What is it?:
Pulp! Is a skirmish miniatures game that aims to replicate the feeling of old books and movies from the “pulp era” of media.
As mentioned above, the setting isn’t really one, but a genre instead. The book references a few of the more famous pulp series and media, but they do include two scenarios in the book. One is about a New Rome thing being discovered and the other is about ninjas and poison during the WW2 era. Otherwise, it’s up to you to come up with something.
The system:
The game is based around pools of d6’s, with the number and amount depending on a few things.
When it comes to the amount of models you’re going to have, it’s going to depend, but it recommends that you start with maybe a dozen models. Each of these models are going to have a rank, which is going to be the main factor in how many models you’re going to have and how good they’re going to be. To put it simply, the more powerful the unit is, the fewer models it will have. In the beginning of the book, they recommend one Hero/Villain model (or two), one or two 2-Model Elite or Veteran units, and three 3-Model Seasoned units. And we come to one of my first problems with the game. It doesn’t clearly state that you should have either one Elite Unit or two Veteran units, plus I don’t think this really reflects Pulp genre stuff. Usually, in the old serials and films, you’d have a main hero, a “trusty sidekick”, maybe a love interest and maybe a scientist or “Kenny” (young kid that’s going to cause problems but also be helpful) for the heroes. The villains were usually the main villain, be it the king, the priest, or whatever, and then a second in command (who might be traitorous), and a bunch of grunts. By requiring both sides to be matched like this, it doesn’t quite line up with how we see most stuff in the old stuff. Hell, even modern stuff doesn’t have things like this.
Anyway. Once you pick your models, you get to equip them. After a few games to learn the rules, which is fair. Models can have one ranged weapon, one melee weapon, and one explosive. In addition to the stuff you’d expect (pistols, knives, grenades, etc), they do have a nice list of Mad Science or Alien Technology weapons, with is kind of cool. I say you could also make them into spells or super powers, if you need them. That said, there are some special powers that a unit/model can use a few times per game. There’s a fairly sized list of them, but it’s not well organized, and they do have that “roleplaying element” where your Heroes can pick from a list of things that limits what general powers you can use, but also gives you another power instead. One the other side of that, there’s a list of drawbacks that you can use to balance it out. Not that this game really cares about balance, but it at least gives it lip service.
The game is broken down into several different phases in a turn, like a lot of games, based around movement, combat, and typical end of turn stuff. However, one thing that makes this game a little different is the “continuing combat” phase at the start of the turn, for hand to hand fights that hasn’t been resolved yet. When it comes to picking your actions, there’s a lot of leeway in how much you can move and what you can and can’t do in the next phases depending on what you choose to do. Out of everything they have, this is one thing that I like the most. Getting to choose between moving zero and four inches for the same action is really nice, because it reduces the sense of urgency or need to “do something” when you’re trying to set things up, and might make it harder for an opponent to guess what your plan is based on what action you’ve picked. Plus, I think I rather enjoy combined actions these days.
Now, on to some of the stuff that I feel like doesn’t quite work with this game. While you do have a rather nice list of classic wild and savage animals (yes, including dinosaurs) to include in games if you want to, I don’t feel like the rules work quite as well as I would like them. I can’t explain exactly what it is about them, but it’s just not clicking for me. And, as much as this game wants to be like character driven game, there’s no real rules for experience and campaigns. Part of this is because of the loose rules they have, but it’s also the fact that this game is trying to be everything to everyone, which is the downside of “universal” games and settings. What compounds this for me is the fact that the scenarios they give you are more outlines than real scenarios. While this is great for the intent of the game, as you don’t know what kind of games and settings your players are going to come up with, you can’t really give them firm games to play. There’s also several variations they discuss, should you be trying to run a campaign. Not that you can, not like other games, because there’s nothing but an outline of an idea of how to improve models and groups.
Is it worth it?:
If you have the models already, and it’s on sale, yes. Otherwise, probably not. Honestly, this feels unfinished or cut short. It’s almost there but there’s too much missing for me. I swear, it’s got to be that full page art that Osprey uses that must be cutting down the page count just enough to leave things undone.
Honestly, it reminds me a lot of Zona Alfa. However, ZA has two supplements that make it better, which is where it feels like the author wanted to take it, but didn’t have the space. If this game could do the same, I’d put this as a firm yes.
I only picked up this game because I’d heard really good things about it and I’ve been on the hunt for a good Pulpy game. Nothing in what I found pointed out the problems I found, which is a shame, because I’m still hunting for that game…
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