Skrim rules review.

Hello and Welcome back, 

The Skirm rule book arrived on my door mat last month and I thought I would knock up a review for you (yes it took this long). 

Skirm is a small skirmish Sci Fi game set in on the abandoned world of Tapu (also known as the Gutterlands), which is a world of ancient rusting junk and weaponry. The Gutterlands and the Skrim rules are creations of Bill Making Stuff. 

The rules are a A5 sized booklet with a indie punk zine feel to them. The game is figure agnostic but does encourage players to convert or scratch build models for the game (for inspiration checkout the Gutterlands website). The book has plenty of art work and model eyecandy to make you drool, all the work is by Bill Making Stuff. At the back of the book there is a quick reference sheet that should make game play easy. The game involves your squad having to search junkpiles for weapons, loot and ammo, while fighting off the other squads or factions. 

The rules are designed for a 3 foot x 3 foot table and each faction's squad is limited to 6 figures. There isn't any points calculations to sort out before you start playing. Which is a boon if you are like me and hate all that calculating. You will also need counters for ammo, 6 scrap tokens/piles, a scrapbeast and area effect templates. 

The game looks quick and easy to play. Its a 2D6 roll based game with some pretty nice mechanics involving rolling doubles which will add a element of unpredictablity to the game. Character armour is denoted by tokens next to the figure on the tabletop and is lost after 1 hit. The leader has armour and an ancient weapon. The weapons fall into one of two categories, scrap weapons and ancient weapons (these have special effects). Ammo is limited with each faction having differing ammo availability. Extra ammo can be looted from corpses or junk piles. Junk piles have an extra risk that a scrap beast might appear and rampage around the table. 

There are 4 different factions in the book, for playing Skirm the Gutterlands. Each faction starts with a set amount of ammo and has special attacks and abilities. The factions are Colonialists, Big Red Mining Corporation (Space Dwarves), DEAP troops (think mutated peacekeeping bioweapons) and Rusters (tribals who worship the piles of rust). 

While these rules are based in Sci Fi they could happily fit into a Post Apocalyptic setting. There are no solo rules, but the AI could be stolen from another game, such as 5parsecs or 5clicks. 

I am looking forward to giving these rules a whirl. They are also making me want to create my own versions of the factions which I can worked into my Mattblackgod’s world and Wild Galaxy settings. 

Thank you for reading, take care out there!