First Look: Gruntz V1.1

So after a build up that could rival a heavy weight boxing match myself & Coops got down and dirty with a 200 point game,

As luck would have it we took the same forces....

I had:

1 commander
2 grunt sqds
1 apc
1 MBT
1 Mech

and coops had the same!

the skill levels and the like were slightly different,


Game Play:

Ruleswise its quite a simple set with the following "rule" being applied to the system:

2D6 + Stat = or more than opponents stat, very similar to warmachine but has more modifiers so doesn't make shooting that easy.

At the start of each turn you roll for initiative using your commanders skill stat and choose to go first or second,you activate a unit at a time and each unit gets two actions, so you can move & shoot, move & move, shoot & go prone and so on, so plenty of options possible depending on what you want to do with your stuff, you can also shoot & move but you need to "upgrade" you unit to do that.

Shooting works quite well you can pre-measure so suss out your best options, and you have a normal range and if you double your normal range that's your long range, if you shoot at long range your at -3 to hit plus any cover bonuses etc..

Assault is a tad more complicated but the rule book has a easy to follow flow chart so you know what you need to do, and there are flow charts throughout the book explaining things and worked really well for me,

Overall I'm happy with the rules system by no means is it perfect but considering that this system is from a one man band its bloody impressive, and if it was any more complicated then would become boring. With a bit more proof reading and general tighting up its a solid rules set that I'll be playing again.

Lastability:

As a standalone system this could be played amongst a club no problem for a while due to the open endedness of the unit creation, I'll explain.....

So you want a "imperial guard" type unit you stat up the unit yourself! yep that's right you have no "army lists" no "codex's" just what you want to take there are some restrictions that you need to take depending how many points your playing but if you wanted a full airborne unit coming in on starship trooper dropships then you can do it, If you wanted a prison world army full of low skilled but fanatical troop you can do it, and so on the only thing that's stopping you is your own imagination!

You can also add perks or mods to units as well so making then slightly better but also giving them the edge over your opponent, but some of the perks and mods are not cheap!, same goes for the weapons that you can give your models & units you choose what you want, did you want frikking lasers or good old slug throwers, plasma guns or pistol welding nutters, basic combat weapons or really big shiny energy powered swords? the choice is yours!!

This is what makes Gruntz wildly different to any other game that I've played, for the powergamers/torney whores yep there are some mental things that you can do but there's aways a way around that that.  This is the one aspect that when I started looking at the system I couldn't get my head around as I'm used to picking up a book and looking at pre-made troops etc and this I could sit there and make a fluffy army based on the "coolness" of the models.

Models:

 Another "oohhh" for me is that there is NO models associated with the Gruntz system, (apart from 1 mech from Ground Zero Games)  you can use what you like! so google-fu needs to be strong for you to find what you like the look of, or you can simply head over to the excellent dropship horizon blog and check out the links and the reviews of new 15mm stuff that is coming out, I'll be honest this site has opened my eyes with regards to 15mm sci-fi so I tip my hat to the author who maintains it,

There would be no reason why you couldn't do this in 20mm or even 28mm with some adjustments to the weapon ranges, and you don't have to just use it for sci-fi, anything can be adopted with the unit builders in the main book or if your "challenged" with maths like my good self then there is a unit builder program coming out soon that I've been playing about with due to my kick starter pledge last year and its a good bit of kit nice and simple and some cool features that keep me sitting at my PC playing about with different stats for stuff.

So onto the main event, We had a war correspondent for the game so keep an eye out on the gruntz forum for Dan's AAR, but here's a few pic's from the game on Thursday,

Both Black Ivan and the Urban Suppression unit try and take down Coop's Mech but the dice gods deserted me that evening!

Towards the end of the game, Objective secure but surrounded by armour and big guns!

"technically" I won by having a gruntz unit in base to base with the objective but coops rolled me good and proper and was rolling like a daemon for hitting and damage! I enjoyed the game that we're upping the points to 300 for next week so lets see what happens!