Rogue Fire (Seriously?)

I have a rather embarrassing condition: I can't leave good enough alone.

Take the game Rogue Planet - simply awesome. I've had some great Rogue Planet games, full of memorable moments and huge laughs. Classic gaming stuff. But no, rather than just stick with a fantastic formula, I've got to go poking and prodding about, changing this, tinkering with that. And the result? Games that feel Rogue Planet-like, but aren't Rogue Planet anymore.

Why "Rogue Fire"? The "Rogue" borrows from Rogue Planet, but the "Fire" comes from another game I've found myself exploring called Round of Fire.

What is Round of Fire all about?

It's a miniature agnostic game, with lots of little innovations that come together to provide an altogether different experience. For a rule hound (that's the polite term) like me, that's always welcome. The major point of differentiation relative to 99% of the games out there is the use of an eight-segmented wheel to track the various units' turn sequence.

On the left is the Wheel (A4-sized) and right are Unit Cards I had prepared for a game.

Rather than me poorly describing how the wheel is used, here's a cut from the rulebook:

Hopefully, you can get a sense that the use of the wheel adds depth and dimension to the game the likes of which is pretty unique. How the ultramodern wargame Skirmish Sangin manages unit sequencing has somewhat a similar feel, but Round of Fire's approach feels as though there's a little less overhead involved.

Beyond the novelty factor, after playing with it in the wild, it also provides another tactical lever in the game e.g., some units can move a lot more efficiently than shoot (a shooting action results in a longer wait until the unit's next turn) and others are more efficient at shooting than moving - but in the moment, the distance they move or accuracy of their shooting could well be exactly the same, rather it's their relative frequencies of action that differ. BOOM! Mind blown!

Being the fiddler I am, I recently trialled mixing Rogue Planet's Movement, Action-Reaction, Damage, and Skill Resolution mechanics with the Round of Fire Wheel to handle turn sequencing. You know what? It actually worked. The guys I were playing (who've also previously played Rogue Planet) with very quickly 'got it' and before we knew it, we were spending as much time studying our unit's relative positions on the Wheel as where our miniatures were on the gaming table. 

You know you're onto something when you spend 2-hours focusing
on a corner of a board AND enjoying it! Maybe the beer helped some?

We played Space Marines vs Eldar - four Units/Squads apiece with the simple goal of mutual destruction. We had Eldar performing Move-related Actions for 3 Action Points (i.e. segments of the Wheel) and Shooting-related Actions (e.g., Shoot, Op Fire, Reaction Fire) for 4 Action Points. Marines were the opposite: 3 Action Points to Shoot and 4 Action Points to perform Movement-like things such as Intercept, Dodge or simply Move. As there weren't any objectives as such in play, the Marines had little incentive to Move... indeed they hardly had a chance before two squads of Howling Banshees descended upon them.

Now you've got to be pretty happy with
a Unit Card that looks this sharp!
Thank you Erik Walton!!

So where to from here? I'm still laying down my homegrown Rogue Inquisitor rules (21-pages and counting people!) and now I'm tempted to incorporate a Wheel mechanism for the Turn/Activation sequencing. It's nice to have a project on the boil that is singing to a couple of friends as well and since I've been writing my game rules up using a decent desktop publishing app, the outputs are looking increasingly professional as well. Maybe during January work will let up enough that I can spend an evening or four bringing everything together for some more test runs down at Axes & Ales... I hope so!