Irregular Space

Sometimes projects come out of nowhere. I think this one in particular has existed in the forbidden section of my brain for quite some time, and as I seem to be amassing projects right now I thought ‘why not?’ The project in question is to produce a set of rules specifically for Irregular Miniatures 15mm Sci-fi Range. They haven’t asked me to by the way, I just really like the range and its spread of quirky miniatures. Also, I have their Skirmish rules sold with their 6mm ‘Posh Packs’ of figures. It’s a single sheet of A4, designed for 15mm figures so it’s probably available with other things, I just got mine with an Old West Posh Pack. So the groundwork has already been done.

Irregular’s Skirmish rules are oldschool, written orders (I think), and most die rolls are with D100s and a bucket full of modifiers. So things can feel slow, and I wouldn’t recommend you play with more than 15 minis a side.

Of course Irregular’s rules are designed for bows, muskets, rifles and no armour, but I didn’t find it too difficult to include sci-fi equipment.

As I said to shoot you apply modifiers to a D100 roll, and in this case the lower you roll the better. And if you hit you then roll for the effect of the hit – kill, serious wound or light wound. So all I had to do was come up with ranges for all the sci-fi guns and how they modify the effect roll, along with how armour modifies that effect roll too.

As far as shooting modifiers go, you’ve got short, medium and long range. How fast the target is moving, whether they are mounted or not, how wounded the shooter is, how many turns they’ve spent aiming. Strangely you get +20 for a ‘mounted target’, and +10 if the ‘target is mounted’. I think this is a typo, as the +10 is within a group of negative modifiers, so I’m guessing it should read -10 if the shooter is mounted. The figure’s relevant shooting stat gives a +3 per point, which seems a bit obtuse. So if their stat is 6 they’ll add 18. I imagine the +3 was decided upon as +5 was too powerful? Because the maths would be so much nicer with +5. What feels like an obvious omission to me is the lack of any cover modifiers.

I’ve added those cover modifiers, and also decided on the stats giving +5 per point. But then, I realised instead of using D100s I could switch everything over to D20s. So if I’ve got multiple shot weapons, or squads all firing at a single target, D20s will be far less of a headache.

For melee you play rock, paper, scissors and then an effect roll is made for the loser with some modifiers.

To get melee a bit more involved I’ve added a melee stat, so you roll a D20 for each figure and add their melee stat, the higher scorer wins. Melee weapons give modifiers to the effect roll right now, but I’ll have to include some that effect the users melee stat too, so you can have things like classic power fists which were more deadly but less wieldy.

The reason I say I think that the rules use written orders, is me reading between the lines, because the rules themselves don’t give a turn order/structure. So I’m guessing it’s a fairly friendly, gentlemanly sort of affair.

I could add in an initiative stat for turn order, or I’ll go with the classic – Side A moves, Side B shoots, Side A shoots, Side B moves, which is definitely oldschool appropriate, popping up both in Donald Featherstone’s rules and Laserburn Imperial Commander.

Stats wise, Irregular use three – Skill to Throw, Skill with Musket/Rifle and Bravery/ Skill with Bow. These are randomly generated for each figure with minimums for various types and armaments. I have to say, I do like the idea of bows being about holding your nerve. I’ve never seen a set of rules incorporate that before.

With the inclusion of a Melee stat and Armour I’ll be up to four (or 5 if we do initiative). Melee, Shoot Skill, Bravery and Armour.

I’ll be needing to add vehicle rules to cover Irregular’s full range. Along with odd characters with special abilities like medics and electronic warfare.

I wonder at what point I can still say based on Irregular’s Skirmish Rules as this is less of a Ship of Theseus situation and more of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre ‘based on true events’ situation.