It’s been a busy week with the build up to Christmas alongside various Church activities, so hobby time has been sparse, however I have managed to think about a game involving my Hominids from last post I’m calling WOTH, which stands for War Of The Hominids.
I started out with something rather odd, a take on my Simple Toy Soldier Game but involving D20s and the D12s. It was a no-go to say the least, the core mechanic just wasn’t working. So I switched gears entirely to something more ‘mainstream’.
Here are my rough rules so far:
Each Tribe should have around 5 hominids.
The game is played in turns. Each of a player’s turns has 4 phases:
- ENRAGE
- LOB
- RUSH!
- SCRAP
ENRAGE
Give one of your Hominids a Rage token. Rage tokens boost your Hominids actions. Rage tokens stay on a Hominid and are only removed by damage.
LOB
During your Lob phase each of your Hominids can Lob a rock at the enemy. Select an enemy and roll a D6 and add the value of any Rage tokens on the Lobber. If the result rolled x2 is equal to or greater than the distance to the target in inches then a hit has been scored and the target suffers damage. Natural 1s always count as misses regardless.
RUSH!
During the Rush! phase you can move each of your Hominids up to 6”, +1” per Rage token and -1” per wound a Hominid has.
SCRAP
If any of your Hominids are in base to base contact with an enemy then they can scrap. Roll a die for each Hominid adding the value of any Rage tokens they have. Reduce a Hominid’s roll by the number of wounds they have. The lower roller suffers damage. Reroll ties.
Where multiple Hominids are in base to base contact with enemies you determine the order the Scraps are resolved in, and each Hominid suffers a -1 modifier per additional Scrap.
Once all Scraps are resolved each of your Hominids still in contact with an enemy backs off 1”.
DAMAGE
Roll 2D6 on the table below whenever a Hominid suffers damage to see its effect:
2 – Enraged: The Hominid is angered by the attack and the surge of adrenaline causes it to forget all pain. The Hominid heals any wounds it has and gains D3 Rage tokens.
3-4 – Knocked: The Hominid stumbles. The player causing the damage can move the Hominid upto 3”.
5-6 – Struck: Hominid suffers a wound.
7 – Dead: The Hominid is killed, remove them from play.
8-9 – Discombobulated: Hominid suffers a wound. Additionally the Hominid loses any Rage tokens they have.
10-11 – Crippled: One of the Hominids legs is snapped like a twig. The Hominid suffers a wound and it can no longer take part in the Rush phase.
12 – Brutality: The Hominid is killed in such a violently, over the top way that all of its allies lose all of their Rage tokens.
Once a Hominid has suffered 3 wounds they are killed as soon as they have 0 Rage tokens.
I’ll be adding scenarios, and with playtesting possibly pushing the number of figures up. I’m currently thinking of adding a bigger chieftain type figure to each force, and then maybe a few specialists, shaman, totem carrier etc. I’ll also need to put in special rules for my three starting factions – Yetis, Sasquatches and Skunk Apes.
I’ve also been considering allowing you to play in three distinct eras: pre, during and post humanity. Pre, you may bump into dinosaurs, during groups of human hunters and post, irradiated mutants?
Deathzap 
It has an elegant simplicity
Thanks, I am racking my brain for something truly bizarre though. It all feels very much done before.
Well you could have five hominids on each side and each move roll a d10. Each hominid has a number, perhaps one side is odd, the other even, so the latter’s hominids are numbered 2,4,6,8,10
When the number comes up, that creature acts
So one model could act several times and others don’t
For added complication, you could put a marker by each figure, which is removed when they act. If, at the end of a move (perhaps 12 die rolls) a figure hasn’t acted, it’s probably seething with rage and bubbling frustration, so give it another rage counter 🙂
I like that. It’s strange really trying to put together some sort of tactical game together about gangs of ape men trying to tear each other’s heads off. A thing which in reality probably has very few if any tactics involved.