Laertes Chews On Wargame Scenery In Real Time

[Laertes]

This is a followon from this thread and in the style of Phonelobster, I'm going to do my design blabbering here instead of elsewhere.

This is mental masturbation: I have some spare processor cycles right now (as the geology threads show) and this seems like a good dump for them. I don't expect it to ever come to fruition, but if someone ever want to strip mine it for ideas then great. If someone actually wants to play it, then awesome.

Without further ado, we bring you:

Laertes's Warhammer 40,000 Heartbreaker

The purpose of this game is to design something that meets Ogrebattle's original design criteria:
- A wide variety of unit types and armies are possible.
- Armies consist of multiple separate units.
- 3-6 turns each of 15 - 30 mins.

I'm going to add some of my own criteria that I added in that thread:
- Units are going to be defeated by morale loss, not by death.
- Terrain is going to matter a great deal.
- Battles are going to be small: this is a skirmish game and not a meatgrinder
- Units are going to be generalised. They'll have different strengths but each unit should be capable of every battlefield task.
- The game is won in chargen, rather than in play.

Here are some further criteria that Dean posed and my answers to them:
- Units will all have multiple abilities.
- Maneuver will not be a matter of exactness.
- Modular army building and upgrades.

[Laertes]

So the first thing that matters is movement mechanics, but before we can talk about that we need to talk about distance. For 28mm models, a 4'x4' table is aesthetically pleasing but it's not very large. A modern infantryman's assault rifle is accurate out to about 300m, while a battle rifle or LMG is accurate to about 500m. 500m is 250 times the height of a soldier. The 28mm equivalent of that is seven metres, which you cannot fit on a sensible table.

This gives us six options:

The Battlefleet Gothic solution. Accept that your models are larger than the soldiers they represent. This works well but means that your terrain is going to be weirdly out of scale; you're going to have clown-car houses and vehicles larger than the roads they're on, for example. This is aesthetically undesirable.

The Epic solution. Use really, really small models. This won't be popular with people who want cool looking models and so your game will suffer.

The Doom solution. Have weapon ranges not be a thing in your game. Use visibility instead. This might work well once you get used to it, but means that when people use your rules in situations you didn't expect - and they will - they'll break down completely. Enemy forces will have to begin out of visibility of one another, otherwise the person who gets the first turn will be able to carry out a massacre.

The Historical Wargames solution. That one guy actually represents an entire squad.

The Shadowrun solution. Deny that it's a problem. Let military fetishists and gun-porn enthusiasts whine on the internet about it but don't actually fix anything.

The Warhammer 40,000 solution. Write it into your fluff. It's not a bug, it's a feature. All firefights take place at chainsword range in your setting. Roll with it.

If you want to sell toy soldiers, I'd go with the Shadowrun solution. If you want to make good rules, I'd use the Battlefleet Gothic or Epic solutions. Since we're trying to write good rules but also use 28mm minis, we're going to go with the Battlefleet Gothic solution for now. I may fall back on one of the others if it turns out not to work.

Now let's talk about movement. I want the game to be extremely fluid and mobile, so that clever generalship matters. As such, the basic movement rules are going to be as follows:

- A squad can move at its normal movement rate if none of the below apply.
- A squad can move at double its normal movement rate if it will end its move within X distance of a friendly unit. (So you can quickly advance up to the front line and withdraw to prepared positions, and so you can have fast fragile elements "guide" your advance.)
- A squad can move at double its normal movement rate if it will not pass within X distance of an enemy during any part of that move. (So you can make quick outflanking moves if the other guy didn't guard his flanks, and lone snipers can pin down convoys.)
- These last two stack, so a squad can move at four times its normal movement if it will be away from bad guys and it's moving so that it ends within X distance of a friendly unit.
- If a squad has a transport vehicle, it gains unlimited movement across open ground. It may move as far as it likes. However, if it moves through enemy firing zones, it may provoke snap fire. (So that transports make you really fast along roads and stuff, but anti-vehicle ambushes become a thing.)

[Ice9]

- 3-6 turns each of 15 - 30 mins.
...
- The game is won in chargen, rather than in play.

These two don't seem to go well together. So we spend two hours playing a game, but none of that actually matters because victory was already decided when I sent a "Rock" army against your "Scissors" army?

Or alternately, we spend half an hour setting up the table, and then you place your troops on it and I immediately concede because I know I can't win? Or perhaps we just compare army lists before the match and don't bother actually playing?

Is there something I'm missing? Because all of that seems pretty undesirable.

[Laertes]

- 3-6 turns each of 15 - 30 mins.
...
- The game is won in chargen, rather than in play.

These two don't seem to go well together. So we spend two hours playing a game, but none of that actually matters because victory was already decided when I sent a "Rock" army against your "Scissors" army?

Or alternately, we spend half an hour setting up the table, and then you place your troops on it and I immediately concede because I know I can't win? Or perhaps we just compare army lists before the match and don't bother actually playing?

Is there something I'm missing? Because all of that seems pretty undesirable.

"Game won in chargen" is something that most tabletop wargames are sadly guilty of; and indeed many games in general. Personally I love games which have as little gen and as much play as possible, but the downside of those is that it becomes frustratingly difficult for players to discuss because there are no "builds", just situations that occur. Since what I'm aiming for is the fun bits of Warhammer 40k without the stupid, and most 40k players I know have immense fun building their army lists even though they know the game is usually decided by the matchup rather than the tactics, I didn't see that as a tremendous problem.

There's a saying which goes "chargen is the game; play is the exam on how well you did during chargen." I really dislike it when people go into a party-based RPG with that attitude but in an openly competitive game it can be a great deal of fun.

[Laertes]

The Battlefield and the Flow

A 4'x4' table is a good size. That's roughly 1.25m on a side because I'm a scientist and I use metric units. It's 1.25 and not 1.2 because that lets me break it into five squares, each one 25cm on a side, to make it easy to conceptualise.

The minimum number of units your side has, according to Ogrebattle's original design specs, was three: two fighting units and one HQ. I'm going to put a soft upper cap on it too, for now. That upper cap is going to be five units. Beyond that the game gets too complex to flow quickly. Some factions might raise that cap at the cost of mechanical simpler units, but that's thought for later.

As such, a crowded front line might consist of one unit in every 25cm square, and a sparse one might consist of a unit in squares two and four with gaps in one, three and five. These gaps shouldn't be literal gaps in your line; your units should be able to exert control over them. As such, the "power projection" range of an infantry unit should be about 25cm. Anyone moving within that radius will have to engage in battle with that unit, and unless they're clearly stronger then the unit should win regardless of who get the first turn. From this, we can already see our game taking shape. Units will move quickly into one another's "bubbles of power", using quick maneuvering to gang up and good positioning to deny one another the ability to move quickly. It means you can set up a solid defensive position but people can maneuver to try to get around it. Okay, great, so what happens when they get within one another's bubbles?

Ideally, both units chip away at one another until one breaks and withdraws. This shouldn't be a full-on rout so much as a simple recognition that "these guys are too hard for us, let's get out of their bubble." As such, it should leave the loser in the sort of shape where a decisive counterattack or energetic pursuit is a risky but potentially game-winning move. However, it should also leave the winner in the sort of shape where fresh troops might be able to break through. As a result, most damage should be recoverable, rather than permanent; this means that you have a real tradeoff between "sit tight after the fight and recover" versus "pursue the enemy and shatter them before they've recovered." We can do this by separating morale and casualties, so that units become combat ineffective due to morale loss, but can regain it; while casualties can't be regained.

[Laertes]

Units

A unit consists of a collection of models. It also consists of a collection of cards, which hold the rules for those models. The cards should contain everything you need in order to play that unit. Every upgrade you make to a unit should also have a card.

A unit will have a set number of Action Points it can spend every turn; better units might have more, and it will be possible to temporarily manipulate the number of Action Points that units have. Everything that a unit can be expected to do requires the expenditure of at least one Action Point. Therefore, taking two small units instead of one big one means you get twice as many Action Points, but each one counts half as much since there's a smaller unit doing it.

This plays nicely into the upgrade system. If you upgrade a ten-man unit with an antitank weapon, it should be twice as good as giving it to a five-man unit. The best way to do this, of course, is to simply make it play off the number of models in the unit. So if a unit has ten models and an antitank weapon, it'll be as good as two five-man units each of which has an antitank weapon. The antitank weapon is actually just a symbol for "this unit can attack tanks." We can make this work by writing the antitank weapon's upgrade card to say: "ACTION: Make an armour-piercing attack with strength X, where X is the number of models in the unit."

Because the two small units have more tactical flexibility, we'll say that an upgrade is a flat cost regardless of the number of models. Thus, small units may give you tactical flexibility, but large units are more cost efficient. For now we won't have an upper cap on unit size, but it might be something to consider.

Let's go a little further and add something which will tie the modelling part of the game into it some more: every upgrade is also a model. It's usually a new unit member, but could potentially be a vehicle. This means that the cost of adding the upgrade will include the marginal cost of one more unit member. It also means that unit upgrades are instantly recognisable on the battlefield.

Interestingly, it also means that it's very easy to swap an upgrade from one unit to another. In fact, let's make that a thing you can have. We can call them Individuals and they can enter and leave units as they please, taking the bonus to where it's needed. Other upgrade models can be called Specialists and will be stuck in their unit.

[violence in the media]

Are you going to have cards that don't correspond to units, but are instead played in the middle of battle to modify things?

Something like cards that return troops to a unit, allows a unit to hide or take cover, or retroactively lays a minefield?

[Laertes]

I like that idea, but I'd rather have those abilities put on unit or individual cards as once-per-game Actions. That way you can deliberately build them into your strategy rather than having them as extra things that might come up or might not.

[Laertes]

Actions

Every unit has four Basic Actions which can be used any number of times per turn. Each one costs one of their Action Points.
Attack
Take Cover
Move
Rally
So for example your unit could fire three times, or move, fire and move again, or fire and then dig in to cover twice if they're expecting an enemy to shoot back. This turns something that would be dull in any other game - two units in cover shooting at each other every turn - becomes interesting and interactive, because you're weighing up the pros and cons of Attack, Take Cover and Rally, and using a different balance of them every turn and responding to what your opponent is doing. It turns a firefight into a minigame.

Different units will also have different special Actions either on their own card or on their Upgrade cards. We'll come back to those.

Suppose two perfectly matched units are firing on one another. They could spend all their Action Points on shooting. Alternatively, they can spend them on Rally or Take Cover. Each of these actions could have been another Attack, so taking them decreases the amount of firepower being flung at your opponent. As a result, they need to be balanced in terms of the Attack action that they could have been, and the Action Points that they will force the opponent to spend.

The difference between Rally and Take Cover is that Take Cover is a guess; you are guessing that you will take fire next turn, and then trying to work out how many Action Points worth of Cover you need to Take in order to soak that fire. It also only applies to the immediate future*. By contrast, Rally is done with the benefit of hindsight, and can be done over multiple turns. For these reasons, Rally needs to be weaker than Take Cover otherwise nobody would use Take Cover.

Let's also set the basic amount of Action Points that a unit can expect every turn. That number is three. Some units will have more, some will have less, but that will be rare. The default is three. Because having more Action Points is so powerful, we will be extremely disciplined in creating special abilities which manipulate this number.

The reason for three? Humans like threes. It's a weird quirk of our minds, so I'm going to go with it.

-----

* We could make Take Cover build up over the turns to represent troops digging in, but that lead to both sides digging in in their own deployment zone and that wouldn't be fun.

[Laertes]

Maths

Two identical units called RED and BLU are firing on one another. They have identical cover and identical weaponry. Neither is in a clear offensive or defensive stance. Each has three Action Points each turn. Let's design for this situation with the following design goals:
- Each should have a 50% chance of victory, regardless of who goes first.
- In a six turn game, the combat should take roughly 2 rounds.
- The loser should be out of the battle for about another 2 rounds, and will have taken some permanent losses so that even when they rejoin, they'll be weaker.
- The winner should be out of the battle for about 1 round, so that attacks naturally stall unless they massively overpower their enemies. They should take relatively little permanent loss.

Therefore the tempo of the game might go as follows:

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TURN 1 RED: Fight
TURN 1 BLU: Fight
TURN 2 RED: Fight, RED wins!
TURN 2 BLU: Retreat, lick wounds
TURN 3 RED: Lick wounds; is now ready for battle
TURN 3 BLU: Lick wounds; is now ready for battle
TURN 4 RED: Advance!

Or it might go:

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TURN 1 RED: Fight
TURN 1 BLU: Fight
TURN 2 RED: Fight
TURN 2 BLU: Fight, BLU wins!
TURN 3 RED: Retreat, lick wounds
TURN 3 BLU: Lick wounds; is now ready for battle
TURN 4 RED: Lick wounds; is now ready for battle
TURN 4 BLU: Advance!

This means that for RED to win they need two turns of shooting while only taking one in return. However, for BLU to win they need to survive two turns of shooting and then inflict two as well. This is uneven. We solve this by looking at what BLU is doing on turn 0, before the fight begins. The answer is - if they're not stupid - they'll be Taking Cover or otherwise preparing for action.

I've just done a short piece of number crunching using Lanchester-law assumptions* and the balance point at which a turn entirely spent Taking Cover before battle makes it irrelevant whether you get the first or second turn is a little over 2, but close enough to 2 that we can use it and it'll work. In English, this means that a turn spent hunkering down and preparing for incoming fire needs to halve the effectiveness of that incoming fire in order to make the outcome of that firefight not depend on who gets to go first.

So a whole turn spent preparing for action will reduce the incoming firepower by 50%. Great. What does this mean mathematically?

First, let's look at the Action Point economy. Each unit has three APs regardless of the number of people in it. However, it should fight at a strength determined by the number of people in it. Therefore, two 5-man units must be equivalent to a single 10-man unit even though they have twice as many APs. This means that a useful abstraction is the man-AP: the amount of work done by one man for one AP. Two 5-man units can use up to 30 man-APs in firing (2x3x5) in a single turn; one 10-man unit has the same number (1x3x10). In other words, the Action Point economy strongly suggests a dice pool system.

Take Cover could then work by reducing the dice pool of the incoming fire. But that would work badly because it's difficult to have fine gradations in reduction when you're decreasing the proportion of dice and you don't know how big the pool is initially. A better way would be to manipulate the target number. This needs to be done in an extremely disciplined way in order to prevent things falling off the RNG, but since this is thus far a one-man project that can be done.

Let us assume that the turn spent in preparation involved two actions spent on Take Cover and one spent on Moving. I'll come back to the reason why in a second. This then means that 2 Take Cover actions reduces incoming fire by half. We can do this by using a D6 and setting the normal to-hit to be 3+, increased by 1 for each action spent Taking Cover. So if your opponent spends 2 Action Points on Take Cover, it reduces your to-hit chance to 5+ and halves the number of hits you score.

Simple. Effective.

The reason why we assume two actions Taking Cover and one action Moving is the default preparing-for-battle is because this firefight is supposed to model a meeting engagement, not an assault on prepared positions. In other words, both units would be moving towards one another. In situations where one has the ability to spend an entire turn digging in beforehand, then this model doesn't apply: this has become an assault against prepared positions, and in such a situation you would expect the defender to have an advantage in an equal-numbers matchup.

Therefore, we now know:
- Shooting involves dice pools.
- Take Cover manipulates the number on those dice.
- We cannot allow more than three actions spent on Take Cover or any other equivalent powers, otherwise the bonus will fall off the RNG.

-----

*I assumed that in a single turn of shooting, a unit reduces its opponent's strength by an amount equal to 1/X of its own current strength - that is, linear Lanchester rather than square Lanchester. For given values of X the following were the

balance points:

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X=2, balance at 2.3
X=3, balance at 2.19
X=4, balance at 2.14
X=5, balance at 2.11
X=10, balance at 2.05
X=20, balance at 2.02
X=50, balance at 2.01
X=100, balance at 2.01

[OgreBattle]

Do you see the entire army being activated on one turn, or only a certain amount per turn?

[Laertes]

I don't know yet. It is my suspicion that the two will be the same: that is, that it will be difficult to persuade players to buy more units than they can activate every turn. However, that might be a useful way of enforcing the soft cap on number of units.

What do you think would be a good idea?

[Wulfbanes]

I can imagine a surplus of troops for the purpose of having more troops to order around, even if units get destroyed. Hence, not having more orders than troops to use them on.

[Laertes]

Corrections

So I reran the numbers and I made a mistake earlier. Or rather I didn't make a mistake, but I was working from the wrong assumptions and so got to the wrong conclusion. Mechanically, my above balance point of 2 is perfect for a firefight which will go on for 10 or so turns each, which is not the case here. We need a balance point and a shooting efficiency which gives us an answer after two turns each.

If we take the balance point as being 2 then after 2 turns the fighting has BLU reduced to 85% fighting ability and RED to 80% fighting ability. This is absurd. Nobody is going to tolerate a unit fleeing while it's still able to fight at 80%. If eight out of ten soldiers are still alive and fine, that squad's owner is going to regard that squad as able to fight and is going to call hax when it turns and flees; and the opponent is likewise going to want to pursue and wipe it out. There needs to be a number which is visible to both sides, manipulable by both sides and which gets reduced to zero before people will accept that a fight is actually over.

I've played around with numbers here and the best way to solve it isn't to alter the balance point, it's to alter the shooting efficiency. The best efficiency is about 2.* Therefore, we want our dice pool to have the following qualities:

- Must return 50% values.
- Must be able to be halved by adding 2 to something.

This leads inevitably towards the concept of D8 dice pools. Ladies and gentleman, thoughts please - is a D8 dice pool too weird an idea? Would that put you off?

-----

Shooting efficiencies are expressed as X where a unit of strength Y inflicts Y/X damage with one Action of shooting. So for example if X is 2, then a unit of strength 10 inflicts 5 damage in a turn of shooting.

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X=1, RED wins on turn 1
X=1.5, RED wins on turn 3
X=2, both survive with slivers of strength, meaning a good roll would turn it into a win
X=2.5, BLU wins on turn 4
X=3, BLU wins on turn 4

[angelfromanotherpin]

Ladies and gentleman, thoughts please - is a D8 dice pool too weird an idea? Would that put you off?

It does not put me off, but it might reduce the game's accessibility. Most people who have piles of dice have lots of d6s and/or d10s. Very few people have a pile of d8s. It's not a deal-breaker, and certainly there are games out there like X-Wing that rely on piles of custom d8s and still do very well, but the pick-up-and-play factor will go down at least a bit.

[OgreBattle]

If you're buying (and painting if not prepainted) miniatures, I think you're going to be cool with some d8's in there.

Though personally I like the simplicity of the d6 and every result sticks in my head. You say '3+' and I know somebody's wearing power armor.

[Laertes]

It does not put me off, but it might reduce the game's accessibility. Most people who have piles of dice have lots of d6s and/or d10s. Very few people have a pile of d8s. It's not a deal-breaker, and certainly there are games out there like X-Wing that rely on piles of custom d8s and still do very well, but the pick-up-and-play factor will go down at least a bit.

Accessibility isn't much of an an issue for me, since at this stage it's still an intellectual exercise more than anything else. The pick-up-and-play factor will be affected, but as Ogrebattle points out, someone needs to supply the miniatures and once they've made that investment, a few handfuls of D8s are not a bank-breaker.

Though personally I like the simplicity of the d6 and every result sticks in my head. You say '3+' and I know somebody's wearing power armor.

D6s are simple and don't scare people off. However, the iconic "3+ power armour" factor should be even stronger if you're using a die with more sides. I'm going to try to design in faction-defining points like that when I come on to factions.

[Laertes]

Damage and Morale

When a unit goes to zero it withdraws. We want it to be able to get back in the fight, so let's make most of that damage be healable. It shouldn't all be healable though, otherwise there's no feeling of success when you crush someone. If recovery is too strong then victory is robbed of its meaning; if it's too weak then nobody is going to bother trying to rally their beaten units. Intuitively an 80% recovery level seems fair to me, so that a unit can sit out of the fight for a turn or two and then come back at 80% strength.

The victor has also taken losses though, so both sides will pause after a fight and lick their wounds. This is good because it means that in order to power through defences, you need overwhelming strength or fresh troops; and it means that reserves can be used to counterattack and break worn-down attacking units.

The best way to do this is also the simplest:

A unit has Morale equal to its starting Strength. All Attacks reduce their Morale. Units attack with their Morale; however, their current Strength is a cap on their Morale. For every five full points of Morale a unit loses in a single turn, it loses one point of Strength as well.

Once a unit's Morale has dropped to zero, it's out of here. To represent this, they will gain a free out-of-sequence move directly away from the enemy. We can add some rules here to restrict this, but for now let's just say "away." In safety, they can now start rebuilding their Morale.

Morale cannot drop below zero. If it would drop below zero, instead it remains at zero. However, every five full points of incoming damage will still cost them one Strength. This means that pouring fire into broken formations is mechanically disincentivised, but still slightly effective - we want to encourage players to see a fleeing enemy as a victory, not as an opportunity for pursuit.* It also means that firing at two 5-man units causes the same number of casualties as firing at one 10-man unit, which is important.

Ideally we want a unit to lick its wounds for 1-2 turns. Let's call that four actions, to allow them some time for movement to get away.

Suppose BLU is defeated. Its Strength started at 10, and therefore so did its Morale. It now has a Morale of 0 and a Strength of 8, which means that it can only regain Morale up to a new maximum of 8. Eight Morale in four actions is two Morale per action on average.

However, we want the rate of regain to be independent of the size, which means it needs to be a Strength dice pool. Since it should take four Actions to get up to full Morale, that's a total of 32 dice rolled, each of which has a one in four chance of succeeding. With a D8 dice pool, this is easy. If we don't go for a D8 dice pool it might be harder.

Therefore, we now know that:
- A single Take Cover action means the enemy needs to roll one point higher on each die.
- A single Attack action rolls a single die for each point of Morale the unit has, with a hit on a 5+ on a D8.
- A single Rally action rolls a single die for each point of Strength the unit has, with a hit on a 7+ on a D8.

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*If this was an ancient-world game, then light cavalry pursuits are cool. If it was a strategic-scope game, then encirclements to prevent withdrawals are cool. However, it's a tactical science fiction game on a platoon or company level, and on that level fleeing enemies will get away except in properly-executed ambushes. Those are cool and we need to represent them, but that doesn't need to be built into mechanics this basic.

[Laertes]

Balancing

Are these three Actions actually balanced against one another? Let's take a look, and adjust them as needed.

Is Rally balanced against Take Cover?

A single Rally action restores an average of one-quarter of the unit's Morale. Assume that a RED unit with a Morale of 10 takes four incoming damage from BLU. They could use Take Cover beforehand to reduce it by 1, or they could use a single Rally afterwards to recover by 2. If they took 8 incoming damage they could use Take Cover to reduce it by 2 or Rally to reduce it by 2. Therefore Rally is better than Take Cover.

Is Take Cover balanced against Attack?

When we use Take Cover we reduce incoming fire. When we use Attack we also reduce incoming fire since it reduces enemy morale and so suppresses the enemy's return fire. Assume a RED at varying levels of Morale firing at a BLU with varying levels of morale. Take Cover always reduces incoming fire by a flat 25%. How much does Attack reduce it by?

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RED at 10  BLU at 10  Attack: 50%	Attack is better
RED at 10  BLU at 8   Attack: 63%	Attack is better
RED at 10  BLU at 6   Attack: 73%	Attack is better
RED at 10  BLU at 4   Attack: 100%	Attack is better
RED at 10  BLU at 2   Attack: 100%	Attack is better
RED at 8   BLU at 10  Attack: 40%	Attack is better
RED at 8   BLU at 8   Attack: 50%	Attack is better
RED at 8   BLU at 6   Attack: 66%	Attack is better
RED at 8   BLU at 4   Attack: 100%	Attack is better
RED at 8   BLU at 2   Attack: 100%	Attack is better
RED at 6   BLU at 10  Attack: 33%	Attack is better
RED at 6   BLU at 8   Attack: 37%	Attack is better
RED at 6   BLU at 6   Attack: 50%	Attack is better
RED at 6   BLU at 4   Attack: 66%	Attack is better
RED at 6   BLU at 2   Attack: 100%	Attack is better
RED at 4   BLU at 10  Attack: 20%	Take Cover is better
RED at 4   BLU at 8   Attack: 25%	Drawn
RED at 4   BLU at 6   Attack: 33%	Attack is better
RED at 4   BLU at 4   Attack: 50%	Attack is better
RED at 4   BLU at 2   Attack: 100%	Attack is better
RED at 2   BLU at 10  Attack: 10%	Take Cover is better
RED at 2   BLU at 8   Attack: 13%	Take Cover is better
RED at 2   BLU at 6   Attack: 16%	Take Cover is better
RED at 2   BLU at 4   Attack: 25%	Drawn
RED at 2   BLU at 2   Attack: 50%	Attack is better

There's an easy pattern to see here: Take Cover is only better when the person firing at you is more than twice as powerful, in which case you're just delaying the inevitable. It won't turn defeat into victory, and for it to be a useful option we need it to do that. Therefore Attack is better than Take Cover.

Is Attack balanced against Rally?

When we use Rally we increase our firepower, since it increases morale and thus increases our dice pool for subsequent attacks. Assume that a partially suppressed RED uses a single action to Rally before it uses the next two to Attack. If it used that action to Attack instead, it would gain 50% more firepower. Since Rally is based off Strength, they will regain 2.5 morale with the action, which means 2.5 extra dice per Attack action. This is balanced with using that action to Attack when the unit has sustained 5 morale loss - which seems fair. Therefore, Rally and Attack are balanced.

So, in summary, Take Cover is too weak but the other two seem fine. However, Take Cover has its current values in order to make meeting engagements work. If it gets stronger then meeting engagements will favour the defender, leading to nobody actually attacking and a boring game. We need to give Take Cover some extra benefit but only after the firing has actually started.

On monday's episode of Laertes Chews On Wargame Scenery: the further analysis of Take Cover! Also, I'm going to see if I can do some very early prototype playtesting over the weekend, to see how it plays.