Grimdark Future Firefight!

After having played about 10 games of Age of Fantasy Skirmish (both solo and 2-player) I thought it would be a good time to try out its stablemate Grimdark Future Firefight, which is roughly equal to GW’s Kill Team without all the expensive faction boxes and faction books and bespoke terrain.

I 3D-printed 250pts of Robot Legions (aka Necrons) and some Battle Sisters and went at it.

The game plays quite differently from Fantasy Skirmish as the emphasis is on shooting so cover is all important. The tactics also differ if you’re talking about the standard “control points at end of game” mission as you really don’t want to be caught out where the other side can take a shot at you.

First game was a draw 2-2, but 2nd game the Robot Legion won due to a miscalculation on the Battle Sisters’ part on the final turn (placement for seizing objectives). 

Then I tried a 2-player game (again with 250pts) with Robot Legion vs Alien Hives but the Alien Hives wasn’t a viable war band at the time due to them being 3D printed and only having very limited selection of unit types at hand.

I now have 300 points of Robot Legions and Battle Sisters but that’s just 1 extra model per side. Still, I added in some melee options to a shoot game and we’ll see how that goes later on.

Overall, the OPR rules (both sci-fi and fantasy) are fast and furious, they get out of the way, meaning you don’t have to look up a ton of rules, interrupting play since everything you need to reference can be fitted on one page (for a smaller point war band). There can be a lot of dice rolling (roll to hit, roll to save then if you have Regeneration, roll to survive the failed save THEN roll on the table to see if you're stunned or outright knocked out/dead.) However, you typically roll 1-5 dice (max) each time and at smaller points each model is precious and so you're invested in each dice roll. This is contrasted with some other MORE POPULAR games where you literally roll buckets of dice at a time (40-50) and then roll more buckets to damage and then roll more dice to save and then less dice to Feel No Pain and at the end maybe 2-3 models out of a unit of 20 will die and you just shrug and continue the game. It's a very different style of play of course and some will love it and others hate it, so YMMV.

I think long term, both this game and the fantasy version can get VERY samey, which is where you will want to get the full rulebook that gives you campaign options as well as more options to vary missions, add on side missions and variable battlefield conditions. You also need a story as to why you are fighting to control the zones/objectives otherwise it’s just a game of tactical chess with miniatures on the table.

All those caveats aside, the OPR games make a very good introduction to newbies to the hobby as the factions can be small (250pts suggested intro games) and rules very manageable and you just chuck some dice and have a fun evening of gaming.