"Star Grunt meets Slammers" Topic

Jon Tuffley, owner and proprietor of Ground Zero Games; author – of course – of many rules systems (Full Thrust, Dirtside, GCav etc) and the man behind the ever popular Star Grunt paid a visit at Slammers HQ and we played a couple of games, which was very nice! We got out three detachments of the Solace Regular Army, (led by Colonel Priamedes) defending a town attacked by a detachment of the elite New Ukrainian Army.

We played a game using The Crucible and then followed it with some actions using much of the same forces using elements of Star Grunt 3 which Jon is working on and we had a debrief (and some Pizza!) and discussed concepts and tossed about ideas. The first game, that we finished, was about equal on points: – about 2000 or so a side – but the Solace were holed up in buildings and the Ukrainians had to advance and park outside the Police HQ to win.

It was a good – and productive – session for both of us, I think. GZG has been fundamental to the Slammers project from the start andthe game we played used – appropriately – GZG vehicles and figures (played by Jon, of course) and New Ukrainians from CMG for the vehicles and Rebel for the infantry, all from my collection.

Buildings were a mix of scratched, Kato, Brigade and 4Ground. Read a little more and look at some extra pictures here: link

Jon and I both did some thinking about mutual support for both systems in the future and projects we could work on.

'Nuff said!

John Treadaway
hammers-slammers.com

We played a game using The Crucible and then followed it with some actions using much of the same forces using elements of Star Grunt 3 which Jon is working on and we had a debrief (and some Pizza!) and discussed concepts and tossed about ideas.

Oh, hello! What's that??? Star Grunt 3??? Coolest.

Any chance you have more pictures of your games with John? Looks like you guys had a great time.

Wait, Stargrunt 3?

You have my full attention. I thought he'd gotten out of the rules business entirely.

GCAV? Never heard of it, got a link? I'm pretty interested.

Jon and I both did some thinking about mutual support for both systems in the future and projects we could work on.

And the rest of the galaxy shuddered in collective terror…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

GCAV? Never heard of it, got a link? I'm pretty interested.

Those rules are so old, they pre-date the Internet. I very much doubt there is any link, I'm afraid.

Thanks guys

(roughly) in order:

I've known Jon for almost thirty years and did a piece on him for Miniature Wargames a year or so ago. GCav, as I recall was the earliest set of rules he produced and are very much out of print.

Mr Tuffley and I share a lot of common interests – one being a liking for games with polyhedral dice ( winks at Leland!) and another is a big love of the Slammerverse and us both having cut our early SF gaming teeth on Traveler.

In fact, I did the original photography for the covers of Full Thrust, Dirt Side and Star Grunt, back in the day when photo-correction involved slight of hand rather than photoshop!

I have many thoughts on where to go project wise at the moment (as my excellent meeting with Leland this time last year in San Francisco will attest) and one of them has been discussing with Jon the fact that he is dead keen to get to grips with a new edition of Star Grunt: one that covers some new ground etc.

I've said I'd be interested in helping him and – though it's early days – something may come of it. Let's hope.

All the pictures of the games are on those web pages there's only just over a dozen as, inevitably, we were trying ideas out and chatting (and stuffing our faces) and I was only taking snaps when I remembered (as we were at this for the best part of 8 or 9 hours, you can see I didn't take many!)

There are a lot of systems I'd like to make another contribution to (hence my chats with Leland – I do love Silent Death) but I just need to get myself into gear.

I'm currently handling Trade bookings for next year's Salute and it is quite a task, so I need to work around it and push myself a bit harder, I guess!

Thanks again, all.

John T

Nice one John :)
Looking forward to what comes of this :)

This is exciting news indeed!
Stargrunt 3 is going to be a thing :)

Gorgeous game, damn fine layout there.

Great news! looking forward to see them.

Stargrunts III now that is something well worth getting excited over if it works out, I would think that you would get all the support you needed from the majority of the members here including me, I still am a big fan of playing SG2 when I get the opportunity. :) Zac

Above all:
That table, it makes me weep.

Stargrunt 3! I have an erection.

Just all kinds of good news here -- John T, I never realized you were the photographer for the books! That's great.

Stargrunt 2 is still the standard against which all rulebooks are judged for me.

And all of this is very well and good but what people really want to know is…when will Full Metal Anorak be out!? ;-)

Jon T and John T working on another project together – this simply made my day.

Best,
Nick C

Thanks gnubrid and nickc – I'm hoping for good things. Ghost – you can probably get some tablets for that

John T

Excellent. All very excellent.

@stingray20166

Yes it was a loooong time ago and I did just the front covers with the odd internal shot. All snaps were taken using 35mm on my old Minolota (or possibly even one of my three, very old Praktica BCIs) on Fujichrome ASA 50 slide, probably, to get as much resolution/detail as possible.

There's a reason that there's an asteroid in the way of the support stand on the space ship for Full Thrust – like I said, no computer compositing here: all done in camera with a painted background.

@Jagannath

You have to steeple your fingers when you say that and do it in a "Monty Burns" voice!

John T