Seventh in an ongoing series
THE GAMING STORE “PORTALS” opened earlier this year on Kent Island, MD, a few minutes’ drive from my home, featuring “Tabletop Thursday” open play from 5:00 to 9:00 pm. Since then, my brother-in-law Drew, Drew’s son Daniel, my neighbor Dylan, and I have often used this opportunity to get together and play using the Grimdark Future rules from OPR Games.
For our latest match, Drew’s Orc Marauders would be going against Dylan’s Space Wolves, and Favorite Nephew Daniel asked to play me. For our game, Daniel proposed something different. Instead of regular armies clashing, he asked to have three big monsters from his Alien Hives (aka Tyranids) take on three big monsters from my Kurindans collection (aka Space Lizardmen, which use the GF rules for Saurian Starhosts).
Each monster would be up to 1100 points, and the fight would simply be until one side destroyed the other–no mucking about with objectives, or anything like that. I’m a big fan of pure brutality, so I readily agreed.
The Kurindans
Someday soon, I need to write up an official post on my “Kurindans,” but basically, they’re purple Lizardmen in Space who mostly rely on close combat, and they’re aided by various green reptilian monsters. For the game against Daniel, I brought:
Megasaurs (3) (count as Dread Titans) Q3+ D2+ | 1045 pts each | Fearless, Impact 6, Primal, Primal Boost Buff, Tough 24, Unpredictable Fighter; Stomp (A8, AP 2), Vicious Jaws (A4, AP 4, Deadly 3), Super-Heavy Beam Cannon (24″, A2, AP 2, Deadly 12, Disintegrate)
What all that means, to those of you not familiar with Grimdark Future and/or Saurian Starhosts, is that I had three mini-Godzillas with a lot of Wounds (24 each). Each monster breathes bolts of atomic flame twice per round (hitting on 3+) that Daniel’s critters would need 6’s to save against.
And if they failed? They’d take 12 Wounds from each shot. OUCH. And my mini-Godzillas didn’t suck in melee combat, either, with 12 attacks per round, 4 attacks of which did 3 Wounds on each hit. OUCH AGAIN.
Alien Hives
Favorite Nephew Daniel brought:
Hive Titans (3) Q3+ D2+ | 995 pts each | Fear 3, Fearless, Hive Bond, Ravage 12, Regeneration, Tough 24; Stomp (A6, AP 2), Titanic Heavy Claws (A18, AP 2, Rupture), Titan Grasping Tongue (18″, A12, Bane, Reliable)
All of which means that each of his Big Aliens are really, really good at close combat, as one might expect. Each round, each Hive Titan gets 24 attacks, with possible additional wounds dished out. OUCH!
Daniel’s Aliens don’t suck at shooting, with an 18″ range, and 12 attacks hitting on 2+. Fortunately, my guys are better at shooting than his, so my plan was to stay out of reach as long as possible, firing on one model at a time until it went away.
Let the Games Begin! And Begin Again. And Again. And….
Daniel set up the table with minimal scenery, and we took turns deploying our Titans. I thought that this game would either be a long grind, or be over very quickly. The latter turned out to be true.
One at a time (remember, in GF, players take turns activating and moving units), Daniel ran his Big Guys towards mine, and one at a time, my Big Guys fired at them. On Turn 1, I killed two of his Titans before they could get to me. The third managed to engage one of mine in close combat, tearing some Wounds off it. Then on Turn 2, I shot it dead.
Total elapsed time: less than 10 minutes. At the table next to us, Drew and Dylan were still deploying their Orcs and Space Wolves (respectively) for their game.
Daniel then remembered that his guys had shooting attacks, so we decided to play again. He went first, with Barbie advancing and firing. One of my monsters fired back, dropping her with two bolts. Daniel’s other monsters moved up and shot. Mine shot back.
That game lasted about 10 minutes as well. Tino the Dino made it into close combat, knocking about 14 Wounds off JoJo, if I recall correctly. And then I shot him to death, too.
Daniel proposed a one-on-one match: Tino against JoJo. At the next table over, Drew and Dylan were starting their game. I obliged. Tino ran up. JoJo shot him.
Finally, one last time, Daniel proposed a two-on-one match: Barbie and Ken vs JoJo. That went how you might think it would. I shot Barbie dead on Turn 1. On Turn 2, Ken jumped JoJo and knocked a mess of Wounds off him. Then JoJo fried him.
Daniel finally ran up the white flag, and we watched Drew edge out a win over Dylan.
That Was…Underwhelming
I really thought that Daniel’s monsters would put up more of a fight, but I didn’t lose a single model in the four bouts we played. We’ll see how I fare in the four-person megabattle that we have planned for Christmas break.
For that next game, I initially proposed that Drew, Daniel, and Dylan team up against me, but now, it’s looking like it will be Team Imperial of me and Dylan against Team Xenos of Drew and Daniel. I’ll let you know how that goes.
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Kenton Kilgore writes books for kids, young adults, and adults who are still young. Follow Kenton on Facebook for frequent posts on sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. You can also catch him on Instagram.