Indefinite Hold

The blog's been quiet for a while now; and now that I finally have a bit of time to write, I feel like I owe everyone an explanation. Long story short... I'm currently buried in family responsibilities. Forcing me to put the development of WarStrike on hold while I deal with them.

When To Test Leadership

Ok, so here's some thinking on when, under the new "I go, you shoot" system, we should test leadership to clear suppression.

Simplifying Things Some More...

Sorry for the long break in posting, but I've been dealing with some serious health issues that demanded my full attention. I'm having a 'good day' right now though, so I've actually been able to sit down and think about the project in detail. Instead of in little snippets here and there.

As part of that, I've been having a desire to simplify the game some more. Which mostly boils down to simplifying close-combat and shooting. While keeping a bit of the feel that we had in the last game sequence test. Where we experimented with a set of phases that were similar to those in the old Squad Leader game.

Concept: Leadership Failure Levels

Still from Paths of Glory- Kubrick 1957

Eriochrome here today to talk about some ideas for the morale/leadership system. Unit morale is a key factor in war and while interspecies wars can be genocidal that does not mean everyone will fight every engagement to the death.  Units under fire might start keeping their heads down more than the general on high would like or they might even run away to fight another day.  We would like a unified leadership system which can cover this whole range without being too complicated or constricting.

Do Base Sizes Really Matter Now?

I was at the local FLGS last week, when I spied a box of the new Dreamforge 'Eisenkern' troopers for sale. The Eisenkern line is widely seen as an attempt to offer cheaper/cooler Imperial Guard options than GW does. At just $21.95 for a 10-man squad, I said "sure", and grabbed one. When unboxing them though, I was surprised to see that they come with (very nice) 30mm bases. Which is 5mm more than the 25mm standard that GW and Mantic use.

I'm not sure what Dreamforge is up to, as buying a $4.50 pack of 10 GW bases to be '40K legal' with these actually erases a little more than half of their price advantage. But it did get me thinking about how much base size matters in the game now. Given that we intend to facilitate the use of anyone's minis with our rules, differing base standards are a potential problem. But how much of one?

Buildings & Shooting

As I'm going through and re-ordering the rules, I've decided to pull some of the 'advanced' rules (Woods, Buildings, etc.) out into their own sections. In an effort to make the 'base' rules simpler and easier to follow. While doing that, I've had some interesting ideas on how buildings should be treated in regards to their own evasion/armor/toughness. For when you're trying to shoot the building itself, instead of the just the guys inside it.

Making Officers More Heroic

So here's an interesting idea I had while outlining the Shooting rules today...

Mission Outline: Meeting Engagement

Here's the outline for the Meeting Engagement mission, which is more or less our 'standard' mission. I'm going to let HighlanderBurial polish it up.

Testing The New Game Phases

I went down to the local club yesterday and got a test game in with Nick. Who's followed the project off and on since its inception, but who hadn't actually gotten to play a test game yet.

A Very Handy Outlining Tool

One of the problems I have with creating detailed rules outlines in Word is that eventually I reach the point where I can no longer deal with the volume of info I end up with. Meaning that I can't think about stuff like chapter order, with all of the section/detail info in the way. At that point I always end up abandoning the outline, and writing rules up in full. Before I've completely worked out all the interrelations and dependencies. But then I keep going back to the outline because of how slow that is...