ONE PAGE RULES - Grimdark Future: Firefight Review

i think that is a bit longer than one page when you are looking to get into a war game most times the initial cost is going to be limited by your cash or by your models but on occasion all a new system will ask of you is an investment of your time for me this was the case for one page rules a free rule system that was initially designed as an alternative play environment for people with existing warhammer armies for the longest time i did not give one page rules any mind i paid attention to its growth but i didn't give it any play over the years one page rules has added in mechanical support for a variety of combat scales and factions these days the one page rules brand now covers army games skirmish trail games and even ship scale combat across the two primary tabletop genres of grim dark future and age of fantasy there are also a wealth of smaller supplements all acting as one page rules equivalents of another existing idea concept or system with my current focus on reviewing tabletop miniature slash war game systems it felt like the perfect time to take a proper look at one of one page rule's offerings i remember looking for reviews of one page rules and being frustrated because everyone who would write anything on it would keep it very short they would call one page rules warhammer but simple the lack of good coverage was one of the biggest factors that led to me never giving the system my time with that said i finally decided to get my toes wet i took my models and my dice and i grabbed myself a copy of the one page rules firefight pdf today after a period of play testing and rumination i am confident in stating that one page rules firefight is warhammer 40k kill theme but simple to come to the shocking conclusion i went out to set up a play testing gauntlet for one page rules firefight i chose 5 factions to create my 5 different warbands which i would then put through a 2 round round robin this would mean that each faction's warband would get 8 games versing every other warband twice each this would mean playing a total of 20 games of one page rules firefight as is my standard methodology on this channel i play these test games solo one page rules firefight comes with solo ai rules so for the first round i run the ai rules for one of the sides each faction gets two plays controlled by me and two controlled by the ai on the second round i ditch the ai completely and just play myself double fisted to make things more interesting i also run firefights campaign rules which means each team starts at 150 points going through the campaign's progression systems across both rounds the orc marauders were some of the first models i ever painted and have a storied career in guild team 2018 i ran them with a melee war boss with a focus on shooty backup the dark elf raiders ran a pretty vanilla warband again with a melee focused leader their warriors are fast but fragile with some very deadly heavy gunners the soul snatcher cults come in with a mixed warband of gunners and melee units they were the only warband in the campaign to start out with a deadly psychic they are also the only warband in metal the last two warbands were painted up just for the review starting with a spare of 5 warriors this theme is unique in that they do not run any heroes this means that they are running with a pair of very dangerous models but at extreme risk if either of these warriors becomes a casualty that's half of the fire team gone on the spot just like that the final warband are the rebel gorillas who ran units with fire team's rules for multi-model squads they have a hard focus on shooting and have to work around their commander being a buff beacon the troops cannot do much if he is not around to give them the bonuses for this run i made up a new terrain set and play on a 3x4 board it is slightly smaller than the suggested 4x4 so to compensate i measure any deployment schemes from the center to make sure that the recommended gap between the two zones is maintained there are small table rules in the paid version of the firefight rulebook but i didn't feel the need to make use of them in this instance speaking of the paid book i also used a fair amount of the extended rules across the run from game 1 i used the extra scenarios and deployment zones from game 5 onwards i also use the advanced actions letting me do things like overwatch and focus fire i also use the random events just to make things interesting and finally from game 10 onwards i make use of the critical hits rules once my match structure is finalized i ready my models and get ready for the firefight so it is day one of my play testing i have gotten five six six games in of one page rules firefight then let me just show you my setup here as you can see i am playing in let's say a relatively large mess got all my models etc so first impressions are i'm not super fond of the ai system just the way it flows i'm honestly quite excited to move away from it and just start playing myself but we'll see how that pans out yeah i do like how snappy it is it's very quick to play i imagine this is going to be quite chess-like once i actually start playing myself also you will notice that my board is not exactly a 4x4 it's closer to a 3x4 and i think it's working fine that is that for this log i will see you in another six games maybe yeah one page rules is thoroughly informed by its source gw systems not just in design but also in intent and for better or worse in-game feel in firefight's case we have a skirmish scale tabletop war game in the grim dark future setting it exists as an alternative to gw's 40k kill team this video was originally going to be a review of kill team 2021 but after doing all the math in regards to the prices of the rulebooks and comparing it to the alternative i decided to just put that money towards more resin instead both kill team and firefight work in two directions serving their larger scale army games as an onboarding point for new players they also offer an alternative use of models for existing players as such both systems will also borrow a lot of rules from their respective army scale games this can be a tricky role structure to deal with especially when it comes to rolling small amounts of d6s around single wound units but i think firefights got some good ideas as we are about to see the core system in firefight runs off alternating activations that means that each time a player goes they pick a unit and they will resolve that unit's entire turn once their turn is done it goes over to the other player who does the same once a unit has taken its turn they will be more or less done for the rest of the round alternating activations as a design paradigm is generally regarded pretty highly within the war gaming scene one page rules leans heavily into using this turn structure i have my own personal thoughts on alternating activations i think it's not the most interesting system you could go for but we'll talk more about that when i review grim dark future for firefight i think the alternating activations are fine they're real basic but it works if a unit is chosen to activate it'll have a choice of 4 actions hold lets a unit stand in place and shoot advance lets a unit move 6 inches and shoot rush lets a unit go up to 12 inches but stops it from shooting and charge lets the unit go 12 inches while also allowing it to step into melee combat psychic spells can be activated during a psychic model's turn at any point before it makes any attacks casting spells is a simple matter of rolling one dice adding a modifier and comparing it to a target number shooting has rules for basic line of sight and cover supplemented with a load of different weapons across all the different factions that operate with different rules at different ranges melee only ever happens at the end of a charge action the charger will enter melee at the end of their charge and then will do their attacks if the target survives the target gets to retaliate the charger will then step back out of combat if they fail to destroy the target regardless of the outcome in firefight a melee will never be locked in i think it is important to note how big a deal not having a locked in melee state is for a skirmish game it really helps separate it from its game's workshoppian design routes a melee lock state can really neuter the feeling of a heated battle especially on the tabletop because across rules rolls and turns being locked in melee can feel less like a duel and more like a tarpit the basic rules for both melee and shooting attacks are the same when a unit shoots you make a quality test roll a dice per model and compare it to the unit's quality meet or beat the number and that is a hit the target may then make a block rolling a dice and comparing it to its defense if the target meets or beats its defense it successfully blocks the attack otherwise the hit goes through and the target takes a wound once a target is wounded the defender then rolls a d6 and adds the number of wounds the model has taken total on a 2-5 modified the model is stunned on a6 or more it is knocked out stunned models stop being stunned at the start of their next activation at the cost of what would have been their turn this will still count as an activation though so you can use stun models to delay your turn stun models are knocked out immediately if anything charges them or if they are successfully hit by any shooting i mentioned this in the warhammer skirmish review but this wound role into stunned state is a buffer to help keep a very lethal system in check this is a side effect of the system working off the army scale stat lines guild theme did something similar but i think one page rules handles it a bit more cleanly finally once a war band is down to half of its initial units each unit will have to pass a morale test at the end of the round this is once again a quality test if they meet or beat the number on a roll of the dice nothing happens otherwise they suffer a route and they are removed from play as they flee off the board the activation scheme the four basic actions and the rules for attacking and morale make up basically all of firefight despite the simplicity the player agency involved in faction selection and less building can really elevate firefight's replay and theory craft value there isn't any specific force organization to making a firefight list so you can go for some wild card builds like fielding 15 grats or just having the two models the first few games in my campaign run saw the two alien hive warriors run roughshod through the rebel gorillas but they in turn are overwhelmed by the orcs who successfully divide and conquer the orcs cannot do the same for their encounter with the soul stealer cults however but the cults in turn are way laid by the rebels in an ambush finally the dark elf raiders make their debut dominating the two hive warriors with their heavy fire it is day three of play testing i have gotten 11 12 12 games out we have been going at clip because i want to get some work done for course over the next few days and i'll finish what remains of the games a few days after that i've really enjoyed the double fisted game so far tactically they're more sound i did not like the randomization of the ai activations that made them feel brain dead sometimes so yeah now we'll finish up completely on double fisting we'll see how the campaign behaves from here see you on the third entry firefights campaign like the rest of it is simple right off the bat the campaign lets you define how you would like it to end which i think is important for a campaign to do it recommends a starting pointage and sets a relative upper point limit in place as defined by the warband with the lowest point value there are casualty rules for all models which is based off a single row of a d6 heroes are more difficult to kill leading a roll of a one followed by a second roll of a one on the injury table to truly drop standard units however do not take injuries if they roll a 1 on the casualty roll that is it they are dead for anyone used to rolling on these kinds of tables a 1 in 6 chance of dying may seem a bit high and yeah it really is fortunately the campaign does still have some balancing tricks up with slaves winning a game in the campaign gets you plus 10 points and plus two of the abstracted victory points for determining the campaign's winner losing a game gets you no victory points but lets you 30 of the regular points which are the actual important ones this can make the option to route at the earliest possibility very attractive especially if you are short on points in the campaign mode of firefight routing can be voluntary it is a great way to spare half of your warband from having to take casualty roles there are rules for experience gain attached to some basic trade progression which is separate from the point by for the point by you aren't given an arsenal of weapons per se but allow to touch up your forces according to your faction's roster sheet you can buy new units take upgrades for existing ones and even sell old upgrades overall the campaign rewards taking heroes and measured ratios with regular units cheaper heroes specifically can end up becoming way more powerful after a few upgrades if you take too many regular units your warband can start to feel transient coming and going with a casualty roll if you take too many heroes your warband may end up getting out gunned and out activated as the skirmishes blaze on the warbands slowly build themselves up the orcs bring in some heavier guns and a pack of goblins who end up being key to their aggressive strategy the dark operators honed their skills taking on a fusion carbine gunner soon the original warband are all considered veterans even deadlier than before with their guns the soul snatcher cultists requisition one of their namesake soul snatchers providing the warband with some lightning-fast shock offense biding their time the alien warriors have slowly built themselves up and have taken on a third melee focused warrior this balances out the original two's hard focus on shooting and finally the rebel guerrillas take on a veteran and a spotter while slowly and surely getting upgrades and experience onto their core rebel squads it is just after game 20 and i have tidied up the setup and i am now going to get ready to write i did enjoy the game quite a fair bit more playing it double fisted versus playing it with the ai and i think the campaign is good enough to maintain interest in the game up to about the eighth session or so maybe like maybe ten games of the campaign is pushing it a little bit in terms of what you can upgrade and how strong things are those last five games were a real struggle to get through that is the case in most of the things i run through this uh review gauntlet but firefight in particular was difficult because it's not quite less strategically robust as other games i play but i still did enjoy myself i will expound on my thoughts a bit more during the proper review process when i am a little bit less tired right when i say that one page rules for better or for worse inherits the game feel of a gw miniatures game i refer to two things number one the game's lethality if you're familiar with how abrupt a death and guild team can feel you can imagine how much worse it can be when the system does not bother with a wound role this lethality exists in stock contrast to number two the game's swinginess most rows are determined with a small amount of d6s working off binary pass fail conditions some dangerous weapons will work off single rows of the dice notably weapons with the blast special rule the meltagan equivalent the fusion rifle rocks the deadly rule at rank 6 meaning it has the capacity to instantly vaporize or at the very least stun most units in one hit with no variable damage role whatsoever this degree of randomness is further embraced in a lot of the extended rules especially in the campaign the casualty role working off a single d6 makes it a particularly concerning example poor enough rolling can hurt a warband for the rest of the campaign from even the earliest sessions there is a no permadeath mode that lets you opt out of unit deletion entirely instead giving units d3 games of recovery in its place i'm not sure how this feels as i didn't try it out but it is safe to say that the unit spending 3 games on the bench will probably serve you better being sold off and replaced with a new one so on paper this mode gives you more slack and more decisions to make so it might be worth going with this one over permanent unlike most campaigns there is no way that i saw that you can decrease the odds of your units dying to the casualty roll i think this is actually good design in a campaign game if you have the mechanics to curb the death roll you are probably going to spend money on it first so in effect it becomes a tax i think it's better to just keep everyone on the same playing field across the entire campaign other random factors are a bit less daunting such as the random encounters at the start of each round i wish there were more of these because they are very entertaining i do also wish they'd not resort to the select a random unit condition so much since on-the-spot randomization can be awkward given the variable number of units on the table campaign progression in your warband is also randomized some people may not appreciate this but i prefer it to being able to min max progression across my units it can totally help with giving each unit a distinct emergent identity across the campaign the rules for critical hits which i played late in the latter half of the campaign make a lethal system even more lethal on paper this doesn't seem like the brightest idea but i think grits push the lethality over a threshold where it can outpace the randomness crits make the game far more decisive my personal preference would be playing with the critical hits on finally i want to address the solo ei rules because it is also really random everything from where the ai deploys to the order in which it activates to which unit activates is determined by the dice there's even rules for randomizing which lists use i didn't use those by the way as an avid solo player i find that all this randomness can be frustrating because it makes the ai feel brain dead despite all the steps and roles at referring to the flow chart i do to make the system run in an alternating activation setup there is often one decisive and obvious move you need to make at the start of the round especially if you end up going first this is usually going to be you sending your most dangerous unit into your opponent's most dangerous unit to effectively neutralize a biggest threat on the board before it can go the ais written does not respect this golden rule of alternating activations it instead picks a random unit regardless of the tactical context now i acknowledge that all these rules have been given to me for free and that they can all just be taken as suggestions i can play the game any way i want to especially because it is a solo experience however this is a fully functioning ai system with a clear design intent and i think it merits the critique while i am not a fan of the rules for the ai activations the logic flow charts by themselves are sound if rather thematically dry by the end of the campaign i had played 20 games across 5 different warbands experiencing the game from 40 unique perspectives each game can take anywhere from 10 minutes to bordering on an r depending on the point values and the player speeds playing solo at low pointages in particular can result in some really snappy games each of the war bans was 8 games in at this point and i would say this would be around the early or middle end of the campaign run i'd say a more natural place to call it would be at about the 10 or the 12 game mark by the end the dark alfredo suffered the most deaths losing warriors far too frequently their heavy gunner was consistently the star of the show being a huge threat across the entire run while accurate and deadly at the end they were still fragile and had a hard time keeping up with their up-gunned rivals the alien hive warriors had easily become the single most dangerous warband their melee specialist could easily take out any other fighter in one-on-one combat and the two heavies reigned death from afar while still being deadly up close however the cause of safely getting to their current state had meant plenty of tactical retreats and even now if any of these warriors were to die they would be under strength by a considerable amount the soul stealer cults were the most well-balanced of the warbands and were the only ones capable of using psychic spells their ability to scout also made it so their melee fighters could close the gap with alarming speed on a blow pueblo basis however their top units simply could not match the top units of the other warbands the orcs were being led by a particularly deadly war boss who could kill a hive warrior in one blow backed up by light shooting they would advance with heavy fire and then bludgeon the enemy into submission once close enough a simple tactic but it worked time and time again of note was the mob of goblins who proved to be a surprisingly dangerous asset and finally the rebel gorillas had started out slow but after a few tactical retreats they had picked up camo cloaks backed up by a veteran with a med kit this would make them quite tough their low quality was bolstered by their commander who would firmly lead from the back after a couple of injuries as a warband they were flexible dangerous and most importantly tough to kill this survivability would be the key to their success as they did not have a single death across the campaign if i have been somewhat harsh to firefight of course the last couple dozen paragraphs that is because i acknowledge that it is a work in progress it is constantly being improved it should be noted that there are quite a few more modular expanded rules in the paid rule book that i did not touch on in this review i haven't talked about them because i haven't played them yet i do however think they are interesting and make the purchase of that paid book well worth the price i mean you're already getting the whole game for free anyway may as well kept the guy here there are rules that let you play it like bolt action with the bag and the randomized draws now some people like that some people don't i'm pretty on the fence on it but it is a neat option and there are even rules for cripping the scouting face from kill team 2018 imagine wanting to play the scouting phase from kill team 2018 it's good for narrative games that's fine at the moment the one page rule scene is growing rapidly thanks largely in part to the very good 3d printing deals you get from their patreon in this rush to get new toys i want to be able to shed some light on one of those systems those toys are attached to some people like me will be looking at the system first and i want this review to help out in that regard if you're a competitive gamer coming out of gw looking for other options i don't think you're going to get much mileage out of firefight it's not the most strategically in-depth thing you can play it's very basic but if you are someone who wants to game more casually someone who wants an alternative way to play with your models and a lighter rules environment that can immediately accommodate them with no additional investment well that's what one page rules was made for one page rules firefight is a great way to onboard new players it is a great way to refresh your own enthusiasm for the hobby and if you're like me it is a great way to get yourself unreasonably curious about trying out grim dark future one page rules firefight is warhammer kill team but simple and for some folks that is going to be absolutely perfect i needed that hey there and welcome to the end of the video i have changed the lighting setup one moment whenever i make one of these videos i like to acknowledge the digital artists whose stls i use for this video i would once again like to credit terrain for print who has all these awesome free stls up on thingiverse they also have a paid store for their fancier stls if you would like to check it out if you're interested in the rules for one page rules firefight it is just up on their website the core rules are absolutely free you can play the game thoroughly using just what is given to you for nothing at all i will link the core rules in the description if you are new to the channel hey there my name is so i like to do miniatures games reviews and i like to focus on the more independent systems i also like to play them before i talk about them now we are coming up to the end of the year so i want to give people a little bit of an estimate for things coming forward in terms of reviews i will have these systems put up which i am interested in tackling in the future for the end of the year i am looking at probably doing war search next and then maybe i'm gonna do another one-page rule one and once five leagues from the borderlands comes out i am definitely going to cover that i might take january or december off just so i can do some hobby stuff because i am building up to a review for grim dark future and that will take a bit more models than i am used to fielding or instead of taking a break i might just do a regular essay with some random graphics on top we'll see what happens anyway that is it the credit should have rolled by now the title cards are up there i i don't know like share subscribe see you next time thank you for watching

Channel: CementSaul

Views: 6,319

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Id: I3ejD26BJIQ

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Girl-Knight]

cool

[u/Worthstream]

Finally, an in depth review of the system.

BTW I loved your review of 5 parsec, you are the only YouTuber to even mention the coop rules. And that's to show how you went more in depth than any other.