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I still love Warmachine's boost mechanic. There's a target number
to match or beat, and the standard roll is 2d6. You can set up
situations or expend resources to "boost" that dice, and so you
get a nice curve of probabilities.

I never got to play it, but Warmaster's Command system seemed
like a good one. It did mean, however, that everyone made space
to have a Crown of Command, right?

I've also always wanted to play Hordes of the Things. I even
have miniatures painted up and based for it. I love the idea of a game
that standardizes all the units, and your "list building" is made up
of deciding which elements you'd want in your army. So if you have
Dwarves, you'll probably choose to have artillery over Lurkers because
, hey, they're dwarves right?

I liked the Heat Sink mechanic of Battle Tech.

"Sure, you can fire EVERYTHING, but you might shut down..."

Hi Kronk.
Battletech was good at giving LOTS of player choice in mech build.
Weapon types, Armour types , engine types , auxillery systems.(But kept it really simple too.)

It was one of my top ten games of all time.

I had a Stealth in our campaign, which could jump at almost full distance and fire all of it's guns without getting into heat problems.

Fun game, but took forever to play out a battle.

 Balance wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
THAC0. If you don't know, you'll never know.

GW could just change BS to be the actual, useful number (So SM would be BS 3) but it'd be an ugly changeover and I don't think they like the idea of having one stat that is best when low (although Armor Saves are "lower is better" anyway)

Warpath does this. It's effectively the number you would need to roll off the 40K Chart is the stat number, instead of you having to reference a stat number on a chart, or do math to determine the target number.

 kronk wrote:
I liked the Heat Sink mechanic of Battle Tech.

"Sure, you can fire EVERYTHING, but you might shut down..."

It was a simple and elegant solution that made asset management important and tactical.

I found that Battletech suffered from 2 flaws.
1.) As you pointed out, the games took forever, even with small amounts of models
2.) The Inner Sphere Mech designers should have all been executed for incompetence. They updated to the newest weapons with ZERO reguard for heatsink capacity. You could easily design a legal mech, using the included rules, that was vastly superior to the stock mechs.

I thought the stock mechs were awful by design ,to get you to design your own!

We used to play smaller skirmish games ,a handful of mechs a side.I agree bigger games would take ages.
But at least the rules were straight forward,(C.B.T was book keeping heavy though.)

Heat Sink is okay, but BT is way too modifier heavy for my tastes. Plus, filling in little bubbles for armor reduciton is a bit tedious.

I liked Cavs reacting Fire, but I prefer full on action/reaction systems.

Attack dice from Confrontation 3. Put dice either in to attack to try and hit your opponent or defense to try and block. Eah has two plus one for each extra opponent your facing. Special abilities also ame of from where you plaed your dice.

I like the activation sequence and movement of the Star Wars X-Wing game.

The initiative order is similar to another game already mentioned:

Movement: low to high
Shooting: high to low

And I love that everybody decides there movement in secret before flipping over their markers.

I heard that the x-wing mechanics were based on another game though, which one?

The 40k shooting phase. Though random, I find ballistic skill system makes sense.

 d-usa wrote:
I like the activation sequence and movement of the Star Wars X-Wing game.

The initiative order is similar to another game already mentioned:

Movement: low to high
Shooting: high to low

And I love that everybody decides there movement in secret before flipping over their markers.

I heard that the x-wing mechanics were based on another game though, which one?

I'm not sure about the exact mechanic/game that it came from, but ordering movement and combat non-sequentially is reasonably common in some historical games.

In the old "Mechanized Combat" rules by Andrew Thomas (the basis for the Panzer 8 series of free rules http://panzer8.weebly.com/rules.html) Initiative is determined at the beginning of the game and play proceeds :
1. A moves
2. B fires
3. B moves
4. A fires
5. A and B rally

It's not perfect (assault introduces a few irregularities), but it definitely necessitates quite a bit of forethought and strategy. We liked the rules so much we made our own house variant (attached) of this remarkable 2 page sci-fi mass combat ruleset.

Thanks Color sgt .Kell, I just spat my coffee all over my monitor.

40ks shooting phase/resolution methods make sense?That is the most hilarious thing I have read all week.(Admittedly its been a crap week.)

Thanks for cheering me up.

Infinity's ARO mechanic is great--not just the mechanic itself, but how the game functions around it. It really makes things smooth.

 d-usa wrote:
I heard that the x-wing mechanics were based on another game though, which one?

If this is a serious question, the "secret" manuever mechanic is common in many aircraft games.

For example, Wing sof War makes you choose 3 manuevers in advance!

Aeronautica Imperialis has you only choose one. However, the manuever choice is a bit different as you also choose speed increase/decreases, and can than use your manuevers at any point during your models move. Either way, it leads to a pretty tactical game.

However, I love the fact that in X-wing you move/shoot based on your pilot skill. I tmakes an "ace" actually useful.

 Color Sgt. Kell wrote:
The 40k shooting phase. Though random, I find ballistic skill system makes sense.

Only in the most superficial of ways. It used to make sense back when there were modifiers, when it served as a base point from which you worked out your required hit number. Now it's even expressed in a redundant fashion- it would make far more sense to make BS a X+ number (such as for a marine, 3+) like saves.

There was a game called Flashpoint which managed to simplify all ranged attacks into a single D20 roll. You needed a 12- before modifiers- to hit and kill anything. Of course that was modified by cover, weapon, armour and most interestingly model skill levels (both offensively and defensively). Worked really well so long as super tough stuff wasn't involved. It was also almost entirely generic, allowing you to build almost any humanoid troop type.

 Easy E wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
I heard that the x-wing mechanics were based on another game though, which one?

If this is a serious question, the "secret" manuever mechanic is common in many aircraft games.

For example, Wing sof War makes you choose 3 manuevers in advance!

Aeronautica Imperialis has you only choose one. However, the manuever choice is a bit different as you also choose speed increase/decreases, and can than use your manuevers at any point during your models move. Either way, it leads to a pretty tactical game.

I was serious, X-Wing is the first game I have played that use a mechanic like that. But I do really like it a bunch, so I will keep my eyes open for some of the other games that use a similar system, thanks!

X-wing movement and initiative setup, deck building mechanics, Kings of War balance, Warhammer fluff.