I had some time off work today, and spent a spare part of the afternoon trying out a different way of resolving hits for the One-Hour Wargames rules. I find that the steady attrition of the rules as written tends to leave to a mass slaughter of units well before the normal end of the game, and wanted to see if there was a way of reducing the casualty rate. In addition I wanted to be able to use markers to record hits. Whilst I came up with
a way of doing this for 15 hit units the other day, I still prefer a lower number of hits - the three or four of 'See The Elephant' or 'Twilight of the Sun King' seems abut right.
I played around with the numbers, and came up with this:
Roll 1D6 in combat as before.
A unit which normally rolls 1D6-2 score a hit on a 6.
A unit which normally rolls an unmodified D6 scores a hit on a 4-6.
A unit which normally rolls a D6+2 scores a hit on a 2-5 and scores two hits on a 6.
If you get to double your hits (flank attacks) then roll two dice, and add together the hits scored.
If the hits are halved then roll a D6 for each hit scored; on a 4-6 that hit is ignored.
A unit is removed when it has taken four hits.
I tried this out in a couple of games, one of which you can see here:
It's viable, but possibly not much better than the original system. The fact that attacks can score no damage gives you the feeling your units are are little more robust, but I may need to play with the odds somewhat as D6-2 units are really quite feeble. It aso requires more than one D6, and more than one roll for the combat sometimes. On the plus side I found it easier to track hits, and less predictable, which is always good.
Super idea. Less casualty markers.
ReplyDeleteBut “If the hits are halved then roll a D6 for each hit scored; on a 4-5 that hit is ignored.”
Is it not rather on a 4-6?
Lex
You're correct - it's a typo I have corrected :)
DeleteThe existing combat system is a little bloody, particularly for units armed mainly with ranged weapons. This is partly as many of the scenarios have almost no cover at all, and partly because the combat system virtually encourages you to mass fire against single targets. One simple solution might be to keep the 'four hits' concept but use the standard hit point generation system with some sort of saving throw. Six hit points generates one actual hit on the target, and simply dice for fractions (so e.g. unit A rolls a '4' to attack, so the target then rolls a 5 or 6 to save or it takes one hit, unit B rolls a '7' (D6+2), so gets one hit automatically and the target saves against a second on a 2-6).
ReplyDeleteJust a thought anyway, I've been playing around with the naval variant and that really is hideously bloody unless you introduce lots and lots of hit reduction machansms.
The massing fire issue could be partially resolved by a simple target priority mechanism. I'm still working out issues like range measurement and whether arcs of fire are block so I can come up with simple way of adjudicating it, and target priority could be part of that.
Delete(For example, draw a line straight forward from the centre of the firing unit. If it meets an enemy unit that is closer than any other enemy unit, then you must fire at that one. Now if you have two lines of infantry facing each other they will fire at the unit opposite.)