique sculpts. You get 10 Heroes split into 5 Casual and 5 Heroic poses and 10 bad guy Goons, split into 5 Cowboys and 5 Thugs. I'll show the Goons in my next post. For now, I want to concentrate on the Heroes.

I guess the Unique Selling Point of the game is that the Heroes come in two flavours - Casual and Heroic. When a Hero is acting Casual he or she can move around the board and take actions without attracting the attention of the Goons. However, once they start acting Heroic, which isn't just limited to combat actions, then the Goons will go on the alert and try to stop them. I like this effect. In some cases it'll pay you to go stealthy and casual but other times you'll need to go gung ho.

The five Heroes of the game are the basic crew of the Serenity. So, from left to right, are Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds, a cunning and capable leader and a skilled fighter. During the Unification War, he fought as a Browncoat.While he is not above petty theft, smuggling or even killing to maintain his free lifestyle, he is generally honest in his dealings with others, fiercely loyal to his crew and closely follows a personal moral code. He is openly antagonistic toward religion as a result of his war experience.
Next up is Jayne Cobb, a mercenary and macho man who often acts dumber than he is. Despite his amoral mercenary persona, he sends a significant portion of his income to his mother, again suggesting that there is more to his character than what he presents to the rest of the crew.
In the centre is Kaywinnet Lee "Kaylee" Frye, the ship's engineer. She is the heart of the ship, a genuine and sweet person who has an intuitive grasp of mechanics, despite having no formal training in engineering.
Second from the right is Hoban "Wash" Washburne, the pilot of the Serenity and devoted husband of Zoe. He is very light-hearted and tends to make amusing comments, despite the severity of any situation.
Finally, is Zoe Alleyne Washburne, who fought alongside Mal in the Unification Wars. She is a capable fighter who keeps calm even in the most dangerous situations.

For the Heroic versions of the Crew, most are armed with their favourite weapons, apart from Kaylee who is a pacifist. Mal is armed with his trusty revolver. Jayne is carrying his favourite assault rifle, whom he has named "Vera." Kaylee is crouching down, making use of her tool box. Wash is firing a pistol in a two-handed grip and Zoe is firing her Sawn-Off shotgun from the hip.

I should point out that I bought this game last month in order to give me plenty of time to paint the miniatures in time for my birthday. The detail on these figures, particularly on the faces, is rather soft. They are made of hard plastic but are not of the same quality as Mantic Games' The Walking Dead figures. On the plus side, each figure is a unique sculpt and it is very easy to tell at a glance which version is Casual and which is Heroic. Note that if you were playing the game with unpainted figures, the Casual versions are made of grey plastic and the Heroic versions are light green plastic.