Aron Clark
United States
Los Gatos
California
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My thoughts on Gruntz . . .
The good
* Good alternating activation sequence, provides some choice and tension to the game. Think it might play even better with card draw activation.
* Small 3x3 play area
* Flexible design system that lets you build troops that suit your vision, along with some handy utilities to convert these to playing card sized references
The bad
* Gruntz seems too light a set for me, but mechanically heavy . . . see below. There may be more here than we are seeing having just played a simple meeting engagement of roughly equivalent forces.
* My forces suffered from design issues (power armor who didn’t have any better armor than light infantry & indirect fire with an area effect of 1” diameter). My opposition was all infantry with a single rapid transport. This meant the PA didn’t have the punch or staying power, while the indirect fire generally on target had limited effect against a numerically superior force
* Leaders who have more hit points than a light vehicle, which to my mind is illogical. A leader might be able to absorb 1 or 2 extra hits but 7 or 8 is too much.
* Lack of any meaningful moral rules, units coming under fire could take suppression effects but only impact is loss of one out of two actions. Squad casualties of 30% or more were just shrugged off. Maybe at a large skirmish that’s the right approach, I’m not sure.
* Ranges: we played this a bit fiddly moving each trooper, and I missed the Tomorrow's War approach of moving around the squad leader. This made ranges complicated too, this SAW in effective range while these rifles at long vs those 2 guys but long vs the others at short, ect. We need something more generic (center to center, or something like a weighted ratio which sounds like too much math)
* Too much dicing for combat, Shoot Skill + 2d6 vs Gaud Skill exceed to hit, then Weapon Damage +2d6 vs Soak Skill exceed to kill. Bit of math here that can be a bit exhausting or fuzzy when my mental facilities weren’t at their height. Do this for an eight man squad along with the complications of ranging defined above and ouch
and the ugly
* Gruntz needs another outing, after I’ve had an opportunity to review the rules and design a force.
* Not sure if the design system is mature enough to provided point balance.
* Need to rethink the combat expression as: Guard – Shoot > 2d6 = miss, Soak – Damage > 2d6 = save???
* Don’t see any solution for the pile of dicing, or the fiddly range aspects
* Need a better understanding of leaders, moral, and the impact of both
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Robin Fitton
United Kingdom
Crawley
West Sussex
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Thanks for taking the time to write up your feedback. Here are some thoughts in response to your ideas but by no means a solution to all your feedback:
Quote: >>* My forces suffered from design issues (power armor who didn’t have any better armor than light infantry & indirect fire with an area effect of 1” diameter). My opposition was all infantry with a single rapid transport. This meant the PA didn’t have the punch or staying power, while the indirect fire generally on target had limited effect against a numerically superior force.
You said the power armour was a bad feature of the game. Is it because the power armour you designed was poor spec or because you used some poor pre-generated power armour profile cards? I normally find that PA performs very well and has OK staying power. Would you like to see additional design features for the PA to make them harder hitting? What indirect fire were they using?
Quote: >>> Leaders who have more hit points than a light vehicle, which to my mind is illogical. A leader might be able to absorb 1 or 2 extra hits but 7 or 8 is too much.
The rules say that you can use Commanders in cinematic mode (multiple hits) or single damage Commanders. You can actually build a commander with low hits if you wanted more than 1 damage point. So as far as being a bad aspect of the game, it is more a case of personal choice as to whether you go for the cinematic version with a heroic leader that can take more incoming damage or a more realistic Commander.
Quote: >>>* Lack of any meaningful moral rules, units coming under fire could take suppression effects but only impact is loss of one out of two actions. Squad casualties of 30% or more were just shrugged off. Maybe at a large skirmish that’s the right approach, I’m not sure.
This was a design process to reduce record keeping. You can enter condition brown, which is a test against a units Mental statistic (essentially moral) which is varied. I can't say if it is meaningful enough for the setting but it is there to provide an aspect of rules to cover if a unit enters condition brown when they lose more than half remaining troops in a squad. In playtest and convention games it appeared to provide enough of a crunchy moral aspect, although I agree that it is lighter than some rules which cover it in detail such as unit quality degrading during a game. You can also call on a nearby Commanders Mental statistic to boost moral/quality by either assigning additional moves to a squad, removing suppression or making a Mental check using the Commanders stat which improves the chances of succeeding a condition brown check.
Quote: >>>* Ranges: we played this a bit fiddly moving each trooper, and I missed the Tomorrow's War approach of moving around the squad leader. This made ranges complicated too, this SAW in effective range while these rifles at long vs those 2 guys but long vs the others at short, ect. We need something more generic (center to center, or something like a weighted ratio which sounds like too much math)
Ranges will get slight increases in v1.1. Are you playing in 15mm scale? All the rules and ranges were 100% focused on development in 15mm. I have had several playtesters keen to try in 28mm but so far it has not felt right in the larger scale. I might work on a conversion to the larger scale later this year but at the moment things are bolted into working for smaller figures.
The concentrated fire action covers some streamlining and it can be used to increase the damage from a unit. You also only then roll once to attack for the full squad. I am considering the option for one measurement from the squad whilst maintaining line of sight.
Design was also focused on allowing maximum fine control of individual squad members, something which might perhaps need a revision.
Quote: >>>* Too much dicing for combat, Shoot Skill + 2d6 vs Gaud Skill exceed to hit, then Weapon Damage +2d6 vs Soak Skill exceed to kill. Bit of math here that can be a bit exhausting or fuzzy when my mental facilities weren’t at their height. Do this for an eight man squad along with the complications of ranging defined above and ouch
Two items improve this. Concentrating fire reduces a squad to one single attack roll (if you use the rule) and getting matched pairs of dice so you can roll them all at once - that really speeds it up. As to the basic math I have not met anyone with a problem with it yet but the Damage vs Soak was a vital component to help integrate vehicles without making them work just like super-sized troops.
Quote: >>>* Gruntz seems too light a set for me, but mechanically heavy . . . see below. There may be more here than we are seeing having just played a simple meeting engagement of roughly equivalent forces.
I can certainly see what you are saying with the light aspect. It was designed to be as easy to access as possible though. My 11 year old son is a regular player and despite the math he now knows the rules better than me (and I wrote them).
I really appreciate the thoughts and all feedback is welcome. If you have any question or ideas please fire them at me.
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Aron Clark
United States
Los Gatos
California
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Hi Robin, thanks for the insight.
Re: power armor, the relative weakness of this troop type in our game was based on a poor off the shelf design. I can see how the design system could work to build a better power armor trooper.
Re: leaders multi-hit feature, understand that this is an aspect of design and the system caters for different options.
Re: ranges, we were playing in 15mm. My observations weren’t so much related to the actual distances but the challenge of maximum fire control where a portion of the firing squad is at short vs the balance at long and the complication that can create in game.
Re: concentrated fire, interesting to hear there is a stream lined approach vs. 2d6 matched pairs. Will have to take a look at this.
Please understand that my observations are based on a single play without a deep knowledge of the system. I am interested in playing Gruntz again, and looking at the rules in more detail.
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Joshua Love
United States
Clarkston
Washington
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aronbc wrote:
Re: ranges, we were playing in 15mm. My observations weren’t so much related to the actual distances but the challenge of maximum fire control where a portion of the firing squad is at short vs the balance at long and the complication that can create in game.
Never played the game before, but I have played similar squad style games (mostly of my own design), and we just measured the distance between the closest attacking squad member to the closest target squad member. While this may be a bit of a abstraction, it worked for us, and may make things less confusing for you. I always just made sure everyone kept their squads in a relatively tight formation (no more than an inch apart, although I was working with a larger scale than 15mm).
Hope that suggestion helps.
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