Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Mass combat idea (part 2)

So following on from yesterday's brain dump, I am pleased with the leader centric system (though a little bummed Foundry got there first!).



Idea 2: slaughter margins
So the next issue is buckets o' dice.  I like the idea of essentially comparing the number of troops in a unit to the enemy and gaining 1 dice if you outnumber them, 2 dice if you double, 3 if you triple them... and so on.  Rounding down.
Example:  6 orc ninjas face off against 15 zombies.  Its 2:1 advantage- the zombies would need 18 for 3:1- or would need to slay 1 orc (15/5).
This means you can have swarms of goblins and only need a few dice.  Swarms are an advantage in that they keep this bonus for a while and take time to slaughter.

Idea 3:  diceyness
A D6 (or D8?) roll equal or less than own skill to score a hit.  Attacker rolls vs. melee score... Enemy rolls defence score.  Deduct defense hits from attacks- remove casualties.  If attacker rolls zero hits, enemy gets to counter attack. On a draw, both lose 1 casualty each.  If neither score a hit, no casualties.  If defender scores no hits, enemy hits doubled.

Idea 4:  igoabit-yougoabit
Play passes to one player, who rolls for activations (custom d6 maybe- 1, 2, 2, 3, wild, wild). Move that number of units and mark them with a gem.   Play passes to next player.  This continues til all models have been moved.  Once opponent has all units marked, you can move all remaining units.
Rolling a wild means you get activations equal to your total morale points.  These are given by command units, baggage trains etc.  The max is 3 activations by default, but you can have any morale points you like.

Idea 5:  Measuring
A single measuring stick approx 3 bases wide is used.  Slow get 1 move, medium 2, fast 3.  You can force march your troops by placing a fatigue marker next to them giving you 1 more stick move.  A unit can have three of these normally.  They give a dice to enemy, and one can be removed by resting a turn.  You can have a max of 2 fatigue, and force marching once full kills troops/adds wounds.

Idea 6: Shattered units
Golems, titans, giants.  The ability to field stupidly big models if you like, have them bowl down troops like skittles, throw casualties at other units- fall on them when slain.  A unit could be 'downed' or 'shattered' by placing one or more of its models prone.  Potentially getting up and seeing who survived on next turn to keep game moving.
A successful spell shatters a unit... you then work out casualties when that unit is next targeted or used.  So, if you shatter a unit, then charge it... you dont know how many units are standing until your charge ends... the smoke and debris clears.

2 comments:

  1. All of this is incredibly appealing to me, especially the baggage trains and the shattered units. I'm a little confused about the slaughter margins, though. If you have equal sized units, how many dice do you roll?

    Also, don't worry too much about GoB...it sounds like your game will be substantially different.

    I'm really taken with the leader-centric mechanic. It sounds like I could use it to easily turn a sci-fi skirmish game I'm fiddling with into a multi-squad affair...

    Say... if I were to send that ruleset to you (its short so far, about 11 pages) would you give me your thoughts?

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  2. Each squad has a number of dice indicating strength. You gain bonus dice for advantage of numbers- so a 2 dice goblin squad vs a 4 dice dwarf squad are evenly matched when goblin troops outnumbers them 2:1.

    As I am doing a scifi skirmish gamr I had better not read it- I don't want to be accused of nicking ideas! I will... I just don't like accusations!

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