I’ve been working on my first version of WOTH (War of the Hominids), a simple game where you take 6 apemen and make them fight your opponent’s 6 apemen. It’s all lobbing rocks and ripping arms off.
I’ve mostly cracked the core of the game, with a small niggle regarding ‘objectives’ (if apemen even have them), but deployment was causing me a bit of a headache.
I tend to force myself to stick to one page of rules, so there’s limited room and long winded or waffley explanations can eat up too much space. A game needs to be fun, and a good scenario is key to that, and part of any good scenario is how the opposing forces are set up.
My initial thoughts, and a version of deployment that was rather long winded (ate up half the page) was where you’d roll for deployment and there were 6 different types (I think). Your standard deployment on opposite edges, deployment in opposite corners, deployment where players get two opposite sides each, the same but with corners, one player gets the centre and the other the entire outside etc. There was certainly a good variety, but as I say it ate up too much space. It also didn’t describe how the board was to be set up in terms of terrain, so there were additional rules for that.
This was the second iteration:
The board is divided up into a 4×4 grid of 6” squares. Then cards are shuffled and laid facedown before being flipped. There’s one of each face card and the numbers 2-6 in red and black so 16 cards total. The number cards are deployment zones for each side, and the face cards are terrain, two hills for the kings, two swamps for the queens and two areas of dense woodland for the jacks.
The system worked well, it was random, and described how figures and terrain should be set up all in one go. The only issue is that set up took as long as it did to play a game, so while this system may have worked well it didn’t feel right for something so quick and bloody.
The third iteration was to drop a handful of dice onto the table which then players would in turn replace with either one of their figures or a piece of terrain. I thought this was a good idea initially, however getting the height wrong sends dice cascading across the room or they gather in the middle of the board and don’t give you a good spread at all.
So what am I looking for?
Randomised deployment, that’s quick and easy to explain and that creates fun games. I don’t really have any other ideas. Put any ideas you’ve got in the comments!
Deathzap 
– Place terrain. Pretend the board is a clock face, have players roll a d12 per figure to give each ape-man a segment of the board to deploy in.
– Place terrain down and divide the board in quarters, roll 2d4 per figure, the first D4 designates the quarter of the board, the second D4 which quarter of that quarter the ape-man deploys in.
– Place terrain. Each Ape-man calls a certain piece of terrain their home. In turns both players roll on a table of the different terrain types for one of their ape-men at a time, the piece of terrain they roll is that Ape-man’s home. The player can then place that ape-man within or touching that terrain. Repeat until all ape-men are deployed. This one is random but a little more tactical.
Any of the above can have a a rule that no two opposing ape-men can start in contact or must be deployed a given distance from eachother.
All brilliant ideas, I’ll try them out. I’m also considering making deployment a kind of game, similar to Chain of Command, so I really like the home terrain idea.
Hmm, the idea of apemen engaging in tactical Chain of Command like deployments sounds a bit unlikely to me! Don’t they just want to tear each other’s heads off? You could use a small pack of cards, each with terrain placements and deployment zones marked. Randomly select one and deploy as indicated. As long as you have a dozen cards or so, I doubt you’d feel there was a lack of options.
I was thinking more of the apemen stalking each other through the dense forest or a snowstorm. You have two counters per apeman, if one attacks it’s revealed as an apeman, when a counter is attacked you either have to reveal your apeman or just remove the counter.
I assume that the ape men don’t attack their own side?
I suggest you decide what terrain pieces you are using. Assign each one to a card, make the deck up to 16. Then lay your cards down, turn them over, put the terrain on.
If you are having ‘attackers and defenders’ then the defenders are each assigned to a terrain piece before the cards are even played. Attackers each come on the board at the random board edge
If it is an encounter action, give each side a base edge, and they arrive on their base edge randomly where there is no terrain on the edge
What if all of the 10 apemen are from the same tribe, just doing their own business (gathering fruits, decorating a cave, making pointy sticks…) ?
Then, players deploy alternatively a numbered / marked fig where they want until all figs are on the table.
At this point, an incident occurs (some apeman make a mean joke about his fellow’s apewoman) and everybody goes apeshit.
Each player draw 5 cards out of a 10 cards deck, determining wich apemen he’s going to play.
Bloodbath can begin.
(Sorry for my english, it’s not my natural language)
Forgot to tell that this mode of deployement allows for scenery and “realistic” arrangement of the terrain (a camp, bushes with berries nearby, some forest with a clearing and game to hunt, a stream…). Apemen could be deployed near or between points of interest (objectives ?). I’ll give it a try soon.
Oh, and with a total of 12 apemen, it could easily be played by 3 or 4 players.