Review: Space Gits

Space Gits an odd duck of a game by the man himself Mike Hutchinson. Mike asks the question, “can you model a game around drunk-ass orks being drunk asses?” I would have to say the answer is a resounding yes: this game is inspired.

Before we get to the game, let’s talk about the rule book. This was another book waiting for me in my brother’s flat. A small A5 hardcover I’ll be able to smuggle back to Canada with whatever I end up grabbing at Dragonmeet. Mike did the layout himself and it’s impressive. The book is neat and tidy, easy to read, but with lots of flourishes that give the impression of drunken ork messiness: crumpled paper backgrounds, edges and borders that are almost always some sort of torn paper effect, etc. The miniatures and their photography by Tyler Russo (Billion Dollar Clown Farm) are fantastic, as one would expect if you’ve seen his YouTube channel. He did a great job converting minis for this game. Till Förster’s illustrations complete the package. Absolutely frenetic art. I’m happy I grabbed the book.

Mike opens the rule book with a discussion about what he was going for with the game. He does something similar with Hobgoblin, though the discussion comes at the back. I suspect he appreciates his audience is likely a non-trivial number of indie gaming nerds who want to know how the sausage gets made. You can read the rest of the rule book with their goals in mind. Perhaps the clearest form of expectation setting. (I am reminded of Apocalypse World and its progeny that love to make the point of the game particularly explicit.)

Players take turn alternatively activating models. Each model can scoot, shoot or boot. The games central conceit is centred around dice moving dexterity. Your orks will build a tower of dice when they activate or take hits. When you move your orks around you must move their dice tower along with them. Knock over their tower, the ork has fallen on their ass and their activation ends. Opponents can steal bottle caps from fallen orks, the games currency and how you score to win. This is the boot action. Bottle caps are scattered over the board when you start the game. Scooting is how you move. It will involve dexterity as well, though more likely luck. You roll your orks movement dice into the play area. The ork will move the number of inches indicated on the dice, directly towards the dice. Movement neatly models the drunken meandering motion of the orks. If you bump into a bottle cap you will pick it up. If you bump into an orc you will fight. Shooting is a similar sort of action. You roll dice into the play area, and your ork will fire their gun in the direction of the dice, but this time the distance their bullets travel are dictated by the weapon they use. The die’s value needs to beat the target’s toughness to score a big hit, otherwise the target takes a weak hit. Hits cause an ork to gain more dice for their dice tower.

After 30 minutes to police show up to break up the party. Players create a siren dice pool that starts with 2 dice. Before players activate they’ll add a dice to the pool and roll all them all. If they roll triples the game ends immediately. (The game will certainly end after 13 activations, as it’s impossible not to roll a triple after that point.) You can pour yourself another beer and play again.

There are rules for vehicles, so you can live out your immoral drunk driving fantasies guilt free. There’s a campaign system so you can play a drunker orkier Mordheim. There’s a bunch of factions to help you theme your orks, and differentiate the different war bands. There is a lot of gaming to be had with this book.

Space Gits is such a unique and unusual game. I can’t think of another skirmish game I own that attempts anything like this. I won’t pretend to have been interested in a dexterity based skirmish game, and likely wouldn’t have picked it up if not for the fact it was made by Mike Hutchinson. Everything he’s produced seems particularly interesting. I’ll need to write about Hobgoblin at some point. A game I’ve actually played! As it stands I was at a pub drinking an ale and reading this book, so this is the review you get.