Gruntz Battle Report - Federation vs Caliphate

Sitrep:  Contact reported.  Infiltration Bn elements at location 49R27438574.  1st Plt, B Co, 2nd LAR with Mech attachements.  Movement to contact.  Destroy the enemy.  Hold the town.  The APC's will advance towards the last known location of the enemy.  Mechs are scouting ahead, will rendezvous at the objective.  No Air support available.  2nd and 3rd platoons at 60 minutes for relief.  Comms plan B7.

Light Armored Recon pushing the Infiltration Bn out of the village.

Tony and I played our first game of Gruntz last night.  I put together two pretty even forces, three squads with supports, three APC's, a Lt, a sniper, a medic and two light Mechs.  The Infiltration Bn also had an AC team.

We played a meeting engagement, both forces moving into the village and trying to take control of it.  This was really just a learning game, and part of Tony trying out new game systems.  He's recently become disenchanted with the evil empire and is looking for other games.

APC's squaring off in the main street.  That lone trooper was part of a squad a minute ago.

Tony got the first turn, moved once and went on overwatch.  I moved up full on the left and disembarked an infantry squad.  There was some ineffectual fire back and forth.  Tony then moved an APC to the center of the main street and disembarked his infantry.  They shot at and killed a couple of my guys, and then got wiped out, except for the SAW gunner.

The Federation mech staring down its Caliphate counterpart.

We both moved closer, in the center, and threw more infantry into the fight.  My vehicles on the left were gaining the upper hand over their counterparts and there was nothing to counter my move down the right.  The center was a stalemate but the Caliphate commander was beginning to eye his rear table edge nervously.

A good round of shooting, though the medic saved two of them.

When the infantry on the left flank got wiped out Tony called the retreat and everyone headed for their rides. One Mech was a mobility kill so it's pilot ejected to be picked up.  The other backed up, trying to screen the APC's as they made a run for it.

The Federation armor closes for the kill.

Sensing the blood in the water the Federation armor left their infantry in possession of the town and raced after the retreating enemy, killing everything except the last mech.

All three APCs are burning at this point.

This was a fun little game.  It took us about two hours to play, though it sped up a lot once we got the swing of things.  We learned that missiles are awesome and SAW's less so.  We got a lot of things wrong and just winged a couple of rules when we couldn't find them in the book.

The cards were great.  I use Gruntomatic to build my cards.  It's quick and easy and they are saved on the site.  Now that I have a game under my belt I'll read through the rules again.

I found myself thinking about the game again today, which is the sign of a good game in my book.  I liked the rules.  I think they'll scale well to larger games.  They are simple but flavorful.  For smaller games I think that I'll still prefer Tomorrow's War, based on my one game of Force on Force.  For rules that are fun and easy to learn with plenty of tactical depth, Gruntz work fine.