After Hours: Seize the Initiative
Added 2018-07-10 13:00:01 +0000 UTCInitiative systems in miniatures war games: the most controversial topic in all of gaming or of all time? Aaron, Shaun, and I discuss the initiative systems of various war games, from Konflikt 47, to Warhammer 40k. I also got a few of the new Warhammer books, so we make fun of the naming system in Death Tome Flesh Eaters Court, which is already a pretty silly name.
Song: Role Initiative by Queen Wolf
Comments
Holy crap, that song at the end is awesome. Nice find, Ross.
Jared Adams
2019-01-01 08:26:56 +0000 UTCThey remind me of Quantum Thief too since they're all terrifying people from the internet/ Gamers.
Adam Makey
2018-09-02 10:50:13 +0000 UTCThe only reason I haven't started playing it is that I currently don't have Legos (s).
Adam Makey
2018-09-02 10:48:20 +0000 UTCI was struck by the comment about wanting to use Sun Tzu's Art of War in a wargame but being stymied by the fact that the game doesn't reward that kind of thinking. I think that's perhaps because Sun Tzu discusses Strategy and choosing the place of battle rather than the deployment and maneuvering of troops on the battlefield. My brother is a huge 40K player and painter and he decided to study the tactics of Napoleonic battles and troop placement and use for his Tau army. He started setting up in squares and using all the battlefield tactics from that time and it had a big impact on his battles. Maybe you are looking too high level - look into squad deployment and tactics for Konflict 47 and the like. I tend to get drawn back into the stories of the individual soldiers and back into RPGs after playing wargames about twice.
Dan Williamson
2018-08-04 14:26:08 +0000 UTCYeah, a lot of older wargames (both hex & counter and miniatures) had more deterministic systems. In the example of Ogre, you compare the ratio of attack strength(s) vs. defense strength and look up that column on a Combat Results Table while rolling a d6 to determine the result of your attack. At an attack vs. defense ratio of 3-1 or better, you're guaranteed a minimum result of "disabled" on the CRT (which will destroy an already disabled armour unit, or a single infantry squad) and at a ratio of 5-1 or better, you're guaranteed a "destroyed" result. This can not only reduce the number of dice rolls you make, it can reduce the randomness of the results. But GW (and companies that are chasing GW players) are very unlikely to use more deterministic mechanics, for the reasons cited by the RPPR crew.
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-23 15:50:17 +0000 UTCYou are describing miniatures wargames. There are also hex map and cardboard counter wargames. For example Ogre & GEV by Steve Jackson games. Although it also has a miniatures variant. Multiple units can and should concentrate fire to get better odds of attack vs defense which makes eliminating a target unit more likely. That sort of better odds before you attack mechanism was very common in the old Avalon hill world war 2 games like panzerblitz and squad leader. It is probably just very common. Anyway, it gives you some control of how much risk you accept when attacking and reduces the number of dice rolled. Terrain and a huge variety of other factors could be relevant. This the rules books on panzer blitz and squad leader got correspondingly longer than Ogre. Wizkids mage-knight and later hero clicks have the very clever dial on each figure giving you the current stats which beats looking up things on charts or long rulebooks. Wizkids also did a Battletech miniatures with dials game. Battletech with mech warrior rpg was a good fusion of tactical & RPG back when it came out. The simpler games tended to be I go you go. Responsive attacks add complexity... which can be a good thing but... complexity. Oh Starfleet battles has a quickstart version available on drivethrurpg... worth a look. Those rules got crazy complex as they added races and weapons systems. And I lost my point other than games which might be of interest 🙂.
Dan Kassiday
2018-07-21 21:15:21 +0000 UTCAnd FYI, you can get the rules pdf --pay what you want-- here: <a href="http://mobileframezero.com/mfz/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://mobileframezero.com/mfz/</a>
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-21 19:48:01 +0000 UTCAnd a couple of games I own but haven’t played that have interesting initiative/action systems: Rogue Stars is a sci-fi squad vs squad skirmish game. Initiative is initially determined by dice rolls from the players (with some modifiers), but the player who gets the initiative keeps it (and keeps activating figures) until they either choose to pass off to the other player, or the other player takes initiative from them with a reaction. Every time the player with initiative activates one of their characters, they must roll against a target number per action, failures give their opponent reactions (which can be used for various actions); and while successes give actions, they also give stress to the character, which give penalties to subsequent activation rolls. Crossfire is a WWII company level game whose big claim to fame is that it doesn’t use rulers and doesn’t have a fixed turn sequence. Movement is measured from terrain piece to terrain piece, and since it’s a skirmish game, it’s assumed that all the action takes place within the effective range of any WWII weapon. For initiative & actions, one player starts with initiative (dictated by the scenario, I think) and keeps it, taking actions (moving; shooting; close assault; etc.) with their squads in any order they wish (and they can also take actions with the same squad repeatedly) and the other player can take reaction fire actions in response to each action. If the active player’s squad fails an action, or if the reacting player suppresses or kills the acting squad, initiative then passes to the reacting player. The acting player can also voluntarily pass initiative to the other player whenever they wish. In all other respects it looks like a traditional historical wargame, but the “No Rulers Required, No Fixed Game Turns” aspect just fascinates me. And now I’ve pulled my copy of the rulebook out to reread (again).
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-19 23:24:22 +0000 UTCAlso note that one of those pdfs is AT-43 Tactics, an AT-43 squad adventure game somewhat along the lines of Imperial Assault.
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-19 22:21:30 +0000 UTCdamn that sounds cool.
Ross Payton
2018-07-19 20:29:38 +0000 UTCThat sounds interesting. If anything, I need to play more systems for war games/skirmish etc.
Ross Payton
2018-07-19 17:45:18 +0000 UTCAh cool. Thanks for the link. I did not have time to read the books. I will now though.
Ross Payton
2018-07-19 17:44:11 +0000 UTCI've played the adventure campaign, it was quite fun. Haven't tried the skirmish game yet though.
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-19 11:51:17 +0000 UTCAlso Imperial Assault is very small scale, much more tactics based with plenty of rules exceptions (huge progression system for the campaign and a card deck for skirmish)
Amelia Moss
2018-07-17 02:21:03 +0000 UTCI really enjoy Imperial Assault since both the placement and action phases alternate between the players. Players choose which unit to place/activate on their turn, then it alternates until everybody has placed/activated. This doesn't favor larger armies as much as you would think since it's squad based activation rather than individual units. They can still resolve in any order (units move to flank, then attack together for example) but it's offset by the exponential power growth. An AT-ST is worth like 2.5 squads of soldiers and obliterates them from extreme range. It's very much beatable, especially since its movement is extremely cumbersome and both scenarios (4v1 campaign) and skirmishes (1v1) have objectives that are almost never based on eliminating the entire enemy army.
Amelia Moss
2018-07-17 01:44:48 +0000 UTCI could have sworn I’d already replied to this, lemme try again… I’ve played a number of games with card-based initiative/action systems (they’re rather popular with the local homebrew crowd) and I remember one that’s similar to what you describe. This is the blurb from the author’s website: “The Face of Battle uses special cards to indicate when a soldier or crew member may act. Each card represents one soldier or vehicle crew member. Each player will have a deck of cards that represents their forces. All players flip their cards at the same time. The soldier or vehicle crew member represented by the card can act: fire a rifle, move, toss a grenade, fire a tank main gun. Leaders order other soldiers into action using leadership cards. Other cards in the deck cover events, vehicle movement, mass movement for human waves, and more. The card system allows all players to be running the forces simultaneously. Players are always involved in the action throughout the game.” I remember playing a game of FoB at a convention a while back, a WWII Canadians vs Germans scenario. I had a Sherman tank, and to preform the actions that I wanted, I had to get the right cards at the right time. If I flipped over a ‘gunner’ card when there was nothing in the main gun, the result was no action. I also had to specify what kind of round was being loaded on the loader’s action, and when a hidden German 88 was suddenly revealed, I found myself deeply regretting choosing an AP round (better against tanks) instead of an HE round (better against infantry and unarmoured antitank/artillery guns) on my loader’s previous action. My gunner fired the AP round to no effect, and before the crew could load & fire an HE round, the 88 put an AP round into my Sherman, brewing it up along with the crew. Before that happened though, the occasional ‘leadership’ cards that came up had been a godsend, allowing me to take the actions I needed to when I wanted.
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-14 23:27:21 +0000 UTCAh, that is a very interesting bit of insight.
Ross Payton
2018-07-11 17:16:12 +0000 UTCOverwatch is limited to shooting at units that charge you and requires 6s to hit, which is weird. Heroic intervention requires units to be 3 inches within the charging enemy. It seems more limited.
Ross Payton
2018-07-11 17:15:34 +0000 UTCLastly, you don't need to memorize every army rule in the game. You only need to know what your shit does and what their shit does, and as mentioned, you should know your army from building it and their army you can read their army list (which they should provide you with before the start of the game anyways). A number of the special rules are also duplicates spread across the different factions (-1 to hit for a certain type of Marine/Eldar, +6" on range for a certain type of Guardsmen/Tau, and so on and so forth).
Patrick
2018-07-11 10:55:15 +0000 UTCSecondly - a lot of the reactionary things Ross was looking for are baked into the core rules. Want to shoot at the Orks charging your Guardsmen? Overwatch. Want your Space Marine hero to save those Guardsmen? Heroic intervention. Want to stop the Ork psychic? Deny the Witch. Cover saves are baked into being in terrain by default.
Patrick
2018-07-11 10:50:58 +0000 UTCI was wondering if a card based initiative mechanic based on the type of action a unit is performing would work; similar to Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards. So a tank would aim and fire slower than infantry running, who might be slower than another infantry unit firing. Also could you have a power level tier system, like the one in Base Raiders to reduce the number of dice thrown, with enough lower level shots equaling a higher level shot. Quantity has a quality all of its own after all.
A FakeLastName
2018-07-11 06:54:20 +0000 UTCRoss: Have you read the Therians army book for AT-43? I think I’ve mentioned it on the forums too. The origins of the Therians are just wild: a posthuman technological singularity who created their own enemies because… otherwise there’d be no other factions to fight? Rackham made all the AT-43 books free to download shortly before going under, here’s a link to a folder with all of them on dropbox: <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qmk32cox055g2ii/AADHlNT5ciTjMWl8EDvftGvma?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qmk32cox055g2ii/AADHlNT5ciTjMWl8EDvftGvma?dl=0</a>
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-11 02:54:27 +0000 UTCI also want to take a moment to plug my current favourite wargame for it's initiative system: Mobile Frame Zero. MFZ is designed for asymmetrical battles, so players are supposed to bring unequal forces to the table. The player who brings the least powerful army is called the defender and gets bonuses to their ‘points per asset’ (units & objectives), and the player with the most current points has the initiative. Having initiative means that you get to decide if you want to take a turn with one of your units, or pass off to the player with the next highest score, until all of your units have taken their turn, which gives that player a lot of power to dictate the flow of battle. In addition to that, when a unit that hasn’t taken a turn yet is attacked, it must take it’s turn immediately after the unit that attacked it ends it’s turn, regardless of which player currently has initiative. This can lead to a chain reaction of units being forced to take their turns “out of order”. Over the course of a game, as units are destroyed and objectives are lost and captured, initiative can shift between players, making it a very fun & dynamic element of the game.
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-11 02:27:04 +0000 UTCI may have shared this before on the forums, but I read an interview with Rick Priestley (the author of the 1st edition of Warhammer & also Bolt Action) where he said that the IGO-UGO turn sequence was deliberately chosen for their target audience: “No, we did alternate moves with Warhammer, because we knew our audience. You can’t write a game based on simultaneous movement unless you’re going to have some element of hidden orders or direction. Well, no youngster is going to play that.” The bit about “simultaneous movement” was a reference to the kinds of wargames (like WRG's 'Ancients') that Priestley had played and designed prior to working for GW.
Bryan Rombough
2018-07-11 01:56:05 +0000 UTCI'll have more later, but I'll start off with this - decreasing the # of dice rolled does not help with reducing the effect of random chance on a wargame, it increases it.
Patrick
2018-07-10 18:44:26 +0000 UTC
