Roach Wars is the add-on to 5150 that we use at Mid Anglia Wargamers to run co-operative participation games at the conventions we attend in the UK (East Anglia, SE England and the East Midlands). We generally run it with quite a high Roach Rating (danger level) of ‘4’ to justify well armed rescue teams with machine guns, rocket launchers and (especially) flame throwers. You can’t beat the satisfaction of ‘crisping’ several dozen roaches or the frustration when the wretched thing won’t fire!

The rules are adapted from the ‘Xeno’ and ‘Bug’ rules in 5150 to give a more ‘roach’ feel and to make things less deadly. A typical game has several rescue teams in play so that roach swarms can be quite big, the record is over 180 so make sure you have plenty of template weapons! Grenades are actually quite useful as although they only have an impact of 1 against roaches they do knock down every roach within a 5” circle and that can impose enough delay to allow your team to escape.

Download Files for Roach Wars:

1. Roach wars addition to the Two Hour Wargames 5150 rules: Roaches5150-v4.pdf
   

2. Human play sheets for Roach Wars: RoarchWars Humans.pdf
   

3. Alien play sheets for Roach Wars: RoarchWars Aliens.pdf
   

4. Xeno play sheets for Roach Wars: RoarchWars Xenos.pdf
   

Note that these play sheets contain only the information needed for the participation games, they do not have the full background or all the weapons available to a faction.

Explanation and Publicity Posters:

1. In association with the Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy Wargamers: SFSFW Poster.pdf