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The club and I got together last week to try Nuclear Renaissance. I've had my eye on this ruleset for several years now and finally picked up the rulebook and supplement "Tome of Tridlins" via on of his kickstarters. As with every first playtest, we learned a few things (play on a smaller table, use more terrain, vehicles are really helpful) but It was a great time and I am looking forward to playing again.

Full Batrep and lots of pictures here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2014/08/nuclear-renaissance-game-report-and.html
A few pics to entice you to visit:

That is some amazing terrain and some very characterful cars. Have you played any more games than the two you have reported? I have looked at the NR rules, and they look pretty cool.

I really like the fact that you can make your own stats for miniatures.

Morrison's Doors.... tee hee.

Looks like a lot of fun!

Just the two. The one above, and this one:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2014/08/more-musings-on-nuclear-renaissance.html

As to making your own stats, the majority of the games the club plays are one's with unit creation mechanics. It allows you to play with whatever miniatures you want, but every such game I've read is open to abuse, so you've got to have a group of players who are willing to reign in their WAAC impulses and lean a bit toward narrative play. Having good scenarios helps too.

I think the benefits of such games are well worth it though. We've been playing these kinds of games for over 4 years now and having a great time.

What did you guys experience as "abusable"? I see that you said guns and "munchkin characters" (what does that mean?) dominated, but when you can get four melee guys and a buggy to get them quickly into the fray for the same price as just an assault rifle, I can`t see how guns would dominate.

It also seemed like you guys used a very large table. Do you think 4x4 would fit the game better?

Good questions.

Every game with a unit creation system is -in our experience- "abusable". In general things run ok if the group stats up their minis with a mind toward WYSIWYG.

With open ended unit creation rules, however, you can break the system and begin to figure out what the the best and killy'est combinations are, for the least amount of points. That's par for the course in something like 40k or Warmachine where there are a lower number of variables. In a game like NucRen it can really hurt the gameplay and devolve into an arms race where the best number crunchers win with combinations of stats that are built to win, rather than to "accurately" ( a lose term of course) represent a miniature on the tabletop.

That said, our club has been quite successful in the past in curbing such impulses. We've found the benefits of such games to out weight the potential negatives and as such, most of the games we play have a unit creation mechanic.

I think Munchkin charachters refers to charachters that are kitted out with all manner of shootyness, but I don't know exactly what the author meant by it.

As for the assault rifle vs a buggy full of guys, an assault rifle on a high perch can do a heck of alot of damage to the passengers before the buggy get's there. I think it's possible that dense and tall terrain help to ameliorate this. Future games will tell.

As noted in the reviews, we do think that a 4x4 table would probably be a better choice.

Looks like a lot of fun. Just out of curiosity what scale model cars are you using? Can you offer any advice on buying toy/model cars for 28mm gaming? I'm thinking of making a gang using my steel legion but I like the idea of technicals.

 Red_Starrise wrote:
Looks like a lot of fun. Just out of curiosity what scale model cars are you using? Can you offer any advice on buying toy/model cars for 28mm gaming? I'm thinking of making a gang using my steel legion but I like the idea of technicals.

We've done alot with die-cast toy cars found that 1/43 cars and 1/48 trucks (common die-cast scales for those types) or near-to-it work very well for 28mm (1/56 or so) gaming. Technically they are too "big", but when you factor in the height of the miniatures base, scale creep, and the fact that most 28-32mm figures are sculpted as wide as a 1/48 scale figure they just look right.

I had some 1/32 vehicles as well, but they just seemed too big, so I got rid of all of them except for a Beetle I had transformed into a monster truck buggy.

die-cast 1/43 cars and 1/48 scale trucks are commonly found at toy stores, drug stores, on ebay, and other places for between 4-9 bucks (more for trucks).

You can see some more info about modding, painting, and sourcing them on these blog posts:
Bburago (cheap!) cars and hot wheels motorcycles
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2012/06/post-apocalyptic-cars-and-motorcycles.html
Post apoc Water truck and others
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2012/01/28mm-on-cheap-post-apocalyptic-vehicles.html
My take on the Mad Max interceptor
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2012/04/last-v8-interceptor.html
Step-by-step painting and converting.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2011/12/28mm-on-cheap-toy-cars-as-wargames.html