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Hey there! I've been bouncing around ideas and mechanics for a game that I've been designing for over a year now. I just wanted to hear some insight from the community and hope to get some constructive brainstorming going.

So before I started writing anything, I sat down and wrote down things that I've liked and not liked from games I've played over the years. I wanted to create something that was easy to learn/play, something that keeps players interest and offer a tabletop experience unlike anything they've played before.

Here are some of the things that I wanted to avoid
- Units that you just painted being the first thing to be removed when you get them on the tabletop
- Too much bookkeeping
- Games that feel very unbalanced or one that if you make a small mistake it could cost you the game.
- Convoluted rule sets
- Units/armies not being supported

With that being said here are some of the ideas I've been working with and the play testing thus far has been very rewarding.

Scale is 28-32 mm and it uses a D12 system.

I am using a 1.25" hex grid. I decided to go this route so there was no bickering about range, pre-measuring and players don't have to worry about carrying around measuring accessories. Hex grids also offer cohesive weapon/ability ranges and is excellent for determining the facing of the model.

I'm currently designing four unique factions, each with certain specialties and quirks.

The overall feel has a classic RTS feel. Both players start within 8 spaces of the board edge and two resource mines are placed in the middle of the battlefield with "event tokens" being placed by each player.
Event tokens will activate if a model move within 3 spaces, in which players will draw an "event deck" that triggers anything from explosions to neutral monsters being spawned.
There is a Fog of War mechanic that adds a different aspect to the game. Armies have a universal "sight" characteristic for organic and mechanical units. Enemy units that are out of a friendly models sight can't be targeted. If a friendly model reveals an enemy unit, all friendly units within range can target that enemy unit. There are scout-like units that are lightly armored but move quickly to uncover areas of the battlefield, with certain factions being better with sight than others.

Players use gatherer units to collect resources from the resource mines to construct structures and spawn new units. (This gets around the painted models being removed, as you can just respawn them). Models are activated using action points that they can spend to do various abilities like move, attack etc.

Structures are also a key part of the game. Players can build structures that allow them to spawn units. Unless stated otherwise, only three of the same unit can be on the battlefield at any given time. Units are usually capped at 3 models per unit to keep the model count reasonably low.

Players also start with a "Commander" unit which is a powerful champion that leads their force into battle. If this champion is slain during the course of the battle, players can respawn them at their "Command Structure". This process is very costly in resources and the spawned commander can't activate the turn they're respawned, so players will have to play somewhat smart as they navigate the battlefield.

Unit's take turns activating, so you activate a unit/structure then the opposing player activates a unit/structure until all models on the board are activated and then the turn ends and all actions are reset. (So far this has allowed players to make minor mistake without it costing the them the game).

While the rules section of the core rules I've written clocks in at 21 pages, the rules are pretty streamlined and are reasonably easy to learn. I've worked up the lore and model designs to eventually get a 3D printed prototype. My late term goals would be to release rules in pdf format that is free to download and will be updated to make sure rules are cohesive and updated in real time. I'm also leaning towards offering 3D STL files so players can just print their own models from home, or I can print them for them for a fee. I'd like to keep costs down for players while eventually getting somewhat of a return in my investment for things like artwork, 3D renders and formatting. Overall I just want to create something that is enjoyable to play and helps bring more folks into the mini wargaming community.

I look forward to your responses and I'm completely open to new ideas as I've been primarily designing this solo.

Thanks

It's an interesting concept, almost trying to replicate the sort of Dawn of War style RPGs on the tabletop.

I think it has a lot of potential to work well.

I'd be tempted to go the extra mile and add spotting/stealth characteristics for different units. So tanks might be hard to hide and relatively blind, encouraging infantry support.
But that may not be worth the complication.

I've worked up faction wide mechanics, so certain armies can see better than other. So factions with poor eye sight have shorter sight range and more developed factions to have higher sight range. I've also added a mechanic to one faction that can drop stationary "beacons" with scout troops that reveal small areas.

With the sight profiles of organic and mechanical, tanks will typically have shorter sight than organic infantry units. So you need both for them to be most effective.

Overall I like the use of key term abilities, so I have around ten to fifteen. I just don't want it to get too convoluted like Infinity, where there are fifteen pages of key terms. ( I love infinity, just not for this.) My goal is to find balance in the middle. Not as simple as games like Warcry, but not as advanced as Infinity.

I have camouflage as a key term ability that makes certain units even harder to target.

Here is my initial workup of the unit profiles. I plan to hire an actual graphic designer down the road, but these are the working layout.

Looks good.
Only comment I might add is that if weapon profiles are simple enough, including them in the datasheet would make player's lives a little easier.

Good call! They should easily fit, so I'll definitely be implementing that. Thanks!

So it's been a while since I've posted anything on this. A few colleagues and I are taking the next steps to make this a reality. We've partnered with Hexy Studios to create the prototype that is slated to be finished by the end of 2022 with a launch goal of next year to crowdfund. I feel that we've hit home a lot of the goals we set out to achieve with our system. Our game is completely focused around the player experience on AND off the table. There will be no pregame preparation other than choosing a hero model. Games scale up throughout the battle and the average game time is 1-2 hours. Sight ranges inhibit long range destructive weapons, so they must be paired with a scouting unit to "reveal". It is impossible to achieve a turn one win due to the starting model count and in the many games we've played so far the earliest win was turn 3 (games last around 5 turns). The model count per battle and scale are close to that of Warmachine with around 20-30 miniatures on the battlefield at games end and is designed for a 4'x4' board. We plan to offer digital rules that are consistently updated through an app that we have in development. I've attached a picture of the first 3D printed STL prototype (it's not to scale) and I'm not a professional painter. The final scale for these will be about the size of a primaris marine. For those that are interested I'll be posting links to our social media that we plan to launch in April 2022. I'm really hoping everyone has as much fun playing this as I've had bringing it to life.

At a macro level, any combination of mechanics works to make a game. The real question is whether this is the right combination of mechanics for the game you desire to play.

IMO, rather than worrying about details like the number of sides per die, I'd worry about the overall flow of the thing.

For example, why must your game board be 4' deep, when you've just cut out all of the at-home gamers whose kitchen tables are only 3' deep? Is there a benefit for your game to play on a 3'x4' field, allowing it to play on both 3x5 tables and 4x4 boards?

If there's no prep aside from selecting a hero model, so how do you ensure there isn't a 'best' hero? Is there a 'ban' phase a la League? Is there a bidding mechanic?

If you're not using bog standard d6 which are widely available by the bucketful, why d12 when most not-d6 games (eg. White Wolf, Kingdom Death) use sets of several d10? Or is it a 1d12 system? If so, why not 1d20 a la D&D? d12 feels like being different for the sake of being different, without any actual gameplay or customer benefit. It's actually a big turn-off when there are well-established die systems out there that potential players are likely to have. And no, selling extra dice isn't great when you are the only supplier.

Why 20-30 models, when most new games are scaled at a half-dozen (OG Warmachine / Hordes starters, Malifaux starters, Infinity starters, Guild Ball, etc.) or a dozen at most (Blood Bowl team). If each model matters, why so many?

This is great stuff! Thank you for the ideas & feedback!

My team and I put quite a bit of thought into the size of die that we wanted to use. Many of playing miniature wargames for over half our lives at this point (I'm 35 so quite a while). Our first idea was go with D6 like many of the games we played but we felt that with D6 there is almost too small of a outcome range and everything becomes trying to "mathhammer" your chances of success. You can still do this with higher numbers it just becomes a little more difficult. We thought about a D20 like Inifinity and D&D, but the swing was a little too much for what we were wanting. We settled on 2D6 or D12, the pros to 2D6 is that like you mentioned, they're available by the bucket. The con is that you're now rolling 2D6 per action instead of a single die. I love the 2D6 in Warmachine but it wasn't ideal for the way our game plays due to full unit activations. So we ended up on D12 to get a similar result without needing to roll the additional dice.

As for the table size, I love this suggestion. I love the idea of being able to play on the kitchen table. I've been working up formats to play via missions and this will be an excellent inclusion. I get my brain wrapped around 4x4 or 4x6 and didn't even think of that. Thank you for the suggestion.

For hero's their more focused around utility, so I guess it would depend on your play style as to which one is the "best". There are several aspects of the game that don't exist in current wargames that hero's can help manipulate or change. This would be like the sight mechanic or "fog of war", where units have a vision arc much like in Metalgear Solid. There are hero's that can manipulate this mechanic to make your force better at sneaking around, or there are hero's that are completely combat oriented and just run in and smash stuff. This takes a large amount of balancing of course, but so far we've haven't been able to determine a solid "best" hero yet.

The model count is really in the hands of the player as well. Our game is inspired by classic RTS games of our childhood like Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation, Warcraft etc....So you gather resources, use those resources to build forces and play. So the battle escalates as you play. Turn 1 players only have 4 models on the battle. As the battle progresses they gather resources, build structures and spawn units. We are going for the "army" feel that 40k offers, but making the units interact with each other to enhance their capabilities. So instead of individual models its more Squad A sets up for Squad B to shoot while Squad C scouts enemies ahead and provides support. Basically your force works as a single cohesive force that enhances itself instead of smaller individual units doing their own thing. I used EDH format in Magic the Gathering for inspiration on faction and army design. I looked at it almost like deck building, with units that have that "answer" to something that's happening on the battlefield. Players can then spawn that unit or preemptively spawn a unit in anticipation of what the opponents next move is.
I feel like we achieve the goal of blending "big battle" games with the smaller skirmish style. All while minimizing the "feel bad" moments from other formats.

Your response has made my night, as now I'm reworking things in my head. Our company is centered around listening and changing around player feedback as much as possible. We know we won't be able to make everyone completely happy, but we are going to do our best to listen to our player base and use their feedback as inspirational changes to our game.

Thanks for your reply, it's always helpful to hear from the designer why they made certain choices.

Absolutely!

So I've been talking to my team and I think we're going to start everything as a "print & play" then move to physical model production, once we get experience under out belt.

We're thinking about this approach just to start small and slowly acquire injection machines to make physical models. What is everyone's thoughts on this? I know not everyone has 3D printers, but it might be a good starting point for us.