I've started to dabble with Grimdark Future. This is a ruleset by One Page Rules, and is available for free here*. GF is a very light alternative for 40K (or other similar games of around platoon- company size). It achieves this by removing nearly all the strategems, rerolls, auras, exceptions, shenanigans, errata, updates, and other special rules that really bog 40K down and prevent it being a casual game. GF remains tense with competition for objectives, and interesting with alternating activations. There are buckets of dice, and units getting destroyed/ routed frequently makes for a quick game! Not to forget it isn't spread across multiple books, and is free.
I lined up my Red Corsairs against my opponent's Space Marines, the Right Hands. The Right Hands all had hand-painted markings on them- respect! We played on a 6'x4' table with three objectives. We chose 1000 points as a smaller game as it was our first with these rules.
Red Corsairs:
- 2x squads of Chaos Marines
- 2x mobs of Cultists
- 1x pack of Possessed Marines
Right Hands:
- 1x Assault Squad
- 1x Infernus (flamethrower) Squad
- 1x Tactical Squad
- 1x Invictor Warsuit
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Right Hands Invictor Warsuit
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The Right Hands advance on the refinery facilities. Chaos taint is suspected. |
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The Warsuit and Assault Squad cover the Marine right. |
Here's an overview of what happened. I advanced over a broad front, and my Possessed Marines went loping around from my right. The Right Hands tried to stop them, and did a similar sweep with their Assault Marines on my left.
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The Battle. Objectives are numbered. |
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Right Hands Tactical Squad holds Objective 3 |
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My traitors try to gun them down. |
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My terrifyingly fast Possessed rip the Right Hands apart. |
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On my left, cultists face off against Assault Marines...
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...and the melee unsurprisingly goes the way of the Astartes. |
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The Possessed leap onto the Warsuit, and damage it but cannot take it entirely out. |
Final result was a 2:1 win to the Red Corsairs. The cultists were weak and the Warsuit was strong, but the number of bodies gave me an edge. I am going to need to up my anti-armour capabilities...
We're going to try this as a light campaign**, with experience, wounds, and a slow trickle of reinforcements.
The objective markers are Wargames Atlantic Zombies with the bases cut off and limbs reposed. I can see myself making more with era-specific weapons and accoutrements as required. They're on 40mm MDF bases.
*An expanded and still free version of the rules can be found
here, and the excellent army builder is
here.
** Campaign rules
here. They're free as well...
Everything looks great, I've always thinking of trying this kind of lighter games, but never got the chance to do so. Cool thing to see they work nice!
ReplyDeleteIt's all about meeting expectations- mine were met.
DeleteSounds better in Latin. Dextra Manus - the Right Hand. Thanks Barker, looking forward to seeing the post for round 2
ReplyDeleteThe 'high gothic' declensions are going to be fun!
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