Screw Yourself

Note: Screwing Yourself is my own term for playing a solo game with your screw based armies.

The table is ready, the armies lined up, I’m full of piss and vinegar. Let’s go!

But I’ve got no rules… nothing, nowt, zilch… no problem, let’s make ‘em up as we go!

First problem is stats. I scribble something down quickly:

I’ve also had a mechanic brewing in my mind for a while now. Each force has a morale and command value. Morale dictates the number of dice you will roll at the start of your turn, command (a number from 2-5) will dictate what actions are available for your turn. Roll lower than your command and you can perform a charge action (move 3” and fight in melee), roll higher and you can perform a shoot action. Any single die can be traded for a basic move action (2”). and if you roll your command value exactly you’ll get access to a few command actions unique to your faction. I don’t have those command actions right now though, so I’ll say any exact rolls count as nothing, wasted actions. A base can perform up to 2 actions per turn, but never the same action twice in the same turn.

Both sides begin with 6 morale, the Royal Star Marines have a command of 3 and the Apocalytes a command of 4.

I don’t want to be tracking wounds on bases, this is already too small and fiddly! But my idea was that morale would count as army wide wounds. In that way, bases would be very rarely destroyed, most likely they will pull back, but the force’s morale would take the hit instead.

Let’s say for combat we make opposing rolls, the attacker add their attack, the target their defence. The higher scorer wins, if that’s the defender, or it’s a tie, nothing happens. If the attacker wins by 1, the defender retreats from the attacker 1”. If it’s by 2 the defender retreats 1” and their force morale drops by 1. If it’s by 3, the base is destroyed and their force morale drops by 1. Once a sides morale drops to 0 it’s game over.

I did quickly realise however that everything was too tough, so I dropped all those defence stats by 1. This should be a quick game after all.

The Apocalytes won the first exchange. Mostly because of the big monster, once it was into the enemies lines it would eat them up fairly quickly. Also the Cultists felt rather useless. They weren’t strong enough to deal with the marines and floated around, mostly as a liability. They would come into their own however if there was more to do than just fight. So maybe I need additional objectives.

Day 2, attempt 2. The core is definitely in place, I’ve just got to tweak stuff. What if, instead of putting objective markers everywhere (again, this stuff is already small and fiddly) I add a rule in, that if you can get a base off of the board on your opponents side, your opponent loses 1 morale? This represents a breakthrough of enemy troops. Your base would be effectively dead, but it would give those weak cultists something to do.

Also… Command Actions

Royal Star Marines –

Focus Fire: Have a base make a shooting attack with a +1 modifier to their attack stat.

Royal Startillery: Make a shooting attack against any enemy base (doesn’t have to be in range or line of sight of anyone) with an Attack of D6.

Battle Cry: Roll a die, on a 4+ add 1 to your morale score.

Apocalytes –

Respawn: If you have a base of cultists out of action (killed or moved off the opponents edge) you can return them to play within 1” of your own board edge.

Ambush!: Remove a base from play. And place it in Ambush. If you already have a base in Ambush you can use this action to return it to anywhere on the board (it takes one action to remove a base, and one to return it).

Sacrifice: If you have a base in base to base contact with an enemy base, kill your own base and then you can roll a die. on a 1 or 2 nothing happens. In a 3 or 4 your opponent loses 1 morale. On a 5 or 6 your opponent loses 1 morale and their base that was in contact with yours is killed too.

I should also add that any die can be spent to perform a melee attack against an enemy in base to base contact.

This game went really well. It felt far more tactical, and deciding what you wanted your dice to do was on occasion a real head scratcher. That and deciding when to move off of the board…

There’s quite a bit to play with here… I’ll report more soon! Let me know what you think so far!