Wargame Design: In Strife and Conflict

 

This game has been a long time in the making.  Those of you who are my Patrons on Patreon have had access to these rules for a year or so.  With their help I have been able to make some adjustments to the game to finalize these rules.  There help focused on finish off these rules.  As thanks, they got access to the finished product months prior to everyone else.  In addition, the Patrons have also had access to the RPG rules of Space Mecha Theatre, a G.I. Joe RPG module, as well as various other work in progress games.  Some games are at the earliest stages, while others are in late stage post-production.   

For the In Strife and Conflict PDF, I needed to paint a couple of armies as part of post-production.  Then, once the two forces were painted I needed to take some photos of them in action.  I am not a photographer and many people would argue I am not much of a painter either.  However, I took a lot of photos and not all of them made it into the rules PDF.  However, I didn't want them to to go to waste.  Therefore, I decided to post them on the Blog as a bit of a photo dump.  

I also decided to use this time to talk about some of the Design Goals.  This game had the following Design Goals when I built them: 

Natives block the Pass

The rules themselves use the Heirs of Empire system as a base.  They were written initially about 5 years ago?  It took that long to prioritize them and complete the post-production.  In that time, I got a lot of great feedback about how to do supporting, the turn sequence, movement speeds, and other points.  I was able to incorporate a lot of those ideas into the core rules themselves.  

Chariots rush forward to clash

As usual, I want all my games to be base and model agnostic.  These ones are no exception.  I used 60 x 60mm bases, but I realize that the base size I chose is not a "universal" choice.  Most people like 40mm frontages.  However, frontage is not really important in this game as long as both sides are roughly based the same.  However, there is some discussion about using multi-based units or single based units.  Therefore, you can really play with 2mm-54mm scale if the players wish.  This is a Unit-vs-Unit game.  

If you are familiar with Wars of the Republic or Men of Bronze you know that I worked to emphasize close combat.  However, in these rules I changed up the base mechanics to emphasize the mobility of chariots and to enhance the role of firepower.  Close combat will still have a role, but archery is much more powerful in these rules than my other ancient rules.  In addition, integrated archery is a key part for a number of core units.  

One of the interesting things about Chariot warfare in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age is that no one really knows exactly how it worked.  In addition, different nations may have used their Chariot forces in different ways.  For example, it was commonly believed that the Egyptians used their Chariots as a mobile firepower platform.  Assyrians used their Chariots as a mobile shock force, and even used carts to move infantry around as "battle taxis".  Hittites had different types of chariots for different battlefield roles, but what were those roles?  Did they charge with spears?  Did they just get into an advantageous position and dismount?  It is not clear at all how large forces of Chariots were managed or coordinated on the battlefield.  Did they operate in large formations all together?  Did they operate on a tactical scale with squadrons operating alone?  Did they act as individual units?  What exactly was a "Chariot Runner"?  How fast were chariots compared to guys on foot?  How did you use them in a siege?  There are a lot of unanswered questions about Chariot Warfare, so a strong Point-of-View was needed for these rules.               

Therefore, much of how I decided the game would play was based on some assumptions I made about Chariot Warfare.  For fast-paced games, I chose to lean into the idea that Chariots were a mobility element of the army that could go faster and further than foot units.  Is this true?  No one is sure! However, for the purposes of "This Game" I wanted Chariots to be able to zip around quickly, shoot at other units, and hit harder than the equivalent foot units.  I wanted the Chariots to be the logical "core" of a force because they had benefits that other units could not bring.  We don't exactly know how the Ancients used Chariots but we do know they spent a lot of time, effort, and resources to have chariot forces.  Therefore, they must have been a key factor on the battlefield for a reason so I wanted that to be reflected in the game.  

Laying Siege to a city-state

 Like most of my games, I want players to be engaged at all times.  The best way I have found to do that was to make a fluid Initiative system based on using Command Points combined with triggering Special Rules for units with those points.  This is a standard conceit in my Men of Bronze- adjacent games.  In this game, I theme it around a resource called King's Decree.  The King was often the center of the army, and many of our surviving accounts focus on the role of the King/Pharaoh of the force.  It thematically made sense to tie Command Points to the King in this game.    

The game is designed to be played as a Unit-vs-Unit game.  Therefore, the exact number of models is not spelled out.  It depends on what the players decide a "Unit" is composed of and I leave it intentionally vague in the rules.  However, actions happen at a unit basis.  A Unit could be a single based model, a handful of single based units, or a few multi-based units.  It doesn't matter.  However, maneuvers and interactions happen at the unit-vs-unit level.  Special Rules are triggered at the unit level. 

Typically, the game plays with 4+ units per side.  I haven't really found a "top" to the number of units as the game can play pretty fast.  However, I think the "sweet spot" is 4-12 per side to play a game in about 1-2 hours of gameplay.  There is not really a "top" I have found yet as the rules are easy enough for larger games too.  However, unlike Heirs of Empire this is not designed for "Wings" of the army.  However, there is no reason you could not break it into multiple commands and have multiple players per side.  My personal belief is that armies in this period were not that large, despite what some scholars will claim about the size of the armies at battles like Kadesh.  Therefore, a "wings" system did not seem relevant for this game system, but wargamers being wargamers we always want more toys! 

A typical force size

Since this is a unit-vs-unit game, a big difference I make in these rules is that I assume all units are in the best formation for them.  Therefore, if you want to be in a different formation it takes the use of King's Decree to move them into a different formation.  This is similar to how I structured it in Heirs to Empire.  Therefore, most units have some turning and direction restrictions.  Not all units can go into a more maneuverable formation, and there is a cost to being in those looser formations.  

Notably, I did not include the "Melee Phase" in this game.  Instead, I opted to have all melee occur at the time of impact during an activation. I find that this approach makes controlling the Initiative much more impactful during the game.  It does lead to some situations with how "support" works and units charging in after a melee has started.  The rules are much clearer on these points thanks to feedback from my previous games that use this model. 

Two other things I did for this set of rules.  First, I formatted it to no longer use two columns per page.  Some of my early work did this, and I received feedback that it was harder to use as a PDF with that formatting.  Therefore, I went with single pages at a time which should be easier for PDF viewing.  Second, I wised up and finally added a QRS into the document!  That should be a handy resource to print out when you play your first few games.  

Chariots attack while the infantry forms a solid defensive base

Final Thoughts

If you are familiar with my Ancient games, you will see a lot of familiar mechanics and ideas in this game.  The main challenge of this rulebook was to match the core themes of Chariot Warfare with appropriate mechanics to try and catch the proper Point-of-View for the style of warfare within the rules framework I use for Ancient games.  That meant emphasizing the mobility and potential power of the chariots, and using infantry as a base to operate for support, firepower, and holding ground.  I also improved missile firepower compared to my Greek/Roman focused games. 

Overall, I am really happy with how the game plays.   This was a modification and not a revolution of the core system.  If you have liked my other Ancients games, you will like this.  If you have not liked them you will not like this one.  

Let me know if you have any questions.  Until next time. 

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