These Rules Are FUBAR

Posted On November 17, 2012

Last night, the boy and I headed down to the weekly game night and threw together a quick test drive of the FUBAR rules.

For those of you who don’t know, FUBAR is a free, one-page, sci-fi set of rules from Gawd ‘Elp Us Games. As a one page set of rules they are reasonably complete, with all the standard rules for initiative, activation, movement, firing, melee, and morale. It uses a bit of a hybrid game turn with elements of IGO-UGO and action-reaction. Whoever wins initiative activates units by beating a target number based on troop quality – better troops are more likely to activate. When a unit fails its activation, that unit goes onto overwatch, and play passes to the opposite player.

Like this, only bigger.

Firepower is resolved in the standard manner – roll dice for each little man (with extra dice added for squad support weapons), and each die that beats a target number (modified by things like aiming, troop quality, and cover), hits a figure.  Any hit figure that doesn’t make an armor save is hurt.  Sort of.  The first few wounds suppress a figure and left over ouchies eliminate a figure.

The deal here is that each suppressed figure in a unit makes it harder to activate on their next turn.  If your unit fails to activate, your suppressed figures stand back up, but that unit is stuck on overwatch for the turn.  As a result, choosing between suppression and casualties gives you the choice protecting your men and making it more likely that your unit does what you want them to do.

As a one-page rule set, there were a number of issues that cropped up during play for which we had no real answers.  All we could do was use common sense and roll a die.  Although, to be honest, I wound up giving the boy the benefit of the doubt more often than not cause I’m just that kind of Dad.

Let’s leave more detailed discussion of the rules for another day.  The take home message here is that the rules are light, quick, and easy, and we’re looking forward to more games.  Now that we’ve resolved the bulk of the drudgery of the rules, we’re eager to put them to use with more sophisticated scenarios and asymmetric forces.

Next time, I’ll bore you with the stuff that won’t make a lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the rules.  Promise.