Sunday, October 8, 2017

A Manoeuvre Experiment

My cat Buster was a little under the weather yesterday so I skipped LARPing to watch over him. As he was napping, I pulled out my copy of Maoeuvre to experiment with different rules.

I decided to try out a couple of different armies. This battle featured the Ottomans invading the Austrians. I reduced the army size to 6 (a la One Hour Wargames). The randomly selected map tiles had 2 villages so I decided that the Austrians were trying to defend the villages against a Turkish incursion.

I made 2 major changes to speed play:

  • I used the cards for activation, allowing each side to activate as many units as possible. To activate required a unit card. Leader cards could activate as many adjacent units as their Command rating. The special HQ cards (e.g. Regroup) would have effects as close to their original intention as possible, although I tweaked the rules a bit here and there.
  • An attack required a roll on 2D6 >= the target's unit rating + terrain mods. Hit units retreated and would also lose strength if a D10 roll >= the target's rating.

I did not keep strict tabs but I probably played about a dozen turns.

At this point of the game, the Turkish irregular cavalry harried the 6th Grenzers off the battlefield.

Later, the Janissaries seized one of the villages.

The other village held out.

Given that one village fell and the Austrians suffered the most casualties, I grant the Turks a narrow victory.

I still need to work on the rules. Using cards for activation worked fine. The combat rules seemed a bit weak; there weren't enough strength reductions so combat seemed indecisive. I want to make it more deadly so that the game is more fast-paced.

1 comment:

  1. Looks like a good game - the tiled battlefield gives you lots of possibilities and, as you say, you can always change the rules to suit you. A great purchase.

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