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Hi All,

I'm (still) working on a skirmish game, and I've got a few more rules to throw out there for feedback. I've had boring mechanics and overly complex mechanics in the past, so hopefully I've found a balance here.

The basis of my design is a flowing AA system, intended to imply simultaneous actions. I intend for there to be a fairly large difference between things which are tough because of good saves, and things that are tough because they're tough (the difference between an armoured car and a monster with 8 hearts, for example).

The idea is for damage to be a bit unpredictable, and for it to all be resolved after the unit activates.

So, the turn:

It's normal AA, with each players turn being:
Select a model (which hasn't activated this turn)
Take a bravery test
perform actions
resolve damage cards

Bravery test is based against how many damage cards and fear tokens the model has when they activate - basically roll 2D6, add the damage cards & fear tokens, and if it's higher than your bravery, you break.
If a model breaks, they roll 2D6 and compare it to their "Flight" characteristic. If they roll equal to or lower than it, their model flees. If they roll over it, their model fights (fight or flight).
Fleeing models can only move away from the enemy, run or hide, they cannot attack or charge.
Fighting models can only attack or charge, and can only move closer to the enemy.
if you pass the bravery test then you can act normally.

Actions are on a model-by-model basis, basically different attacks cost different AP. no model has enough AP to do everything, so you have to pick what to do. A model may have 3AP, and it would cost 3 to fire it's gun, 1 to move, 1 to run, and 1 to charge, so it can either move or shoot.

After your model has done all it's actions, you flip the damage cards he has over. damage cards are a standard deck of cards, which do the following:
Red cards do 1 damage each, jack, queen, king do 2 damage each.
Spades inflict 1 fear token, jack, queen, king also do 1 damage.
Clubs do no damage
Jokers reduce damage by 2

I'm still thinking how to remove fear tokens (I don't want units becoming unusable).

The idea being that you don't know how much damage you've actually taken before you go, so it's always a gamble.

used cards are shuffled back into the deck at the end of the game turn.

Damage is inflicted thus:

each weapon has a number of attacks, a range and a damage statistic.
Defenders have a Defence and Save, defence is number of dice (EG. 2) and save is a required roll (EG. 4+)

to hit rolls are like 40k, roll X+ on a D6 to hit, as defined by the attackers skill.
then add all the damage from each hit, and the defender rolls 1 dice for each point of defence he has, plus 1 dice for each additional hit after the first. On each dice they needs to roll equal to or over their save, and each dice which he succeeds cancels one damage.

So, for an example, a models with skill 4+ fires 3 shots with a damage 2 weapon at a model with Defence 3 and a 5+ save, and gets 2 hits. this totals 4 damage, and the defender gets 3 dice, +1 for the second hit, and needs 5+ on each to cancel a damage. he rolls 2, 3, 5, 6, and so cancels 2 damage, meaning 2 go through. the defender gets 2 face-down damage cards.

This system is engineered to allow high volume of shots to combat armour, but for powerful single shots to be more damaging. EG, if a single shot with damage 6 hits a model with Def. 1 and a 3+sv, it will do more damage than 6 D1 shots.

(a single damage 6 shot allows 1D6 of save, needing a 3+, so does 5-6 damage. 6 Damage 1 shots (assuming all hit) allows 1 + 5 D6, so 6 dice each with 3+ to cancel, so can do 0-6 damage.)




I think that this system is quite well balanced, allows volume of fire to overcome saves without making them as good as high-damage weapons, and I quite like it. I'll look forward to seeing if anyone picks up on any problems with the system!

As a general guideline, I'm planning on games not exceeding 15 models per side, a typical force being around 10 models. Hordes more toward 15, and elites 5 or less.

So, does this system sound functional? I think having over 1/2 a chance of damage, and some of it being higher damage, is a good balance. I just need a way of getting rid of fear tokens, so that people don't end up overwhelmed and endlessly doing fight or flight checks! In short, do you like it?

Okay, first of all, interesting approach, but I have some concerns:

1) Why D6? You're doin a skirmisher you don't need that many dice so you could have D10, D20 or D%. Those give you a wider range and more variability.

2) Cards AND dice to determine what other games do with one roll? That sounds a bit overcomplicated but I would need to play that to tell if it works out fine or not...

3) Either have fear tokens easily removed in the following round or remove the models entirely if they fail a morale check. It's always annoying to move models that'll supposedly do nothing for the rest of the game.

4) It's harder to balance as you might think. If you shuffle your cards into your deck the cards get very unpredictable very quick. The more unpredictable a mechanic is the more difficult is its balancing. If you don't shuffle your deck it gets in fact a little bit more predictable but that doesn't come without some issues.
Each deck has a specific ammount of damage and fear... so if you could guarantee that each player draws his/her whole deck in the course of the game (and not one more) it would be a relatively stable system... but you can't. It is a flaw you have with cards and there's not really work around. In general you use cards everytime if you want to reduce the proparbility of repeating results. That's the big advantage of using cards, but you diminish that advantage by shuffling the deck each round. I understand why you do it, but I think that larger dice would do a much better job.

5) Overall you could reduce the number of rolls. You have some failresults in your damage range that don't inflict any damage, representing... supposedly misses. AND you have a HitRoll which failed rolls represent... proparbly misses aswell. So you could theoretically miss twice with one shot. I know it's the old ToHit, ToWound, ToSave thing... but it's dated af. You can reduce it for at least one roll. It's even more intuitive if each hit has to be saved or inflicts damage. It was one of the first things that I asked my opponent while playing 40k for the first time. It was something like the following:
"But I hit you!"
"You didn't wound!"
"And where did the bullet go?"
"It sticks in my armour."
"Okay. So what happens if you pass an armour test?"
"The bullet is eaten by the armour."
"AGAIN?! That feels awkward, but okay, let's move on."

The Hit-Wound-Save system has some redundancies as some things are represented twice. I understand how they grew and how their use is explained designwise but we know better and cleaner approaches today.


Maybe have a look into Malifaux for the use of cards as a substitute for dice. In Malifaux you have hand cards and a deck. For each action you can choose whether to use a hand card or draw a random one. If you use a card it is removed from play, so every result occurs only once making it easier to balance. Each action in Malifaux is a competitive action so every play uses a card and can either draw one or use a handcard. So there's an element of bluffing added to it (another advantage of cards that you can't replicate with dice without further tools), as all used cards are layed face-down before the results are compared... so you can use a low card to make your opponent use his white joker (automatic success; the opposite is the black joker and an automatic fail).

Lord Royal wrote:
Okay, first of all, interesting approach, but I have some concerns:

1) Why D6? You're doin a skirmisher you don't need that many dice so you could have D10, D20 or D%. Those give you a wider range and more variability.

Mainly for accessibility. I had considered using D10's, but then I realised that you can achieve more with the probability curve of a 2D6 roll than you can with the purely-random results of a D10. With the bravery check, the tipping point becomes Br 7 - someone with Br 7 is more likely to pass an unmodified bravery check than they are to fail it, in a manner which gives genuine results. On a D10, you are as likely to roll each value, whereas on 2D6 you are most likely to roll 7, and it decreases from there down. I am wondering if I can combine the bravery & fight or flight mechanics into a single roll.

Lord Royal wrote:
2) Cards AND dice to determine what other games do with one roll? That sounds a bit overcomplicated but I would need to play that to tell if it works out fine or not...

The cards are purely for the result of the damage. The majority of the game is played by dice. The cards are somewhat necessary for the way I want the game to play - I want the players to not know if a unit is dead or not until it does it's next move. This might be the final act of a dying trooper, or the continued existence of a lucky one. AA is in place to make the game playable and immersive, but if you were to treat it as reality, every model does everything at the same time. resolving damage after everything that wants to shoot you has shot you (simultaneously) is a way to prevent people from knowing that precisely 4 dudes shooting is enough to kill the monster. If there's a big monster running at you, you can put as many cards as you like on it - but it won't resolve them until it activates.

I'm now considering resolving damage at the start of the activation, as people will want to have some stopping power... I'll playtest both variants and see which one works better. I think that resolving cards before an activation works well, actually, as it will leave things open for special rules, like activating before resolving, and other things will have rules which allow cards to be dealt face-up, or for the attacking player to look at them as they are dealt.

Lord Royal wrote:
3) Either have fear tokens easily removed in the following round or remove the models entirely if they fail a morale check. It's always annoying to move models that'll supposedly do nothing for the rest of the game.

I detest the idea of just removing the model. It's the worst mechanic 40k implemented. they basically took the fearless-wounds concept and applied it to everything.
I will be coming up with some way to remove fear tokens, I may even have them cancel out automatically, I think it'll be something I'll add in when I playtest it - it's hard to think how it will affect the game until I try it!

Lord Royal wrote:
4) It's harder to balance as you might think. If you shuffle your cards into your deck the cards get very unpredictable very quick. The more unpredictable a mechanic is the more difficult is its balancing. If you don't shuffle your deck it gets in fact a little bit more predictable but that doesn't come without some issues.
Each deck has a specific ammount of damage and fear... so if you could guarantee that each player draws his/her whole deck in the course of the game (and not one more) it would be a relatively stable system... but you can't. It is a flaw you have with cards and there's not really work around. In general you use cards everytime if you want to reduce the proparbility of repeating results. That's the big advantage of using cards, but you diminish that advantage by shuffling the deck each round. I understand why you do it, but I think that larger dice would do a much better job.

I am aiming for an unpredictable system, where it's difficult to precisely kill every enemy with 100% efficiency. overkill is the only way to guarantee that your target is wiped out in a turn.

Lord Royal wrote:
5) Overall you could reduce the number of rolls. You have some failresults in your damage range that don't inflict any damage, representing... supposedly misses. AND you have a HitRoll which failed rolls represent... proparbly misses aswell. So you could theoretically miss twice with one shot. I know it's the old ToHit, ToWound, ToSave thing... but it's dated af. You can reduce it for at least one roll. It's even more intuitive if each hit has to be saved or inflicts damage.

Lord Royal wrote:
The Hit-Wound-Save system has some redundancies as some things are represented twice. I understand how they grew and how their use is explained designwise but we know better and cleaner approaches today.

I've already smoothed it to: Roll to hit, Roll Defence, deal cards.

The cards which cause no damage are there to add unpredictability to the game. the Hit, Defence mechanic is there to represent "I think I got him", and the no-damage cards represent grazing hits and lucky dodges. From a game mechanic point of view, it's to ensure that players are unsure as to the exact amount of damage they will be dealing, so they don't have prescient units who know not to shoot this guy because the people shooting him right now chipped off his last wound. They are both firing at the same time, which can't be represented on the tabletop very easily without writing down what everything will do before each turn.

Lord Royal wrote:
Maybe have a look into Malifaux for the use of cards as a substitute for dice. In Malifaux you have hand cards and a deck. For each action you can choose whether to use a hand card or draw a random one. If you use a card it is removed from play, so every result occurs only once making it easier to balance. Each action in Malifaux is a competitive action so every play uses a card and can either draw one or use a handcard. So there's an element of bluffing added to it (another advantage of cards that you can't replicate with dice without further tools), as all used cards are layed face-down before the results are compared... so you can use a low card to make your opponent use his white joker (automatic success; the opposite is the black joker and an automatic fail).

I'm not such a fan of cards for the actual mechanics in the game, I think that dice are more immersive and will flow more smoothly. The cards will be put into a discard pile and shuffled back into the deck at the end of the game turn. By then, other cards will have been dealt. If someone is dealing a lot of damage, they may have to shuffle sooner.

I quite like the 2 jokers having opposite effects, I am now contemplating having one joker halve the damage and the other joker double it. as there's only a 1 in 54 chance of getting either of them, it would be pretty cool to have. Either that or have one clear all damage on this model, and the other kill it. but that would be too extreme, I think!

You misunderstand how your cards work. It‘s basically a ToWound roll. Why? Because there‘s a high chance (~25%) that you don’t deal any damage. It‘s like a 3+ ToWound roll on a D6... you just use a D52 or D32 (or whatever Standard Deck you use). You don’t use the advantages of cards but try to compensate their flaws. Why using cards in the first place then? You try to use them like a die, so you have a variant of the dated HitWoundSave approach. You can delete one of your randomizers to streamline your system... either the ToWound roll or the Save. Either static damage (which you don’t want) or a static damage resistance. For example: you substract the armour from the damage result. It‘ll make your game much faster but it stays unpredictable.

A little secret: a die is unpredictable aswell, because you can‘t tell the result before you roll. Cards are in fact a little Bit more predictable, therefore an example: you draw a Joker, deal 3 damage, than attack again and know that the next damage roll won‘t show the same result. It‘s not unlikely that you repeat a result, it‘s plain impossible. Cards get more and more predictable the more you determine damages. But that is the exact opposite of what you want, isn‘t it?
So either change your design goals or don‘t use cards.

Lord Royal wrote:
You misunderstand how your cards work. It‘s basically a ToWound roll. Why? Because there‘s a high chance (~25%) that you don’t deal any damage. It‘s like a 3+ ToWound roll on a D6... you just use a D52 or D32 (or whatever Standard Deck you use). You don’t use the advantages of cards but try to compensate their flaws. Why using cards in the first place then? You try to use them like a die, so you have a variant of the dated HitWoundSave approach. You can delete one of your randomizers to streamline your system... either the ToWound roll or the Save. Either static damage (which you don’t want) or a static damage resistance. For example: you substract the armour from the damage result. It‘ll make your game much faster but it stays unpredictable.

A little secret: a die is unpredictable aswell, because you can‘t tell the result before you roll. Cards are in fact a little Bit more predictable, therefore an example: you draw a Joker, deal 3 damage, than attack again and know that the next damage roll won‘t show the same result. It‘s not unlikely that you repeat a result, it‘s plain impossible. Cards get more and more predictable the more you determine damages. But that is the exact opposite of what you want, isn‘t it?
So either change your design goals or don‘t use cards.

The importance of the cards is to delay the dealing of damage. You end up with face down cards on a model, signifying how much he has been wounded, and then when he goes to activate (I'm quite sold on resolving damage cards at the start of activation rather than after it now) you assess how hurt he actually is. yes you hit, yes it went through the armour, but it just clipped his arm - it won't stop a bezerker at all. or you hit him in the head, and it's done a lot of damage. or it whizzed past his eye, and put the fear in him.

I would say that people will not be able to count the cards very well, as it is very unlikely that all of them will be back in the deck after the first turn. if each model deals some damage, there will always be face down cards on the players army list (cards are dealt next to the models stat card, not the model, for tidiness). I think that, with a constant flow of cards into and out of the deck, the

I think that it would remove the immersion if I simply had damage mount up, then you roll all your saves at the start of your turn. it would also be a mountain of bookkeeping, as it's not 1 save per damage. It also means that only one player gets to do anything in each player turn. all in all, I think that less operations in the attack roll system wouldn't work with a lingering-damage system. If I had damage going on immediately then I would look into removing an operation. reducing the attack to simply "did you hit?" will be anticlimactic for both parties.

Subtracting armour from damage is a very dull way to play. basically, if you hit you know how much damage you do. I'm not a fan of that, I like to at least feel like I have a say in how much damage I take. The system I have does work well in this, as a powerful weapon can be weakened by armour, but not avoided completely, unless you're very lucky.


I have had another idea about streamlining bravery and fight/flight into a single roll:

Bravery statistic is now how much fear you can take - if you have more fear tokens and damage cards than your bravery stat, then you make a Fight or Flight (FoF) test at the start of your turn.
Models have a Fight and a Flight statistic. They must roll over their Fight, and under their Fight, on 2D6. If they roll beyond one of the values, then this is their reaction.
EG:
Models has Bravery 3, Fight 4, Flight 9.
if they have 4 or more damage cards or fear tokens, then they must roll 2D6. If they roll 2,3 or 4, then they Fight. If they roll 5-8, then they behave normally. If they roll 9+, then they take Flight.

This allows me to skew certain models in different directions, make some more controllable than others. A spectacularly brave model would have Fight 2 Flight 12, meaning even if they are scared they need a double 1 or double 6 to fail. a cowardly one would have fight 2 flight 7, meaning they are likely to flee. a psycho would have fight 8 flight 12, meaning they will probably go crazy and charge.

This reduces the bravery check to one roll, and determines the response as well.

The system could easily be transferred to a D10 roll, but I do still prefer the centrally-biased results gained from a 2D6 roll. the difference from 8 to 9 is the same as 9 to 10 on a D10, but it isn't on a 2D6. as something moves closer to 7, it becomes more likely to be rolled. I think it makes it easier to "control" how likely a model is to freak out.

Check out Hail of Fire on Wargames Vault. It is a WWII company or platoon level game that uses a similar delayed results mechanic for small arms fire . I believe it's still in Beta.

I've been pondering whether this damage system could be translated into squad-based games at all...

assuming all units comprise of models with the same save:

attack is to hit with each shot, and each weapon has a Strength stat which is added together to form the attack.
EG 10 S2 shots, get 5 hits, totalling 10 "attack"

Defence is a defence value and a save, so you get a number of dice equal to defence, and you have to roll equal to or higher than your save on each one. you get one additional dice for each hit after the first.

EG a unit with defence 5 and a 3+ save is hit by the above attack, they get 5 dice + 4 dice for the 4 hits after the first, needing 3+ on each dice to cancel out the attack.

for each attack which isn't cancelled, the unit takes a wound.

I'm now thinking it might be better to add half their Defence (rounding up) for each additional hit; the unit could then have defence 3, and get 11 dice to defend with. a unit with defence 5 would get 17 dice to defend with.

However, a missile hitting (S10, 1 shot) would only offer 5 defence dice to the unit - meaning they are guaranteed to lose 5 wounds to the powerful shot.

Now, to fix this issue (can't have, for example, a powerful sniper killing loads of models with each shot!) I would then say that you cannot lose more models than the original number of hits.

Then we can put an AP value in place, which affects the number of defence dice directly - EG AP-1 is 1 less defence dice for each hit after the first.

so if the first example was AP-1, a unit with Defence 3 would get 7 dice to defend.

This means that:

high strength low shots will be very likely to kill something for each hit
low strength high volume has a chance to kill a lot, but offers better defence
high strength high shots will almost certainly overpower the defence a lot, but can only kill as many models as the hits - so will target powerful models

Obviously the delayed damage mechanic might be worth getting rid of if it's squad based.

I feel this would end up skewing as volume of fire increases...

Have you tried solo-play?

 Nurglitch wrote:
Have you tried solo-play?

I've not had a chance to muck around with this yet (most of my brainstorming takes place in my lunch break), I'm also still coming up with ideas for models & weapons - I need the numbers to put together!

I'm thinking that units could be a good way to go with a couple of races - essentially balancing the horde army by allowing them to activate units, and the damage output of said units decreases as they lose wounds, as opposed to the elite armies who only lose output when they have lost all of their wounds. I'm only thinking of units of 3 or so.

I might have some mucking-about today, if I get a chance. I've thrown some numbers about for the Dwarf faction of the game, so I think I'll do 2 identical forces and see how they match up. I have plenty of models and plenty of space, I just need a starting point for attack & defence!

Ah, I misunderstood that in the first place...

What do you mean with "delayed damage"?

Is it as follows?
1) Roll ToHit (layer of randomness)
2) Roll ToSave (layer of randomness)
3) Deal WeaponDamage
4) Draw Card (layer of randomness)
5) Deal Card Damage

Right?
Those could be to many layers of randomness, but as your design goal is "as random as possible", it might work.

But maybe something you should think about: You can add a decision layer into that by drawing an ammount of damage cards that is equal to some value that is bound to warband size, attacks or some other sensible value. For the opponent it is still unpredictable, while the other player gains a little bit control during his turn. This way you could even implement Interrupt cards... maybe the joker nullifies the damage of one attack.
At the end of each turn all cards are shuffled back into the deck, but maybe there are some cards that can only be used once per game and are removed from the game after it'd been used.

Maybe some factions can draw more cards (representing something like better weapon's quality) or have other special rules for the jokers.

The point is: decisions are fun and can add a huge ammount of depth as you can plan your turn which gives you the possibility to feel like a master tactician.

Maybe an interesting videogame for you:
Deep Sky Derilicts - a round based dungeon crawler similar to a SciFi adaption of Darkest Dungeon but with card- and deckbuilding-components. It feels very analog for a video game, that's why I think it could be an inspiration for you.

Here a Let's Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrQ-1x5QdrM

I really like your idea (now, that I think I understand it).

Lord Royal wrote:
Ah, I misunderstood that in the first place...

What do you mean with "delayed damage"?

Is it as follows?
1) Roll ToHit (layer of randomness)
2) Roll ToSave (layer of randomness)
3) Deal WeaponDamage
4) Draw Card (layer of randomness)
5) Deal Card Damage

Right?
Those could be to many layers of randomness, but as your design goal is "as random as possible", it might work.

But maybe something you should think about: You can add a decision layer into that by drawing an ammount of damage cards that is equal to some value that is bound to warband size, attacks or some other sensible value. For the opponent it is still unpredictable, while the other player gains a little bit control during his turn. This way you could even implement Interrupt cards... maybe the joker nullifies the damage of one attack.
At the end of each turn all cards are shuffled back into the deck, but maybe there are some cards that can only be used once per game and are removed from the game after it'd been used.

Maybe some factions can draw more cards (representing something like better weapon's quality) or have other special rules for the jokers.

The point is: decisions are fun and can add a huge ammount of depth as you can plan your turn which gives you the possibility to feel like a master tactician.

Maybe an interesting videogame for you:
Deep Sky Derilicts - a round based dungeon crawler similar to a SciFi adaption of Darkest Dungeon but with card- and deckbuilding-components. It feels very analog for a video game, that's why I think it could be an inspiration for you.

Here a Let's Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrQ-1x5QdrM

I really like your idea (now, that I think I understand it).

It's more like:

1: Roll to hit (layer of randomness)
2: Roll to save (layer of randomness)
3: Deal face-down cards to the model, the amount of which is defined by steps 1 and 2

4: (later, when the target model activates) flip damage cards over and resolve them (layer of randomness)


So when you shoot someone, it does nothing to them right then - but it does affect their next turn. They might even be dead. But neither player knows until the model activates, so you can't kill precisely the right amount of wounds off each model with utter precision. It's the "usual" level of randomness, but with one reserved for later to keep players guessing.

The idea is that, when you activate your army, in reality, everything happens at once. you won't know how well the guy next to you did at killing that monster, because he's shooting it at the same time as you, and the monster is running at you at the same time too.

I will also be adding some special rules for models to perform 1 action before resolving damage, and for "protection" buffs which will cancel out damage cards, allowing you to reduce the potential damage before you activated a badly damaged model. Some races/factions will be very hard to kill, as they will reduce damage cards when they activate and then perform their actions before they resolve them. this will be like the ethereal/spirit races.

Ah, a little bit like ranged attacks in ThisIsNotATest.

How big were your tested games (how many models) in this iteration? Did you playtest it with friends yet and did they like it?

Because players tend to forget faster than a dementia patient.
So how do you display which player got hit how often? The common use of tokens could be problematic here. Combined with HP-Tokens it can become confusing... I imagine models with 10+ Tokens, that would be too much. Especially in melee.
Or do you have UnitCards for every model and place the damage cards directly next to the target model's card?

Maybe consider a static success value to keep it arranged more clearly. Rather define each effectiveness of hits and saves through the number of dice only... like in "Vampire: The Masquerade" (the PnP-Rpg). So every roll of 5+ is a success, for example. So all you have to do is counting fives and sixes no matter what you do. Applying modifiers in that variant is super simple, you just decrease or increase the number of dice. You can of course have some special skills that can modify the success value to 4+ or the opponent's to 6+. But keep those simple and uncommon to represent armour piercing ammo or masterful combat skills.

And maybe think about changing your fear-mechanic to the same "success value" mechanic. That way you can balance it much easier as you can treat those similarly. And on top it's more intuitive and easier to write rules for. You just have to define a Success-Check that is used for everything.

Lord Royal wrote:
Ah, a little bit like ranged attacks in ThisIsNotATest.

How big were your tested games (how many models) in this iteration? Did you playtest it with friends yet and did they like it?

Because players tend to forget faster than a dementia patient.
So how do you display which player got hit how often? The common use of tokens could be problematic here. Combined with HP-Tokens it can become confusing... I imagine models with 10+ Tokens, that would be too much. Especially in melee.
Or do you have UnitCards for every model and place the damage cards directly next to the target model's card?

Maybe consider a static success value to keep it arranged more clearly. Rather define each effectiveness of hits and saves through the number of dice only... like in "Vampire: The Masquerade" (the PnP-Rpg). So every roll of 5+ is a success, for example. So all you have to do is counting fives and sixes no matter what you do. Applying modifiers in that variant is super simple, you just decrease or increase the number of dice. You can of course have some special skills that can modify the success value to 4+ or the opponent's to 6+. But keep those simple and uncommon to represent armour piercing ammo or masterful combat skills.

And maybe think about changing your fear-mechanic to the same "success value" mechanic. That way you can balance it much easier as you can treat those similarly. And on top it's more intuitive and easier to write rules for. You just have to define a Success-Check that is used for everything.

I haven't done any playtesting yet, I am still just mucking about in my own head!

The plan is for each model to have a card, which the damage cards are dealt to. The card details what the model can do, and how much AP it costs them to do it, and has their statline on it, and is used to track HP.

success is done on a comparison between the attackers ability to shoot and the defenders defence. the system I'm building hasn't got the space for a constant value to hit or to save, it relies on different values to add flavour to a units survivability.

EG: a small model with heavy armour might have 2 defence with a 3+. a small model with light armour might have 2 defence with a 5+. a model with fancy armour might instead have 1 defence on a 3+, or 5 defence on a 6+ - allowing both values to change means some models become better vs small arms, some better vs big guns, some can be ludicrously lucky and escape a lot of damage, others can reliably remove a small amount, but become overwhelmed by more. with defence scaling with the number of hits, a defence of 2-3 with a good save (3+) wil lprotect you more than 6 dice on a 6+. against 3 hits, def3 with a 3+ gets 5 dice, def 6 with a 6+ gets 8 dice.

I'm not sure how fear will work exactly yet, but I want it to take care of itself - adding more rolls to add or remove fear, as well as the tests to take because of fear, would be a lot of rolling for little payoff.

I highly recommend to do a playtest asap.
If you don't want to show the game to others on a such early state, have some games against yourself at least. Just create some units without any specials and you're good to go.
First get your overall handling straight and then implement fear.
Start simple to get complex but always keep the playability in mind. Is it clear? Do players understand what's going on? Are some mechanics disturbing the game flow? If so, can I change them or should I remove them?
All those are very important questions and you can only answer them by playing your game... often... very often...

I also highly recommend a play test.

What I anticipate is that not knowing what is going to happen to the unit, including whether or not it will even be alive to do anything when you activate it, is going to be a detriment to the entire experience.

Randomness is all good and fine, but players need information to make decisions. And this degree of unknowns is going to cripple a players agency in their decision making.

Or the information can be used to negatively impact decision making in ways that just don't flow with intended game play.

Just throwing out this hypothetical. I know this guy I have has say... 1 health left. You put 2 cards of damage on him. Yeah, maybe those cards are whiffs and he's still alive. But chances are hes not. He's dead. So why the hell would I waste an activation on this dead man walking? I wouldn't. Those cards will sit there, face down, unresolved, until the very moment I have no other choice but to active that guy and flip them. Because literally any other choice made by me is going to be more viable.

 Lance845 wrote:
I also highly recommend a play test.

What I anticipate is that not knowing what is going to happen to the unit, including whether or not it will even be alive to do anything when you activate it, is going to be a detriment to the entire experience.

Randomness is all good and fine, but players need information to make decisions. And this degree of unknowns is going to cripple a players agency in their decision making.

Or the information can be used to negatively impact decision making in ways that just don't flow with intended game play.

Just throwing out this hypothetical. I know this guy I have has say... 1 health left. You put 2 cards of damage on him. Yeah, maybe those cards are whiffs and he's still alive. But chances are hes not. He's dead. So why the hell would I waste an activation on this dead man walking? I wouldn't. Those cards will sit there, face down, unresolved, until the very moment I have no other choice but to active that guy and flip them. Because literally any other choice made by me is going to be more viable.

That is a good point - and I have a potential solution, but it will take some working on to balance.

If you allow the unit a single action before the cards resolve, the unit remains viable. I also want a system where models can reduce their damage cards. I'm considering having a healer buff which allows the unit to use a "heal" action if within 6" (random distance) of the healer. Heal would, say, remove 1 damage card (to be tweaked to make it useful). some units can heal themselves.

So a model with 2 damage cards and 1HP could "heal", removing X cards. then, after this action, resolve the 1 remaining card and, if still alive, try to do something useful.

a model with 9 damage cards on him with only 1HP left can try to pull a last hurrah, then die horribly.

The gamble I'm trying to engineer is when a model has, say, 3HP and 4 damage cards. Do they break cover and die fighting, but at a risk of standing stupidly in the open, having not died? do they hunker down and act as if they'll live another round, but at the risk of dying anyway? do they heal off one card, but then still risk dying to the remaining 3?

In fact, I may allow all units to heal 1 card as an action. It adds to the gamble, in my opinion. you might even heal a card which did nothing, or worse, the "half damage" joker.

Playtesting is in the pipeline, it' just finding the time to do it (without looking like a weirdo rolling dice on my own in the corner of the office...).

That SOUNDS nice. But is it fun?

This is not a Test has a similar mechanic for ranged attacks.
A model gained just a hit token and took damage in the endphase. It felt very weird and confusing. Because sometimes you had a huge ammount of tokens on a model and all from different weapons, each weapon dealt an individual damage... you proparbly see the problem. You have a work around for that confusing part as you have Unitcards.

Again I highly recommend to find a quick way to display those mechanics and have a game. For example: Instead of Unit Cards you could use Damage Zones for each model to lay down effect tokens and cards. Implement the simplest combat mechanic you can imagine (and your card damage mechanic, of course), give each model just a combat and a health value, give each player the same ammount of the same units (for example 2 standard melee, 2 standard ranged, 1 elite) and test if your damage mechanic is fun.
That is the work of a few hours. Invite a friend have a game.
That's the quickest way to find out if your idea works out in the first place.

Yeah. They call them paper prototypes. Buy some cheap note cards. Get the basic info on them. Give it a go. Dont invest any more time into the paper prototype then you need to. The point is to quickly and cheaply see what works and what doesnt before you invest any real time or money.

I have a rock paper scissors chess game i designed in school made with a sharpie and a cardboard box from work. A lot of fun actually. Built it in about 15 minutes.

Oh, another recommendation:

Watch game design talks to learn from other designers and don't learn from wargames only.

For example this GDC-Talk by Mark Rosewater (the lead designer of Magic: The Gathering) and his 20 lessons he learned in 20 years of designing Magic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY

I just watched it and it's awesome. Most of the lessons count for games in general and none are counting for Card Games only.

I'll third that suggestion, and point towards all the neat little boardgames that are out there doing stuff that might give some perspective on making a wargame fun.

I'm planning to do some playtesting this weekend, so that should give me an idea of whether I'm going in the right direction or not.

I've had a think about my morale system, after following this thread, and I've decided to take it down a different route, which I like quite a lot.

Instead of fear tokens, It's now pinning tokens. Ranged weapons have a "pinning" value, and this is how many pinning tokens they put on the unit when they shoot at it.

When you select a unit to activate, you may only select a unit with as many or more pinning tokens on it as the one you previously activated (this is locked in at the end of your last activation, so tokens applied to your last unit during the intervening enemy activation don't count).

This means that you can apply suppressive fire to push the activation of a unit back, if you want to.

HQ units allow any unit who activates within 6" of them to shed 2 pinning tokens (may change for different HQ's), meaning if you have units with 1, 2, 3 and 4 tokens, you can activate the one with 3 first ,shed 2 tokens, and your next activation can be any unit with 1 or more tokens. This allows HQ units to give an aura of control, as they should.

Cover works by reducing incoming damage, but also increases pinning tokens by 1. This is because you're more likely to hide if you are in cover than if you're in the open.

I will be reducing the damage output of ranged weapons to compensate for their increased utility.

At the end of each turn, units reduce their pinning tokens by their Morale statistic.


This system means that you're not bound by an order - you can skip units if you really want to. But it makes morale have a role to play in the game other than making people run off. I also like that it offsets the benefits of cover by making people more likely to hunker down if they are in it!

I'll let you all know how playtesting goes. I have some rough ideas for the weapons, equipment and units for one of the races, so I'll make 2 identical lists and face them off against each other!

 some bloke wrote:

When you select a unit to activate, you may only select a unit with as many or more pinning tokens on it as the one you previously activated (this is locked in at the end of your last activation, so tokens applied to your last unit during the intervening enemy activation don't count).

This means that you can apply suppressive fire to push the activation of a unit back, if you want to.

If I am reading this right what the actually means is pinning a unit forces you to activate only pinned units because units that don't have any pins become completely unavailable.

I don't like the idea of the mechanics forcing you to loose options.


Game Play is most often defined as a series of interesting choices. Interesting choices have consequences. Letting one player so easily tell another player that their choices are being made for them removes game play.

For instance, I can leave your weakest unit alone, apply 2 pins to the guy I want you to activate second and 5 pins to the guy I want you to activate 3rd.

You either activate them in that order or loose the possibility to activate the less pinned units. Those are not interesting choices because there is only one good choice. Your agency has been taken from you.

 some bloke wrote:
I'm planning to do some playtesting this weekend, so that should give me an idea of whether I'm going in the right direction or not.

I've had a think about my morale system, after following this thread, and I've decided to take it down a different route, which I like quite a lot.

Instead of fear tokens, It's now pinning tokens. Ranged weapons have a "pinning" value, and this is how many pinning tokens they put on the unit when they shoot at it.

When you select a unit to activate, you may only select a unit with as many or more pinning tokens on it as the one you previously activated (this is locked in at the end of your last activation, so tokens applied to your last unit during the intervening enemy activation don't count).

This means that you can apply suppressive fire to push the activation of a unit back, if you want to.

HQ units allow any unit who activates within 6" of them to shed 2 pinning tokens (may change for different HQ's), meaning if you have units with 1, 2, 3 and 4 tokens, you can activate the one with 3 first ,shed 2 tokens, and your next activation can be any unit with 1 or more tokens. This allows HQ units to give an aura of control, as they should.

Cover works by reducing incoming damage, but also increases pinning tokens by 1. This is because you're more likely to hide if you are in cover than if you're in the open.

I will be reducing the damage output of ranged weapons to compensate for their increased utility.

At the end of each turn, units reduce their pinning tokens by their Morale statistic.


This system means that you're not bound by an order - you can skip units if you really want to. But it makes morale have a role to play in the game other than making people run off. I also like that it offsets the benefits of cover by making people more likely to hunker down if they are in it!

I'll let you all know how playtesting goes. I have some rough ideas for the weapons, equipment and units for one of the races, so I'll make 2 identical lists and face them off against each other!

Besides the mentioned activation issue. It could work nicely in theory... BUT it sounds like a huge ammount of tokens on every model.
Further pinned is a condition that can be displayed by only one marker. Adding a morale based timer sounds obvious simple but is impracticable if done analogically. That's where usually dice rolls come in charge to display abstract stat based timers. But you already have an interesting mechanic to generate random numbers. So what about cards?

I think of something like in the following example:
A soldier with morale 5 is pinned through an enemy action. In the beginning of his activation he discards the pinning marker and can choose whether to end the activation or to try to shake it off to not lose his activation. To do that draw a card; if the number shown is equal or LOWER 5(I explain later why that could be a nice idea; pictures are always a fail), the soldier is no longer pinned and act normally. Otherwhise he loses his action as if he hadn't choose to draw a card.
This way you can add a purpose to your other cards and a risk to the "shake it off"-action, because by turning the morale value around, it is more punishing to fail at a morale check. Because you not only fail your morale check but you also lose the opportunity to deal a bigger ammount of bonus damage this round. Although this can be easily compensated by activating pinned models at last which might be an issue...

Playtestings! Yeay!
Fun you will have.
Learn much you will.

Found this and had to think of you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=115&v=PZ35jXdP_nk

Did a playtest today, had a few little bits to tweak.

Units now reduce their pinning tokens (now called suppression tokens) by their Morale when they activate, not at the end of the turn. This means armies with better Morale statistics are less prone to being suppressed.

HQ units now allow units within 6" to reduce their suppression tokens by the units own Morale when the HQ unit activates.

I'm sticking with Cover causing 1 less damage and 1 extra suppression. It really added an element of weighing up sitting in cover verses manoeuvring.

Units can perform a single action before their damage cards resolve. This is more of a hit to CC units than shooting, as the CC unit wants to move first, which does no damage. However, CC is generally more powerful than shooting, and there's always the chance you didn't die.

The delayed damage effect worked really well. I had an instance where a unit had 5 health left and 13 damage cards on him, and decided to shoot instead of moving up to charge. He then only took 3 damage, meaning he still had 1AP left. If he had moved, he could have fought in CC and done a lot more damage.

The combat mechanic worked well, I felt. It took a bit of getting used to (I kept going to pick the dice up again, as per 40k!) but once in the swing of it, I found it resolved really quickly. It actually sped the game up by resolving the "to wound" stage all at once with the cards.

I'll muck around a bit more and see if it still feels ok after a few more trials.