Brewing my own

[modius13]

I'm thinking of starting a project over the summer: the creation of a table top miniatures game.

The aim is to be:
inexpensive
easy to understand (clear, concise rules)
played with a minimum number of models
play relatively quickly (maybe 30 minutes max for a game)
and most importantly, be fun

I don't have anything done on it yet except the thoughts burbling in my head, but I'll keep posting stuff here as I come up with it. Feedback will be needed. Also play-testers at some point... maybe in the Fall.

I think that's about it for now.

[End Transmission]

[Leudast1215]

Except for July I'm stranded here over the summer so if you need someone to brainstorm/work with/playtest over the summer I'm all ears.

[modius13]

Ah, yes, thank you... I'll post something here when I've got some basic rules down.

[ddaypunk06]

I'm in, just let me know how its going.

[modius13]

So, first installment of sorta rules... Terrain. I'm thinking using 3 inch hex tiles. The tiles will be part of a players points limit. I figure that the battlefield is just as important a part of the strategy as the actual army. Each type of terrain has a different effect.
So far for basic terrain I have:
clear
forest
rocky
buildings
water
Is this good or should there be more? suggestions.
I think there should be 7 to 10 tiles per player. Players take turns placing 3 or 4 tiles at the beginning of the game. the rest of the tiles are placed one at the beginning of each player turn.

Other notes: 20mm bases for small things like people and small critters; 40mm bases for larger creatures and machines.

That's it for now. Thanks for everybody's help.

[Leudast1215]

Seems like something to get started with; If the goal of the game is to be played with few miniatures and a short period of time it would probably be important then to use the resources we already have available at OBG: namely the terrain and the tables themselves. We already have the minis (we're in a miniatures club) so the focus should rather be, I feel, in figuring out ways in which perhaps to use the boards we already have at OBG to use with terrain in a pseudo-chess style thus involving minimal models and as for length chess takes as long as u want it to so the same should hold for this game. So to make it open to everyone we should follow chess's inspiration and create new unit types with rules to follow so u just pick ur favorite minis, 'upgrade' em' to your liking and go play.

For example, we can make up upgrades that have a point value and a limit to how many you can take. each player would start the game with a pre-set point value and use to buy either more models (not much, anywhere from 5-10?) and upgrade em' to your liking on a piece of paper before the game, showing ur 'army' to the other player only when you're both done. terrain will then affect movements and other stuff, and the purpose should be to claim objectives or fulfill scenario objectives that we can cook up?

[modius13]

Yes to the objective-based game play. I should have said that earlier... a bit tired still from finals. The idea of having the terrain hexes is so that you can play anywhere, not just at a game store. I have no problem with game stores, really, love 'em to death, especially OBG, but I want the flexibility of say, playing at home in a small apartment where you might not have the space for 40K style terrain or maybe in the Student Center at lunch or something. It needs to be compact and durable enough that it can be stuffed in a decent sized dice bag. ooo, that was a bit long-winded and ranty... sorry, but you get my point, ya?

Once this gets up off the ground and a few games have been played, I'm planning on getting some casting resin and some silicon mold rubber and making some simple minis (probably closer to tokens or, yes, chess pieces) and the terrain tiles. the tiles will be sort of bas-relief sculptures, 3/8 to 1/2 inch thick at most. easy and cheap to cast once the masters are made.

number of models: 5-10 is the idea. depending on the upgrades and such. Also, at most 5D6... I'm sick of rolling 40000 dice. Yes, as much as I love having that many attacks, I think it would be better to have the amount of attacks be more of a modifier to the attack roll instead of the number of dice rolled. speeds things up and makes for less mess.

I'm rather fond of the games that use cards for the model stats (Warmachine, Heavy Gear, AT-43, etc.) For the demo game of Heavy Gear, the cards have the basic unit info and the bottom half is a list of upgrades with check boxes and points for each. As far as I've seen, the actual game doesn't have that *shrug* but I like the idea.

OK, I have to go spend time with the folks tomorrow, so I'm off to bed.

[ddaypunk06]

Sounds good so far man. I like the Hex terrain idea, and stat cards are a great idea. I like how easily things can be referenced to on them like in Warmachine.

Maybe a like swamp type terrain? Kinda a hybrid water and forest.

[modius13]

'Allo again, another installment of basics.
Troop Types:
Heros - 2 Wounds
Basic Troops - 1 Wound
Specialists - 1 Wound
Machines/Beasts - 2+ Wounds

Stats:
Movement - How far the unit can move in hexes
Attacks - How skilled the unit is at hitting things where it hurts
Defense - How well the unit avoids getting killed
Wounds - How many times the unit needs to be shot before it dies

Weapon Stats:
Strength - How easily the gun hurts things
Range - How far away from the enemy the firer can stand

Basic Terrain:
Clear - No effects - 5 points
Water - Impassible - 10 points
Rocky - -1 Movement - 10 points
Forest - +1 Defense - 15 points
Buildings - +2 Defense - 20 points
Swamp - +1 Defense -1 Movement - 20 points

Attack Rolls - Roll under (Attack characteristic + Strength of weapon + 1 for each of that type of weapon over 1) on 2D6: Example- 3 basic troops in the same hex with Attack 3 and Strength 4 guns would be roll under 9 on 2D6 (3+4+2=9).

Defense Rolls - D6 + Defense Characteristic +Defense Modifier of Terrain: greater than Attack Roll = no wound; equal to or less than Attack Roll = 1 wound

Misc. : small arms- move and shoot; Big Guns- move or shoot.

Yup, that's the last of what I have written up so far.

[modius13]

Today's post is....
Objectives:
Fortress- 40mm base, +3 Def., 15pts.
Battle Standard- 20mm base, 1 re-roll per turn, 15pts.
Ammo Dump- 20mm base, 1 attack re-roll for each unit in the same hex per game, 10pts.
Spotter- 20mm base, +1 range to 1 friendly unit in any adjacent hex per turn, 10pts.

Each player gets 1 objective for every 200 pts. of his/her force. The idea being that the objectives shouldn't just be little tokens that you have to capture, but useful assets in the game as well.

Any other ideas for objectives?

Oh, and a note on the base size thing. you can have as many pieces in a hex as can fit. i.e., you can really only fit 1 40mm base in a hex along with maybe 3 20mm bases, where as you could fit up to 7 or so 20mm bases in a hex.