Gamma Wolves is the newest tabletop miniatures game from Ash Barker at Guerilla Miniature Games. It’s a post apocalyptic skirmish game that showcases Mecha scavenging the ruins of a broken, irradiated world for usable tech and resources. I got this game from a friend for my birthday, so I wanted to make sure you understand I got it for free. It’s published by Osprey Games as part of their expanding universe of skirmish gaming. Let’s dive deeper and see what we can see.
Gamma Wolves is a slim book, weighing in at 112 pages. It comes in both hardcover and kindle variants. Ash gives a two to three-page synopsis of how the world ended to set the stage for Gamma Wolves, and it does the job expected. There’s not an enormous investment in the backstory, but really it isn’t necessary for us as a player to understand how the universe came to be. It’s a setting for giant robots to duke it in the wasteland, and it works for that.
The book is divided into two primary sections, the base rules for the games and the campaign rules section of the book. The base rules take some adjustment from other miniature games because the individual units are complex. They aren’t Battlemech record sheet complicated, but they are more complex than a unit profile from most of the other wargames on the market. My earnest suggestion for getting used to the sheets is to read through the section on force construction a few times, try it out, and take time to watch the videos on the GMG YouTube channel (which can be retrieved here).
The intricacy of the force construction rules also highlights another feature of this game. It doesn’t have a dedicated miniature line of its own and strongly encourages you to find your own. The book suggests scales and base sizes for your Mecha. Other than that, it’s up to the players to determine the units they want to bring to the table and find representations for them. This could lead to some very unusual combinations of cobbled together ranges of Mecha across a play group, but that is part of the charm of a system that doesn’t have its own range.
The rules are fairly straightforward. If you are interested, I will break down the core rules of the game at a later date, but I will strongly encourage you to spend the money and pick up the tokens set from Death Ray Designs (here). The 90 degree firing arcs alone almost mandate the tokens sets, and you will save yourself a lot of time and irritation picking them up.
The Campaign aesthetic is very much an Ash Barker style of doing things, and it bleeds through into the rules. From a starting pool of resources, a group of players will construct their forces and play their way through several linked battles following a developing narrative from mission to mission. There are random treasure tables, ancient pieces of equipment to find, and it feels very much like the campaigns that Ash showcases on his YouTube channel. It reaches a natural conclusion, and then it’s time to start over again with a new campaign.
Overall Verdict: Should buy
The rules are mechanically straight forward with simplifications that encourage positioning and plotting your turns ahead of time to find the optimal position to engage your opponent. The scenarios are mechanically tight and have rules that encourage you to get in, secure objectives, and get out. For that alone, the book is worth the price of admission. It’s an insight into the mind of a very serious wargamer who’s sharing his design aesthetic with the world.
The downside to the game is that because it doesn’t have a defined model range of its own, it can be very hard to get a group to engage with the game. If you have a colossal miniatures collection, you can probably put enough bodies on the table to get started, but you will have to carry a lot of the load while the other players scrounge up Mecha.
That’s my brief review of Gamma Wolves, by Ash Barker. If you like this article and want to see more like it, you need to let me know these things and I will try to cover more information about it.
I’ll see you all next time.
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