The secret society meets for a mini con

 While many went to one of our local conventions "Pro or Con" at the Elk's Lodge, my fellow Freemason brothers gathered for our own mini con. We played a miniature game followed by a boardgame. Gruntz (a scifi miniature ruleset) was the miniature game played, and Terraforming Mars the boardgame.

I will present the pre game terrain setup along with some pictures of the fluff and orders given out to players. I will present commentary as the game proceeds along after each group of pictures.

[below pre game setup with some pictures of the SDR units. All Terrain, other than the hill in the upper left corner was considered slow go terrain or rough. Units would be halved moving through these areas, but could move normal if they sacrificed firing to do a double move. The three blue buttons are the debris areas the SDR has to investigate by spending an action while in base contact with them.]

[below you will see the fluff I handed out to players, and then each players orders. The SDR player enters the board, while the IMA player has hidden setup]

[Since all of the IMA units where hidden, the SDR player moved all his units onto the board on Turn 1, he moved these one at time to see if he triggered any ambushes before moving on to next. In fact his third unit moved did trigger an ambush and his Powered Armor platoon got severely mauled. The SDR player infuriated threw the rest of his troops headlong at the ambush site. The two photos below show the end of Turn 1 situation]

[Turn 2 had the SDR player not knowing all the nuances of the rules yet used his turn to try and shoot up the IMA players harden positions. He ended up causing him three causalities but when the IMA player actived this unit, the SDR player found out they had a perk. Combat stimulus drugs and on a die roll of 5 or 6 they would recover. The three causalities turned into one. Excellent rolling! The picture shows the start of turn 3]

[Turn 3 had the SDR player taking two of his walkers and trying to go around his right flank. Otherwise a firefight was engaged in. As the SDR began turn 4 moving his walkers into rough ground the IMA sprung another ambush with his armored car.]

[Turn 5 the SDR walkers and Armored Car exchanged fire and hits where scored by both sides but no critical hits taken. The SDR finally assaulted the IMA defensive position and the IMA's reaction fire was poor and the SDR punched them in the face really good causing them to withdraw and take the position.]

At this point we called the game as it was understood the SDR would only be able to take one of the three positions and did not have enough movement to reach one of the others by the end of turn 6.

My crew really enjoyed the Gruntz rule set. We know we did a few things wrong, and the SDR player more aware of the rule system definitely would have moved his units differently and engage in a different way. The cards that you can get for the Gruntz system (cards allow units to activate in order of higher number on card so play can go back and forth or a player may move a few units before the other player can etc.) really added enough spice to make the game even more interesting. I purposely set the game up this way to help the players get a feel for how to move, shoot, etc. Future games setup like normal in the rules with a few more units for the IMA player will really help the card system shine. 

Well that's it for my report for now. As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Kevin