Square-Grid Initiative Rules

I thought I would share the activation system I am playing around with for my current square-grid games. It's based on the method used by others of rolling Risk express or battle Cry/Memoir '44 dice to determine which units can be used during a turn, but I have adapted it to use a conventional D6; the results are easy enough to remember in a fairly short period of time.

Each army has a number of activation dice assigned to it, and can roll that many at the start of the turn. I haven't hit on a method of determining how many dice the army should get yet; for the smallish games I have been playing three to five seems sufficient.

The primary arm of the army must be determined. This is either Infantry or Cavalry.

Roll your activation dice. The scores are read as follows:

1-2 Activate one unit from the Primary Arm
3 - Activate one unit from the Secondary Arm
4 - Activate one Artillery unit
5 - Reroll this dice, and add an extra activation dice.
6 - Activate one unit of your choice (if within 3 squares of a General)

So if your primary army is infantry and you have four dice, rolling 1,3,5,5 you can activate:

One Infantry (1)

One Cavalry (3)

Reroll the two rolls of '5' and add two more dice. These score 1,2,5,6 which means you can also activate:

Two Infantry (1,2)

One unit of your choice within three spaces of the General (6)

Reroll the '5' and add yet another dice. A score of 2 and 3 finally adds

One Infantry (2)

One Cavalry (3).

This is a total of:

Four Infantry

Two Cavalry

One unit of your choice.

If a dice score cannot be used (because you don't have enough, or any, units of that type), then it is ignored.

If a General is with a unit then he may move with it if it is activated. Otherwise a general may be activated with any dice score (a good use for scores that you can't otherwise use).

Obviously this mechanism is designed for a horse and musket style of game (I've tested it with 18th century and 19th century settings), but it could be adapted for more modern eras as well; for an Interwar/WWII setup you could have mechanised and non-mechanised as the arms, for example.

I'm still tweaking this idea, but it does seem to give the player enough control to implement a plan, whilst throwing the odd bout of good or bad fortune their way as well.