I recently got my hands on the printed version of the Gruntz v1.1 rulebook, and would like to put down my thoughts on the product itself. I have reviewed the rules elsewhere - and I have had a dearth of gaming lately, so I haven't been able to even play the game a second time. So for what it's worth, this is my impressions of the physical product.
I already owned the latest version of Gruntz in PDF form, and have it printed out and scribbled all over in red pen like I do to all my self-printed rulesets (I can't help it - I edit things in my sleep, apparently). Still, having an actual bound book is nice because I'm old school, and I find that having something I can flip through is just handy. Besides, even though I am more apt to use PDFs during gaming sessions these days, we had a small hiccup on Saturday night with a PDF not loading correctly during play...and short of a malicious dog or REALLY invasive spill of Mountain Dew, a book doesn't tend to let you down when you need it most.
I also pretended that I hadn't played the rules while flipping through it, to see if that affected my view of it's presentation.
In case you've lived under a rock for the past few years, Gruntz is a 15mm Sci-Fi wargame written by Robin Fitton of the UK. It is described as "Fast play combined arms". Just wanted to make sure you were in the right place...
Their website is http://www.gruntz.biz/.
Initial verdict upon examining the book: The book is nice. It has a good sturdy, glossy cover. The paper inside looks like it came off my printer at work - it is in color but is regular weight. The black spine is uninspiring, and the name on the spine is in tiny print on the bottom of the spine, and is upside down [from my American point of view, I'd expect to walk up to a shelf and put my right ear onto my right shoulder to read spines of books on a shelf]. Not such a big deal, but I do collect rulebooks, and this one will clearly get lost amongst some of the others but for one fact - it is printed in the oversized British standard of A4. I'll nestle it alongside my Firestorm Armada and Dropship Commander rulebooks and it will feel at home.
The Contents looks quite thorough, but one thing stood out to me: it's lack of organization. It is just a three-column exercise in words and page numbers. This is a real shame, because clearly the book is broken into sections: Introduction, Rules, Unit Construction, Scenarios, and Fluff. There is nothing to draw your eye to any one of these categories in the Table of Contents, but this is a minor quibble.
The book immediately tells you what it is for (which, believe it or not, if often skipped in rulebook introductions) and gives you some basics of what you can expect from the game. It then leads you into how a game is played, starting right away with Game Setup, Initiative, and Deployment. I love when a book doesn't waste time and starts you off in the nitty gritty. After all, if you're learning a game and use the book as a reference, like I often do, being able to open to the first few pages and have pertinent info right there is a nice touch.
Robin uses a really nice mix of flow charts, diagrams, and pictures to bright up the book. A friend, who had never seen the book, remarked about the nice layout design as he flipped through it. I agree. There was clearly some time and effort put into the book, and the grammatical and spelling errors I found are to be expected (God knows, I've written enough and proofread my own writing enough that after a very short while, a grammatical error could be brazenly flipping you off from the middle of the page and I could gloss over it).
Despite my initial comment about the Table of Contents, it is actually quite easy to find stuff in book. Massive headers line each page, clearly labeled with what is on the page, and they follow a logical order. I think I would have liked a color change for each major section, maybe, but this is again a minor thing.
One thing that I constantly have to get past when reading the book is the language. I don't mean that silly British habit of putting u's where they don't belong (colour, anyone?), but the very cheeky nature of the terms used in the game. Let me preface: the ruleset is clearly based on a similar game, Warmachine by Privateer Press. This is fine, as the formula clearly works, but it appears that in order to put some separation between other rulesets and Gruntz, the author came up with alternate names for stats.
The Gunnery or Ranged Attack stat is called Shoot. Melee is Assault. The Avoidance stat is "Guard" while the Armor stat is called "Soak". Leadership or Morale is "Mental", and everything else is just called "Skill". A unit that whose morale is broken is under "Condition Brown". Being killed is called "Waxed", or "Smoked" if the unit is a vehicle. Special abilities are called "Perkz", and add-on equipment for vehicles are "Modz". I actually like adding Z's at the end, because it reminds me very much of the Games Workshop Orks-style of language, but the rest of it kind of makes me feel like I should be giggling in the boys bathroom with other 12 year olds over some Mad Magazine comic strip. I can get past it. Others of my friends have clearly stated that they won't. I don't think it should be a deal breaker, as it is just the flavor the ruleset is written in - I applaud the author for being bold and writing how he likes. If I had my own ruleset, I'd likely do the same.
Background: There is a trend (again) recently to bring rulesets back to the generic, so that they work with anything and anyone. I completely applaud this direction because I stopped buying game-specific rules and models years ago. Now I buy what catches my eye, and I'd love to put them all on the table at once...and these types of rulesets allow that. With that in mind, Fluff (e.g. background story, the setting's history, etc) is a controversial item. Some, like myself, could care less about the fluff because we're going to making our own as we go, or even just ignore it in our rush to get models killed on the battlefield. Others feel that without fluff, there is no immersion, and without immersion, one might as well be throwing dice on an empty tabletop. Gruntz acknowledged both of these schools of thought and did something brilliant - he put it in the back. The last 32 pages of the book are Background, so they're out of the way if you don't need or care about it, but, well, if you do, it's there. Kudos. No, I haven't read the fluff, and no, I don't intend to.
However, I feel that in this case, the fluff gets in the way of what could be a truly excellent product, but for 3 things missing: a QRS (Quick Reference Sheet), an Index, and 2 or 3 premade factions with example units.
The love of a Build-your-Own system is that you can buy, model, and convert to your heart's content, and you can likely find rules for putting it on the tabletop. The downside to said system is that often, you have to do the Gruntzwork yourself (I'm feeling quite clever there - leave me alone in my smugness!). In order to get about to throwing dice in anger, you need units, and this book has none. Well, ok, there are a few tiny examples in the Unit Buider section, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'd like two faction's worth of infantry, a few support units, a few vehicles, and let me try it out.
I own the unit builder for Gruntz, but I've never used it because I don't have a printer at home. I know there are plenty of examples on the really cool website http://www.gruntz.biz/, but is immaterial to me. Sometimes I like unplugging, sitting down with an army book, and doodling over a paper with a calculator. I like sitting with friends pre-game, especially if I am introducing a game to them, and picking out forces together. Am I alone in this? 4 pages of pre-mades to get me started, to whet my appetite to build my own, is all I'd want. I think this is one large error from a rulebook point of view.
[The opposite of this is PMC2640, which doesn't allow you to custom design anything, but has so many prebuilt options that you'd have to be incredibly anal or nitpicky to not be able to field the force you want].
Personal Issues: I have a few other minor points to point out. Doing so might be slightly unfair, because I said I wasn't going to go into the rules. I cannot help myself, however, as I have played it once, and these things are niggling at the back of my head, and might be semi-influential in why the game hasnt hit the table a second time for me.
The first is the method of combat resolution. Roll some dice, add a stat, compare to a target stat = nothing new here, especially considering it is WarmaHordes rewrtten. My issue is that you roll 2d6 per model firing. If you have a standard infantry unit of 8 men (2 with Squad Weapons), you're rolling 16d6. Each pair of dice is unique, however, so you're rolling 8 pairs of different colored dice. Oh GOD yes, I can do this (my dice collection is stupid-huge), but this is a bit of an inconvenience when it comes to speed of play. This is shared by the friends I have shown...and it shouldn't be, but its the biggest roadblock to me wanting to play Gruntz again.
By the way, I completely agree with and understand the allure of the 2d6 bell curve. I grew up playing Battletech (Phantom Blue Assault Company, FASA fan chapter #2 for any really old timers out there), and my favorite roleplaying game is HERO, which uses 3d6...so this leads me to my second quibble.
In v1.0, the price to buy more Shoot mechanic was 1 point per stat, so a Shoot of 4 costs 4, and a Shoot of 6 costs 6. The problem here is that a +1 or a -1 to the 2d6 bell curve is HUGE. I'm not a mathematician here (1 plus 1 IS 2, right? Just making sure...), but give me a -2 to a 7-or-better roll and I'll love you, but give me a +2 and make it a 9+? Ugh...so why make this all-important stat so damn cheap?
Remember Tomorrow's War? I tried my ASS off to make a spreadsheet that assigned points to units, because I'm just not cool like other people who can balance lists off the top of their head. As I consulted the forums, one thing came up constantly: Troop Quality (the stat used in ranged combat) IS ALL. It is the most important thing. It might even be the only thing. Same as with Gruntz (as an aside - I was so desperate to like Tomorrow's War, but I think I need someone who knows, really knows, the rules to walk me through it. Are you near San Jose, CA? Holler at me!).
I helped do rules testing and editing for Unbridled Fury, which was a really promising product, and his combat stat was almost exponential in cost. I urged Robin to the do the same...So Gruntz v1.1 came out, and I was relieved to find that he had at least increased the cost per stat, but only by 1 point each...I think it is too cheap to get a high skill, but it is better than it was.
Summary:
So let me sum all of this up. The rules are what they are, so no rulings here.
Book Presentation: A-
The book is well done. It organizes itself fairly well, although I have not had to delve for info i the middle of a game for ages, so I cannot comment to that. An Index would have been HUGE, as would have a more organized Table of Content.
I liked the layout and how things were presented. I liked the order that everything was presented in. I missed the prebuilt unit lists that are on the website, and a QRS would have been jolly good (jolly goodz?). I will buy other Gruntz products if they are produced, and most likely in book form if they come out in this medium again. I am even aiming at playing this again, but my gaming group suffers from the same affliction that I do - gamebookcollectingitis. Yea - we all collect rulesets, and we all want to play said rulesets at least once, which means on any given game day, we're likely trying out a new set of rules. The upside? Lots of cool rulesets come across our desks. The downside? It's like that hot brunette that catches your eye as she passes in a crowded mall - by the time you realize she really was as hot as you initially thought, and turn to get a second look, she is gone, swallowed up by the crowd, and getting back to her is harder than it should be (poor choice of words? "More difficult", maybe?)...PMC2640 is my number one right now, but Victory Decision looms on the horizon, as does the WW2 ruleset Chain of Command by Two Fat Lardies (which I have already played once but not reviewed).
Thanks for reading.
About Me
- Kealios Achilles-Fang
- My name is Gavin McClements. I am a wargamer and family man, living in Los Gatos, which is a suburb of San Jose, CA. Building terrain is one of my favorite aspects of the wargaming hobby - in fact, lately I've become more interested in making my battlefields "pop" than in actually playing.
Showing posts with label 15mm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 15mm. Show all posts
Monday, March 17, 2014
Thursday, November 14, 2013
PMC 2640 gets played against a real human opponent!
I was pretty excited about PMC when I finally got my hands on it a few months back. I wrote my introductory battle report on it after doing a solo run simply because I had to...but I finally got my first "real" game in last night.
I decided to forgo my usual note taking and just enjoy the flow of the game for once. What Im going to present here is a series of pics with ultra-quick commentary, and then give a few more thoughts on the game itself.
Here is our battlefield as it shapes up and forces are chosen.
I had to introduce the mechanics of the game in and amongst the descriptions of the unit stats and what they meant - fortunately my opponent was a veteran and picked it up quicker than I would have liked him to!
We played an easy Tier 3, Priority 1 battle. Left to right:
4-man Tier 3 Rocket team
3-man Tier 2 LMG section
6-man Tier 3 LMG team (one member is being interrogated by the enemy, but managed to escape in time for the battle)
4-man Tier 4 sniper team
Tier 3 Light combat vehicle
8-man Tier 3 Rifle team
Honestly, as I was deploying, I thought the red thing in front of me was a hill...heh oops! :)
We played a Capture scenario, where we had 20 turns to contest 3 objectives: the 2 watch towers and the low, flat grey block in the center (it was VITAL, I swear it!).
Deployment as it is shaping up:
My opponent was fielding a version of the Slammers, with 3x Tier III Grav Combat cars, some mortars, scouts on grav sleds, and quite a few Tier I rifle teams.
His models were pretty cool. Here are his Combat Cars and Scouts.
The game starts, and he starts flanking to my left with his vehicles. I snake my way towards the center with my Light Combat Vehicle. His grav sleds rush up and pull their first Markerlight designation, which immediately brought mortar fire down from the other side of the map. Fortunately it missed.
The rules for buildings were really easy, but we had packed them in so densely that the only things really maneuvering where the vehicles (his to hunt, mine to evade).
You can see his tanks sneaking around to my left. I felt I was secure in the buildings - my snipers had Gauss weapons which gain a +1 vs vehicles, and I had a lot of faith in my bazooka team, but the snipers never got to cover before they were pounced on...and this was their quick and inevitable end:
(Hint: 1 guy, with a modified Morale of 1, with 12 Suppression markers....he wasn't long for the battlefield! [He fled the next turn])
My bazooka team didn't fare much better, either, taking lead from fire hoses at near-point blank range, which ended up being too close for them to arm their own rockets. To make matters worse, you can see the smoke billowing from the center - my light tank took its final demise from small arms! That's right - at point blank range from an angry mob, even assault rifles can finish off light armor, which was scary to contemplate!
On my right, the LMG team wasnt doing much better. They slogged through cover for two turns, and when they popped out, took some crazy-accurate fire from some rookie gunners across the way, and spent a few more turns cowering under cover.
They finally had had enough of being pinned down on the right flank, and decided to make a mad dash in a vain effort to redeploy and aid their ailing left flank.
It was a futile gesture. The Combat Cars kept coming, while mortar fire continued to rain into the Bazooka team. The tank at the bottom of the pic here wiped out a few more of the redeploying LMG team and sent them right back into the woods.
It was getting late, and with the all-but-complete destruction of my bazooka team and my LMG team pinned again, I called it. We made it 5 turns, and it was a complete route. I killed a few scrubs with my central Rifle team, but really didn't return effective fire on any front. Here is the outcome:
Finally, satellite imagery confirmed the conflict's result:
So, I had a blast even though the game was over almost before it began. I knew Aron would be bringing vehicles, but I put my points into small, more veteran units. I think he did it right, as the firepower from his tanks was almost always a 9, and only rarely a 7 - brutal in such short environs. He proved that Tier I troops might not be glamorous, but their effectiveness was plain to see. The few I hit did break nicely, but he rallied against long odds and kept them on the table.
Actually, come to think about it, his dice were hot when they usually aren't, so it was good to see luck back on his side. There was nothing atypical in this game - it had its ups and downs, but no single roll or action seemed out of place.
The game is, indeed, a fast-play ruleset. I'll borrow some of my opponent's words as he described it our local group, since he was seeing it with fresh eyes:
"It plays well, quick play set a bit like slammers but not as crunchy. Simple force building, with this "tiered" structure you may have read about. So no custom options but with a bit of imagination I was able to do slammers combat car platoon supporting some local irregulars.
I'd rate this 8/10
Slammers & StarGrunt 9/10
Tomorrow's War 7.5/10 for the complexity.
There is a Mordheim-like campaign system. So that could be fun. I'm going to get the printed rule book.
I like this better than Gruntz."
Of course, YMMV but this came together nicely. There are a few things that could be a splash more crunchy, but then it would lose a bit of its ease of play. Indirect fire, for example, had no scatter, but we realized that this would require a template, which the author stayed away from. The combat is pretty streamlined.
Next time we play, we hope to do two things to make referencing easier in-game. First, combat cards for each unit, instead of a roster. Similar to Malifaux or other similar games, we'll need to design these, but that shouldn't be hard.
Second, we think a chit or token with the unit's Morale stat on it would be a huge help, especially if it could be written on with a wet erase or grease pen. The chit would follow the unit around the board, in a similar vein to Dirtside tokens. For the purist, it might clutter up the board, but we were already using blast markers. That, combined with a small card, would make pulling up numbers in-game that much more quick.
Again, "factor factor factor" comes up a lot in the game, but the modifiers are so straight forward as to be quite simple.
This game is a winner. There are so many unit types premade that exploring them all will be part of the fun. Not being greedy and sinking all my points into smaller, elite units will be hard to resist, but this game values concentrated fire, and all units seem to have a purpose.
I decided to forgo my usual note taking and just enjoy the flow of the game for once. What Im going to present here is a series of pics with ultra-quick commentary, and then give a few more thoughts on the game itself.
Here is our battlefield as it shapes up and forces are chosen.
I had to introduce the mechanics of the game in and amongst the descriptions of the unit stats and what they meant - fortunately my opponent was a veteran and picked it up quicker than I would have liked him to!
We played an easy Tier 3, Priority 1 battle. Left to right:
4-man Tier 3 Rocket team
3-man Tier 2 LMG section
6-man Tier 3 LMG team (one member is being interrogated by the enemy, but managed to escape in time for the battle)
4-man Tier 4 sniper team
Tier 3 Light combat vehicle
8-man Tier 3 Rifle team
Honestly, as I was deploying, I thought the red thing in front of me was a hill...heh oops! :)
We played a Capture scenario, where we had 20 turns to contest 3 objectives: the 2 watch towers and the low, flat grey block in the center (it was VITAL, I swear it!).
Deployment as it is shaping up:
My opponent was fielding a version of the Slammers, with 3x Tier III Grav Combat cars, some mortars, scouts on grav sleds, and quite a few Tier I rifle teams.
His models were pretty cool. Here are his Combat Cars and Scouts.
My bazooka team didn't fare much better, either, taking lead from fire hoses at near-point blank range, which ended up being too close for them to arm their own rockets. To make matters worse, you can see the smoke billowing from the center - my light tank took its final demise from small arms! That's right - at point blank range from an angry mob, even assault rifles can finish off light armor, which was scary to contemplate!
So, I had a blast even though the game was over almost before it began. I knew Aron would be bringing vehicles, but I put my points into small, more veteran units. I think he did it right, as the firepower from his tanks was almost always a 9, and only rarely a 7 - brutal in such short environs. He proved that Tier I troops might not be glamorous, but their effectiveness was plain to see. The few I hit did break nicely, but he rallied against long odds and kept them on the table.
Actually, come to think about it, his dice were hot when they usually aren't, so it was good to see luck back on his side. There was nothing atypical in this game - it had its ups and downs, but no single roll or action seemed out of place.
The game is, indeed, a fast-play ruleset. I'll borrow some of my opponent's words as he described it our local group, since he was seeing it with fresh eyes:
"It plays well, quick play set a bit like slammers but not as crunchy. Simple force building, with this "tiered" structure you may have read about. So no custom options but with a bit of imagination I was able to do slammers combat car platoon supporting some local irregulars.
I'd rate this 8/10
Slammers & StarGrunt 9/10
Tomorrow's War 7.5/10 for the complexity.
There is a Mordheim-like campaign system. So that could be fun. I'm going to get the printed rule book.
I like this better than Gruntz."
Of course, YMMV but this came together nicely. There are a few things that could be a splash more crunchy, but then it would lose a bit of its ease of play. Indirect fire, for example, had no scatter, but we realized that this would require a template, which the author stayed away from. The combat is pretty streamlined.
Next time we play, we hope to do two things to make referencing easier in-game. First, combat cards for each unit, instead of a roster. Similar to Malifaux or other similar games, we'll need to design these, but that shouldn't be hard.
Second, we think a chit or token with the unit's Morale stat on it would be a huge help, especially if it could be written on with a wet erase or grease pen. The chit would follow the unit around the board, in a similar vein to Dirtside tokens. For the purist, it might clutter up the board, but we were already using blast markers. That, combined with a small card, would make pulling up numbers in-game that much more quick.
Again, "factor factor factor" comes up a lot in the game, but the modifiers are so straight forward as to be quite simple.
This game is a winner. There are so many unit types premade that exploring them all will be part of the fun. Not being greedy and sinking all my points into smaller, elite units will be hard to resist, but this game values concentrated fire, and all units seem to have a purpose.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Even the Best Laid Plans...
I had made up my mind. After a really positive reception to my PMC review, and more than a fair amount of requests for a Battle Report, I decided that today I would oblige. All my possible gaming friends were off at their cons, but PMC 2640 thoughtfully includes options for both solitaire and cooperative play. Excellent!
I did my honey do list, got the kids outdoors and into the sun (where I should be!), and convinced the wife to look the other way as I happily set about preparing my battlefield. I was going to do Scenario One: Restoring Law and Order.
After I had the village set up (including the area hit by preliminary bombing; clever me!), I sat down to write up the army lists. I opened to the section for Insurgents...and blanched.
See, the Battle Tier determines how many units you can bring, and of what type. The options were Tiers I-III (rolling a d3 to decide). I figured I could get away with no more than a Tier I game, so I set about it.
Tier I allows no Tier III units, and the Insurgents were to receive 10 Tiers-worth of troops. Oh, and they were allowed only one Tier II unit. This means they would be composed of 1 Tier II and 9 Tier I units. No, no, I thought. They need more beef. Breaking the rules, I assigned them a Tier III 8-man "Insurgents with LMG" unit before also giving them a Tier II 12-man Organized Militia. Rechecking the Force Org chart, I saw that the only other option was to give them 5x Tier I Armed Civilians....at 12 men apiece.
Lesse...
8+12+(5x12) = 80 models. For a Tier I battle.
I admit, my heart sank. Not because the rules are unfair, but because I'm a 6mm guy, and this teeny 15mm force is all I have. I might be able to get the Insurgents on the table, but I'd have zero ability to play the invading force!
Sorry, boyz. I tried. I'll try again when I can convince a friend to join me, or when I decide to try a 6mm game...so instead, Im going to paint some of those JR Miniatures buildings!
[EDIT: Stand by...I have an idea...]
Scratch that, reverse it...
What the heck was I thinking? I unpacked, set up, hit a snag, repacked, went back upstairs, and then came to my senses. Seriously? So I didnt have 160 models. I had my collection, and I had a new ruleset to play.
Enter: Rescue the Hostage!
It was an hour to dawn, and the small group of elite commandos surveyed the town they were to infiltrate from its outskirts. Glancing at their fellow comrades, they wouldnt have been able to detect each other in their stealth suits had it not been for the hyperimaging sensors in their powered armor suits. Knowing the downed fighter pilot they were here to rescue was in the hands of some ruthless interrogators, it was time to get in, make the rescue, and get out.
In this scenario, I made a group of super soldiers in powered armor. They were advancing under the cover of darkness, and so I made some changes to the rules:
Sz 5 [qty of men in group], Mv 6" [move], F5 [Firefight value], R 18" [weapon range], D12 [defense: note, halfway through the game I dropped this back to 11 as 12 was too insanely high], A5 [assault value], M6 [Morale, also VERY high]. Specials: Advanced Stealth [Cannot be engaged from more than 12" while in darkness], Determined [Morale doesnt get reduced with casualties], Silenced Weapons [Will not attract enemy attention if a firefight wipes out the target and there are no other units in LOS]
Defending the town, we had:
Squad Orange: 5 Engineers [Mv 4, F3, R18", D10, A3, M5] who were working on a broken APC [M10, F3, R18", D12, A2, Struc 5] - in hind sight, the vehicle was just for show...LOL!
Blue Squad. regular riflemen [Sz 9, Mv 5, F3, F3, R18", D10, A3, M5] who were occupying some ruins at the far end of the village. It was reported that the basement of this farmhouse was where the pilot was located.
LMG Section [Sz 8, Mv 4, F3, R24", D7, A1, M4] occupying the central hill with a decent view of the approaches.
Yellow Squad, same as Blue, who were camped out in front of the two manors in town.
Here we can see the Commandos as they exchange final glances, nod, and advance as one.
Rules of the Scenario:
In solitaire mode, the player takes his turn and then OpFor takes theirs. As long as no unit is within 12" of the commandos, the commandos can act as they like, but every OpFor unit rolls 1d6 on their turn: on a 6, they can act according to the solitaire chart in the book.
Once a firefight or action had occured, this OpFor roll becomes a 5+. If a squad gets LOS on the commandos, or a firefight initiated by the power suits raises an alarm, then all OpFor units roll on the chart as normal, but add +1 to the action roll.
Opening Fire:
The Commandos advance towards the APC and the Engineers idly working on it. Huddling at the base of the hill between them and the enemy, the commandos note that the engineers are not being very discreet in their actions; it is not a hard decision to storm over the hill and engage. They do so, pulse weapons firing in brutal efficiency:
Rolling 1d10 + F5 [firefight] + Qty 2 [5 soldiers firing] + 2 Range [less than 1/2 range] + 2 Hill [elevated gives a bonus] = 1d10+11. I rolled a 9, which is an auto-hit (and as high as I could have rolled - in PMC, a 0 is a zero, not a 10. 20 vs Defense 12 (I gave the ambushed bastards some cover from the depot and the APC) meant 8 hits.You can see the dice there: 3 dead, 10 Suppression Points (SP). Their Morale dropped from 5 to 2 due to the casualties, and 10 SP is decidedly more than 3x their Morale. The Engineers wont get to act on their turn, and if they cannot clear the SP to get to 6 or less (to be eliminated you need to be MORE than 3x Morale...and you roll 1d6 per Morale stat...which is reduced by casualties. They'll roll 2d6 and cannot clear more than 1SP per die. They get auto-removed!
The silenced weapons did their job and no other enemy units are alerted to the disaster that just befell their mechanics. However, I changed the Activate roll to 5+ now instead of 6+ because a firefight occurred. No OpFor acted.
The commandos advanced to their right, around the walls, drawing closer to their charge.
The photo shows the OpFor activation rolls for the next turn, however: 3 6's. Rolling on the chart, furthest to closest from the commandos:
Yellow gets uneasy and withdraws behind their buildings, listening for radio traffic
LMG section holds, prepping their weapons
Blue squad feels that something isnt right, and leave their courtyard to investigate. They Exit their building 4".
Deciding that Power Armor would treat Medium Walls (which are Impassible) as Low Walls, the commandos jump the walls and Move into the small patch of woods in front of them, drawing closer to the suspicious Blue squad. The LMG section cannot see them yet (outside of 12", but their activation roll pushes them forward and they advance towards the APC. Yellow team gets curious, returning to their original positions. Blue team holds.
The squeeze is on:
The commandos have no perfect shot, and decide the best defense is a quick and furious offense. They Advance into the depot next to them and let rip into the LMG section. F5+R2+Q2 = +9, getting them a 14. D10 on the LMG gets 4 hits, equaling 2 SP (I later realized the LMG team only had D7, but oh well!). The firefight wasnt as conclusive as they had hoped, so the GIG WAS UP!
LMG team clears their 2 SP.
Yellow squad Move 7" forward.
Blue squad Advances around the corner of the walls and open into the back of the commandos. Since they are setting up the Crossfire but dont get the bonus yet, their roll of 13 cannot beat the Power Armor in cover (14) and miss.
The Activation roll had the LMG team Advance (move and fire) and so they did. Adding +2 from Crossfire, they achieve a 16, and the 2 hits give the commandos 1 SP.
The commandos are in some serious heat now. Failing to clear their 1SP, they stand and Fire into the LMG crew. I prepared a 1d10+10 shot but rolled a 0...whiff! Uh Oh!
Yellow squad Advance and as they climb the hill, 3 of their team are able to open fire with their assault rifles, but the roll isnt good enough.
However, the errant shots really surprise the Blue squad, who mistake the incoming shots as being directed against them (they rolled a 0 on their Action table). They fled in panic directly away from the commandos.
Bloodlust in their eyes, the LMG team Charges in, preparing for some serious Rambo action. Return fire from the commandos deals them 1SP (the Basic Fire shot was 1d10+7, but I rolled a 1, resulting in 8 vs D7).
Assault in PMC is like Epic Armageddon: it goes until it is finished.
Firing from extremely close range, the LMG crew managed 1 Sp. However, the return fire was much more vicious and punishing. 5 hits from the commandos dealt 2 casualties, Breaking the LMG team (Morale 5 - 2 = 3, SP dealt was 7, so more than 2x = Broken). They fall back 1".
Once again, the commandos fail to clear their Suppression Points, but knowing they were in a hard place, and knowing that Broken units who are assaulted are destroyed, they lunge forward and cut the LMG team down where they stand. While a beneficial auto-kill, it also put them directly under the vengeful guns of the newly arrived Yellow squad...
Hearing the cries of their brothers as they are struck down, the Blue team rallies yet again and runs back towards the firefight (the random rolls were really wreaking havoc with the OpFor's ability to coordinate, but they were fun nonetheless).
Yellow squad Advance and gather their combined weight on the top of the hill. There would be no better time or opportunity to finish off the infiltrators, and they gave it their all.
R2 + Q3 +H2 +F3 = 1d10+10 resulted in a 16 (it was during that Assault that I realized D12 for the commandos was too high), giving 5 hits. This resulted in 2 dead and 7 more SP to the commandos, for a total of 9SP. Because Determined meant that the commandos didnt lose Morale as they took casualties, 9SP was only more than their M, and not twice, so they were Suppressed only.
Here, as the commandos prepared to shake off their SP, I realized I had been rolling Morale incorrectly. I had been rolling 1d6 per SP on each squad, but this was supposed to have been 1d6 per Morale stat. Thus, the commandos rolled 6d6 and cleared 4SP, bringing their SP total to 5, which was below their Morale, and clearing the Suppression status. This happened before actions, so they then got to act.
Knowing they couldnt take another round of deadly fire from the elevated position of the enemy, they did what any sensible team of highly trained commandos in power armor would do - they charged up the hill and entered melee, taking their 5SP with them!
Return fire of 1d10+6 failed, and thus began a back-and-forth brutal engagement that eventually saw the Yellow Squad broken and they fell back the obligatory 1".
At this point, the Blue squad (furthest from the enemy) rolled yet another 0 and fled. I decided they had had enough and were done for the night. The Yellow squad cleared 2SP with their 4d6, but were still Suppressed. Suppressed units cannot move or fire, except to withdraw to the nearest cover. "Hey look, Ruins!", one shouted to another, and the team fell into them, seeking any possible escape.
It wasn't to be, however, and the grim reapers of death advanced on the cowering team, extracting their vengeance and eventually their embattled comrade....
Game Over, Man!
So that was Fun! Learning a ruleset for the first time, playing a solitaire game AND taking furious notes is always a challenge, and this one was exactly that, but I really enjoyed it.
Note: Balance was likely non-existent since I created the units, composition AND activation rules on the fly, but it got the dice flying nonetheless. Had this been a player-vs-player, the commandos would have been annihilated, but the uncertainty of the solitaire activation provided some fun. I thought the powered armor was DONE when the Blue team came around that corner, but the Yellow team scaring them off was hilarious (Hi-Larious, as Jane would say). It played pretty smoothly, and actually lasted a lot longer than I expected. As the author pointed out, casualties are pretty light, with Suppression Points being the order of the day, but I liked it.
I'll need another run with a mate soon, to get another's perspective on it, but I will certainly play this again.
I did my honey do list, got the kids outdoors and into the sun (where I should be!), and convinced the wife to look the other way as I happily set about preparing my battlefield. I was going to do Scenario One: Restoring Law and Order.
After I had the village set up (including the area hit by preliminary bombing; clever me!), I sat down to write up the army lists. I opened to the section for Insurgents...and blanched.
See, the Battle Tier determines how many units you can bring, and of what type. The options were Tiers I-III (rolling a d3 to decide). I figured I could get away with no more than a Tier I game, so I set about it.
Tier I allows no Tier III units, and the Insurgents were to receive 10 Tiers-worth of troops. Oh, and they were allowed only one Tier II unit. This means they would be composed of 1 Tier II and 9 Tier I units. No, no, I thought. They need more beef. Breaking the rules, I assigned them a Tier III 8-man "Insurgents with LMG" unit before also giving them a Tier II 12-man Organized Militia. Rechecking the Force Org chart, I saw that the only other option was to give them 5x Tier I Armed Civilians....at 12 men apiece.
Lesse...
8+12+(5x12) = 80 models. For a Tier I battle.
I admit, my heart sank. Not because the rules are unfair, but because I'm a 6mm guy, and this teeny 15mm force is all I have. I might be able to get the Insurgents on the table, but I'd have zero ability to play the invading force!
Sorry, boyz. I tried. I'll try again when I can convince a friend to join me, or when I decide to try a 6mm game...so instead, Im going to paint some of those JR Miniatures buildings!
[EDIT: Stand by...I have an idea...]
Scratch that, reverse it...
What the heck was I thinking? I unpacked, set up, hit a snag, repacked, went back upstairs, and then came to my senses. Seriously? So I didnt have 160 models. I had my collection, and I had a new ruleset to play.
Enter: Rescue the Hostage!
It was an hour to dawn, and the small group of elite commandos surveyed the town they were to infiltrate from its outskirts. Glancing at their fellow comrades, they wouldnt have been able to detect each other in their stealth suits had it not been for the hyperimaging sensors in their powered armor suits. Knowing the downed fighter pilot they were here to rescue was in the hands of some ruthless interrogators, it was time to get in, make the rescue, and get out.
In this scenario, I made a group of super soldiers in powered armor. They were advancing under the cover of darkness, and so I made some changes to the rules:
Sz 5 [qty of men in group], Mv 6" [move], F5 [Firefight value], R 18" [weapon range], D12 [defense: note, halfway through the game I dropped this back to 11 as 12 was too insanely high], A5 [assault value], M6 [Morale, also VERY high]. Specials: Advanced Stealth [Cannot be engaged from more than 12" while in darkness], Determined [Morale doesnt get reduced with casualties], Silenced Weapons [Will not attract enemy attention if a firefight wipes out the target and there are no other units in LOS]
Defending the town, we had:
Squad Orange: 5 Engineers [Mv 4, F3, R18", D10, A3, M5] who were working on a broken APC [M10, F3, R18", D12, A2, Struc 5] - in hind sight, the vehicle was just for show...LOL!
Blue Squad. regular riflemen [Sz 9, Mv 5, F3, F3, R18", D10, A3, M5] who were occupying some ruins at the far end of the village. It was reported that the basement of this farmhouse was where the pilot was located.
LMG Section [Sz 8, Mv 4, F3, R24", D7, A1, M4] occupying the central hill with a decent view of the approaches.
Yellow Squad, same as Blue, who were camped out in front of the two manors in town.
Rules of the Scenario:
In solitaire mode, the player takes his turn and then OpFor takes theirs. As long as no unit is within 12" of the commandos, the commandos can act as they like, but every OpFor unit rolls 1d6 on their turn: on a 6, they can act according to the solitaire chart in the book.
Once a firefight or action had occured, this OpFor roll becomes a 5+. If a squad gets LOS on the commandos, or a firefight initiated by the power suits raises an alarm, then all OpFor units roll on the chart as normal, but add +1 to the action roll.
Opening Fire:
The Commandos advance towards the APC and the Engineers idly working on it. Huddling at the base of the hill between them and the enemy, the commandos note that the engineers are not being very discreet in their actions; it is not a hard decision to storm over the hill and engage. They do so, pulse weapons firing in brutal efficiency:
Rolling 1d10 + F5 [firefight] + Qty 2 [5 soldiers firing] + 2 Range [less than 1/2 range] + 2 Hill [elevated gives a bonus] = 1d10+11. I rolled a 9, which is an auto-hit (and as high as I could have rolled - in PMC, a 0 is a zero, not a 10. 20 vs Defense 12 (I gave the ambushed bastards some cover from the depot and the APC) meant 8 hits.You can see the dice there: 3 dead, 10 Suppression Points (SP). Their Morale dropped from 5 to 2 due to the casualties, and 10 SP is decidedly more than 3x their Morale. The Engineers wont get to act on their turn, and if they cannot clear the SP to get to 6 or less (to be eliminated you need to be MORE than 3x Morale...and you roll 1d6 per Morale stat...which is reduced by casualties. They'll roll 2d6 and cannot clear more than 1SP per die. They get auto-removed!
The silenced weapons did their job and no other enemy units are alerted to the disaster that just befell their mechanics. However, I changed the Activate roll to 5+ now instead of 6+ because a firefight occurred. No OpFor acted.
The commandos advanced to their right, around the walls, drawing closer to their charge.
The photo shows the OpFor activation rolls for the next turn, however: 3 6's. Rolling on the chart, furthest to closest from the commandos:
Yellow gets uneasy and withdraws behind their buildings, listening for radio traffic
LMG section holds, prepping their weapons
Blue squad feels that something isnt right, and leave their courtyard to investigate. They Exit their building 4".
Deciding that Power Armor would treat Medium Walls (which are Impassible) as Low Walls, the commandos jump the walls and Move into the small patch of woods in front of them, drawing closer to the suspicious Blue squad. The LMG section cannot see them yet (outside of 12", but their activation roll pushes them forward and they advance towards the APC. Yellow team gets curious, returning to their original positions. Blue team holds.
The squeeze is on:
The commandos have no perfect shot, and decide the best defense is a quick and furious offense. They Advance into the depot next to them and let rip into the LMG section. F5+R2+Q2 = +9, getting them a 14. D10 on the LMG gets 4 hits, equaling 2 SP (I later realized the LMG team only had D7, but oh well!). The firefight wasnt as conclusive as they had hoped, so the GIG WAS UP!
LMG team clears their 2 SP.
Yellow squad Move 7" forward.
Blue squad Advances around the corner of the walls and open into the back of the commandos. Since they are setting up the Crossfire but dont get the bonus yet, their roll of 13 cannot beat the Power Armor in cover (14) and miss.
The Activation roll had the LMG team Advance (move and fire) and so they did. Adding +2 from Crossfire, they achieve a 16, and the 2 hits give the commandos 1 SP.
The commandos are in some serious heat now. Failing to clear their 1SP, they stand and Fire into the LMG crew. I prepared a 1d10+10 shot but rolled a 0...whiff! Uh Oh!
Yellow squad Advance and as they climb the hill, 3 of their team are able to open fire with their assault rifles, but the roll isnt good enough.
However, the errant shots really surprise the Blue squad, who mistake the incoming shots as being directed against them (they rolled a 0 on their Action table). They fled in panic directly away from the commandos.
Bloodlust in their eyes, the LMG team Charges in, preparing for some serious Rambo action. Return fire from the commandos deals them 1SP (the Basic Fire shot was 1d10+7, but I rolled a 1, resulting in 8 vs D7).
Assault in PMC is like Epic Armageddon: it goes until it is finished.
Firing from extremely close range, the LMG crew managed 1 Sp. However, the return fire was much more vicious and punishing. 5 hits from the commandos dealt 2 casualties, Breaking the LMG team (Morale 5 - 2 = 3, SP dealt was 7, so more than 2x = Broken). They fall back 1".
Once again, the commandos fail to clear their Suppression Points, but knowing they were in a hard place, and knowing that Broken units who are assaulted are destroyed, they lunge forward and cut the LMG team down where they stand. While a beneficial auto-kill, it also put them directly under the vengeful guns of the newly arrived Yellow squad...
Hearing the cries of their brothers as they are struck down, the Blue team rallies yet again and runs back towards the firefight (the random rolls were really wreaking havoc with the OpFor's ability to coordinate, but they were fun nonetheless).
Yellow squad Advance and gather their combined weight on the top of the hill. There would be no better time or opportunity to finish off the infiltrators, and they gave it their all.
R2 + Q3 +H2 +F3 = 1d10+10 resulted in a 16 (it was during that Assault that I realized D12 for the commandos was too high), giving 5 hits. This resulted in 2 dead and 7 more SP to the commandos, for a total of 9SP. Because Determined meant that the commandos didnt lose Morale as they took casualties, 9SP was only more than their M, and not twice, so they were Suppressed only.
Here, as the commandos prepared to shake off their SP, I realized I had been rolling Morale incorrectly. I had been rolling 1d6 per SP on each squad, but this was supposed to have been 1d6 per Morale stat. Thus, the commandos rolled 6d6 and cleared 4SP, bringing their SP total to 5, which was below their Morale, and clearing the Suppression status. This happened before actions, so they then got to act.
Knowing they couldnt take another round of deadly fire from the elevated position of the enemy, they did what any sensible team of highly trained commandos in power armor would do - they charged up the hill and entered melee, taking their 5SP with them!
Return fire of 1d10+6 failed, and thus began a back-and-forth brutal engagement that eventually saw the Yellow Squad broken and they fell back the obligatory 1".
At this point, the Blue squad (furthest from the enemy) rolled yet another 0 and fled. I decided they had had enough and were done for the night. The Yellow squad cleared 2SP with their 4d6, but were still Suppressed. Suppressed units cannot move or fire, except to withdraw to the nearest cover. "Hey look, Ruins!", one shouted to another, and the team fell into them, seeking any possible escape.
It wasn't to be, however, and the grim reapers of death advanced on the cowering team, extracting their vengeance and eventually their embattled comrade....
Game Over, Man!
So that was Fun! Learning a ruleset for the first time, playing a solitaire game AND taking furious notes is always a challenge, and this one was exactly that, but I really enjoyed it.
Note: Balance was likely non-existent since I created the units, composition AND activation rules on the fly, but it got the dice flying nonetheless. Had this been a player-vs-player, the commandos would have been annihilated, but the uncertainty of the solitaire activation provided some fun. I thought the powered armor was DONE when the Blue team came around that corner, but the Yellow team scaring them off was hilarious (Hi-Larious, as Jane would say). It played pretty smoothly, and actually lasted a lot longer than I expected. As the author pointed out, casualties are pretty light, with Suppression Points being the order of the day, but I liked it.
I'll need another run with a mate soon, to get another's perspective on it, but I will certainly play this again.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
PMC 2640 review for 15mm
It's Labor Day weekend and many of my friends are off at one of the two local cons running...Celesticon or Pacificon. That's ok. I'm here listening to Depeche Mode and writing about my first impressions of Assault Publishing's PMC 2640!
I ordered the game last week from Pico Armor for $32 USD. I was pleasantly surprised that this price included shipping; it shipped last Saturday and arrived yesterday, Friday.
The book itself appears well done. The cover is nice and shiney, and the pages are high quality. That's not what I'm here to write about. What I was really gambling on by ordering this sight unseen was:
Is the game play going to be engaging?
Will I be able to use the models I have?
Will I want more, or will this sit on my shelf like so many other rulesets I took a risk on?
Let's delve into it.
Game Mechanics
The game mechanics have been mentioned elsewhere (open the links in Google Chrome and it will translate the pages automatically), but I'll touch on them again here.
The game uses d6 and d10s. Combat is done with a single d10: add your unit's Firepower stat, add a few easy modifiers, and compare the result to the target's Defense. For every Margin of Success you achieve over the Defense, you get a hit. Rolling on a chart with 1d6 per hit gives you the results, most of which are Suppression Points. If a unit suffers enough Suppression, they can be taken out of the fight (eventually, when they reach enough, they will simply disband). It had the flavor of Epic Armageddon's blast points to me - I immediately identified with it.
My gut reaction was that this was too simple, but then I studied the Firepower modifiers, and the more soldiers you have in the firing squad, the more bonus you get. I think it is an elegant solution to the "fistful of dice" syndrome, and I'm looking forward to putting it to play.
Actions:
Activation alternates between players, with each squad getting one action they can perform.
Move lets you move your Move stat (which seems to average around 4 or 5") plus 2", but you cannot fire.
Fire lets you perform a Firing action, and gives a bonus to combat
Advance is a typical "Move and Fire" with no bonuses to either step
Assault is a close combat charge, but before you do so, the target unit AND all supporting enemy units within 6" of the target get to fire at you. Given the ease of which Suppression Points are given, this will likely end poorly for the attackers in all but the most carefully planned assault. No objections to it yet...
Army Building
That's the quick gist of the game. I needed to know, however, how many models this game wanted me to put onto the table (in fact, the FIRST thing I opened the book to find was the unit sizes!). About a year ago I purchased some of Khurasan's Federal models, and have been contemplating an OpFor for a few months - what would I need to get? The answer seems to be that each Squad has between 2 and 8 models in it. Most "standard" units are 8 men strong, with some specialized units (like snipers or LMG crews) are much smaller.
The game I had bought my models for was Gruntz, but I just didnt like the dicing mechanic - 2d6 per model got cumbersome, and while I can appreciate the Battletech-esque bell curve, it just didn't flow for me. I did, however, like how Squads were usually around 6 strong, and you could add 2 Specialists to beef up each unit. PMC does it differently. Here, if you want a group of soldiers to have Rifle Grenades, you would buy a squad of Grenadiers out of the Engineers list, taking a Tier II or Tier III slot; the same group of soldiers without Rifle Grenades would likely be a Tier III Regular Rifle Team out of the "Rifle Infantry" list. The difference? The Engineers are 6 strong, while the Riflemen are 8 strong.
Remember that you are only throwing 1d10 per unit as they fire, but 4 men in a group get a much smaller Firepower bonus than 8 men do. You also get to choose which models to remove as casualties, and a unit never really loses its abilities as it gets reduced in size (Morale, Firepower bonus, and Suppression are all a different story, however!).
The one knock I had heard of PMC ("Private Mercenary Company", btw) was that it really was a Human-only game, in a similar vein to Tomorrow's War. This game doesn't have a "Build Your Own" mechanic, which concerned me a bit, but what it DOES have is a reasonably large selection of unit entries for you to pick and choose from. It is a bit simplified, and needs some expanding in a serious way, but for now I think it will suffice.
(The one advantage that this has over "build your owns (BYO)" is that in a given force, you know what the base standard is. Anyone who has ever played Warhammer Fantasy or 40K knows what a human stat line looks like: all 3's, with Ld 7 and 1 wound. In a BYO, you can min-max to your heart's content, making Human-stat troops even cheaper by removing redundant stats, or jacking up one all-important stat at the expense of the others, creating a strangely asymmetric "elite" unit that has no real resemblance to what a "real" elite soldier would look like. This system bypasses that problem at the expense of flexibility).
The Army Building mechanic doesn't use points, per se, but rather Tiers, and I think the way it is implemented is actually pretty clever. You decide what Battle Tier you are going to play; this is a number between 1 and 5, and a chart tells you what you can and/or must take from each Tier of unit (as an aside, he uses "Tier" a lot, and it took me a few reads to fully get what he meant in each case, but I believe I have it now).
Units come in Tiers from 1 to 5 (same as above), with a Tier I unit being the lowest of the low (ie Penal or Irregular troops), Tier III being an "average" unit like Regular Rifle Team or a 6-man Light MG team, and Tier V troops are the best (2-man Sniper team, Commandos/Rangers, or even Advanced Combat Vehicle).
Speaking of vehicles, the designer made a comment in the rules that he wants his vehicles to play like PMC plays, and not be a "game within a game", and for the most part, he appears to have succeeded. You can take APCs and Main Battle Tanks, but in really reduced numbers, and doing so will eat away at the points you have available for other troops.
Each Battle Tier gives you a certain amount of Composition Points (in this example I'll use 18). The Tier then lists what units you may take, for example maybe you can take 0-4 of Tier I units, 0-3 of Tier II units, 3+ of Tier III units (being mandatory), etc. The Tier of the unit you take is subtracted from the Composition Points, so in the above example, you are spending a minimum of 9 points on 3 Tier III units, leaving 9 points for other Tiers. You could get a Tier V, and 2 Tier IIs, or maybe go with 2 more Tier III and 3 Tier I units...
I believe that two players who come to the game, each with a human-style merc force, will likely end up having similar armies if they just play a pick-up game. However, if you did this, you would lose the real flavor of the game: the Campaign. The author makes no bones about his campaign - this isnt a Flow Chart or set of Linked Scenarios. This is a straight up Mordheim-style campaign, where your units get Experience Points that they can use to develop Battle Honors (making each unit individual and lethal in the ways you want them to be). You can also add doctrines to your own Force, however, which allow you to bend some of the army construction rules (one gives you 2 extra Tier I units for free, while one reduces the number of required units, freeing up your points to spend on more exotic units).
As I said, the author needs to come up with more troop entries soon, but within this limitation of the game, the Battle Honors system lets you really individualize your force in an acceptable and satisfying way. There is no way to model:
Grav bikes or tanks*
Teleporting / Tunneling
Spells/Magic/Special technology
Aliens-style melee-only units
(*note, this is not entirely true, as different forms of propulsion are mentioned in the Optional rules, but this works for vehicles and not grav bikes, etc...)
This last bit concerns me a teeny bit, because I'm about to buy some of Khurasan's Space Demons, and also really wanted some of the Felid jetbikes...but Im pretty sure I can tweak the existing Alien entries to make faster, less shooty melee brutes and have it come out ok. Still, more is needed if this game wants to compete in the marketplace.
Common Sense
A few last things to mention. The writing is actually decent - I had no problem understanding the gist of things, and even though it was written by a non-native English speaker, it wasnt really that hard to comprehend. Reading outloud in a mock-Soviet Bad Guy accent actually got me to chuckle a few times (under "Alternate Activation" on p.22, one paragraph starts, "For remembrance, it is good idea..." - how can you NOT read that in a Soviet accent and keep a straight face?).
*Fire combat is measured closest model to closest model.
*If one of your models can reach base-to-base with the enemy in an assault, all of them can.
*When crossing a linear terrain piece, either all of your models must be able to cross it, or no one can.
*When your models are half in one terrain piece and half in another, they get the least beneficial result depending on the circumstance (so a half-open, half-wooded unit would get no cover versus incoming fire, but would suffer a movement penalty when moving out).
I'm really looking forward to putting this on the table. Like you, I have read enough rulebooks to find the niggling points pretty quickly as I go through them, and this one doesn't have many for me. I appreciated the streamlining I saw, and think it will work out, and with the campaign system, I can even imagine that I will get quite some play out of this one. I recommend you check it out. For those of us in the US, $32 isnt a massive amount of money for something to be shipped to you.
Lastly, I am going to walk myself (and you, if you're still here) through a quick firefight and see how it goes. Oh, and I don't tend to spend time creating Cheat Sheets for a game unless I think I'm going to play it, and last night I sunk about 2 hours into making mine. I am still seeking permission to post it up to Board Game Geek however, since they seem to have changed their posting requirements...
Fire Combat
You just moved a unit of 8 riflemen into some woods that are 20" across an open field from my LMG team that is in a courtyard. It is now my activation and I choose the Fire action with my machine guns.
I measure the range from closest to closest, and it is indeed 20". My team has a range of 24" so I am in LOS and range. I roll my d10, adding 5 for my Firepower Stat, +2 for 6 soldiers firing, +1 for the Fire action, for a total of 1d10+8.
The Regular Rifle Team has a Defense of 10. Being in Woods gives them a +2 Defense bonus, so my roll needs to exceed 12 to be effective.
I roll a 5, getting a total of 13. I exceed the Defense by 1, so roll 1d6 on the chart. I get a 3, resulting in the target unit receiving one Suppression Point (SP). Their Morale stat of 5 allows them to act with no penalties until their Suppression Points exceed their Morale - so they can take 4 more with no problems. At the beginning of the next turn, they will have an opportunity to clear those SP automatically. I will need to pour more firepower into that same unit this turn if I want to cause any lasting harm.
Note that had my 1d6 for the hit resulted in a 6, I would have killed a man, and the target unit would have received 2 SP's. Their Morale would be reduced by the 1 casualty, meaning that only 3 more SP would be needed to Suppress the unit.
Unit Building
I will also build a quick Priority level 1, Battle Tier III force:
Tier I
none
Tier II
Field Command 3rd Grade - 2 man Commander unit
6-man Grenadiers team with rifle grenades
Tier III
8-man Regular Rifle Team
8-man Regular Rifle Team
3-man HMG section
Light Support Vehicle (like a SPG on light tank chassis)
Tier IV
4-man Sharpshooter team
Tier V
none
I have NO IDEA if this is an effective force or not. I do know that a Priority 1, Battle Tier III battle is what the author recommends newcomers start with. If I increased this to a Priority 2 game, I could double the entries in my army and keep the game on a 4'x4' table. My collection could easily accommodate this, but that would start to be its limit. The force above has 7 activations, which I think isnt too bad, and has Command, decent anti-infantry and anti-vehicle stopping power.
Epilogue
My wife just walked by and asked what I was typing so furiously about.
"My new game", I told her. "I'm putting a review of it up on my blog."
"Did you like it?" she asked.
"Sure did. I'm pretty happy with what I've read."
"Wait," she asked. "You read the whole thing already? Didn't you just get it yesterday?"
"Yup," I assured her. "I skipped the fluff and went straight to the rules section, but yea, I've read it all already."
She just looked at me. "I do that too", she said after a moment. "Skip the fluff, go straight to the rules..." She gave me a cute smile and moved on.
It's true. The sexes will never really understand each other...which is perhaps why we love them so much!
I ordered the game last week from Pico Armor for $32 USD. I was pleasantly surprised that this price included shipping; it shipped last Saturday and arrived yesterday, Friday.
The book itself appears well done. The cover is nice and shiney, and the pages are high quality. That's not what I'm here to write about. What I was really gambling on by ordering this sight unseen was:
Is the game play going to be engaging?
Will I be able to use the models I have?
Will I want more, or will this sit on my shelf like so many other rulesets I took a risk on?
Let's delve into it.
Game Mechanics
The game mechanics have been mentioned elsewhere (open the links in Google Chrome and it will translate the pages automatically), but I'll touch on them again here.
The game uses d6 and d10s. Combat is done with a single d10: add your unit's Firepower stat, add a few easy modifiers, and compare the result to the target's Defense. For every Margin of Success you achieve over the Defense, you get a hit. Rolling on a chart with 1d6 per hit gives you the results, most of which are Suppression Points. If a unit suffers enough Suppression, they can be taken out of the fight (eventually, when they reach enough, they will simply disband). It had the flavor of Epic Armageddon's blast points to me - I immediately identified with it.
My gut reaction was that this was too simple, but then I studied the Firepower modifiers, and the more soldiers you have in the firing squad, the more bonus you get. I think it is an elegant solution to the "fistful of dice" syndrome, and I'm looking forward to putting it to play.
Actions:
Activation alternates between players, with each squad getting one action they can perform.
Move lets you move your Move stat (which seems to average around 4 or 5") plus 2", but you cannot fire.
Fire lets you perform a Firing action, and gives a bonus to combat
Advance is a typical "Move and Fire" with no bonuses to either step
Assault is a close combat charge, but before you do so, the target unit AND all supporting enemy units within 6" of the target get to fire at you. Given the ease of which Suppression Points are given, this will likely end poorly for the attackers in all but the most carefully planned assault. No objections to it yet...
Army Building
That's the quick gist of the game. I needed to know, however, how many models this game wanted me to put onto the table (in fact, the FIRST thing I opened the book to find was the unit sizes!). About a year ago I purchased some of Khurasan's Federal models, and have been contemplating an OpFor for a few months - what would I need to get? The answer seems to be that each Squad has between 2 and 8 models in it. Most "standard" units are 8 men strong, with some specialized units (like snipers or LMG crews) are much smaller.
The game I had bought my models for was Gruntz, but I just didnt like the dicing mechanic - 2d6 per model got cumbersome, and while I can appreciate the Battletech-esque bell curve, it just didn't flow for me. I did, however, like how Squads were usually around 6 strong, and you could add 2 Specialists to beef up each unit. PMC does it differently. Here, if you want a group of soldiers to have Rifle Grenades, you would buy a squad of Grenadiers out of the Engineers list, taking a Tier II or Tier III slot; the same group of soldiers without Rifle Grenades would likely be a Tier III Regular Rifle Team out of the "Rifle Infantry" list. The difference? The Engineers are 6 strong, while the Riflemen are 8 strong.
Remember that you are only throwing 1d10 per unit as they fire, but 4 men in a group get a much smaller Firepower bonus than 8 men do. You also get to choose which models to remove as casualties, and a unit never really loses its abilities as it gets reduced in size (Morale, Firepower bonus, and Suppression are all a different story, however!).
The one knock I had heard of PMC ("Private Mercenary Company", btw) was that it really was a Human-only game, in a similar vein to Tomorrow's War. This game doesn't have a "Build Your Own" mechanic, which concerned me a bit, but what it DOES have is a reasonably large selection of unit entries for you to pick and choose from. It is a bit simplified, and needs some expanding in a serious way, but for now I think it will suffice.
(The one advantage that this has over "build your owns (BYO)" is that in a given force, you know what the base standard is. Anyone who has ever played Warhammer Fantasy or 40K knows what a human stat line looks like: all 3's, with Ld 7 and 1 wound. In a BYO, you can min-max to your heart's content, making Human-stat troops even cheaper by removing redundant stats, or jacking up one all-important stat at the expense of the others, creating a strangely asymmetric "elite" unit that has no real resemblance to what a "real" elite soldier would look like. This system bypasses that problem at the expense of flexibility).
The Army Building mechanic doesn't use points, per se, but rather Tiers, and I think the way it is implemented is actually pretty clever. You decide what Battle Tier you are going to play; this is a number between 1 and 5, and a chart tells you what you can and/or must take from each Tier of unit (as an aside, he uses "Tier" a lot, and it took me a few reads to fully get what he meant in each case, but I believe I have it now).
Units come in Tiers from 1 to 5 (same as above), with a Tier I unit being the lowest of the low (ie Penal or Irregular troops), Tier III being an "average" unit like Regular Rifle Team or a 6-man Light MG team, and Tier V troops are the best (2-man Sniper team, Commandos/Rangers, or even Advanced Combat Vehicle).
Speaking of vehicles, the designer made a comment in the rules that he wants his vehicles to play like PMC plays, and not be a "game within a game", and for the most part, he appears to have succeeded. You can take APCs and Main Battle Tanks, but in really reduced numbers, and doing so will eat away at the points you have available for other troops.
Each Battle Tier gives you a certain amount of Composition Points (in this example I'll use 18). The Tier then lists what units you may take, for example maybe you can take 0-4 of Tier I units, 0-3 of Tier II units, 3+ of Tier III units (being mandatory), etc. The Tier of the unit you take is subtracted from the Composition Points, so in the above example, you are spending a minimum of 9 points on 3 Tier III units, leaving 9 points for other Tiers. You could get a Tier V, and 2 Tier IIs, or maybe go with 2 more Tier III and 3 Tier I units...
I believe that two players who come to the game, each with a human-style merc force, will likely end up having similar armies if they just play a pick-up game. However, if you did this, you would lose the real flavor of the game: the Campaign. The author makes no bones about his campaign - this isnt a Flow Chart or set of Linked Scenarios. This is a straight up Mordheim-style campaign, where your units get Experience Points that they can use to develop Battle Honors (making each unit individual and lethal in the ways you want them to be). You can also add doctrines to your own Force, however, which allow you to bend some of the army construction rules (one gives you 2 extra Tier I units for free, while one reduces the number of required units, freeing up your points to spend on more exotic units).
As I said, the author needs to come up with more troop entries soon, but within this limitation of the game, the Battle Honors system lets you really individualize your force in an acceptable and satisfying way. There is no way to model:
Grav bikes or tanks*
Teleporting / Tunneling
Spells/Magic/Special technology
Aliens-style melee-only units
(*note, this is not entirely true, as different forms of propulsion are mentioned in the Optional rules, but this works for vehicles and not grav bikes, etc...)
This last bit concerns me a teeny bit, because I'm about to buy some of Khurasan's Space Demons, and also really wanted some of the Felid jetbikes...but Im pretty sure I can tweak the existing Alien entries to make faster, less shooty melee brutes and have it come out ok. Still, more is needed if this game wants to compete in the marketplace.
Common Sense
A few last things to mention. The writing is actually decent - I had no problem understanding the gist of things, and even though it was written by a non-native English speaker, it wasnt really that hard to comprehend. Reading outloud in a mock-Soviet Bad Guy accent actually got me to chuckle a few times (under "Alternate Activation" on p.22, one paragraph starts, "For remembrance, it is good idea..." - how can you NOT read that in a Soviet accent and keep a straight face?).
*Fire combat is measured closest model to closest model.
*If one of your models can reach base-to-base with the enemy in an assault, all of them can.
*When crossing a linear terrain piece, either all of your models must be able to cross it, or no one can.
*When your models are half in one terrain piece and half in another, they get the least beneficial result depending on the circumstance (so a half-open, half-wooded unit would get no cover versus incoming fire, but would suffer a movement penalty when moving out).
I'm really looking forward to putting this on the table. Like you, I have read enough rulebooks to find the niggling points pretty quickly as I go through them, and this one doesn't have many for me. I appreciated the streamlining I saw, and think it will work out, and with the campaign system, I can even imagine that I will get quite some play out of this one. I recommend you check it out. For those of us in the US, $32 isnt a massive amount of money for something to be shipped to you.
Lastly, I am going to walk myself (and you, if you're still here) through a quick firefight and see how it goes. Oh, and I don't tend to spend time creating Cheat Sheets for a game unless I think I'm going to play it, and last night I sunk about 2 hours into making mine. I am still seeking permission to post it up to Board Game Geek however, since they seem to have changed their posting requirements...
Fire Combat
You just moved a unit of 8 riflemen into some woods that are 20" across an open field from my LMG team that is in a courtyard. It is now my activation and I choose the Fire action with my machine guns.
I measure the range from closest to closest, and it is indeed 20". My team has a range of 24" so I am in LOS and range. I roll my d10, adding 5 for my Firepower Stat, +2 for 6 soldiers firing, +1 for the Fire action, for a total of 1d10+8.
The Regular Rifle Team has a Defense of 10. Being in Woods gives them a +2 Defense bonus, so my roll needs to exceed 12 to be effective.
I roll a 5, getting a total of 13. I exceed the Defense by 1, so roll 1d6 on the chart. I get a 3, resulting in the target unit receiving one Suppression Point (SP). Their Morale stat of 5 allows them to act with no penalties until their Suppression Points exceed their Morale - so they can take 4 more with no problems. At the beginning of the next turn, they will have an opportunity to clear those SP automatically. I will need to pour more firepower into that same unit this turn if I want to cause any lasting harm.
Note that had my 1d6 for the hit resulted in a 6, I would have killed a man, and the target unit would have received 2 SP's. Their Morale would be reduced by the 1 casualty, meaning that only 3 more SP would be needed to Suppress the unit.
Unit Building
I will also build a quick Priority level 1, Battle Tier III force:
Tier I
none
Tier II
Field Command 3rd Grade - 2 man Commander unit
6-man Grenadiers team with rifle grenades
Tier III
8-man Regular Rifle Team
8-man Regular Rifle Team
3-man HMG section
Light Support Vehicle (like a SPG on light tank chassis)
Tier IV
4-man Sharpshooter team
Tier V
none
I have NO IDEA if this is an effective force or not. I do know that a Priority 1, Battle Tier III battle is what the author recommends newcomers start with. If I increased this to a Priority 2 game, I could double the entries in my army and keep the game on a 4'x4' table. My collection could easily accommodate this, but that would start to be its limit. The force above has 7 activations, which I think isnt too bad, and has Command, decent anti-infantry and anti-vehicle stopping power.
Epilogue
My wife just walked by and asked what I was typing so furiously about.
"My new game", I told her. "I'm putting a review of it up on my blog."
"Did you like it?" she asked.
"Sure did. I'm pretty happy with what I've read."
"Wait," she asked. "You read the whole thing already? Didn't you just get it yesterday?"
"Yup," I assured her. "I skipped the fluff and went straight to the rules section, but yea, I've read it all already."
She just looked at me. "I do that too", she said after a moment. "Skip the fluff, go straight to the rules..." She gave me a cute smile and moved on.
It's true. The sexes will never really understand each other...which is perhaps why we love them so much!
Saturday, February 4, 2012
STORAGE rage!
For the love of pete!
I've got about a dozen buildings from JRM Miniatures made from some type of fragile clay-like substance, and Im at a loss on how to store these beauties!
See how those offending bastards are taking up my table space? So selfish, so thoughtless...them and the other fifty projects I have started and not finished :)
I have SOME ideas on storage. I did THIS (well, "started", not finished, as you can see) to my 6mm buildings:
It actually works fairly well, but damn, its a lot of work, and the box from JoAnn Fabric cost $10...
Im not sure I want to have to do all that for my 15mm buildings, and the small, flat ones deserve more of a smaller tray.
Anyway, Im just throwing a minor temper tantrum on this Saturday, because crafting storage is one of the last things I want to be doing...
How do you store your buildings, at any scale?
I've got about a dozen buildings from JRM Miniatures made from some type of fragile clay-like substance, and Im at a loss on how to store these beauties!
See how those offending bastards are taking up my table space? So selfish, so thoughtless...them and the other fifty projects I have started and not finished :)
I have SOME ideas on storage. I did THIS (well, "started", not finished, as you can see) to my 6mm buildings:
It actually works fairly well, but damn, its a lot of work, and the box from JoAnn Fabric cost $10...
Im not sure I want to have to do all that for my 15mm buildings, and the small, flat ones deserve more of a smaller tray.
Anyway, Im just throwing a minor temper tantrum on this Saturday, because crafting storage is one of the last things I want to be doing...
How do you store your buildings, at any scale?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Gruntz in 15mm gets its first trial run
Tonight, Aron and I put aside Tomorrow's War after two play tests of the rules and gave Gruntz a shot. As I reviewed for the game, I felt much more at ease with the mechanics of the game, although the writing and organization of the rules left a little to be desired. Still, I know Robin of Gruntz is working his tail off on a revision, so I had no qualms with putting together what I knew of the rules and giving it a shot.
Gruntz is a Company-sized game, and focuses on Build-your-Own units with a mechanic very similar to Warmachine or Hordes: each squad that activates gets two actions (unless buffed by the Commander of your forces, or penalized by being Suppressed by enemy fire, ie taking casualties), which are used to move and fire, more or less, in different combinations.
I had already drawn up what I wanted my forces to look like when I bought the game months ago, but instead of using my own creations, I borrowed from Comstar on the Gruntz forums and used his FSE and NSL forces from GZG.
I ended up taking the NSL and had 5 8-man squads (each with 2 Squad Attachments) and 1 "Halftrack" and a Commander. My opponent fielded 2 APCs, 2 squads of 6 troopers, and a 6-man team of Powered Armor, plus his Commander. Our points came out to 150 per side, and we played a Meet-and-Greet on a 3'x3' board. It should be noted that we played with Alternating Activations, not the Rules-as-Written IGOUGO format.
I set up my forces after winning Initiative, keeping 2 squads in my APC and the rest in a long line.
Instead of taking copious notes, I decided to journal the event through pictures at the end of each turn, and make comments and whatnot at the end.
In Turn 1 we discovered the true nature of Gruntz: Range Matters. With most of our squad weapons statted out for 8" range, with 16" being Long Range (and a -4 to hit), almost nothing was done the opening turn. His vehicles were sporting Mortars, and his Powered Armor troops had moved to a position where they could see one of my units. The scatter roll deviated the shots onto a nearby unit, and 2 of my boyz fell. His Commander then ordered his PA units back into cover. My own APC raced forward and delivered its passengers into a nearby ruined farmhouse.
Turn 2 was a little more bloody, as guns started to find their range. My APC, cargo delivered, came around from cover, its plasma cannon firing wildly, killing a FSE trooper and suppressing its unit, but return fire was vicious and the APC was completely eliminated. More shots were traded between the Power Armor unit and my Gruntz on my right, with soldiers in both units falling. My team in the farm yard advanced into firing positions from the house, and their supporting teams dashed ahead, threatening the enemy APC on our left.
Turn 3 would be the final round, as the contestants were growing weary from long work days, but it turns out that the game was naturally headed that way on its own.
His Commander, piloting one of the FSE APCs, had the gumption to charge my Commander (who, while doling out Command points to remove Suppression from his own troopers, hadnt had the movement to QUITE reach cover). My Fearless Leader dove out of the way quite easily (he needed a 5+ on 2d6) much to the chagrin of Aron. We figured this should have been some sort of opposed roll...
My most advance unit on my left swung around the house they had taken refuge behind and popped the backline APC with a few well-placed shots from the Plasma SAW and LAW rocket. Combined fire from my two teams on my right finished off the Power Armor, and one of his central Gruntz units was in Condition Brown and backing away from a nasty round of fire from the farm yard-entrenched NSL soldiers.
We decided that his units would have fled in as orderly a fashion as was reasonable, and called it a night.
Tomorrow's War had some really great things going for it, once we figured it out, but I must admit, I was really enjoying Gruntz. It felt semi-40k-ish to me, in 15mm. Range was likely too big of a factor (-4 on 2d6 is a gigantic modifier), and we never really just picked up gobs of d6's and rolled them (I had successfully located 8 pairs of matched 12mm d6's), but for me, this wasnt a problem.
Aron wasnt so happy with the "Firing is compared to Defense, but nearly every soldier in the unit had a different modifier because of weapon or range, and then weapon damage is compared to armor", but it didnt really bother me much at all. I knew it was similar to Warmachine, but it just worked for me.
It definitely was a swing away from the TW "brain fry" crunch, and a refreshing change at that, and I am really looking forward to drawing my own units up and seeing how Aron runs his. I will play this again in a heartbeat, and will likely start dabbling with more options in-game, and actually run a published scenario or two. A larger 4'x4' board might have been better, but with our time crunch (and the fact that my craft room is so full of junk that its a miracle the 3'x3' board was accessible!) it worked out well.
Other rule sets in the queue? Alien Squad Leader, Stargrunt II, maybe OP4S in 15mm...and I just bought the whole kit and kaboodle of Strike Legion for 6mm off Wargame Vault (www.wargamevault.com) so that will have to come out soon too. Man, wish I wasnt moving in a few months. My gaming stuff is so hard to reach! :)
Gruntz is a Company-sized game, and focuses on Build-your-Own units with a mechanic very similar to Warmachine or Hordes: each squad that activates gets two actions (unless buffed by the Commander of your forces, or penalized by being Suppressed by enemy fire, ie taking casualties), which are used to move and fire, more or less, in different combinations.
I had already drawn up what I wanted my forces to look like when I bought the game months ago, but instead of using my own creations, I borrowed from Comstar on the Gruntz forums and used his FSE and NSL forces from GZG.
I ended up taking the NSL and had 5 8-man squads (each with 2 Squad Attachments) and 1 "Halftrack" and a Commander. My opponent fielded 2 APCs, 2 squads of 6 troopers, and a 6-man team of Powered Armor, plus his Commander. Our points came out to 150 per side, and we played a Meet-and-Greet on a 3'x3' board. It should be noted that we played with Alternating Activations, not the Rules-as-Written IGOUGO format.
I set up my forces after winning Initiative, keeping 2 squads in my APC and the rest in a long line.
Instead of taking copious notes, I decided to journal the event through pictures at the end of each turn, and make comments and whatnot at the end.
In Turn 1 we discovered the true nature of Gruntz: Range Matters. With most of our squad weapons statted out for 8" range, with 16" being Long Range (and a -4 to hit), almost nothing was done the opening turn. His vehicles were sporting Mortars, and his Powered Armor troops had moved to a position where they could see one of my units. The scatter roll deviated the shots onto a nearby unit, and 2 of my boyz fell. His Commander then ordered his PA units back into cover. My own APC raced forward and delivered its passengers into a nearby ruined farmhouse.
Turn 2 was a little more bloody, as guns started to find their range. My APC, cargo delivered, came around from cover, its plasma cannon firing wildly, killing a FSE trooper and suppressing its unit, but return fire was vicious and the APC was completely eliminated. More shots were traded between the Power Armor unit and my Gruntz on my right, with soldiers in both units falling. My team in the farm yard advanced into firing positions from the house, and their supporting teams dashed ahead, threatening the enemy APC on our left.
Turn 3 would be the final round, as the contestants were growing weary from long work days, but it turns out that the game was naturally headed that way on its own.
His Commander, piloting one of the FSE APCs, had the gumption to charge my Commander (who, while doling out Command points to remove Suppression from his own troopers, hadnt had the movement to QUITE reach cover). My Fearless Leader dove out of the way quite easily (he needed a 5+ on 2d6) much to the chagrin of Aron. We figured this should have been some sort of opposed roll...
My most advance unit on my left swung around the house they had taken refuge behind and popped the backline APC with a few well-placed shots from the Plasma SAW and LAW rocket. Combined fire from my two teams on my right finished off the Power Armor, and one of his central Gruntz units was in Condition Brown and backing away from a nasty round of fire from the farm yard-entrenched NSL soldiers.
We decided that his units would have fled in as orderly a fashion as was reasonable, and called it a night.
Tomorrow's War had some really great things going for it, once we figured it out, but I must admit, I was really enjoying Gruntz. It felt semi-40k-ish to me, in 15mm. Range was likely too big of a factor (-4 on 2d6 is a gigantic modifier), and we never really just picked up gobs of d6's and rolled them (I had successfully located 8 pairs of matched 12mm d6's), but for me, this wasnt a problem.
Aron wasnt so happy with the "Firing is compared to Defense, but nearly every soldier in the unit had a different modifier because of weapon or range, and then weapon damage is compared to armor", but it didnt really bother me much at all. I knew it was similar to Warmachine, but it just worked for me.
It definitely was a swing away from the TW "brain fry" crunch, and a refreshing change at that, and I am really looking forward to drawing my own units up and seeing how Aron runs his. I will play this again in a heartbeat, and will likely start dabbling with more options in-game, and actually run a published scenario or two. A larger 4'x4' board might have been better, but with our time crunch (and the fact that my craft room is so full of junk that its a miracle the 3'x3' board was accessible!) it worked out well.
Other rule sets in the queue? Alien Squad Leader, Stargrunt II, maybe OP4S in 15mm...and I just bought the whole kit and kaboodle of Strike Legion for 6mm off Wargame Vault (www.wargamevault.com) so that will have to come out soon too. Man, wish I wasnt moving in a few months. My gaming stuff is so hard to reach! :)
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