by Brant Guillory, 30 September 2026
YAAH! #16 included the Urgent Fury game, an entry-point to the Squad Battles series that includes games set in Vietnam and Afghanistan. This one covers the US forces in Grenada in 1983 facing off with the local Grenadians1 and the Godless commie Cuban interlopers. Like most magazine games, it’s of limited scope, but as an entry-point to the series, it works. Moreover, unlike pretty much every magazine game in the history of ever, this one comes with a mounted map, and yes you read that correctly.
Components
You get the map, a sheet of counters, a small deck of cards, and rules & scenario info in the magazine itself.
click images to enlarge
The Game & Rules
The Squad Battles series of rules aren’t overly-complex, but exist as a solid framework on which to build a variety of different kinds of scenarios in an array of settings.
The map is a map. It’s got hexes that have letter/number coordinates. There’s terrain in the hexes. Did we mention it’s mounted?
Counters represent squads, leaders, and heavy weapons. They’re rated for movement and firepower, and may have a variety of icons that represent special abilities / powers for each of the units, depending on the type of unit. These include things like explosive rounds, or the ability to pop smoke. There are stacking limits to the hexes, but really it can often be about making sure your leaders are in the right places to lend their bonuses to the action, especially if you’ve got heavy weapons to bring to bear.
The other Squad Battles games have some vehicles, this one doesn’t. The other games also have much better counter contrast: the Afghanistan game has the combatants in red and green; green, yellow, blue, and gray for the Vietnam game. This one’s got everyone with a green background, but with some broad stripes of blue or teal for the Cubans or Grenadianians, and none of the Americans.
The shared deck of action cards drives the turn, as players will alternate playing the cards to do stuff. There are blocks toward the top of the cards with some narrative explaining whether it’s an action for your turn, a reaction to your opponent, or a support card that laters on top of another card. Beyond that there are random numbers and there are hits (in various colors) for combat resolution.
At the start of each turn, each player gets 4 cards, and in the bid for initiative, the winner will discard their winning card and play the turn one card down. Because the cards drive all the action, players have to weigh the cost of playing their bid for initiative against the possibility that they win the initiative and then discard that card and its possible actions.
From there, they alternate playing the cards for the various actions (Rally, Fire, Move and Fire, Fast Move, etc) and occasionally to modify their own actions (Aimed Shot, Critical Hit, etc). There are times where players will interrupt the opponent with a reaction card that shoots the opponent before they finish their firing, or allows a unit to retreat out of close combat.Combat action is resolved by flipping cards from the deck and counting the hits on the flipped cards. The hits are color-coded and only apply for certain kinds of actions (the colors are unequally distributed in the deck). The total number of hits is then added up – one hit shakes a unit, another flips it to a reduced side, a third will shake it again, and the fourth eliminates it. There are reactions and powers and terrain that all slough off hits, in effect increasing your ability to take hits.
Ultimately, this isn’t a high-complexity game, but that’s the point: the base mechanics are pretty simple, and the special effects you can look up as you go. It’s well-designed to jump in quickly and start slinging dice flipping cards in your battles.
Playing a bloodlust card can rally a unit in contact, and remove the shaken marker. Then you’re counting hits once you’re shooting at the enemy, and in this case, counting the red/yellow hits, and ignoring the green ones, with a “move and fire” card.
Summing It All Up
The Squad Battles series is designed to get you playing quickly, and your replayability comes through the variety of scenarios, variability of the card decks, and tweaks to unit capabilities depending on who gets placed where on the map. As a series, it’s good to have a range of modern tactical games you can play with one core system. Urgent Fury is a little lighter on components and scenario count than the other games, but as an entry-level magazine game, that’s pretty much what you’d expect, right?
The system is sound, easy to grasp after 2-3 playthroughs, and with minimal rules reference once players get more experience with the card effects. Whether or not this specific game is your cup of tea depends on (1) how interested you are in scenarios on Grenada2, (2) how much you plan to devour the rest of the magazine, and (3) whether or not you continue with the game series. If at least 2 of those criteria are met, dig in!
One final note, the card-driven mechanics of the Squad Battles series are very close to the same mechanics used in Flying Pig’s Night of Man sci-fi game. But where you could plausibly mix-&-match Rangers from Urgent Fury with Soviet paratroopers from ’85 Afghanistan and hack together some homebrew scenarios, there are enough other differences with Night of Man that would make that a non-starter. Also, Night of Man uses a square grid instead of hexes for the map. So it’s more of a cousin to the Squad Battles series than immediate family.
Disclosure: The author of this review does write a column for YAAH! Magazine, but has absolutely nothing to do with any other aspect of the magazine, including (especially!) the game.
This game was played from his author’s comp’ed copy of the magazine.
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