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I've taken a brief look at some of the topics in this forum, and I'm getting the sinking feeling that a lot of what I say here has been repeated elsewhere. But I would love to bounce around some ideas and get some feedback from people outside my immediate group of friends.

I'm attempting to plot out the rules for a d10-based war game, rather similar to 40k, what with having units or models and such, that will be designed for platoon-level games (think somewhere between Killteam and 1000 points in 40K). I'll lay out the goals I have for this game in a handy, bulleted list!:

Goals of this game:

- Use a d10 base
While d6's are available in the quantities necessary for wargaming, I find that a single point difference on rolls with them make up too great a gap. D10's allow for a little more fine-tuning, and should still be available in tubes. This is one of the first things I noticed mentioned in other threads, so I won't go into too much more detail here, other than stating this will be a roll LOW system.
- Keep attack and defense to a maximum of two rolls.
40k has this nasty problem of a LOT of iterative rolls: roll to hit, roll to wound, roll a save, roll Feel No Pain. If all these rolls come to pass, attacks under even the most ideal of circumstances (2+ to hit and wound, 6+ on save and FNP) come out to less than a 50% chance of succeeding. 4 rolls is a lot of work to go through for something that's slightly worse than a coin flip. Ideally, I would like to keep the mechanics of combat to 'Roll for attack; Roll for defense.'
- Nothing has less than a 1/100 chance of success
If ideal iterative rolls produce low odds of success, then we all can imagine how much worse it is under less ideal circumstances. I've run the math-hammer, and while 50 guardsmen popping off 150+ shots sounds mighty impressive, that only gives them the odds of reliably causing ONE wound against a lot of the tougher models in the game (I'm looking at you, Riptide), and a lot of other models just aren't hurt at all by this hail of gunfire. This wouldn't be such a big problem if GW wasn't so cavalier about releasing bigger and bigger warmachines and monsters into the game. When the odds reach that low, it's simply not worth taking the time to roll out. In other words, a 1 always succeeds, a 10 always fails.
- Every model matters
This means the smallest, weakest model in the game has at least a 1/100 chance of causing harm to the biggest, toughest model in the game, as stated above. Additionally, I would like all models to be generally tougher, or at least more difficult to remove outright, elevating infantry to a much more useful level.
- Reduce bookkeeping
I want to create a game where any player can walk up to the board and, based on what is on the table, know exactly what options are available to them and how things are going. This means a few sub-points:
- Finding out what options are available in the current phase does not require remembering actions and outcomes of previous phases.
- All actions and abilities are either resolved completely within the phase they are used, or are permanently active.
- Ideally, no models have 'wounds' or 'hit-points.'
- Ideally, games will not have a defined length. Instead, the game will simply end once one player has gained enough victory points or met a victory condition, allowing the player who went second one more turn to at least tie to keep the game going, or score more victory points to steal the win.
- Avoid use of additional gaming aids
This means using standard rulers/tape measures and dice. I don't want to have to go making custom pieces just to play.

That's most of the more important points. Generally, I want this to be easier and quicker than 40k, but I don't want to go down to skirmish/gang-level combat. I generally like the idea of units of models being treated as a single entity, and I want to make the game -just- big enough to justify that. That said, there's a few key things I need to figure out, composed in another handy list!

Things that Need Figured Out
- What victory conditions should be, or how victory points are gained, bearing in mind ease of bookkeeping or requiring no bookkeeping at all.
I was thinking units could have different abilities that gain victory points in the form of tokens they accrue. Some units could simply generate tokens on their turn to represent the completion of a ritual, while others are required to stake a claim or destroy other units in a particular fashion. This creates an interesting scenario where the composition of an army determines what it must do in order to win the game. But maybe someone has a more elegant solution? I could just make it 'wipe out the other person's' army, but that can lead to a very static game, and I want people to be able to approach this more cleverly than bringing the biggest, most destructive hammer they can get their hands on.
- A GIMMICK!
Something, anything, that can draw players in at a glance. So far, what I have is some odd mix between 40k and Age of Sigmar with no core mechanic that stands out in my mind.
- Phrasing and wording of the rules
This is that part where I get a big old splat of rules down and categorized, but fail to come up with a way to coherently phrase. But I do have a VERY rough draft of what I have so far attached, for those willing to take a look! I try to be redundant in a lot of places, as I would rather people know right at the place where they're looking what kind of specifics I have in mind, rather than forcing them to cross-reference other rules.

Looking forward to see where this is headed. I'm developing a ruleset based on D10 as well but handling it from a slightly different angle, but it'll still be interesting to compare with this ruleset.

I fully understand why you want to minimize the amount of rolls which are needed to determine if a model is destroyed/killed, but I like these rolls if they can be traced to an aspect which we can visualize such as those presented by Warhammer 40k.

What are your thoughts about turn structure? Still one whole turn per player or...?

Chaospling wrote:
Looking forward to see where this is headed. I'm developing a ruleset based on D10 as well but handling it from a slightly different angle, but it'll still be interesting to compare with this ruleset.

I fully understand why you want to minimize the amount of rolls which are needed to determine if a model is destroyed/killed, but I like these rolls if they can be traced to an aspect which we can visualize such as those presented by Warhammer 40k.

What are your thoughts about turn structure? Still one whole turn per player or...?

I do understand the aspect of tracing rolls to a particular aspect of a model. The way I plan on doing it for most attacks is just having an 'Accuracy' and a 'Power' stat that add together to determine a total attack value. However, I approached this with the mindset of 'if I want it to be more likely to hurt an enemy, I'll just straight up make it more likely to hurt an enemy,' instead of juggling around number of shots, high versus low strength, etc. Typically, an upgraded weapon will add to an attack's power, and thus make the attack roll straight up better. It's a LOT more abstract, but I feel it avoids creating that issue of accidentally making a weapon that costs a premium amount that just doesn't statistically hold up.

As for turn structure, I still wanted to keep it one player per turn; one player goes through all the phases, declaring actions for each of their units for each phase, then the next player goes. I know that can get a little 'unfair' at times, so I was considering a number of mitigating factors to include:
- The player who goes second gets +1 to the Defense of ALL of his models during his opponent's first turn.
- When a player reaches a victory condition, the other player will always get one more turn to tie or exceed their opponent. If they manage to pull it off, the game continues for another turn to give the other player a chance to tie or exceed. In other words, the game ends when one player meets a victory condition, and the other player cannot catch up by the end of their turn. I -would- phrase this to hand the victory at the end of the second player's turn if they manage to exceed their opponent after victory conditions are met, but I feel that would create a scenario where it will always be better to be the second player in a close match. There has to be a more eloquent way to phrase all that...

Staggered turn orders are neat and all, but they can be a bugbear to write and balance properly. Not to mention that this will require more book keeping to keep track of which units have activated.

But a big thing I wanted to ask for input on was the Recover action. Think something along the lines of old-school Necron 'We'll Be Back.' When a model is 'killed' by an attack, it gets placed on its side next to the unit it is a part of. If that unit isn't in close combat, it can forgo a phase to take the Recover action, rolling against the Recover value of the downed model; on a success, the downed model is placed back in coherency with its parent unit. And wounded models are only removed at the end of their controlling player's turn, so you get multiple opportunities to try this if you really want a unit to keep its numbers at the expense of moving and offense. But this only works while the unit still has models standing (just like 'We'll Be Back'). I was thinking a 2 or less on the roll would be about standard for most light infantry units, and 4 or less would be standard for most characters.

I rather like the Recovery idea.

Ok! It's been a while, and I've been making plenty of updates to the rules. A couple of major changes:

- Wounded status: No longer plays like 'We'll be back.' Instead, a model with the Wounded status remains on the field, cannot roll Defense for its unit, and can only hurt other models on a d10 roll of 1. If an entire unit is Wounded, it's Defeated.
- Changed Defend so defending player decides which model rolls for it, instead of going with the closest.
- New rules!
- Relentless - a wounded model with this rule uses its full bonus when making attacks.
- Machine - If a unit composed entirely of Machines is wounded, it simply sits on the field, making Recovery rolls each phase until it either recovers or is removed during Clean-Up. This replaces the old Self-Repairing rule.

Also also, I've developed some prototype army lists!
- Hominid Coalition - The intrepid explorers, settlers, and blue-collar workers seeking a place on a new homeworld, spurred on by inscrutably powerful overlords to take and hold land against the natives. Think very much weird science meets Manifest Destiny homesteaders. This is sort of the 'Space Marine' option; their models are relatively durable and versatile, and they have a few quirky and powerful units that can wreck an enemy's day when employed properly, but they can quickly find themselves outnumbered if used recklessly.
- Vulpine Legionnaires - The noble defenders of Vulpes IX, serving industrial feudal lords and protecting their territory from the encroaching hominids. The flavor here is more along the lines of Napoleonic Steampunk, with lots of muskets and chivalry. I intend for them to be more of the 'Eldar' option. They move faster and are more delicate, but each unit serves a tailored purpose, with character models giving offensive bonuses to their related units.

Now, you may notice there are no points values in these lists. That's intentional. Instead, I wanted to see if I could balance these units to be roughly equal in merit to all other units. So, rather than adding together points and slowly widdling down the gap until you fill them up exactly, you simply determine "This is an 'X' unit game," and pick that number of units to fill out your list. I may mandate that each army picks at least one character, as they count as a unit choice all their own, to act as a sort of field commander for mission purposes, which will be developed later. This also allows me to balance upgrades, giving each unit a list of specific options that they make take one or two of at no additional cost; usually it should come down to 'add more models,' or 'add bigger basic guns,' or 'add special weapons.' Let me know what you think of this design theory.

Also, two things I want to ask for input on; one quick, one lengthy:

The quick one - You'll notice there's an entry under the Close Combat phase marked in red (if not in your case, it's just the last step of it). I wanted to work in morale to Close Combat, but I'm not sure if this is a sound mechanic or not; it's possible to have Wounded models going into a CC phase, then collect more Wounded during the fight, and then forget which wounds are new and which are old, which make for that fiddly book-keeping I was trying to avoid. Should I just leave this be? Rework it? Drop it entirely?

The lengthy one - I realize I still don't have a gimmick for this game, and realized that for this 'War of the Wheel' name, I'm sure lacking some wheels! So, I had an idea of radically altering the rules to include dials (similar to X-Wing), that players would use to determine the actions for their units each turn. It would go something like this:
- Players dial in their unit actions, and set said dials face down next to their respective units.
- Players roll-off for initiative.
- Winning player reveals a dial and carries out an appropriate action for that unit, then the other player does the same.
- Repeat until both players are out of units to activate, then start again.

In this case, each 'wheel' would have three settings that, when revealed, allow a unit a small number of options (especially a few options to cover circumstances where a typical action of that type would not be available):
- Move: The unit can move its walk, Flee from a unit it is Locked with, or use the Recover action
- Shoot: The unit can shoot normally, Move its Push and Shoot or vice-versa (in which case, it only succeeds on d10 rolls of 1), or if the unit is Locked in Close Combat (as in it was Charged before it got to activate) it can shoot at an enemy unit it is Locked with, but again only succeeds on d10 rolls of 1.
- Fight: The unit can Charge if it isn't Locked, or use the Fight action if it is Locked.

I can see both 'All at once' phase-based turns and staggered, order-based turns having some merit. The traditional All-Phases, All-Models method is simplest and easiest to keep track of, and requires no additional materials, but can lead to static play. The 'you go, I go' system using the dials would go a long way to keeping both players engaged at all times and make for more dynamic play, though it requires a new game piece, and just a -little- extra book-keeping. Honestly, the dials aren't supposed to be revealed until a unit is activated anyway, so one could keep track of what still needs to activate by looking for face-down wheels.

I look forward to any comments or suggestions!