# Five Parsecs From Home: Tactics *Created:* 2026-10-09, *Modified:* 2026-10-09 ![[Five Parsecs from Home - Tactics (cover).jpg]] Small-time trouble in a big universe is the usual Five Parsecs diet — but sooner or later someone asks what happens when the trouble stops being small. **Five Parsecs From Home: Tactics** is the answer: a standalone, scenario-driven big-battles variant of **[[Five Parsecs From Home]]** that scales the line up from barroom skirmishes to full-blown planetary operations. Big tanks, big monsters, big events, and platoons of troops — the same solo adventure-wargaming philosophy, aimed at the kind of battle where a bad initiative roll costs you an entire squad instead of a single freelancer. ## Setting Tactics keeps the Fringe but raises the stakes to a theatre of war. There's no fixed map at the heart of it — the design is deliberately a **toolkit**, handing you the rules to build your own scenarios for whatever troops you want to field, playable solo, co-op, or under a Game Master. The tone leans into a gritty space-opera register: infantry standing aimlessly in the open will be shot to pieces, while heroes (even sword-wielding ones, if you're feeling optimistic) can still make their mark. It's the Five Parsecs universe at the scale where your decisions have a body count. ## Mechanics The engine stays core-compatible with **Five Parsecs From Home** — same troop and weapon profiles, same D6 target-number resolution — but Tactics rearranges it around larger forces and purpose-built scenarios rather than a purely random encounter. Success comes down to the number of successes rolled, and the game adds an **AI battle-plan system** so enemy behavior stays lively, unpredictable, and occasionally just plain wrong in a way that reads as character. Combat is designed to be **actively run or Game Mastered** rather than strictly solo-rolled — a genuine optional GM is one of the few places the line gestures toward a tabletop referee. For campaigns, Tactics offers two approaches: an **Operational System** for the operational-level campaign, or **Campaign Story Generation** for the more narrative route. Everything stays a **toolbox** — you're invited to assemble the pieces however the battle you've imagined needs them. ## Editions - **Tactics** (2024) — the standalone big-battles expansion/hardback, fully compatible with **Five Parsecs From Home** and its crew. *In the library.* *(Established as current, single edition.)* ## The Line Tactics sits in the middle of the science-fiction branch of the **Five Parsecs** family: the core skirmish game is **Five Parsecs From Home**, the colony-building standalone is **[[Five Parsecs From Home: Planetfall]]**, and Tactics is the one that brings in the whole army. ## References - [Five Parsecs From Home: Tactics — Modiphius](https://modiphius.net/en-us/products/five-parsecs-from-home-tactics) - [Five Parsecs From Home: Tactics in big battles — Wargame SITREP review, Rocky Mountain Navy](https://rockymountainnavy.com/2024/08/04/wargame-sitrep-24-44-ttrpg-roll-24-30-almost-rpg-fighting-five-parsecs-from-home-in-big-tactics-modiphius-2024/) - [Five Parsecs From Home collection — Modiphius (US)](https://modiphius.us/collections/five-parsecs-from-home)