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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata »

FrankTrollman wrote:Well, most people want the game to scale up to regiments, because they are awesome.
Yes, it's cool but the problem is that interesting small-scale combat systems do not scale well to regiment size. If you want to make your individuals and squads interesting you will end up getting buried in detail and busy work when you're fielding an army above the game's ideal scale.

This is why chit-and-counter wargames, for the most part, pick a scale and stick to it. If you're going to fight a campaign covering the entire Eastern Front of World War 2, then your basic and smallest unit is probably going to be a Corps or Army with 50K+ men apiece so you're only playing with a few dozen units.

Some wargames very stupidly try to allow you to "break down" these large formations at this scale - e.g. you can split your Corps down to individual Divisions, Brigades, or Battalions (often with accompanying special rules) - but at that point the game gets weighed down by so much fiddlyness and rules exception catching. This is how we get insanely unplayable Eastern Front games with thousands of counters on each side.

Mixing and matching stuff is cool, and should be done so long as everything remains at the same scale level. Being able to add new individual models to your army should be fine for instance if the game limits itself to squad scale and there won't be more than 15 models on each side; or if you add a new squad of 10-15 guys to a company-scale game where each side has no more than 200 or so figures.

The problem is how to prevent players from drowning from busywork when you're trying to fight with hundreds of unique individual figures because you tried to scale up a squad-scale game to company size.
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Post by Zinegata »

shlominus wrote:i don't think your generalisation is very accurate.
I see way more Tigers being fielded by these supposedly "historical" scenarios that were ever actually encountered in the real war; not to mention the constant up-stating of various "showcase" units like Grossdeutchland which actually didn't perform very well based on their real wartime record.

Quite frankly most scenarios are not very well researched and based off just a few sources that almost always turn out to be inaccurate "first hand" accounts; hence my dismissal of them as "fanfiction".

If historical wargaming resembled the real war in at least a passing regard, there would be far fewer scenarios dealing with "super" vehicles and prestige units.
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Post by OgreBattle »

The problem is how to prevent players from drowning from busywork when you're trying to fight with hundreds of unique individual figures because you tried to scale up a squad-scale game to company size.
If your regimental combat game is like WHFB or 40k, you still have your leader units with personalized gear dueling demon lords while each side's tiny men are in formation walking into each other counting up their rank/number bonuses and making break tests.

Where it bogs down is if your block of 50 guys all have different base stats and gear instead of all having the same stats.
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Post by Zinegata »

OgreBattle wrote:If your regimental combat game is like WHFB or 40k, you still have your leader units with personalized gear dueling demon lords while each side's tiny men are in formation walking into each other counting up their rank/number bonuses and making break tests.

Where it bogs down is if your block of 50 guys all have different base stats and gear instead of all having the same stats.
The thing here is that your tiny men - grouped together into squads - are in fact your basic unit of scale. Leaders attached to the squads can rightly be seen as more of a stat boost for a squad, whereas Monster-sized units or vehicles are essentially squad-equivalents consolidated into one larger figure.

The problem with that kind of game however is that you need to be buying one whole squad at a time, not one figure at a time. Moreover your "average" game will probably consist of at least 5 squads apiece on each side or else it can become tactically boring - meaning you need 5 x Squad Size figures to start out. If a squad is 10 guys, that quickly adds up to 50 figures. Even if you swap in some vehicles you're still looking at maybe 30 figures and two vehicles.

This is all a bit of an investment. For reference a single squad of 40K troops is already something like $20+ apiece.
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Post by FatR »

Zinegata wrote: Yes but many, if not the majority of WW2 minis scenarios are quite frankly based on fanfiction - very often written by the SS or their fanboys. Real historians for instance have found that the US Army only faced the Tiger I tanks three times in France and Germany;
These "real historians" in all likelyhood are not historians, and German tactical superiority on the ground is a truism to anyone with more than passing familiarity with the events of the war, including the Western Front (see, for example, Hitler’s Last Gamble by Dupuy and others and The Ardennes, 1944-1945 by Bergstrom, two works who pay good deal of attention to speficific engagements, instead of glossing them over in favor of broad details and keep in mind that they cover a period when a large percentage of German troops involved were hastily raised and poorly equipped divisions which performed well belove the average German level throughout the war). Actually low-level wargames, to which minis would be relevant, those that don't model divisional-level artillery support and air support, tend to undertstate the discrepancy in tactical skills, else the Allied side would be too fucked.
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Post by shlominus »

Zinegata wrote:
shlominus wrote:i don't think your generalisation is very accurate.
I see way more Tigers being fielded by these supposedly "historical" scenarios that were ever actually encountered in the real war; not to mention the constant up-stating of various "showcase" units like Grossdeutchland which actually didn't perform very well based on their real wartime record.

Quite frankly most scenarios are not very well researched and based off just a few sources that almost always turn out to be inaccurate "first hand" accounts; hence my dismissal of them as "fanfiction".

If historical wargaming resembled the real war in at least a passing regard, there would be far fewer scenarios dealing with "super" vehicles and prestige units.
apparently you know different historical wargamers than i do.

anyway, someone at mantic obviously agrees with frank, it seems. :)

https://manticblog.com/2016/01/05/twelv ... king-dead/

"Mantic was set up to share that love of gaming with miniatures with as large an audience as possible. I felt the need to create Mantic because the companies in the market were actually going the other way – they were making gaming more expensive, more complicated and more restrictive."

"And let’s be honest, full armies take a long time to collect and get painted – so something with 10 or so models is a great place to start, especially if it scales up a little along the way ;)."

considering what i've seen from mantic so far, i am definitely looking forward to this.
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Post by Zinegata »

FatR wrote:These "real historians" in all likelyhood are not historians, and German tactical superiority on the ground is a truism to anyone with more than passing familiarity with the events of the war,
On the contrary these real historians readily acknowledge the superiority of German tactical leadership. Indeed many of the absolute best performances of the German Army were in units without any glamorous equipment. The best single Panzer Division performance for instance was turned in by 11th Panzer Division in 1942/43 along the Chir - one Division without any shiny Tigers or Panthers fought an entire Soviet Tank Army and won.

The problem with the minis crowd is that they are by and large bad at tactics. This is why there instead an almost fetishist obsession with German equipment. This is why we keep seeing Tigers and Panthers in scenarios that never happened. They need the crutch of over-stated German gear to replicate the war results when in reality the actual Wermacht was fighting with just humble 50mm PAK anti-tank guns for the most part or Sturmgetchutze assault guns instead of Tigers and Panthers.

That many mini combat mechanics emphasize the armored joust - which is gunpower vs front armor - also reinforces this extremely flawed view of the war. In reality more than 70% of tanks were hit to the sides and rear according to both US and Soviet studies; and that tank fights were generally one-sided ambushes instead of any head-to-head joust. Needless to say ambushes are another thing minis don't simulate well because very few have proper spotting / camouflage / hidden unit mechanics.

Also, I would not really cite Dupuy. He's very out of date and the book you cited is from '94. Contrary to popular belief people are in fact still finding out new things about the Second World War, because quite simply the methodology by a lot of "historians" and "analysts" in the 90s period tended to be overly reliant on personal accounts and one-sided looks at engagements.

For instance there has been a lot more comparison of US and German accounts since then, and it readily turns out that "first-hand" accounts often have a very different view of the exact same story (especially with the SS). In some cases for instance the Panzers and the SS reported huge successes while the Americans who were supposedly crushed reported only minor losses (e.g. a couple of light tanks or trucks), and didn't even realize that the Germans believed they had launched a major attack against them. First hand accounts are in fact very easily distorted by the feelings of those on the ground.

Much of Dupuy's loss ratio counting also turned out to be faulty - his math isn't wrong but he apparently never realized that there were significant differences in loss-counting methodology by the Allied armies and the German ones making any such analysis flawed to begin with.

The established narrative in the Eastern Front from the 90s is even more catastrophically flawed - folks who have looked at the actual Soviet archival records released at the end of the Cold War have found that many of the SS's supposedly greatest battles in the East never even happened. That's why the term "Werhaboo" and "Wermacht Porn" ended up getting coined in the first place; and is used freely by historians such as Dennis Showalter.
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Post by Zinegata »

shlominus wrote:apparently you know different historical wargamers than i do.
Do they play Flames of War?
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Post by Username17 »

Zinegata wrote:Yes, it's cool but the problem is that interesting small-scale combat systems do not scale well to regiment size. If you want to make your individuals and squads interesting you will end up getting buried in detail and busy work when you're fielding an army above the game's ideal scale.
You're conflating design difficulty with impossibility. Yes, games have an ideal scale, but no it's not impossible to make a game that handles both individual heroes and regiments. Trying to model regiments made of individual heroes would be a nightmare and I don't want to do it, but if the regiments all have identical stat lines then a 4x10 block of spearmen or shield maidens doesn't have to be a lot more difficult to work with than a single hero.

Having a single game that handles 12 models on a side and also handles 300 models on a side is actually well within the realm of possibility. The 300 model army just has to be represented as 20 or less "units" where most of the units are ~40 model regiments without a lot of intramodel variation. It's a design challenge, obviously, but it's not that big of one. Such a game would probably bog down at a thousand models on a side (or even 30 models, if they were all heroes and monsters), but that's not a huge problem if you're trying to get people to collect fantasy miniatures with your game.

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Post by FatR »

Zinegata, I agree with the general gist of your last post, but disagree with a number of particular points. If you wish, and don't mind derailing the thread, I can elaborate, when I have free time.
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Post by maglag »

FrankTrollman wrote: Having a single game that handles 12 models on a side and also handles 300 models on a side is actually well within the realm of possibility. The 300 model army just has to be represented as 20 or less "units" where most of the units are ~40 model regiments without a lot of intramodel variation. It's a design challenge, obviously, but it's not that big of one. Such a game would probably bog down at a thousand models on a side (or even 30 models, if they were all heroes and monsters), but that's not a huge problem if you're trying to get people to collect fantasy miniatures with your game.

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40K already does 3 models (mecha knights) vs hundreds of models (orks, nids, infantry guard).

Ghay Knights and space furries could pull the 12 models army thing with their heroes that allow you to take the super expensive elite infantry as your core troops, then spending a crapload of points on upgrades for them, but it's not that viable because super uber infantry is still infantry and will die pretty fast in 7th edition if the other army has nothing else to worry about.
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Post by virgil »

And now you've got me wanting to research the possibility of a tournament-legal single unit that's worth 500-1500 points. Army of one indeed.
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Post by maglag »

I don't think it's possible, since every force organization I remember demands you to take separate units.

Besides it would kinda suck for objective capturing scenarios.

One army that may pull off the 12 strong army in a viable manner is Farsight enclave since those can take expensive crisis suits for core troops, then sprinkle expensive riptides as needed. Spech merines eat your heart out of envy, Tau does super power armored elite army better than you!
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

virgil wrote:And now you've got me wanting to research the possibility of a tournament-legal single unit that's worth 500-1500 points. Army of one indeed.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/2011/6 ... 194024.pdf
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Post by Koumei »

I think Space Wolves and Grey Knights used to be able to do HeroHammer, but I don't know if their most recent hackjobs codex updates removed that (kind of crappy) option.

That said, Imperial Knights are in the 300-500 point ballpark (each), and there are actual Formations (thus legal for "Battleforged only, final destination") that are just "1-3 Imperial Knights" or "3-5 Imperial Knights" or "These three specific Imperial Knights". So if you're not put out by your individual units being giant robots, you can totally do it.
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Post by Zinegata »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Zinegata wrote:Yes, it's cool but the problem is that interesting small-scale combat systems do not scale well to regiment size. If you want to make your individuals and squads interesting you will end up getting buried in detail and busy work when you're fielding an army above the game's ideal scale.
You're conflating design difficulty with impossibility.
My exact words regarding the matter is that it's a "problem", not an "impossibility".
Having a single game that handles 12 models on a side and also handles 300 models on a side is actually well within the realm of possibility. The 300 model army just has to be represented as 20 or less "units" where most of the units are ~40 model regiments without a lot of intramodel variation. It's a design challenge, obviously, but it's not that big of one. Such a game would probably bog down at a thousand models on a side (or even 30 models, if they were all heroes and monsters), but that's not a huge problem if you're trying to get people to collect fantasy miniatures with your game.
Splitting down the number of models into an easily digestible number of units is the easy part - that's pretty much the same as wargame scaling. If you want a playable Eastern Front game then your units should be 50,000+ men apiece in a war involving millions; so you end up with a manageable pile of 20+ units to command instead of fiddling over 3,000 counters.

The problem with the transition from 12 models to 300 is that you're presuming a much more consistent army composition with many individual figures that have an identical stat line at 300 models. The mindset when you have a small collection by contrast is different. The guy with 12 models would prefer a more diverse collection of models each with their own individual characteristics.

To illustrate: The 12 model "army" can be likened to the Dirty Dozen. You have 12 individual models, each of which has its own name and special ability. You can have a Lonely Sniper, a Grizzled Sergeant with sword skills, a Crazy Flamethrower battle couple, etc.

But once you scale the army up to 300 models you can't have each model have their own name and backstory. Band of Brothers for instance ultimately focused primarily on the officers who led the company instead of featuring all 100+ members of the unit; because if they did it would be 100+ episodes long and would have lost its viewership midway through the series from the boredom of watching yet another generic private with a Southern accent.

Now, a "solution" could be a way to eventually promote your "Dirty Dozen" to become the officers of your enlarged unit; and the design challenge is how to make their transition from individual soldiers to small-unit leaders seem consistent (e.g. how will the Lonely Sniper transition to squad leader? Will he just give a flat bonus to his squad? Will he just continue lone sniping and use his squad as bait? Etc).

The thing here is that it still makes it necessary to start investing in large numbers of relatively generic units. From buying $2-3 individual "hero" units you now have to start spending $20 to get each of your old heroes their own squad. You can't just keep buying individual models, and if you do most of them have to eventually lose their individuality and be another identical stat-line mook.

Which means it doesn't entirely solve the problem you were pointing out - people will still be forced to collect a large number of identical models at some point; and fall into the current trap wherein people have to shell out big bucks in large spikes (instead of a slow, incremental growth) just to start playing at the regimental level.

Your solution - allowing various armies to mix together - doesn't entirely solve that; because if you simply didn't collect enough men of a certain type then you won't even be able to properly field them as a unit until you buy more men of that type. It would just work primarily for guys already buying a whole squad at a time, but not to the people buying individual figures at a time as you described here, which I feel is a very smart insight into how people "flirt" with the hobby:
When people first flirt with the hobby, their collections are going to be eclectic. A unit of knights, some goblin archers, a manticore, some elvish spearmen, and a mummified wizard. Or whatever.
Edit: Bloody quote tags.
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Post by Zinegata »

maglag wrote:40K already does 3 models (mecha knights) vs hundreds of models (orks, nids, infantry guard).

Ghay Knights and space furries could pull the 12 models army thing with their heroes that allow you to take the super expensive elite infantry as your core troops, then spending a crapload of points on upgrades for them, but it's not that viable because super uber infantry is still infantry and will die pretty fast in 7th edition if the other army has nothing else to worry about.
Having 12 "elite" models be able to take on 300 however is, I feel, a very backwards way of doing it. Why spend all that effort to paint and assemble 300 guys when 12 can beat them?

The neater solution to unequal force compositions had always been to tweak the objectives. For instance the guy with 300 models may need to completely wipe out the guy with 12 to win, but the the guy with 12 models can win just by having just one guy survive or escape.

Or the guy with 12 troops needs to assassinate only 1 "VIP" target from the mass of 300. The "Dirty Dozen" player moreover starts with the advantage of surprise and can move all of his troops, whereas most of the Regiment's troops are still asleep/unaware and only a few squads can be moved to search for intruders initially.

That would make for a much more interesting game than 12 Space Marines trying to recreate Thermopylae on a wide open table. Moreover, even if the player with 300 player loses he won't feel as bad - since he can always blame the handicaps for the other player's success.
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Post by Zinegata »

FatR wrote:Zinegata, I agree with the general gist of your last post, but disagree with a number of particular points. If you wish, and don't mind derailing the thread, I can elaborate, when I have free time.
Sure, just a note that my impression of "historical" WW2 minis wargaming comes primarily from Flames of War, which is the most popular recent game I see often today.
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Post by maglag »

Zinegata wrote:
maglag wrote:40K already does 3 models (mecha knights) vs hundreds of models (orks, nids, infantry guard).

Ghay Knights and space furries could pull the 12 models army thing with their heroes that allow you to take the super expensive elite infantry as your core troops, then spending a crapload of points on upgrades for them, but it's not that viable because super uber infantry is still infantry and will die pretty fast in 7th edition if the other army has nothing else to worry about.
Having 12 "elite" models be able to take on 300 however is, I feel, a very backwards way of doing it. Why spend all that effort to paint and assemble 300 guys when 12 can beat them?

The neater solution to unequal force compositions had always been to tweak the objectives. For instance the guy with 300 models may need to completely wipe out the guy with 12 to win, but the the guy with 12 models can win just by having just one guy survive or escape.

Or the guy with 12 troops needs to assassinate only 1 "VIP" target from the mass of 300. The "Dirty Dozen" player moreover starts with the advantage of surprise and can move all of his troops, whereas most of the Regiment's troops are still asleep/unaware and only a few squads can be moved to search for intruders initially.

That would make for a much more interesting game than 12 Space Marines trying to recreate Thermopylae on a wide open table. Moreover, even if the player with 300 player loses he won't feel as bad - since he can always blame the handicaps for the other player's success.
Eeerrr, that's how Warhammer Fantasy currently technically works right now. If your opponent brings a lot more models than you, you only need to fulffil special objectives to win, like "have one man standing at the end of the turn" or "assassinate an enemy commander".

And that system sucks multiple barrels of dicks, because it severly limits design space. "Have one dude standing at the end of the turn" just means you take a 12 of the super stealthy guys who basically can never be targeted until they attack first and then do not interact with your opponent for 6 turns for sure victory. "Assassinate an enemy commander" just means you take the most glass cannon 12 dudes you can and snipe the enemy target.

Now what Apocalypse 40K used to do for helping make up for different army sizes are "strategic assets", where you could spend points for bonus that had no models, like being able to call an orbital bombardment, or buff up a specific formation, or "ressurect" a lost unit, or whatever.

Anyway, "small elite army" is kinda of a necessity for new players, since indeed it's easier to buy/assemble. Only the hardcore players will be able to make horde armies, but that's kinda inevitable when you need to build and paint minis by hand. But then you have something to cater for both sides.
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Post by Username17 »

zinegata wrote:The problem with the transition from 12 models to 300 is that you're presuming a much more consistent army composition with many individual figures that have an identical stat line at 300 models. The mindset when you have a small collection by contrast is different. The guy with 12 models would prefer a more diverse collection of models each with their own individual characteristics.
This simply is not a problem. It's not even a little bit of a problem. It doesn't look like a problem in a bad light. It's not even a feature. It's the entire fucking point. When you move from the smaller collection to the larger collection, one of the things you'll be doing is investing time and money into larger, more planned projects. Sometimes that'll be a dragon or a tank, sometimes that will be a regiment of soldiers.

The point is that well before you get to the 100 miniatures mark, you're going to be getting some boxed sets and putting together longer term painting projects. Which means that having "themed" troops is a positive incentive to do the thing you want to do anyway when you move to that level of miniature collection.

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Post by Zinegata »

maglag wrote:Eeerrr, that's how Warhammer Fantasy currently technically works right now. If your opponent brings a lot more models than you, you only need to fulffil special objectives to win, like "have one man standing at the end of the turn" or "assassinate an enemy commander".

And that system sucks multiple barrels of dicks, because it severly limits design space. "Have one dude standing at the end of the turn" just means you take a 12 of the super stealthy guys who basically can never be targeted until they attack first and then do not interact with your opponent for 6 turns for sure victory. "Assassinate an enemy commander" just means you take the most glass cannon 12 dudes you can and snipe the enemy target.
Two things:

GW sucks at rules regardless, so we shouldn't hold them as some kind of great example.

And what you're looking at is not design space limitation, but min-maxing. Obviously bringing in glass cannons would be the smart thing if you expect to only play assassination missions. But the point is that you're bringing "your" squad from battle to battle and mission to mission; not setting yourself up to win a tourney of only assassinations.

There are plenty of games that do the non-symmetrical objectives well. Many of them are in fact almost RPG-like such as Descent where one player is an Overlord commanding multiple minions at players controlling only 1 character.
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Post by Zinegata »

FrankTrollman wrote:This simply is not a problem. It's not even a little bit of a problem. It doesn't look like a problem in a bad light. It's not even a feature. It's the entire fucking point. When you move from the smaller collection to the larger collection, one of the things you'll be doing is investing time and money into larger, more planned projects. Sometimes that'll be a dragon or a tank, sometimes that will be a regiment of soldiers.
Lol have I missed your hyperbole.
The point is that well before you get to the 100 miniatures mark, you're going to be getting some boxed sets and putting together longer term painting projects. Which means that having "themed" troops is a positive incentive to do the thing you want to do anyway when you move to that level of miniature collection.

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Okay, so you're still presuming they will get boxed sets at some point. I'm just being overly ambitious in trying to think of a system where they can literally go with collecting single figures from 10 to 100 then :D.
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Post by OgreBattle »

So, what are some things to keep in mind when designing a tabletop game system that accommodates 10 to 100's of dudes?

The main resolution mechanic should probably be a single die, so you can roll a bunch of them at once to represent many guys attacking.

If you really want to play with a pair of 2d6's though, then the big blob of bolter marines should attack with a single 2d6 roll and get modifiers based on being a big blob of bolter marines instead of an individual bolter guy.

My frame of reference is largely Warhammer/40k/Mordheim/Necromunda, so if there's better games for this I'm all ears.
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Post by Zinegata »

OgreBattle wrote:So, what are some things to keep in mind when designing a tabletop game system that accommodates 10 to 100's of dudes?
The first and most important thing to keep in mind is command limits. Real commanders don't have enough time or head space to command 3,000 soldiers individually. That's why there is a chain of command and your Colonel only has to speak to his 3-5 Majors instead.

So whether you're supporting 10 minis or 100, you should pick a general command limit and stick to it. If your command limit is 10 for instance, then your 100 guys will need to divide themselves into 10 units. At 100 models for instance you will probably have 10 "sergeant" models who you can issue orders to instead of each individual private.

To deal with middle-of-the road army sizes you can have officers of lesser rank. For instance when you're at 20 models you could instead hire a couple of Corporals who can command 5 guys, giving you several fire teams and a bunch of other individuals with special abilities. These lesser officers could also serve as backup leaders for larger formations in case the Sergeant/Captain/whoever is killed. As it stands 40K kinda sucks in this regard - people generally don't care if the Sarge is killed unless he was a special character.

====

Or better yet (and this is entirely compatible with the above command limit model) there should be activation/command points. A major problem with many "you go, I go" tactical battles is that being first player tends to be too big an advantage - since he can shout "FIRE EVERYTHING" and smash a good deal of the enemy army before it can even move. This is also the problem in turn-based games like Panzer General where the side taking the turn tends to obliterate the one not taking the turn. On the tabletop this usually also results in long down time.

A better model is to have activation points that are well below the command limit. Say your command limit is 10 squads. Each turn you will be given only 5 activation points - meaning you can only activate 5 of those squads. Mechanics for saving/storing activation points for later turns can also be added (e.g. you can save up to 10 activation points so you have enough for a big "push").

This tends to allow for a better ebb and flow of the game. Each side instead activates only a portion of their army at a time and gives the other side a chance to react with a portion of their own. It also tends to make for better narratives than "we fired every gun we had and they died".

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As for the actual resolution mechanics, one dice per mini is a good rule but I would insist on a revamp of the iconography. Warhammer 40K is a morosely backwards game in terms of teaching players how to play properly, when many other games have shown how to do it better.

For instance, have a consistent set of colored dice based on to-hit probabilities. Say the Red dice hits on a 2+ (elite), yellow dice on a 3+ (veteran), blue dice on a 4+ (regular), and green dice on a 5+ (green). Then put a red/yellow/blue/green dice symbol on the base of the actual model itself so you remember what kind of dice he's supposed to roll.

This system had been implemented in block games since Crown of Roses and had made resolving battles there so much simpler. Instead we're still cross-referencing bloody tables on Ballistic Skill, which is a BS way of doing things.
Last edited by Zinegata on Fri Jan 15, 2016 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
Username17
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Post by Username17 »

Zinegata wrote:Okay, so you're still presuming they will get boxed sets at some point. I'm just being overly ambitious in trying to think of a system where they can literally go with collecting single figures from 10 to 100 then
That wouldn't match buying patterns either. Think about people collecting magic cards for a moment. People with small collections run "limited decks" that mostly use workhorse commons with a few rare bombs. People who have big collections make the oddly named "standard decks" that use a lot of workhorse rares and uncommons that provide good synergy and commons are mostly used for interaction or filling the low end of the curve.

What you're talking about is like if someone got a bigger collection and then made a limited deck that was twice as tall. People don't even want to do that.

-Username17
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