I seem to be setting myself rather difficult challenges of late. Making an interesting 1v1 wrestling skirmish game, and now Ghost Legions, which I realise should effectively amount to a historical rule set for every historical period. All of which reasonably balance with each other, so ancient Sumerians feel like they have a fair shot against the Viet Cong, and which also has additional rules on top to fit my own ghostly setting.
Absolute bananas.
I also set myself the task of fixing various bugbears with historical rulesets. You think you’re going to be allowed to fire bazookas indoors? Bet you wish you hadn’t badmouthed the PIAT now hey?
So my current list of weapon profiles is up to 73. I’m considering how effective a Panzerfaust would be against a Carthaginian War Elephant (likely very), I’m just thinking now how badly a flamethrower would also affect an elephant’s psyche… or longbowmen arching their shots into an open topped APC. But there is a desire to also simplify and abstract. A similar idea to mine is Heroscape, a game which takes some historical troops and combines them with fantasy races, inter dimensional creatures and gods, and has them all fight in Valhalla, keeps everything simple and streamlined. Can I just give a guy a ‘big gun’ and not really worry about the specifics?
I’ve also recently noticed Javis Scenics make Wargames terrain. More on that later.
Maybe I’m realising why Ghost Legions never really got off of the ground before. But I’m going to keep chiselling away at that mountain because as I mentioned in my previous post, I really love this idea, and how accessible this idea is for so many.
Plus my 1/72 collection has grown extensively as a result of all this madness, and collecting two armies for each period – Ancients, Dark Ages, Medieval, Renaissance, Black Powder, Colonial, World Wars, Modern and Future (at least these are the periods I’ve scribbled down), really opens me up to other historical skirmish rule sets.
There is a growing force of Sumerians on my desk right this second.
Another circle I’ve got to square, is the leap from very low level skirmishes (5-10 figures) up to bigger games (50+ on a side). And I think the big problem there is the turn sequence. There is wisdom in a simple igo-ugo as it does scale well (until armies get really big), alternate activations can bog down if one side has too many units. So alternate activations might not be the right call in the game of Vikings vs British Paras. I’ve always like Featherstone’s – A Moves, B Shoots, B Moves, A Shoots, but I must admit playing solo I do tend to get lost as to where I’m at. I’ve also considered activating zones – right flank, centre, left, and there might be something there. Though I’m currently trying out the Featherstone idea, but drawing those phases from a cup/bag/deck much like Bolt Action, which should give a good amount of anarchy in proceedings, and help me not get lost.
It’s all a huge amount of fun though. Especially in those moments at work, where I don’t need my brain engaged, I’ve got a little something to mentally work on. That really is an understated joy of working on rules as an amateur.
