It's sad how fragile my ego is these days - the D&D campaign I was trying to spin up seems to have fallen through, and it sent me into a gaming tailspin.  Well, I'm mostly better now, so back to my usual gaming rambles.

 

The other day, I came up with what I think is an interesting idea for a large scale WWII ground combat game.  The game is a sort of fusion of the computer game Panzer General and some ideas from ShockForce and GW's Epic:Armageddon.  The central mechanism revolves around the use of circular movement trays, conveniently the exact same size as an AOL CD. :-)  Each terrain piece must fit on one of these trays, and each unit in the game has one disk to hold its figures.

 

Figure Scale: microarmor (1:256 scale, or 6mm)

Time and Distance Scale: indeterminate

Units: figures are grouped into units of 3-10 figures, depending on unit type and nationality

Turn Sequence: Roll for initiative, with the winner activating all units one at a time resolving all combat and movement, until all units have been activated or skipped.  The other player then does the same, and the turn is over.

 

Figures are grouped into units and must occupy a tray, either their own movement tray or an allowable terrain piece.  (For example, tanks can't inhabit swamp terrain.)

 

When activated, a unit may perform two actions out of this set: {move, fire, occupy, hold}.  A unit that choses not to perform its actions may "pass", though they should always at least "hold".

 

Move is large scale movement, and involves moving the unit's tray up to the maximum move distance

Fire is long ranged fire, as from a cannon, and is directed against another unit

Occupy is how a unit moves from disk to disk.  If the target disk is unoccupied by enemies, then the occupation is automatically successful.  Otherwise, you have to fight and win an assault to occupy the disk.

Hold allows a unit to go on overwatch.  You can only hold once an activation.  Held units can use their held action in one of these ways:

 - Fire in reaction against an enemy that moves into LoS

 - Assist another unit's attack.  (This allows you to gang up on a terrain disk by moving the attackers into place, holding them, and then when the last attacker arrives, occupy with assistance from the held units in contact.)

Once a held unit takes the held action, it is no longer on hold, and if the unit does not get the chance to act before the end of the turn, then the held action is lost.

 

I'm playing around with the idea of making the figures on the movement disk have a formation that will influence how they fire, etc, but that may be an optional rule.

 

Assaulting another disk will involve a sort of "game within the game", where you can move and attack with each figure involved individually instead of all as one unit.  This will permit you to use some figures to pin the enemy down and others to assault, etc.  I need to make this game relatively fast and easy or it will bog down too much.  In fact, I may dispense with the minigame in preference to a modified roll-off.  In the case of city fights, the city will likely be composed of many disks, and can make occupation of the city a tricky proposition.

 

Terrain disks of certain types will be hard or impossible to move and see across.  These disks can have roads through them that will allow free passage, though figures are still allowed to occupy the area around the road.

 

Different terrain types may benefit your unit.  For example, an occupied ridge line will allow the occupying unit to go "hull down" to protect it from ranged fire.  A densely wooded or rocky feature might provide cover for infantry, etc.  Some terrain will not be beneficial, such as a stream or river, and will largely serve to restrict movement on the battlefield.

 

Units that are not in LoS of the enemy should only be represented by their movement disks.  This will allow the players to have some uncertainty about the enemy disposition at the beginning of the game.  Theres no reason you couldn't also have a number "dummy disks" that represent false intel and disappear once LoS is achieved against them.

 

At any rate, that's my idea.  I haven't gotten much further in trying to flesh out the actual combat mechanisms, but it seems like an intriguing idea, and might allow people to fight a very large battle in a reasonable amount of time, and with a pleasing visual effect.  Well, assuming the terrain disks were done to a decent quality of course.