The Adnekus Wargame Blog 0

Greetings, today I shall post the first prealpha of the Adnekus Wargame rules!.. For I don't have much else to use this website for at the moment. Here they are!

Ruleset Prealpha 0.1:

Numbers and wording are bound to be changed and adjusted until satisfaction.

Setup:

- The game is played on a hexagonal grid of whatever size desired, with the players agreeing where Deployment Zones are allocated, at least ten tiles apart from each other. Agree upon the Logistical Cost (LC) of a force, with 2500LC being the default.

- In advance, choose a faction you want to play as, compose a list of units that make up your force. Units and their upgrades aren't the only thing that can be acquired by spending LC, but also powerful Strategems that aren't given by default to the faction chosen.

- Any unit represents anything from one individual, to a squad, to a large vehicle or aerospace ship. A unit takes up only one tile, which represents enough space for a large aerospace vessel to turn around, and they do not have any explicit directionality.

- Prepare d10 and d12 dice in advance to resolve various actions.

- Roll a d10 to determine which force goes first, if an equal number is rolled, repeat until a difference is achieved.

Turn Overview

- Command Phase: Various stratagems can be activated for cheaper during this phase of the game, while enemy stratagems are most expensive during this phase. Engineering units can build structures and new units during this phase for cheaper, but cannot move, attack or do any other things.

- Unit Action Phase: Units perform movement, attacks, construction and overwatches during this phase, at the cost of AP. Stratagems normal cost applies for both sides.

- Aftermath Phase: Morale of units, damage to the chain of command and other longer term effects are assessed here. Stratagems cost the most during this phase, but enemy stratagems are cheaper.

- Then the turn goes to the opposing side, and they go through each step listed above.

Role of Dice

d10 dice are used for every attack or skill check, while d12 dice are used for directionality of scatter rolls. Emulate a d6 with d12 when need be by diving the result by 2 and rounding down. d10 rolls are also used for stratagem rolls.

### Unit Stats

A Unit is defined by:

- HP (Hit Points)

- Evasion (Ev)

- Armour (Ar)

- Melee Skill (MS)

- Ballistic Skill (BS)

- Speed (Sp, in tiles)

- Cooling Rate (CR)

- Logistic Cost (LC)

- Abilities

- Weapons

- Tags

Action Point Economy

There are these main actions, with many other additional ones labeled abilities. HC is Heat Cost:

- Move (1AP) - move up to Speed.

- Advance (2AP, 2HC) - move up to Speed plus 1 tile forward.

- Attack Wtih (AP and HC depends on the weapons used) - attack an enemy unit with a weapon or a selection of weapons, with each weapon adding an additional HC on top of the HC the weapon generates.

- Aim (2AP) - improves ballistic and melee skill by 1 against a specific unit.

- Overwatch (2AP) - puts the unit into overwatch with specific weapons selected to be used for it. Overwatch allows the unit to attack any other unit within range during the enemy's turn, but disables every other action until the next turn.

- Use Ability (AP and HC depends on ability)

- Use Item (AP depends on item)

- Vent (3AP) - vents all of the unit's Heat buildup.

Combine actions while AP remains. Any unspent AP is lost.

Attack and Skill check Resolutions

Attack rolls (melee / ranged) are done per weapon and per unit basis. They're performed in this order:

- To-hit rolls: Attacker rolls `d10 + BS/MS + modifiers` is compared against Defender rolling `d10 + Ev + modifiers` . If attacker roll exceeds, damage is applied to the defender unit, otherwise nothing in ranged combat, but in melee combat the defender unit chooses a melee weapon of choice and counterattacks with it.

- To-damage rolls: `Weapon Damage - max(Defender Armour - AP, 0) + modifier total` determines the damage applied to the defender unit. AP of weapons isn't applied to damage if it exceeds Armour, reflected in it reducing Armour and the result being set to the larger value, either 0 or the result of the subtraction.

For general skill rolls, a d10 without any explicit modifiers is used to determine the outcome.

 Heat System

Most units have heat generation to worry about, either from weapons, actions or abilities. Each of those have Heat Cost, or HC. Each unit has Cooling Rate (CR) which determines heat dissipation per turn. Each activation of a heat-inducing weapon, ability or action after the first one generates 1 additional Heat, so careful consideration is required when to go all-in or when to hold back.

A unit has a maximum capacity of 20 Heat, with the following threshholds:

- Safe 0-7: No penalty.

- Warning 8-15: Roll a d10 on the Heat Hazard Table each turn within this heat threshold, with a 10 resulting in no effect, and anything below that being a potential problem.

- Critical 16-19: Roll a d10 on the Heat Hazard Table as previously, but also take 1d10 damage.

- Reaching Heat 20 kills the unit, creating an explosion with a radius of 1, afflicting d6 damage.

What's next?

That's kinda it for now. I'll be sure to make another post about the rules soon, with the present plans writing up a bunch of tags and what they do, namely for vehicles. Then I'll start making the first few factions!