STARGRUNT – ‘Nam in Spaaaaace

 

I guess it must have been early in 1991 when I called into a local indie games store/comic shop to buy some proxy minis to use for Rogue Trader. While I loved Citadel sculpts, my paper round money only stretched so far…  As I went to pay for my minis, the beardy chap behind the counter asked if these were for playing 40K. When I said yes, he thrust a copy of Stargrunt by Jon Tuffley/Ground Zero Games into my mitts and said that I should check out this exciting NEW ruleset. It was an A5 pamphlet, which looked to have been written on an electric typewriter and then photocopied, with a handful of rather naive illustrations and a few grainy photos. It certainly had none of the slick production values of its 1996 successor Stargrunt II (which is still available as a free download from GZG). As a young punk, though, the DIY aesthetic really appealed to me and so I bought a copy. As it happened, I never did manage to play the game back in the day, but while nearly all my RPGs, wargames rulebooks and minis were sold off, given away or lost by the end of the 1990s, my copy of Stargrunt survived squirrelled away in a stash of punk zines.

When I was getting back into gaming a few years back, my entry point was playing Craig Cartmell’s excellent FUBAR one-page rules using 15mm GZG/Stargrunt minis. Basically, rules I didn’t need to invest more than 5 minutes reading and a platoon’s worth of infantry grunts for around £20. Magic! Needless to say, I fell back in love with miniatures and wargaming, but I was also curious to explore a bit more of the Tuffleyverse. So, a little while ago my buddy and I dusted off the Stargrunt rules to see how this venerable ruleset actually played. It was also a game I appear to have lost all the photos of. Bugger.

In his introduction to the rules, the author writes that, “Stargrunt actually falls somewhere between a conventional wargame and a Role-playing Game.” As we’ll see below, this is a fair description. And where a game like Rogue Trader allows you to ‘roleplay’ the commanding officer, Stargrunt does a good job of presenting the battlefield from the lowly infantryman’s perspective. That said, in common with many old school roleplaying games, there is a fair bit of bookkeeping and maths required. The pullout-and-photocopy roster rather optimistically gives you enough slots for two 12-man squads and two vehicles. As we’re partial to a few beers with our wargames, we found one 8-man squad each was plenty enough to keep track of!

Example squad roster from the rulebook

The first order of business is to give your squad members names. This isn’t essential, but really adds flavour to the game. These are the guys whose story you’ll be following after all. Next, you roll a d10 for each squad member to determine their individual level of experience – which will be either Green, Regular or Veteran. This roll is modified by the scenario you’re playing. For example, a militia unit on patrol will more likely contain some Green troops with little or no combat experience, while a special forces unit rescuing a hostage is more likely to have veterans within their ranks. Veterans are also less prone to panic checks than other troops (they stay frosty). We decided to play a simple scenario with two opposing regular army units on a recce (using a table full of houseplants to represent impenetrable jungle). Both sides rolled a good mix of experience levels, but with my buddy having a Green NCO. Think Lt. Gorman in Aliens.

The experience mechanic is worth dwelling on a bit, as we thought this was one of the standout element of the rules. It is also the genesis of a core mechanic which would evolve through Stargrunt II to Tomorrow’s War and the Ambush Alley stable of games. Essentially, experience level determines which die a trooper will roll against a given target number. The Basic Die Roll for each level would be d6 for Green, d8 for Regular and d10 for Veteran, although under certain circumstances the die size can either shift up or down one. So, a Green trooper rolling Basic Die Minus would use a d4 and for a Basic Die Plus would roll a d8. A good example of this is testing to see if a trooper fires their weapon effectively. The target number required is 4+ when not engaged or 7+ when engaged with incoming fire. The trooper rolls their Basic Die if stationary, but their Basic Die Minus if moving across open ground or their Basic Die Plus if in position in cover. This rather nicely simulates troops becoming pinned, ducking for cover or squirting off shots without aiming.

The other stat worth flagging is Confidence Level (CL).  This deteriorates on first sighting the enemy, first coming under fire, taking casualties etc. but can also be restored incrementally by causing an enemy to retreat, taking an enemy position or receiving a stern talking to from Sarge. If CL reaches 0 then the squad will decide to bug out, withdrawing towards their table edge unless the NCO can rally them.

With the initial bookkeeping done it was time to get down to some action. Squads are split into two fireteams, which are the basic unit in the game. At the start of each turn orders are given to each fireteam (Fire, Move, Observe or Rally) and the players take turns to activate a fireteam, revealing their orders and carrying out an action. We liked this a lot as it allowed one fireteam to dash across open ground while the second team was on overwatch or laying down covering fire. Within a couple of turns the squads had sighted each other through the dense jungle foliage and started to let rip. The shooting mechanic was a huge departure to what we were used to. Once you’ve established who has actually fired towards the enemy you tot up the Fire Rating of all the various guns (essentially the volume of lead or lasers being poured at the enemy) and compare it on a table to the Target Rating, which is based on the number of targets and whether they are in cover or not. This gives you a ‘to hit’ number to roll on a d12 against each member of the target fireteam. We were a couple of pints in by this point in the game and the initial calculations probably took a bit longer than they should.

With laser beams and bullets ripping through the air it wasn’t long before we started taking hits. Once you’ve scored a hit you then roll on another table (I know! Old school, right?) against the impact value of the ammo-type minus the value of the body armour being worn. The result will either be no effect (the bullet just nicked an ear), stunned, wounded, incapacitated or killed. While stunned troops will shake it off at the end of the round, wounded or incapacitated troops are going to create a whole new series of problems to deal with. Abandoning the injured badly effects the squad’s CL, but this can be negated if their buddies drag them into cover and attempt to stabilise their wounds. Obviously, the guy administering first aid is also now out of the fight until he can stop his comrade bleeding out. We absolutely loved this rule. It felt incredibly thematic and brought to mind films such as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.

By this point, things were fubar for both sides. Half the troops were either dead, injured or attempting first aid. With all the incoming fire it was proving near impossible to stabilise the worst casualties and the CL of both squads was dropping rapidly. If the mission had been to capture and hold a position, maybe I would have ordered ‘fix bayonets’ and tried out the close assault rules (which look brutal), but as both sides were out on a recce, both began to withdraw, laying down covering fire while carrying their injured buddies back for evac.

Troops from the high-grav planet of Grudge out on patrol

So, once the dust had settled, what did we think of Stargrunt? Well, the rules definitely showed their age in some regards. I think game specific tokens and coloured gems for the different experience levels would have helped with some of the bookkeeping, but even then two squads each + beer would still have been a stretch. There are also issues with the rules around having different ammo for the rifles and the SAW when working out hits (we followed the author’s advice and stuck to the same ammo to keep things simple).  And, to be fair, we didn't try any of the point fire weapons, such as plasma guns, which resolve their damage separately anyway.  Things we liked included the alternate activation of fireteams. This combined with the orders gave the feel of everything happening simultaneously. The sliding-dice system is genius and having a fixed target number for shooting effectively was welcome. What we really, really liked, though, was the cinematic feel to the game narrative. You could feel the panic rising within the squad as things fell apart, as injured comrades were dragged into cover, as plans were abandoned and orders ignored, as soldiers basically lost their shit. The game does a wonderful job of eliciting empathy for toy soldiers fighting a made-up war on a kitchen table, which is pretty remarkable. So thank you Beardy man, wherever you are. That was a top recommendation.