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One page rules is becoming quite the thing in my information bubble. I knew about the project for a very long time but it never quite really got me hooked since it was purely 28mm and basically another 40k reprint at the time - this was years ago.
That changed some time ago when I noticed a 6mm imperial guard army tagged with "ready to play one-page rules", after asking "how" I got the answer that they made some experimental rules which would allow it.
Noted mentally and ignored for later.
And now it's that later!
After buying and reading through the rulebook I decided to give it a go!
As mentioned, the game is designed with 28mm in mind. There is a dedicated section on how to play in smaller scale miniatures and/or with multi-based units, but it was not to our liking so we decided to take the route "one 28mm infantry model equals one 6mm infantry stand" and see how that goes
Before we dive any further I need to make two things clear
1) Both me and my opponents bought the extended rulebook but in the end, we did not use any of the official extended rules (at least not knowingly). The rule that we did introduce was taken directly from the Epic Armageddon tournament scene: "all-terrain is either area terrain and/or impassible terrain"
I'm mentioning the extended rulebook to emphasise that in the end, we used the core rules and mission cards. In order to recreate our experience, you do not have to purchase it (although I strongly encourage you to purchase it and support the creators).
2) This comparison is drawn after playing a lot of Epic Armageddon games and only two OPR games. I'm not an OPR veteran but I know good/bad mechanics when I see them or at least that's what i believe. I will not go into super nitty-gritty mechanics details (at least not all the time). I'm going to present this more or less as a comparison to Epic Armageddon rules.
With that said let's start with the summary:
I believe that Grimdark future with the two rule changes we introduced is a really nice game! The scale change worked perfectly (besides a single inconvenience, more about that later). We had a lot of fun playing and you can really feel that the rules are streamlined for speed rather than "fluff accuracy". It's a similar experience to Epic in a way that makes the game enjoyable but different.
Mechanics:
For me OPR:GF is a mixture of: Songs of blades and Heroes, Two hour wargames StarArmy and Epic armageddon. If you are familiar with one of those games there will be only a few surprises. If you know more than one then the introductory process is going to be even smoother!
Setup:
Jumping into details in more or less Epic gameplay order
There is no such thing as a EA garrison, the closest thing would be units with the scout ability which can move right after deployment.
There is no strategy rating for armies/units. First move is determined at the start by the deployment roll which means no more always going second when playing as the Guard against Marines and non-broken/pinned units always do as they are ordered. It removes the suspense (aka gambling) element in favour of predictability and speed.
The initiative rules are much less complicated but still have a nice twist. There is no initiative retaining like Epic has. This means that's it's a strictly alternating activation. This can be both a good and a bad thing. I can recall using the retain initiative on more than one occasion to push an assault forward or attack in two directions to overwhelm my enemy before he can react. I can also recall even more times when I was on the receiving end of that mechanism and got decimated (especially with Eldar since they can retain twice in a row!). This makes for a less complex mechanism aka faster/simpler gameplay.
As I mentioned there is only one who goes first roll-off. That does not mean that the order is static and set in stone. It's an interesting mechanic in which the side which runs out of activations quicker will start the next round. In other words, the more elite (or more destroyed) army will act first. Quite an interesting twist. This actually means that at some point in the round (you can lose units so not really a thing at the beginning) you can predict ( with increasing certainty) who will go first next round and thanks to that act accordingly- for example by opening your ambush units.
Again streamlined mechanics which works for this game.
Moving to the units
Stat wise they are very similar, the only minor difference is that unit quality decides how likely a weapon is to hit rather than the weapon itself. This speeds up the game nicely since you always act on the same number.
Everything is super slow and I really mean it! All units have the same speed. That speed is 6 inches (15,24cm) the value for 'fast' units is 8 inches (20,32cm), a unit (in the basic rules) can either move and shoot or move two times without shooting (can end in mele).
This means that a Human APC can move up to 20 cm in a round and fire its weapons or move 40 without firing.
In comparison, the same APC in Epic can either move 30 cm and fire, move 60 and fire with less accuracy or move 90 without firing. The base speed in OPR is the slowest speed in Epic. You can forget about dynamic flanking manoeuvres and fast deployments from one flank to another.
In that regard, OPR is much more of a static game than Epic. But on the other hand, there is no Overwatch (in base OPR rules) so you do not need to worry about triggering 4 overwatch fires from enemy formations by accident (true story of your truly during Epic World Championships 2019) and objectives are used a bit differently. For example, there is no blitz objective (that would be almost unreachable with the given speeds and game length) and you do not need to keep units on an objective to control it all the time. It's different and less dynamic but not in an "obviously worse" way.
It is critical to say that less dynamic doesn't mean sluggish and or static it simply means less dynamic there are still some interesting twists that you can do with ambushing units which are definitely more available to armies in comparison to teleporting units in epic.
On the other hand, ranges are longer than in Epic and most units have no problems in shooting to targets located very far away. The "most common" range in Epic would be either 30 or 45 cm (12-18 inches) while the base "rifle" range in OPR is 24 inches (60cm) There are of course shorter and longer ranges for specific weapons, this is just an "average". This means that units are less likely to be out of range and "useless" but it also can lead to a more static game.
Fire separation -non-existent in EA (for a good reason I think it would not fir the mechanics) really shines in OPR. It really helps to thin the enemy ranks down! Besides being a mechanics choice I also think that this actually streamlines the game. Instead of figuring out where I want to strike to maximize firepower, I can simply move into cover and fire at different targets.
While on the topic of firepower. In OPR there is also no anit-personel/anti-tank weapon categories. Everything can fire at everything but different save modifications mean that some weapons will penetrate more than others.
A bit of surprise were the artillery blast templates. They are not present in OPR, there are blast rules that allow you to hit more elements of a unit in a single shot but the way they are stated means that a single volley can not target two intermingled formations
Finishing up on firepower one last note. While creating my army for the first time I noticed that some weapons have a 'deadly' special rule. At first, I thought that it was a direct translation of the 'Titan killer' rule in Epic, which would mean that it's a useful but not really required thing most of the time. I was severely wrong. You need some deadly weapons to eliminate enemy vehicles, consider deadly more like a dedicated tank killer/ macro weapon. You want to have a few in your army.
Speaking of vehicles
All vehicles have hit points in contrast to epic Armageddon when we're only war engines have hit points. Big units considered war engines in epic terms have twenty-four points while normal vehicles have anything between six and twelve depending on the armour class. This means that their survivability is quite bigger than in Armageddon.
In epic aircraft are basically a game within a game.
The rules are similar yet different to what the ground units have to use
so it is an additional step of complication
in GDF aircraft rules are pretty similar
there are some differences but those differences are almost cosmetic
there are no big changes from the standard ground rules
that's a nice touch
Let's talk a little bit about the issues that we encountered while playing while absolutely not blocking they might be an annoyance to some of the people that are more reality focused
Alexanders palace
I was actually a bit shocked and confused that 90% of my entire force started in the palace grounds and there was still room! It looked a bit off... I thought that in 28mm that would probably not happen but then I realized that in 28mm that palace and its ground would be half of the table if not bigger. So definitely spacious enough. That was also a direct result of no blast templates in the game. The blast rule does not allow for hitting intermingled formations. ToBe Checked!!
switching to 6mm gives Vehicles an advantage
I have a gut feeling that is not confirmed by anything that in this scale vehicles actually have an advantage over infantry because their footprint is way smaller and it's pretty easy to hide a vehicle behind the train feature in 28 mm that would be not impossible but pretty damn hard to do
One thing that needs to be stated out loud and it wasn't a problem for us but I can see that it can be a problem for some people is that in the convention that we use and one model engine equals 1 stand of infantry transports basically become clown cars
It might not be as visible with smaller units but in larger is really shows.
There is a solution to this problem which I would like to try - it should also help with the size advantage I mentioned earlier - if You check out the 6mm age of tyrants miniature line they have pretty nice vehicles that are on the "bigger" side of the scale. They should work perfectly for this OPR convention.
This video is already longer than I expected so let's come back to non-issues and wrap upcoming back to non-issues!
Blast markers in short there in one place in Green Dot future there are no blast markers in the core rules there is an extension module that adds suppression tokens which works similarly to the glass markers but not exactly the same they feel a little bit overpowered comparing to last markers but did I didn't test them so hard to say
Assault
Where epic assaults are intricate strategic moves requiring planning and preparation OPR assaults are simply blunt for trauma
there are a few twists that make OPR assaults a little bit different than pure close combat, for example, you can actually eliminate a unit instantaneously if it gets enough damage and fails its quality check but the biggest change is that there are no bonuses other than inflicted casualties.
Outnumbering the enemy, being suppression free or being led by an inspiring character doesn't add up to your assault resolution
This translates to a much less complicated and thus faster mechanic but you can definitely feel the loss of options.
So after all of this what's my final conclusion
these are two different games that can be played on a similar operation scale
While Epic can be much more dynamic in terms of manoeuvring
GDF definitely has the speed advantage in terms of overall gameplay.
The fact that one-page rules is exactly what it says a single page of rules is a huge advantage over Epic. Pulling in new players should be much easier.
Both games scratch a similar itch and will be appearing on my tables
For now, I can say with a lot of confidence that GDF will not replace Epic Armageddon for me!
Hope you enjoyed this short summary. If you did remember to like share and subscribe and if you would be more interested in a bit more in-depth comparison or a comparison of Epic and a completely different game leave a comment below!
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