One hour skirmish games

[blinky465 17208xp 4]

So I got this yesterday.

I got home from work, set the new resin 3d printer going (did I say I got a new resin 3d printer somewhere?) and settled down to read this book with a cup of tea – One Hour Skirmish Wargames.

 

I reckon it’s flipping awesome – and might just be the thing to get @warzan out of his hobby funk.

The no-dice, playing-card-based system is just genius. It adds the “granularity” of a two-dice system, but without the annoying bell-curve that weights all the results around the number seven, which then require +/- modifiers to give characters special skills.

I wanted to try out the rules. My wife reluctantly turned off the soaps and joined me. We both had a blast. The cards created a naturally balanced game: for every poor result (low card) you got, you knew you’d get a good result (high card) later on in the game. My only concern was that, as poker players we both had developed a “feel” for the deck: you just get an idea of whether a deck is “hot” (contains lots of high cards still to come) or not. You could even use very basic card counting to keep track of how many blacks and reds remain in your deck as you play (this is important when drawing “red is dead” for injury results).

So we came up with a house rule. Normally I’m not a fan – but this actually *enhanced* the game:

At the start of any turn, the player who has initiative can voluntarily give it to the opponent, in return for (their opponent) shuffling their deck. This means either player can give up their tactical advantage in the game, to try to improve their statistical odds, once the deck has “turned against them”.

Knowing just when to employ this made the game really fun: no longer were we playing against the mechanics of the rules (as might happen with a continous deck) – we were playing a wargame where the commanding character had to weigh up not just how, but when, to give their troops the best chance of success.

Has anyone else played these rules? Any other ideas for combatting us number-nerds who (whether deliberately or not) could otherwise reduce a game into little more than statistical analysis?

[ninjilly 11673xp 0]

Never heard of anyone who’s played it before – it pops up in my Amazon recommendations from time to time. Now I’ve heard good things I might look at it a bit more seriously ?

[blinky465 17208xp 0]

I wasn’t expecting much. And maybe it’s because we’re both card players. But having your own deck, drawing for initiative, drawing for action points… each time you pull off a move because of a high card draw, you just know that at some point in the game “I’m going to pay for that, later”.

Knowing that a good result *has to* be evened out by a low card draw (since you get four of each number 1-13 and equal numbers of red and black cards, equal numbers of each suit etc.) we almost looked forward to losing an encounter or getting a bad result, because it tipped the deck back in your favour!

The only time this might be a drag is if you know you’ve had all your good cards, so have only low value dross left – or you’ve been watching your opponent draw badly early on, so you know you’re going to take a spanking in later turns as they have a pack of high value card remaining.

Hence the “give up initiative to shuffle” rule. It worked nicely. But maybe we need to refine it so it can only be done once or twice a game….

I cant recommend the book enough.

Rules are tight and simple, cover a wide range of periods and the examples really set the tone.

[marsniper27 1006xp 0]

I’ve looked at this a few times but haven’t picked it up might have to get it now.

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