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Some folks have asked about diceless rules using cards so I thought I'd put something together, so here's some alt rules just for fun. Actually planning a diceless game for a newer project so I thought this would be good practice and might also give BWG a fun new spin. Don't worry, the normal game will still always use dice, not changing anything, just doing this for fun. I'll put it all together into a little PDF later on once I get all the little details figured out. I thought it would be fun to base it on poker. I still have to figure out a good way to handle things like running or doctor healing, this is pretty much just for regular attacks..

So, each player gets their own deck of 54 cards (or should they share 1 deck?). Jokers are wild. At the beginning of a turn you draw 5 cards. To make an attack, you figure out your range like normal. pick a card from your hand and play it for the attack, the number on it is the number you would have rolled, and you add your attribute to it. So if your RC is a 4, and you play an 8 card, your result is 12. You'll also have to subtract any modifiers your target had, like if he was in cover, long range, etc. To save, your opponent will play a card and add his DP, so he just has to meet or exceed whatever score you have and he makes his save. If he doesn't have cards that can beat it, his model loses 1HP.

If you want a better chance to take the guy out, you can play a pair, instead of just 1 card, and add your RC to the pair's #'s. So if you played a pair of 7's and your RC is a 3, your score will be 10. But, your opponent needs to save with a pair that will have a better score, or play a better hand to save so he will need a pair that will score at least a 10 or better to save, or play more cards. You can also play 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, full house, whatever.. the better your hand, the better your opponent's hand has to be to beat it.

For face cards, we should probably add a number to them just in case since we have to do some math.. so let's say a Jack counts as 11, Queen 12, King 13 and Ace 14.

Playing 5 cards is tougher to beat and gets a little more complex, and can only be defended by better hand/score, but you can still add in your attribute # too, so a straight could still beat a full house for example, if your attribute is high enough for it.

Straight - 15 - Any 5 consecutive numbers such as 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
Flush - 16 - All cards have the same suit
Full House - 17 - 3 of a kind and a pair
Straight Flush - 18 - 5 consecutive cards and the same suit
Royal Flush - 19 - same suit, 10, jack, queen, king and ace
Dead Man's Hand - 20 - A full house made up of aces and 8's

After your play your hand, discard the cards and draw new ones until you have a new hand of 5 cards.

To roll for initiative, both players draw the top card from their pile, whoever scores the highest wins. If it's a tie, keep drawing till someone wins.

That's the basic idea.. what do you think so far?

>_>

Sounds a lot like Malifaux... but different enough to not be the same mechanics...

Might I suggest using WAR like rules instead of a poker hand? I mean you're already using a 54 deck of cards. Drop the jokers out, or make the jokers auto hit/miss depending on whether or not it's the Big Joker or the Little Joker.

Idk... just some thoughts...

Was worried about Malifaux, never played it I just know they use cards. Just thought it would be fun to try and mix in some classic card games.

Was just thinking though, that Poker method kind of makes things like weapon strength obsolete, no more "rolling to hit" .. so I was thinking of a Blackjack method too.. Might actually be a little simpler and a better way to handle other "rolls" besides attacking.

Target number is 21 + modifiers to hit. You get 2 cards, placed face-up. Your RC or MC = how many extra cards you can draw to add to your 2 face-up cards to try and get get as close to your target number as you can without going over. If you go over, you miss. You don't have to draw if you don't want to.

To defend, opponent gets 2 cards and his DP is the amount of extra cards he can draw. He has to beat your number + weapon strength. Unlike rolling to hit, he wants to go over, if he can't meet or exceed the number, he loses 1 HP.

Might be a little simpler than worrying about all the different poker hands out there.

To be honest, I know next to nothing about your game Necros (other than I likes some of the models )

Here is how Malifaux's card system work

Each player starts their turn with x cards (6 cards in a small game, 7 in a larger game). You flip for initiative, highest card goes first for that turn.
Duels

Outcomes are resolved by flipping the top card of a Fate Deck and then adding it to the appropriate stat. If the total equals or exceeds a target number, the action is successful. This is called a Simple Duel.

For example, if a player wants his model to attack a model that possesses the Harmless 11 ability, the attacking player flips a card and adds the attacking model's Will Power stat. If the total is 11 or better, then the model may attack the "harmless" model.

Duels can also be opposed. An example of an Opposed Duel is where one model attacks another model. In this instance, both players flip and add their appropriate stat to the outcome -the Attacker adds his combat stat and the Defender adds his defense stat. If the attacker's total equals or beats his opponent's total, then action is successful. If the attack is successful, the difference between the attacker's total and defender's total will provide either a penalty or bonus to the subsequent damage flip.

Twists of Fate are modifiers that require the player flipping cards to flip more than a single card and either take the lowest card or the card of his choosing, depending upon whether the modifier is a Negative Twist or Positive Twist For example, if a model shoots at a model in Soft Cover, the attacker has a 1 Negative Twist modifier. This means that the shooter flips two cards instead of one. The lower of the two is then added to the shooter's stat and then compared to the defender's total.

The maximum Twist of Fate modifier is three cards. Also, Negative and Positive Twist modifiers cancel one another out on a one for one basis. For example, if a model receives a 1 Positive Twist in a Duel due to a special ability and that model shoots at a target in Soft Cover (1 Negative Twist) the two modifiers would cancel each other out and result would be a straight flip.

hmm.. seems pretty similar to what I was planning originally..

Was just going to have attacking be it attack stat = draw that many cards. Play any 1 card... weapon strength + card = your hit amount.

Opponent gets to defend, so defense stat = draw that many cards, play the best one and add any modifiers for cover, etc. if he can't beat the hit #, he loses 1 HP.

Seemed simple enough, but I figured adding the poker or blackjack elements would be good for the whole western theme.

I really don't like trying to shoehorn a standard poker deck into a resolution system for games.

Like Malifaux, the problem that comes up with is you actually make your resolution system more complex and time consuming, which is multiplied by every single time you have to resolve something in a typical game, which is a lot, and quite frequently.

Instead, if you're dead set on using some kind of card based resolution system, consider making it something more well designed, using a custom deck of 52 resolution cards.

These resolution cards would have custom icons, number spreads, and more that would work like how some board games have resolution decks for combat. These icons distill what would be large dice rolls into smaller sets of numbers, along with special icons specifically made for the game.

The numbers determine the math outcomes, but the icons can add interesting effects to the outcome of a roll beyond just the math, without the need to consult a chart or lookup what a certain poker suit + number means.

Then on top of this, you can still include all the cards of a standard 52 poker deck in the corners of these cards, which can be used in certain special locations, or as a kind of trade off when drawing cards.

For example, you draw 3 resolution cards for an attack, and can only play 2 of those 3 cards. The cards you get are:
Card 1: Hit with a bit of damage
Card 2: Near miss that stuns
Card 3: Some interesting effect that only takes effect if the target is stunned.

You can easily play Card 1 for a small amount of straight up damage, but that means card 3 wouldn't be used, so you end up just playing Card 1 and 2. However, if you play card 2 first, this inflicts the Stun, and Card 3 drops some extra effect that might not do any more damage, but allows you to get a much greater upper hand in the current situation.

All that can be handled with one card or a quick hand of cards, and all you need to do to decipher them is to look at the cards, every card does something, instead of constantly drawing through your deck and choosing 1.

Another example, Card 3 might have an effect where a stunned unit affected by this card can be forced to move 2" in any direction, sending him tumbling over the edge of second story saloon balcony, ending up doing much more damage to the model had you just chosen Card 1 and 2 for some damage and a stun. And the model might also be knocked down or unconscious at the end of all that.

This would be much more interesting than looking at another hand of generic numbers on playing cards.

But, where the poker suits in the corner of the cards comes into play is, say you draw a number of cards, and it is a decent draw with some effects you want to use right away. You can, instead of playing the cards for the effects listed on the front, you instead play them for their poker values, which triggers some even larger, rarer, and more powerful effect, perhaps even a posse wide effect.

This could tie into always having a sort of River of cards, like in Texas Hold'em, always on the table. Perhaps 1 card is added to the River each turn of the game, up to a max of 5?

Yet another example of this would be from the prior example is that, what if the 3 resolution cards you drew had the beginnings of a straight in poker values in the corners. Looking at the river cards, you see that you can indeed make a straight. Knowing that your gang has a particularly powerful ability you can trigger if you use a straight, you use your hand cards, along with 2 from the River to activate that ability, discarding your hand cards and the river cards (replacing the River cards later).

Good ideas .. texas holdem style could be fun.. turn 1 just has 1 card, every full game turn you add a new card.

Anyway though, after reading up on how to play Malifaux I decided it would be best to not use a standard deck of cards.. the ideas I had are a lot like what they are already doing.

Thinking of changing things around, not really going with poker or blackjack. I'm really planning this for a new game that was going to use the same rules as BWG anyway.. but what I was thinking of now... You have a deck of action cards that's a minimum of 3 cards for every mini, but as high as you want. You'll have your starter deck that's maybe 30 cards (or is it best to stick with 52 as a main deck?), and new minis will come with new cards that are special attacks or actions that anyone can do.. so in a way it's like a non-collectable ccg in that you can build your deck with extra goodies from the minis you buy, and each army will also have unique cards too in their starter deck.

Cards will be numbered 1-6 since the rules are based on D6's. You have a hand of 7 cards each activation. You just play whatever amount of cards you need to attack, the same as dice, up to your combat level.. so if your ranged combat is a 4, you can play up to 4 cards for your attack just using the numbers on them... but you don't have to / want to play all of them. You'll need to save cards for your opponent's activation for your defense. Most of the cards will just be a basic attack, so you just use the number on them, but some will have a specific action on them like a powerful strike that adds +1 strength to your attack, or take aim to lower your to hit number. And some actions will be defense oriented so you want to reserve those to defend yourself. You can draw a new hand each activation, but you can keep whatever cards you didn't play if you want to, or you can discard them.

With dice, the to hit number to attack is 4 with modifiers, I'm thinking that would make cards 1-3 useless, so what we could do is change it to where your cards have to add up to your target number. So to hit would be 4 + target's defense + modifers like soft cover +1, heavy cover +2, target ran +1, etc. Possibly also having some of the cooler actions on the lower numbers to encourage people to use lots of cards. But I was thinking using the add-up method you could play a lot of cards sometimes and come up with some really fun combo moves.

Then to defend, you have to beat the weapon strength + bonuses from the to hit cards or special weapon bonuses, and you can play an amount of cards up to your guy's defense skill, using whatever cards were left over from your previous activation.

Most of the actions would be the same as the skills in BWG, but characters wouldn't have attribute skills anymore, just for whatever comes with a profession. Some special actions might also have attribute restrictions, like to play the Deftly Sidestep defense card you need a quickness of 4 or better. If you don't meet the requirements, you can just use that card's number like it's a normal card. You could also use attack cards for defense, just counting the number on the card not the action. And vise versa.

How does something like that sound? I could put together a chart for BWG based on normal playing cards if anyone wants to try it. Something like cards Ace - 6 = 1 - 6 normal cards, 7+ cards will all get different numbers and have different skills & actions added to them

I could see using the cards numbers and such, but getting into hands from poker and other such games now makes it to where your playing 2 games at once. IMO its a bit much.