Smallbrawl

A fast, hard-hitting skirmish game for the minis you already have. Build a warband of five to ten models. Each round, you roll six Tempo dice and work from 1 to 6.

Tempo

Every round you roll six dice and leave them where both players can see them. Each die is spent at its own number. Low numbers give you room to manoeuvre and throw cheap shots. As the numbers climb, movement gets tighter and attacks get nastier.

Any model can spend any die, so spread your Tempo across the warband or pile it into one model when you need something to work.

You know that the 6 is coming. So does your opponent.

The brawl

Every model can Attack, Move, Push or Guard at every step. Push knocks models out of position and can send them into terrain or into each other. Each class adds its own abilities at different Tempo steps: charges, shield bashes, roots, blinks and healing. So a 2 is never only a 2.

A game takes about half an hour to an hour.

Use the minis you already have

Rename and reinterpret the classes to suit whatever is actually on your shelf. Painted masterpiece? Perfect. Questionable goblin you found at the bottom of a box? Also perfect.

What is in the PDF

Four pages with the complete game: eight classes, six scenarios, bigger battles, multiplayer, dangerous terrain and tools for making your own classes.

Bring some miniatures, at least seven D6 each, something to measure inches with, an A4-sized patch of table, and preferably a handful of terrain.

A round in play

You roll 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6 for Tempo. Your opponent rolls 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6. They have the only 1, so they take priority and spend it alone. At step 2, your Rogue spends the 2 to Move 5" into base contact with an enemy model. Your opponent takes their turn with the 2.

At step 3, your Druid spends the 3 to Move 4" into base contact with the same enemy. Your opponent has no 3 or 4, so you get the next action too, with the Rogue spending the 4 to Attack. The core Attack is +2, with another +1 for Support from the Druid. You roll a 4, for a total of 7. The enemy rolls a 3 and has Armor 1, for a total of 4. The difference is 3, so it takes 3 damage.

You still have 5, 5, 6 left, and your opponent has seen them coming all round.

This is a public playtest

Smallbrawl is complete and will stay free, but it is still being tested. If something feels unclear or unexpectedly powerful, make a call and keep playing. Let me know what happened.

Printing: the sheets are A4. On US Letter, choose Fit to Page in your print dialog.

Current version: Playtest v0.76.3.