Yet more Man & Machine

I have been wondering about cover artwork for this project.  I am not sold on doing it myself, i'm not that much of an artist, but have been drawing a fair bit lately so I thought what the heck.

Some variation of this will probably make the Alpha rules at least.  I guess we will see what else I can come up with.

Man & Machine: Turn Sequence

Plotted out the turn sequence for Man & Machine.

I had thought to use a graphic showing a few models and their movement, but decided a flowchart was a simpler and more complete way to show what I was going for, has one small error, which has been fixed, but I haven't had a chance to upload it yet.  This still gives an idea for how I view the game turn working.

The rules are now formatted up to Turn Sequence.  I hope to have a basic alpha rule set for initial play testing in a couple of weeks.

Man & Machine: Example Illustrations

As I close in on having a basic first concept mostly put down on paper, I am turning to layout.  I came across this blog today which was fairly helpful in moving forward with what I want to do design and layout wise. http://the-dark-templar.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/how-to-design-rulebook-introduction.html.  I set up a basic layout in Scribus this evening and toyed with setting up pages.  I think it should look pretty cool.

One of the things I want to have is some simple, clear examples of the mechanics.

I spent part of tonight drawing a few top down views of soldiers and equipment and then set about digitizing them into the computer so I could use them as samples.

Two miniatures with a set of dice showing success and failure results.

Using the above graphics I can put together fairly simple, and I hope easy to understand examples of game mechanics.

Example showing Blue shooting at Red.  Highlights the relevant stats and any modifies, in this case +1 from the bushes.

Man & Machine: Turn Activation

One of the major hurdles I was trying to overcome was an activation system that was fairly simple, but involved both players at all time.

I have gone with a system that will allow players to alternately use models.

• Player 1 uses a model
• Player 2 uses a model
• Player 3 uses a model
• etc

The concept is that each player must plan their strategy and assign orders to each model.  Then once they are assigned the models are used one after the other.

My current system has 8 orders, such as move, shoot, use a skill etc, and are arranged around an octagon.  Players would place a paperclip on the order they want and place it face down next to the model or it's card.

Order wheel.   One per model.

One of the things I am trying to do with this system is to create a fairly cool looking game without spending loads of money on art, or having to do it all myself.  I have sourced some from RPGnow.com and of course I am making large use of http://game-icons.net/

Man & Machine

Rules Rules Rules

So many rules.

I am sure we could all use another set.

I have been considering a skirmish ruleset for sometime.  I had originally envisioned it as a fantasy type game, but then I thought, why not Sci-Fi?

There are certain aspects and mechanics that I really like in a simple fast skirmish game.

I am tentatively thinking of it being infantry and power armor based, hence Man and Machine as a working title.

1) No math

• This involves rolling a pool of attack, defense, skill dice aiming to hit a particular target.  Various games use this idea: Tomorrow's War, X-wing Miniatures, Conan etc
• Each die can be a success or a failure (Or possibly critical success or critical failure)

2) No writing

• Generally apart from possibly writing down and designing your forces life and effects are all tracked via chits and counters.  ie a player gets armor chits or life chits that are used to track each models status

3) Simple rules

• Simple set of rules to govern combat and basic movement.
• Simple skills that add depth, such as Technical, Medic etc.

4) Activation....

• I feel this aspect can really make a game interesting and I am not entirely sure how I want this to work yet.

I have some ideas rattling around as well as some notes on some post-its.  I will probably post some general ideas on the mechanics as I develop it here.

CONAN

Of all my fantasy loves CONAN is #1.

I was doing a random search the other day looking to see if there was any possibility of a CONAN miniature game I had missed out.

I have the board game, but I really was looking for miniatures.

I came across a game simply called, "CONAN" by a company called Monolith, but it wasn't available yet.  It was just *ABOUT* to go live on Kickstarter in a couple of days.

It funded it's $80,000 in under 5 minutes, and has since gone on to unlock a lot of stretch goals and is not just over $1,000,000 and on track for about $2,000,000.

If you like Conan and like Miniatures you should check it out!

CONAN KICKSTARTER PROJECT

EVEN MORE FANTASY! Fightin' Fungi!

One of the first Fantasy battles I posted about was A Song of Blades and Heroes.

Now the creator of that rule set is launching a new game:  "Fightin' Fungi"

It sounds to me like more of the same awesome of A Song, but with unique mushroom warriors and an improved magic system as well as more combat abilities and weapons.

Find out more at his Kickstarter campaign!  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/9742092/fightin-fungi-28mm-fantasy-miniatures

If you like quick play skirmish rules that have an active community and creator I suggest you check out the new game and his website: http://www.ganeshagames.net/