AAR and Review: Gruntz 15mm Sci-fi

Me and Phyllion managed to get in our first game of 15mm Sci-fi last night and I've done an AAR and a preliminary rules review. 

This game was mainly to figure out the rules so it had no scenario or backstory, it was simply a clash between Autosentia (me) and New Vedithian (Phyllion) forces using whatever bits and bobs of terrain Phyllion could dig out (apart from the vegetation, which he made for the game). 

The board mid-way through turn 1. We both moved our units forward with double actions and into cover where possible. My infantry were a little stranded in the open but luckily out of LOS.

The start of turn 2. Phyllion  had dismounted his gruntz squads by this point and was using his commander to give an extra 'push action' to the squad in the bottom left (marked by the dice)

The end of turn 3 (I think). My 'Tarantula' Spiderbot lost 4 of its 5 damage points when its shields were completely overwhelmed by one of Phyllions' IFVs. Also, you can just about see my recon droid specialists in the top right vegetation, they lit up the IFV with a targeting beacon for the rest of the game, granting a (measly) +1 to hit bonus. 

My battledroid squad had hit the deck on the hill, using the commander's 'push action' to get into position, and managed to knock a couple of damage points off one of Phyllions' IFVs.

Meanwhile  my Assault droids used their jumpacks to fly over the shipping container and take cover in the vegetation. Phyllions' gruntz hit the deck and returned fire but mostly whiffed, curse of the dice!

My mech, after rolling poorly for a few turns shooting, moved into short range of one of Phyllions' Gruntz squads and let rip with its medium gatling gun (I combined the effects of both arms) and medium missile launcher. Five grunts bit the dust.

The New Vedith Riflemen failed their Condition Brown check (silly name...) and legged it 8" behind the crate.

On the other flank my Battledroid squad moved up (again using the commander push), went prone, and then concentrated fire on the IFV at short range. Concentrating fire gives ordinary gruntz a change of hurting an IFV and offers cumulative modifiers which stack with each member of the squad. The result was 6 damage points and an engine critical - the IFV could no longer use Flank Speed (double move).

NewVedith's retribution was swift. Phyllions's riflemen moved up and waxed four battldroids, suppressing the unit. His IFVs tried to bring the pain on my mech but missed. Mech's have quite high Guard values for vehicles, representing their greater agility. 

Mid-way through turn 4 (perhaps...). Phyllion's surviving riflemen relocated into the shipping container (we treated them as buildings) and something, I cannot recall what, wasted two of my Assault Bots.

Phyllion kept his commander in cover and used him to dispense 'push actions'. I did much the same with mine.

My Assault Bots moved deeper into the vegetation to avoid fire and get within assault range of the New Vedithian IFV.

The surviving members of my Battledroid Gruntz unit activated and preceded to decimate the NV riflemen oppositie with a Squad Attached flamethrower, waxing 4 and causing a Condition Brown check, which the NV riflemen failed. 

This picture was taken just before I moved the mech round the crates and got a clear shot at the IFV's rear, adding +2 to my damage roll. My missile launcher missed (although the splash damage still inflicted a couple of points) and the gattling guns knocked off some more hitpoints, inflicting an Armour critical. 

At this point we called the game. Neither of us were happy with the balance of forces (my mech cost half of my forces points and was overpowered, my bad) or some of the design decisions in the Gruntz rules. 

Gruntz: The good, the bad and the illogical. 

What did we think of Gruntz then? Well, its early days and we've only had one game so I think final conclusions are still someway off but here's some ideas. 

The Good

• Optional alternating activation rules worked well and were dynamic. 
• Commander abilities flavourful and useful (although we might expand these). 
• Concentrate Fire. This was a nice little mechanic for giving gruntz a chance vs light armour. 
• Some excellant design choices, such as the 'Guard' value which appreciates that a unit's chance of being hit is not simply dependent on the shooters skill but also their evasive abilities. 
• Presentation. The PDF was extremely well presented with lots of great photos featuring a wide range of manufacturers, had good artwork and surprisingly good fiction. The designers notes were also nicely arranged and interspersed.

The Bad and Illogical

However, there were a number of design choices in the game I wasn't really a fan of:

• Weapons do not posses a rate of fire statistic. This has clearly been abstracted into the cumulative weapon damage statistic but this doesn't feel right to me. SAWs provide 1 extra damage over a rifle but I don't think this really captures the feel of an automatic weapon. Similarly the equivalent of an HMG inflicts more damage but receives no extra shots or even a to hit or suppression bonus to represent weight of fire. 
• Suppression is based on casualties, not hits. Suppressive fire, in my mind, is about throwing enough firepower at an enemy to keep their heads down. Killing them helps, but it isn't the main factor. 
• Suppression does not reduce return fire. Although suppression does limit a unit to one action it doesn't reduce the amount of fire it can kick out. I don't think this is a great way of simulating the effects of a unit cowering under cover and getting real small. I prefer the FOW method of reduced ROF and restricted movement. 
• Squad sizes are limited and controlled. I'm not sure I really like the 6-8man squads. This feels like its been put in the game simply to make it easier to design. In my mind squads should consist of fireteams and have more independence of movement. Fire-team size should depend on your race and military doctrine. 
• The army builder is easy to use but fundamentally flawed. The army builder is a nice touch, don't get me wrong, and I love army builders with excel files, so big points there. However, no real effort seems to have gone into balancing the points costs of the various units and abilities. Increasing stats usually costs the same number of points, the implication of this is that all stats are valued equally. This is not the case. Guard and Shoot are clearly superior, if your opponent cannot hit you in the first place then you don't need a high Soak or Mental. Skill is also expensive and largely useless for infantry figures, as Phyllion found to his expense. Limitations on the number of perks are also annoying, especially for those armies like mine which use exclusively robotic units. I had to fudge the jumpack unit and give them the jump and automaton perks to represent them accurately, even though this is 'illegal'. Another simple point is that the army builder, for some reason, aims to assign extremely low point values to everything. However, the more increments you have in a design system the more differentiation, and thus accuracy, you can show. The Strike Legion unit builder, which is extremely good, is a perfect example of how to get this right. You work out the points cost of a unit using a series of simple sums (which may go over 1000) and then divide by 10 and round up at the end. This retains differentiation without having to calculate silly figures (which if you have excel or a calculator isn't an issue anyway). 
• 2D6 mechanics. Neither me or Phyllion were really sold on these. I appreciate the author was probably seeking the nicely averaged distribution bell-curve you get with a 2d6 probability but it made rolling fiddly, requiring dice to be paired up each time. D10s probably would have done the job similarly well and been a lot faster. If you roll enough dice everything evens out statistically anyway. 

Ultimately we plan to play Gruntz again but with some heavy modifications to better reflect the kind of game we'd like to play. I think I'll probably continue to look into Critical Mass and work on my own homebrew rules. Also, I appreciate the games' author will probably read this. I'm not trying to slam your product just give my honest opinion as to the rules. Perhaps you can shed light on some of the 'issues' above, maybe we were just playing some of it wrong?

AAR: Old West game at the Warlords

I went down to Dulwich Village earlier this evening and took part in one of the South London Warlord's monday night participation games. It was the first ime I've attended the club and I was very pleased with how friendly the atmosphere and players were, overall I felt very welcome! 

This game was set in the old west and used the Warhammer Historical rules named the same. The basic mechanics come from GW's LOTR SBG and as I played this many years ago I was fairly familiar with the mechanics and it didn't take long to get into the game. There were around 12 players, each with their own warband of either Indians, Lawmen or Desperadoes and each group had their own objectives such as robbing the bank, the train or protecting them. I and another guy were the Indians, a bit of a wild card, and our mission was to steal the women scattered about the map and raid the saloon to steal 'firewater'. As it turned out we completely failed at both of these objectives (but we were so close!).

I took a few pictures but didn't really keep up as I was too busy playing, I'll give you a bit of an overview of what happened:

The Game

This was my Indian warband, 4 Braves with bows, a medicine man, a chief (with rifle), 2 youngbloods and two mounted braves. The train moved throughout the game and my tactic was to shadow it and use it as cover to move up the map towards the saloon and women.

Here you can see the wider situation - The saloon is the white facaded building on the middle right and my main opponents in the games were the two Desperado bands just behind the saloon.

This is a few turns in. The train had moved up and I'd started clambering over it. Luckily no-one was killed despite it still moving. The Brave on the ground rolled 3 1s in a row and so didn't get over the train in the whole game! However, the other injuns were like ninjas (ninjuns?) and leapt over no problem.  You can see my two horsemen on the top left heading off in an encirclement to get the women in the town.

Indian bows proved spectacularly ineffective at taking out the deparado (wearing blue trousers) standing by the station. He later used the nearby old man as a hostage, by moving into base-to base, so I decided to close for the kill and take some scalps.

This is just after I charged him, won the fight and killed him with my horde. Return fire from the two outlaws up the street hiding behind a table failed to do any damage thanks to my medicine mans 'run with the shadows' ability which made all indians within 3" count as being in cover. However an outlaw in the saloon 'fanned' his revolver, rolling 6 dice to hit (needing sixes) and managed to waste a Brave (the one behind the barrel).

Here you can see my Indian ally charging a group of outlaws just up the street in an attempt to seize the two women they were using as hostages against the lawmen. Just out of picture to the bottom left are my indians invading the saloon to take the 'firewater'. A desperate outlaw managed to shoot the one indian I got into the building (whilst aiming through the doorway at another and missing). You can just see my two horseman in the top center hunting down the woman in pink on the top right.

Unfortunately the game ended here, on about turn 5, as due to the huge number of players we ran out of time. The Indians had no victory points but we were one turn away from seizing 3 women and flooding into the saloon, so close!

Further up the huge board a group of outlaws had managed to break into the bank and steal the safe. However, another band had turned on them after their success and a deadly shootout ensued, the other band making off with the stolen safe in a devastating betrayal. The lawmen could do little more than look on and take long range pot shots (including a few rounds at my indian horsemen thundering through the main square).

Overall the game was good fun, a little slow, but thats was due to the number of players. The figures I borrowed were excellently painted by Lawrence, who ran the game, and most of the top quality terrain was his also. The game looked fantastic and the players were easy going and friendly. Next week I have a 10mm Blitzkrieg Commander game lined up so that should be good, I'm considering using Future War Commander for my 15mm so it'll be good to try out the system.