Cross genre games are always fun, especially when it comes to Privateer Press games. Much like Game’s Workshop’s Bloodbowl, the idea of Grind is like American Football, except with giant 10-ton metal behemoths. And like Bloodbowl, the idea is pretty awesome… come on, ten ton monsters slamming into each other! The icing on the cake is when Privateer Press reupdated the system to include a dice-resource mechanic similar to Monsterpocalypse, which made it pretty much a no-brainer to get.
Grind is a 2-player game. Each player has 5 Jacks; 2 Crushers and 3 Runners. Runners are your faster, nimbler jacks, while Crushers are your giant death machines built to steamroll through anything in their way. If you’re familiar with Warmachine, the runners and crushers are equivalent to your light and heavy jacks respectively.
As mentioned; the dice mechanic is much like Monsterpocalypse. You have action dice (white), boost dice (blue) and power dice (red). Action dice are your generic dice (used to move and to make attacks), which you use to play actions. Boost dice are slightly more powerful and available based on the type of weapons you outfit each Jack with, and power dice (the most powerful) are acquired as the game progresses.
Privateer Press has an entire walkthrough on their website, but essentially the fact that you get more power dice as the game progresses naturally means that the game gets more and more exciting as time passes. Plus the fact that you get to mix and match different arm types based the specific role of the jacks and make special moves like ‘Slingshot’ (ie the fastball special) provides a great depth to Grind.
Up next: A run through on Grind’s production value and miniatures.
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