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First of all I rarely post on this forum, so apologies if this post comes off as overly rambly or really quick and dirty . I wanted to discuss something I have been thinking about lately but rarely see talked about when it comes to miniature wargaming and wargame design. How plausible would it be to have a miniature wargame (like WFB for the sake of this discussion) where there is absolutely no measuring required, with no ruler or other instruments, with straightforward and concise rules allowing for very quick maneuvering of units while still being tactically important. A pretty difficult goal (impossible?) which is why I wanted to discuss it, mostly for the hell of it but also because I now have an increasing desire/curiosity of designing/developing something that would work.


Introduction/background and what lead to this post (skip if you don't care)

One of the biggest problems I have had in getting my boardgame friends into wargaming is the way movement and measuring is done. To put it bluntly, I noticed a very strong dislike for the paradox of measurements being very important in most wargames, while simultaneously being done in an imprecise, oftentimes "fiddly" manner. The whole deal with units being 0.5" out of range, and measurement disputes requiring arbitrary roll-offs or dubious gentlemen's agreements to settle, etc. Needless to say it's become a point of intense discussion and something that's put off potential players, so I'm wondering about having a wargame system that can solve this cleanly.


My own basic idea

My personal quick thoughts are as follows:

Terrain/table - My own idea was to have the battlefield split into "open ground" square sections (e.g 8x8 or 12x12 inches), ala GW's realm of battleboards. All terrain would be based as a "area of terrain", whether it's a hill or wood or area of ruins (most people seem to base their woods or ruined buildings anyway, and hills are often modeled to have clear edges). The terrain pieces are placed on the battlefield without fear of overlapping the various battlefield squares. Each battlefield square and terrain piece would then be considered a separate zone on the battlefield (so yes, the same area of open ground could potentially loop around a forest for example).

Moving the units - The actual movement would involve a unit taking move actions (e.g. once each turn) to move in/out of any adjacent zone on the battlefield, with the battlefield squares being open ground zones, and each area of terrain being its own zone. For clarity, all models in a unit must be in the same zone, etc. Ideally terrain pieces overlap across battlefield squares (especially buildings/castles), to make for tactical choke points allowing an army to have quick access to multiple parts of the battlefield.

Combat - Units can charge/assault enemies within the same or adjacent zones, getting bonuses if the target is in the same terrain zone or in open ground. Instead of strict shooting ranges, a unit would be able to fire at targets in the same or adjacent zone, and get bonuses if firing from a hill, or if the target is in the same zone or in open ground (this still makes larger open ground areas great for shooting).



That's my quick basic thoughts on the topic, and would be very interested in other people's ideas. I realize a lot of this is probably heresy to many of you, and probably comes across as too boardgamey. Still, I think it's worth discussing at least somewhat, if nothing else than for the novelty.
Edit - clarified shooting better.

Have you ever played the video game Civilization? It's a turn based strategy/management game, where you develop a civilization and go at war with others.

In its last version, the game is played on an hexagonal grid (it used to be squares). Only one unit can be on any given grid element at each time, and units can move to adjacent grid elements (faster units can move multiple times, slower ones by only one element). Each element of the grid also corresponds to a type of terrain (can be mountains, plains, desert etc.), which affects the units: in mountains, you have a bonus to defense, but your movement is slowed down.
You can attack (= assault) units that are in an adjacent element. Also, shooting units can shoot at enemy units that are at most X elements away (X being their range).

So it seems that Civilization's implementation (and I suppose many other games use the same mechanics) is close to what you want to do.
It definitely works pretty well as a system. It does feel more "boardgamy". Actually, many of the last GW's boardgames use tiles, and miniatures can move up to a given number of tiles each turn (and, as I understand it, in Deathwatch Overkill you move on tiles, but you still have some sort of measuring for shooting and assaulting). I fear it wouldn't feel as realistic on the tabletop.

A game called Rogue Planet has measurements, but it is always based on three fingers IIRC, so no special measuring info.

The Old Dust: Tactics boardgame had minis and worked similar to what you are proposing IIRC.

So much IIRC since I am old and have played too many games.

I think if you got clever, you could come up with a wargame that required no measuring. However, I am not sure how "tactical" it would be if things could move as far as they wanted and shoot as far as they wanted. You would need to really think about what you were trying to achieve.

I've heard of a game called Crossfire which does something that you may be looking for. If I remember right, units just move from terrain piece to terrain piece, and their opponent shoots at them as they go. If they are hit, they stop moving, and their opponent activates stuff.

Phil Sabin's Strategos II rules divide the battlefield into 20 zones that define movement and combat.

http://www.soa.org.uk/joomla/18-games/60-strategos-ii
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13686/strategos

Deadzone (and by extension, Mars Attacks) do not have any measurement for range or movement. They play out on a grid (or stack) of cubes 3" on a side and both range and movement are counted out across adjacent cubes. Works extremely well.

Many games also use a colored stick instead of measuring. Each color represents a different short, medium, long category.

For firearms, it is also possible to giver them an unlimited range depending on the scale.

Wings of War / Glory used a deck of maneuver cards.

You chose three per model and then each turn involved 3 phases of movement where you slid your model along the path, like X-Wing..

Heroscape, the Hex-based wonder, incorporated the terrain as the method of measuring. I personally enjoy Heroscape's simplicity and general balance at the basic level.

 chochky wrote:
How plausible would it be to have a miniature wargame (like WFB for the sake of this discussion) where there is absolutely no measuring required, with no ruler or other instruments, with straightforward and concise rules allowing for very quick maneuvering of units while still being tactically important.

At the highest level, on an open board, this is basically X-wing and it's "wing" deriviatives (i.e. Wings of Glory). Models move predefined distances and attack within a predefined range, both using proxy rulers. It's a halfway step between wargaming and boardgaming.

The grid system you describe is basically Zombicide, which is roughly 3" plots on 12" tiles, and ranges are counting 1-3 plots. For comparison, Heroscape is a grid game, just like Super Dungeon Explore, where you're counting up to 9 hexes / squares.

All of these games are designed to play on a 3' square battlefield with a 12" maximum range.


For ruler-less WFB, I'd adapt the X-wing system to use the 18" range ruler for shooting close / medium / far, and a race/unit 3-9" movement ruler to move and wheel the blocks about. It's rulers without measuring.


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 Easy E wrote:
For firearms, it is also possible to giver them an unlimited range depending on the scale.

In the modern era, with 10mm minis and larger, unlimited range is realistic and accurate. The only question is whether one feels a need to have a "point blank" range.

[quote=JohnHwangDD 701336 8886636 cfae46692226a49728d41224d18c7508.jpg}


For ruler-less WFB, I'd adapt the X-wing system to use the 18" range ruler for shooting close / medium / far, and a race/unit 3-9" movement ruler to move and wheel the blocks about. It's rulers without measuring.

Thanks, I wasn't aware.

 Easy E wrote:
[quote=JohnHwangDD 701336 8886636 cfae46692226a49728d41224d18c7508.jpg}


For ruler-less WFB, I'd adapt the X-wing system to use the 18" range ruler for shooting close / medium / far, and a race/unit 3-9" movement ruler to move and wheel the blocks about. It's rulers without measuring.

This is basically the method used by the 'Song of" series and its derivatives. A ruler with three range bands of short, medium, long. Everything uses one of those three ranges.

All wheels should be measured from the opposite corner...

 jmurph wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
[quote=JohnHwangDD 701336 8886636 cfae46692226a49728d41224d18c7508.jpg}


For ruler-less WFB, I'd adapt the X-wing system to use the 18" range ruler for shooting close / medium / far, and a race/unit 3-9" movement ruler to move and wheel the blocks about. It's rulers without measuring.

This is basically the method used by the 'Song of" series and its derivatives. A ruler with three range bands of short, medium, long. Everything uses one of those three ranges.

Wheeling can cause major headaches here. I would suggest simplifying to the DBA rule measuring from furthest point moved. Works for unit based blocks and individual skirmishers.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
I've heard of a game called Crossfire which does something that you may be looking for. If I remember right, units just move from terrain piece to terrain piece, and their opponent shoots at them as they go. If they are hit, they stop moving, and their opponent activates stuff.

That's about right. Units move from here to the next terrain item. If they are visible during that movement, they can be engaged by shooting. The shooting can do anything from nothing to pinning to killing and pinning. If the route chosen doesn't expose the unit, then the movement is safely made and that player can continue activating either that unit or others.

Crossfire claims there's no measurements but sill requires leaders to be within a certain 'stand' or 'base' distance from units they're trying to affect. Those bases have suggested standardized sizes so there's technically measuring.


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 larva_uk wrote:
Deadzone (and by extension, Mars Attacks) do not have any measurement for range or movement. They play out on a grid (or stack) of cubes 3" on a side and both range and movement are counted out across adjacent cubes. Works extremely well.

Although Mantic cheeses me off with their practices and DZ 1.0's forces were crazy unbalanced, I have to agree that Deadzone's movement grid is genius.
Models in version 1.0 could move a set number of spaces/move but the player could choose where in the grid to place them (e.g., behind something to deny shooting bonuses against them).

fresus wrote:
So it seems that Civilization's implementation (and I suppose many other games use the same mechanics) is close to what you want to do.

So you just described hex-based wargaming which has existed since the early 1960's.


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 JohnHwangDD wrote:
At the highest level, on an open board, this is basically X-wing

Except X-Wing requires six different tools to measure movement and ranges, which immediately disqualifies it as being a game without any measuring.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
For firearms, it is also possible to giver them an unlimited range depending on the scale.

In the modern era, with 10mm minis and larger, unlimited range is realistic and accurate. The only question is whether one feels a need to have a "point blank" range.

Infinity is actually close to this. There are range bands with accuracy modifiers, but most weapons have a 'maximum' range of 48" on a 4'x4' board and engagements on a well-constructed board are almost always much closer together.

It's not perfect, (movement can still get a little hairy) but it's much less fiddly than any other wargame I've played with a tape measure.


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 judgedoug wrote:
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 JohnHwangDD wrote:
At the highest level, on an open board, this is basically X-wing

Except X-Wing requires six different tools to measure movement and ranges, which immediately disqualifies it as being a game without any measuring.

I count twelve, actually (three sharp turns, three shallow turns, five straight lines, and the range ruler).

Isn't this effectively Heroes of Might and Magic but as a wargame?

I'm going to approach this from a different manner as I think ultimately this leads the to crux of the issue. So I'll ask about this:

 chochky wrote:
The whole deal with units being 0.5" out of range, and measurement disputes requiring arbitrary roll-offs or dubious gentlemen's agreements to settle, etc.

What is the issue with a unit being 1/2" out of range? Is it since they are out of range, they can't be fired and that realistically they should be able to shoot? Is it an issue with someone moving, thinking they are going to be in range but ultimately not in range (because they aren't allowed to premeasure or something else)? Or that just being slightly out of range should be irrelevant?

The reason I ask is because there are always going to be something fiddly with almost anygame. Even if you are dealing with zones, squares, hexes and remove measuring entirely. Then it might be about cover or something else.

The other reason is to understand more about the way your friends interact. That determines what are better or more viable options.

 Dark Severance wrote:
I'm going to approach this from a different manner as I think ultimately this leads the to crux of the issue. So I'll ask about this:

 chochky wrote:
The whole deal with units being 0.5" out of range, and measurement disputes requiring arbitrary roll-offs or dubious gentlemen's agreements to settle, etc.

What is the issue with a unit being 1/2" out of range? Is it since they are out of range, they can't be fired and that realistically they should be able to shoot? Is it an issue with someone moving, thinking they are going to be in range but ultimately not in range (because they aren't allowed to premeasure or something else)? Or that just being slightly out of range should be irrelevant?

As I read the original post, I think the issue was lack of clarity. The OP appears to want a boardgame type construction, where models are clearly in a zone / grid / region, and ranges / movement clearly correspond to very precise bounds. If you can move / shoot 2, well, that's *exactly* 2 zones / squares, and there's no argument about the thing. This sacrifices flexibility of movement for absolute precision in location & measurement.

It's exactly like Zombicide.

But if you want it to be a TTWG, not a BG, then there's some challenges there inherent to being a WG with freeform movement, before getting into true 3-D terrain / cover / LOS.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
As I read the original post, I think the issue was lack of clarity.

Originally I read it I thought it was about clarity. But then I reread it and looked over the examples and got a different understanding. That is mainly because I have honestly never had or seen a dispute or disagreement about the range. About whether something is in cover or not definitely but never about movement or shooting range, which was why I asked.

Now I do have friends that think that certain games having a limit on ranges is stupid in today's modern wargames. We have had discussions about whether some systems really should have a 'max range'. For them it wasn't about clarity but about the fact that a bullet or laser doesn't just stop at X inches. It started to remind me back to the discussions during the early Alpha's of Mechwarrior Online when weapon ranges stopped weapons. They just stopped, unlike today where they go across the whole map, lowering the potential of the damage and a few other things.

Something being 1/2" out of range is fairly clear, it is out of range. You can't really mis-measure something. But if the game doesn't allow them to shoot and the players think they should, then that is a different thing. It then becomes an issue with that particular style of game or rulesets not with measuring entirely. So even if the range is 2 zones away, but they are using a rifle that the players think should be able to shoot down the whole street.... then removing measuring won't resolve the main issue.

I didn't get that at all:

Instead of strict shooting ranges, a unit would be able to fire at targets in the same or adjacent zone, and get bonuses if firing from a hill, or if the target is in the same zone or in open ground (this still makes larger open ground areas great for shooting).

There's no concept of lasers / artillery stopping short there. The OP describes classic BG gameplay a la Zombicide / Dust / Risk...

If it were what you suggest, then the issue would have been phrased completely differently, such that a unit would be able to fire at any target it can see, and get bonuses if firing from a braced position, or if the target is point blank or in open ground.
See the difference in the problem statement?

To go back to the original point, dimensions of distance and time actually are pretty crucial in war, and therefore have to be considered in some way in a game that even remotely simulates war.

I agree with JohnHwangDD that what you really want is a board game like the Avalon Hill style games, or Battle tech, in which the whole map is defined by the grid. You simply count the hexes or squares and that determines range and movement.

I mentioned Strategic, which applies a variation of this principle to ancient war figure games.

The Star Wars Miniatures Game from WotC used squares for movement and didn't bother with weapon ranges - either you were adjacent, so you could hit the other guy with a lightsaber, or your blaster could reach all across the fairly small area of the battlefield.