Saturday, January 15, 2011

Gut Check v1.3


All dressed up and nowhere to go! I waffled quite a bit on my "more sci-fi gaming in 15mm" vows last year, so I'm trying to rectify that this year. To start off with are the very-in-development rules called Gut Check!, emphasis on the exclamation!

I started following Spacejacker's blog, Tiny Solitary Soldiers because of his excellently painted 15mm troopers (still waiting on that basing tutorial). Then he started adding in some re-purposed Heroscape terrain as terrain, again excellently done.

Putting it all together Gut Check! was born, his home-brewed solo skirmish rules specifically for 15mm sci-fi. Which of course sounded right down my alley. I opened with, "all dressed up and nowhere to go" because as you can see from the top pic, I was SO close to trying out the rules! We've got a large RPG session inbound tonight so I had to clean off the table, all of it. Gut Check! was shelved...for now, but I snapped some pics anyway.


Gut Check! is a hex-based game, and you can easily use a dry-erase hex map or even oversized hex paper copied off at an office copy store. For me, I went with Heroscape tiles, very recently reclaimed I might add. These work great because, obviously, they're three dimensional (and come already painted if you don't have the time for a repaint). The above battlefield is about twice as big as recommended for an intro game, but I was wanting to put all of my tiles out there and see just how much I had and what I could do exactly. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to make it roughly square to boot.


ConFed Troopers (GZG Japanese Corporate) were to one of my squads. There's no points cost in Gut Check!, just statting your models with a 'common sense' method. Same thing goes for the weapons, of whihc a short sample list is already given.


My Mangalore Mercs, also from GZG, are fewer in number, but tout better toughness and deadlier guns (though shorter in range). I've got some more of these unpainted I should whip up, these are great looking figs.


Fresh off the factory floor, post sealant spray, is one of the sat-comm towers. This made for a very nice piece of 'flavor text' terrain on the hex map. Although there aren't any hexes on the base of it, it should be easy enough to approximate. It could make for an actual objective, or just some sci-fi goodness hanging out in the background.

So there you have it, Gut Check! of sorts, if nothing else think of this as a preview of things to come. Check out his site, download the rules, and I'm sure if you had any feedback, that'd be appreciated as well! But the 15mm gaming isn't done!

Another ruleset that I've got my eye on is Gruntz, which also seems made just for what I'm looking for. Here's the Gruntz blurb:
Grunts is a dedicated 15mm fast play wargame designed for skirmish level play with between 10 to 40 figures per side using combined arms. You can use miniatures from any 15mm SCI-FI manufacturer. It is based around a generic platoon level battle, not restricted to a set genre or background setting. Vehicle and artillery rules are included for a combined arms gaming experience with statistics provided for all manufacturers of 15mm sci-fi and modern figures.
Gruntz and Gut Check! aside I've also purchased the highly recommended Future War Commander rulebook, so my 15mm sci-fi gaming options are wide open, and I'm open to any other suggestions you may have!

11 comments:

  1. Interesting .... looking forward to more !

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  2. Looks fun. Love the tower!

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  3. I too(or actually my sons) own a lot of those Heroscape hextiles, but it never occured to me to use them in "my" wargames ... until now :-)

    The FWC rulebook will not dissapoint you! I'm currently using those rules for 6mm sci-fi and they are quick to learn, but difficult to master!

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  4. Woohoo! It's a shame you didn't get to play but it's very cool that somebody else is trying out the game. My girlfriend is away for the week so I expect to be posting a lot of material in the next few days.

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  5. PS- Basing tutorial this week too.. Sorry for the delay! ;)

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  6. Thanks for the pointer. Always grateful for this sort of thing!

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  7. Very interesting rules. I have to dust off heroscape now you realize.

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  8. @ACG: It was the Heroscape that got me hooked in the first place! I even had to break my nephew's heart and take all my stuff back I had given him!

    @GDMNW: No problem, thanks for stopping by!

    @Spacejacker: Looking forward to all of it, more material, and a basing tutorial!

    @Andy2: Great blog, I just signed up and am hooked already, thanks for stopping by!

    @Joe and Bartender: As always, thanks guys! I hope to get some more up this month, got a couple of work things on the HUD right now however.

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  9. Very cool looking stuff. Definitely going to have to check out the rules you suggest when I get my days off. Off topic, but have you had a chance to do anything with AE Bounty? Really curious what think of that one as well.

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  10. Well there is a small hang up in that I "owe" the group three games of Strange Aeons first. Once those are out of the way the path is clear for AEB. Now if the group is kind enough to give a pass on that prior commitment...

    I hope to get some going soon though. I'll be unveiling a monster-sized map tomorrow that would be perfect for AEB too!

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  11. Cool. Never heard of that one before but just looked at an earlier review and batrep you did. Looks pretty cool. Gonna have to look into it more later on. Any chance you'll be posting batreps for the games you'll be paying your "debt to society" with? I mean hey, its not like you have other responsibilities to take up your time... ;)

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