Round of Fire - Review

Round of Fire is a new skirmish game system from Lazy Games designed to allow you to use your own miniatures and utilises an innovative initiative mechanic and movement system designed to take into account different model sizes.

Should after reading this review you'd like to purchase the very reasonably priced pdf rulebook then you can find a link HERE as well as free downloads of the initiative 'wheel' and tokens HERE and the cards and templates HERE.

Lets here what the designers have to say in their own words...

The Round of Fire system offers a solid base to handle the action in a small fight between a few dozen individuals, and the rules are not bound to a specific setting or scale. The distances are measured in Distance Units, that can vary depending on the miniatures scaled used. Because of this, the very same game can be played on a 3? x 3? table with 28mm miniatures, on a 2? x 2? table with 15mm miniatures or even with larger or smaller scales. The “feel” of a particular setting is instead created with the use of specific figures profiles and weapons, which will encourage players to choose the right tactics for the fight. The Core Rules presents near-future profiles and some sample profiles for fantasy and renaissance soldiers, and more expansions will follow that will cover various other settings.

Round of Fire is a skirmish game that simulates the dynamics of battle through a unique activation system.The game rules are tailored around the Wheel, a solution to break from the concept of turns and to consider the battle as a continuous flow of actions. Players must make decisions at every point in the fight to effectively coordinate and manoeuvre their troops. Miniatures of many styles and scales can be used with the system, with players controlling anywhere between a handful to two dozen figures each. Figures and weapons are profiled through statistics that affect their use in the game and on the Wheel.

The wheel system is of particular interest as rather than the usual 'highest/lowest die roll goes first' system used by most games it uses a system whereby the speed of the unit and suppression by other enemy units controls the order in which units act. This gives a far more dynamic and fluid feel to combat than you get from other games and despite initially being somewhat of a shock to the system (I've suggested that the game creators do a video guide to this at some point) is enabled by the use of a simple 'side-board' that is available for download for free using the links at the top of this feature. The rest of this system is designed among more familiar lines but is still very well put together.

Over to the designers again...

The 94 pages of the Core Rules allow games in virtually any setting, covering mechanics for firefights and close combat encounters.

The manual also offers profiles for near-future battles, covering five factions representing tropes that span countless settings from highly trained elite troops to desperate scavengers, fictional militias to insurgents, or even swarms of mindless robots, with fourteen customisable types of troops presented and over thirty weapon types. There are nine playable scenarios in the manual as well, both symmetric and asymmetric, to provide competitive setups and more story-driven encounters. Example profiles for medieval and renaissance units and weapons are also proposed.

The rulebook goes into a great deal of detail to enable you to personalise your units to a considerable degree. This is obviously necessary in any system that enables you to utilise your own models as weapon load-outs vary considerably between different model ranges. The rulebook is very well laid out and has more than adequate rule explanations along with appropriate diagrams to further illustrate the points being discussed. This combined with a number of pictures of models in action gives an overall very professional look for a pdf effectively created by one man working very hard indeed.

The fact that the rulebook also contains a good selection of missions means that the system is overall very self contained though no doubt expansions are planned should it be a success (which it should be...it's very well designed overall).

Should you require some more information before making a purchase then the Facebook pages for The Lazy Games is HERE and the page for the game itself which is regularly updated is located HERE. There's also a quite long (but worth skimming through) on line 500 point playtest HERE.

There's also another review here at Wargame Vault should you wish an alternative viewpoint which is HERE.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Should you ever choose to purchase something based on one of my features or reviews then it would be nice if you could let the company know where the inspiration came from...who knows...they might be grateful to the poor unappreciated blogger who sent you their way...if however I've put you off a product...well...you can keep that info to yourself...