Description

Grey Storm, Red Steel is a set of miniatures rules for small-unit tactical combat on the Eastern Front in World War 2. The scale of the game is a 1:1 representation of men and equipment. Time scale is one game turn equals 2 and a half minutes; ground scale is 1 inch equals 10 meters. The miniatures are mounted in multiples on bases that represent rifle teams (3-4 figures), light machine gun teams (2 figures), leaders (1 figure) and weapons teams (2-4 figures depending on the weapon). Tanks and vehicles are mounted singly. Infantry units are made up of two or more rifle teams and zero to two light machine gun teams.

The rules work very well for representing actions on a platoon or company scale. The rules are best for infantry actions. The rules for tanks are not very detailed: one die roll to see if a hit is made, another for the result based on a comparison of the penetrative ability of gun firing with the overall armor quality of the target. However, they tend to give as good an end result as more complex rules. Anti-tank weapons range from the PzB38/39 and PTRD AT rifles to massive 128mm and 152mm AT guns.

GSRS provides rules for hidden set up, pre-battle recon, weather, command control, and target location that can be used to make challenging game scenarios. There are also some "chrome" rules for things like Panzer Aces, Heroes of the Soviet Union, and civilians in the combat zone. The rules also cover the use of cavalry and air support.

The rules includes a lot of information about unit organization, AFV data, and aircraft data. There is also a section detailing the differences between Soviet and German tactics and capabilities.

GSRS is a somewhat obscure and underrated set of miniatures rules that provides a great deal of flavor and compares very well to tactical boardgames like Squad Leader, ASL, and the Advanced Tobruk (ATS) series.