Welcome to the Russellmania UniversALL Skirmish System—or just RUSS, if you’re already on nickname terms. This is a tabletop miniatures game for people who love tactical decisions, cinematic moments, and rolling just the right number at just the right time. It’s designed from the ground up to be fast, flexible, and fun—like a Swiss army knife that picked up a hobby in storytelling and strategy.

You don’t need an official line of miniatures or a wallet-wrecking starter box. Got some minis lying around from that game you meant to finish? Perfect. Want to mix space marines with post-apocalyptic punks and zombies wearing riot gear? Go wild. RUSS says yes.

At its core, it’s a tactical skirmish game—cover matters, positioning counts, and your choices on the table have weight. But there’s also a light RPG flavor drizzled on top: characters can improve over time, suffer setbacks, and carry scars from mission to mission. It’s like a Saturday morning cartoon got tangled up with a rogue AI’s idea of a tactical simulator, and you’re invited to steer the chaos.

Start wherever you like, but if you're ready to go deeper, grab the Core Rules from the Downloads section. Everything else plugs into that.

Stats: What Your Characters Are Good At (and Not So Good At)

Every hero, antihero, or walking disaster in RUSS comes with two flavors of stats: Combat and RPG. The Combat ones are for shooting, stabbing, dodging, and generally staying alive. The RPG stats are for everything else - brains, brawn, finesse, and keeping your cool when things get weird.

Combat Stats

• Melee: For when you’re up close and personal
• Ranged: For when you want to solve problems from a distance
• Defense: For when problems are trying to solve you back
• Health: Your cushion before your good stats start falling apart
• Movement: How far you go when it’s time to go

RPG Stats

• Brains: Hacking, solving puzzles, rerouting the reactor
• Strong:Lifting, smashing, prying open doors with a crowbar
• Nimble: Dodging lasers, climbing walls, swiping stuff unnoticed
• Willpower: Grit, guts, and resisting all the bad things

Each stat is a dice pool—so Melee 3 means 3 dice. Higher is better. Want the full breakdown and how these stats interact with tasks and rolls? Download the Core Rules and Character Sheet to start building your squad the right way.

Player Health vs. NPC Health: Why You Get a Second Chance (and They Don’t)

Let’s talk survival. In RUSS, players don’t just get dropped in a single hit (most of the time). You’ve got Health Levels, and when they run out, your stats start taking the damage. In RUSS, player characters use a layered health system that lets them take a beating and keep going, but only for so long.

Player Health is a countdown, not a pool. Each player has:

• Health Level: Your starting toughness (usually 4).
• Current Health Level: How many layers of Health you have left. This starts equal to the Health Level.
• Current Health: How many hits you can take at your current level (starts equal to your Current Health Level).

Here’s how it works:

• Each hit reduces Current Health by 1.
• When Current Health hits 0:
• Your Current Health Level drops by 1.
• Your Current Health is immediately reset to match the new Health Level.

This continues until:

• Your Current Health Level hits 1, and
• Your Current Health at that level is reduced to 0. At that point, you're KO’d.

There’s no stat loss, no fatigue, and no overflow damage — unless a special rule like the Critical Overflow Death Check is triggered. This layered system makes healing and recovery meaningful between missions. It also builds tension as characters edge closer to KO. Most importantly, it keeps players in the fight longer — without tracking tons of HP.

NPCs, on the other hand? They’re simpler: a few hits and they’re down. No stat degradation. No Health Levels. No whining. Just splat.

Want the full breakdown on Health resets, critical overflows, and when the Reaper actually shows up? Download the Core Rules and check out the Health Tracking section. You're not immortal—but you are hard to kill.

Combat/Task Rolls: Where Dice Make (or Ruin) Your Day

This is the engine of RUSS - Combat/Task Rolls, aka your moment of glory or absolute disaster.

Every time you attack, dodge, hack, climb, or try anything that might fail dramatically, you’re rolling dice. Here's how it works:

• You roll a dice pool based on your relevant stat (Melee, Ranged, Brains, whatever).
• The opposing force (an enemy's Defense, the Difficulty of a Task, etc.) rolls their own dice pool.
• Then we pair up the dice, highest vs highest, second-highest vs second-highest, and so on.

Each matchup tells a story:

• You win the pair? That’s a success (or a hit in combat).
• You lose? That’s a failure—or worse.

Now here’s where it gets spicy:

• Roll a natural 6 (or max on any die)? That’s a Critical Hit—it beats everything except another Critical.
• Roll a natural 1? That’s a Critical Miss—it’s thrown out like bad takeout and doesn’t count at all.

The dice comparison gives you a clean result: you hit or succeed by X, or fail by Y. It’s fast, brutal, and always exciting.

To make it easier to learn, or if you don't want to bother digging out dice, we've got a online dice roller in the Tools section that rolls, pairs dice, and tells you who the winner is.