State of the (Warring) Nation

Things are moving into overdrive on the war gaming front in the Berman abode.  Brother vs. Brother, Brother vs. Sister, Daughter vs. Father... nobody is safe from the battling, well maybe with the exception of Mum.

What's working?

The BTF (Berman Terrain Factory) is going gangbusters.  Harriet is on the case and she's becoming quite the terrain manufacturing machine!  We're still doing paper craft, with our top three sources being Toposolitario, Genet Models/Ebbles and Tommygun.  We've printed out lots using our HP Envy 4504 and 100gm paper (10gm heavier than most printer paper) - the paper's a bit flimsy and the ink can be chewed up pretty quickly if you're not careful.  Also I've done a couple of trips to Officeworks and had them print on 200gm (cardstock, matt) which ends up being a $1 a page.  I've got some 200gm paper that I'm intending on trialing soon... it will be interested to see how the printer and paper both stand up to the requisite bending...

Playing 6 aside Humans vs Humans.  One Level 2 Commander or two Level 1's, with the occasional Heavy Weapon, but otherwise everyone's armed with Assault Rifles.  We pretend they're Storm Troopers, Rebels or whatever - whilst asymmetrical forces are more interesting for me, they tend to leave at least one Primary School kid frustrated.

Retrieve Missions.  They feel a little like football, especially where we make each Player's exit point  their opponent's entry.  The fact that you can win without destroying the opposition couple with the manner in which the objective scatters makes for a great combination - LOTS of laughter.

Murphy's Law.  This injects some real humour into the game.  Already we've had instances of my Daughter's Commander being caught out in the open and fired upon by 4 enemies, only to have every one of them roll 1's and jam their weapons.  Great fun.

What's needs a bit more work?

Trying some more Missions.  (TGTMG's) Annihilate is a bit too straight-laced for me - I like some character when playing, and the kids enjoy it more as well.  We haven't tried a pure Occupy yet and are yet to try Demolish and Terminate.  Extract just doesn't seem like it's enough fun... we'll have to give it a go.  I've also got some other war game rule books etc lying around and have tried running some other missions which are yet to find their way onto this site... truth be told they could all do with some tweaks here and there.

Cover.  The killer of all skirmish games: how to account for cover.  What we've got now might not be technically correct skirmish-sim speaking, but is is kind of working.  Right now the (family) debate is whether we should also/instead/sometimes enhance the Armour and/or Resolution when in cover.

What are we thinking about doing differently?

Units.  Actually it isn't too hard, but we haven't got a lot of other Lego minifigs.  I'd like to dabble in some painting, but there's a whole money-pit waiting to suck us under. There's some Lego call NexoKnights we might try.  Alex was also interested in some sword and sorcery styled Tolkien play (Nooo!  That means new terrain!!).

Unit Stats.  We're slowly drifting into specialist space.  "Dad, I want this guy to be better at using a sword than shooting his gun" has already been suggested.  Do we go with separate BS and WS aka 40k?  I don't know.

Activation.  I like the idea of Activation i.e. troops don't always do what's wanted and sometimes do what's safest. We're thinking a 50-50 chance of having 1 or 2 Action Points or maybe 2 or 3 Action Points... that would mix it up.  Elite Troops might have a better Activation stat?

Multi-Fate Die.  The 3 Fates and Turn Over rule from the new Test of Honour Samurai game is tempting... do we trial something like that?