"Moderns" Gaming

 Wargaming has all sorts of niches. People would be familiar with "Fantasy" (think Lord of the Rings and Warhammer) and "Sci-fi" (most typically Star Wars and Warhammer 40,000), however, there are plenty of other rabbit holes to get lost in such as Navel, Space Battles, Micro Armour, Napoleonics, Dark Ages... it is endless. 

One such niche is "Moderns", characterised by the setting and mechanics. Setting-wise, we're talking about an armed conflict that reflects the current or the near-future world. As far as mechanics go, it tends to focus on skirmish-sized engagements employing less than a dozen models/units per side.

Recently a mate introduced me to a relatively new Moderns collection by a design team called [something] that includes three titles namely Incountry (aka INX), Killwager, and Skullcore).

What's caught my eye...

I'm a game mechanics nerd. These games present some complexity in the Round/Turn/Action (RTA) sequencing which appeals to my sense of novelty. How do I explain it...

After playing my first game of Skullcore recently (sci-fi setting, less deep and complex rules as to promote quicker and more readily accessible gameplay than its big brother, Killwager) I found myself reflecting on the RTA sequencing for a few days later. My mates asked me about it and I did my best to articulate what happened. It wasn't easy to relay what had happened... how the game flowed and why it seemed to make sense.

I did prepare and share the following illustrative timeline that goes some way to describe how each Round or "Maneuver", consists of an Operational then Execution Phase. Each Phase involves at least two player Turns or "Performances" in which individual Units are activated and instructed to perform their specific Actions aka "Measures".

Why the special terms? Initially, I thought they introduced unnecessary complexity into the game, etc., but now I think it's pretty smart. Using discrete, exacting terms actually reduces the opportunities for confusion. I'll give an example of that in a little bit. 

Maneuvers, Operational Phases, Execution Phases, Performances, and Measures 

This is how it might look when describing an engagement:

Does the above make sense? Remember that each Player is only employing a handful of Units/Miniatures each.

One thing that initially threw me off was that subsequent to Forcing and winning an Execution Phase, you're effectively granting your opponent two consecutive Performances - each Performance allows them to activate up to two Units, so that equates to activating 4 Units consecutively. That didn't strike me as fair. But the more I thought about it, the less it concerned me. Firstly, while ever there's Flow remaining in your Squad/Force (more about that later), you can elect to remain in the Operational Phase even if you have the opportunity to Force and win the Execution Phase e.g., just because you send an enemy Critical doesn't oblige you to move into the Execution Phase then grant your opponent 4 consecutive Performances.

In any event, winning the Execution Phase grants you either 4 consecutive Performances (Battle Drill Beta) first/before your opponent or 2 'free' Performances (Battle Drill Alpha) - either way you look at it, you've got the opportunity to dictate the flow of battle more so than your opponent at that point.

What is Flow?

Flow is a resource that measures each individual Units' capacity to do things. When you activate a Unit (either proactively during your Performance or reactively during your opponent's Performance), doing things (Measures) cost Flow. Each Unit starts with 4 Flow and at the commencement of each Maneuver, each Unit regenerates 2 Flow, back to its 4 Flow limit. Yeah, it means you use a d4 to track each Unit's current Flow, but it's hardly a huge thing.

Different Measures (actions) cost different amounts of Flow (1 or 2 Flow and you can chain some together), so there's some thinking involved because there's never enough Flow to do everything! EXCEPT that if you employ Battle Drill Alpha, you can effectively supercharge two of your Units. They might have been all Flowed out, but Battle Drill Alpha allows you to supercharge you soldiers, redline them and just maybe seize the day.

What's Next?

The rules are constantly evolving. Since I discovered them there has been another release that I haven't really bothered exploring too much just yet (apparently there's minimal change). That would annoy some people, but I actually appreciate it when authors invest time and effort into improving their games. There's a pretty active Discord community too.

I've been painting up some minis and intend to get some more game in before too long. Given the game is played on a 2x2' table, I think I might try and make a set table rather than going through the hassle of creating a table from scatch each and every game. We'll see.

Watch this space!