One Hour Wargaming and Science Fiction

Having played a number of WW1 Machine Age games using house rules based upon the One Hour Wargaming (OHW) book. I got to thinking about applying the OHW rule approach to science fiction, or more specifically the Warhammer 40K universe as I have quite a few miniatures. While I already use my own grid based house rules, I thought it would be fun to try out some simpler rules. So armed with a pencil and paper I sketched out some rules and modified them as I played.

Sci-Fi with OHW

After a couple of games the key unit characteristics identified were: experience, personal armour, weaponry and movement. The variety troop types and weapons does not map neatly to any period and seems to be a mash-up of ancient and WW2. Anyway, here is where I am up to with the rules so far...

Experience
There are two levels of experience - regular troops and veteran troops. Regular troops roll dice as normal, while veteran troops are allowed to re-roll a dice if they don't like the score and must accept the second dice role.

Personal Armour
I needed to separate armour from weaponry due to the variety of troops. As I played a couple of games and tried different troop types and ended up with the three below. Units could be of variable size, but could not exceed 20 hit points.

Armour Type	Hit Points	Examples
Light armour	1	Ork, imperial guard, termagant
Medium armour	2	Space marine, genestealer
Heavy armour	3	Terminator, Tyranid warrior, ork warbike

So what does this mean? If 5 hits was rolled, then: a lightly armoured unit would suffer the loss of 5 models; a medium armoured unit would suffer the loss of 4 models; and a heavily armoured unit would suffer the loss of 1 model. Any remaining hits are discarded. This does give an advantage to better armoured units.

For vehicles and monstrous creatures, which were always single models, they had multiple armour points similar to heavy armour each being 3 hit points. A heavy tank (eg, Landraider or Lemun Russ tank) would have 6 armoured points. So similar to the above example, if 5 hits were rolled, a heavy tank would lose 1 of its armoured points and a hit marker placed with the model.

Units are eliminated once they lose all their models or armour points. The most points a unit can have is 20 points, but units can be of any size up to the limit.

Weaponry

A unit's weaponry reflects its primary weapons and tactical use. The difference between a small arms unit and a tactical unit is, the tactical units has one or two support weapons. Support weapons are heavy bolters, assault cannons, auto cannons, etc. Whereas, heavy weapons are really there to target anti-vehicle weapons such as lascannons.

Armour Type	Troop Units	Non-Troop Units	Examples
Assault*	D6+2	D6-2	Hormagaunt, Orks, Marine Assault Squad
Heavy Assault*	D6+2	D6	Terminators, Tyranid Warriors
Small Arms	D6	D6-2	Termagant, Imperial Guard, Tau Fire Warriors
Tactical	D6	D6	Marine Tactical Squad
Heavy Weapons	D6-2	D6+2	Marine Devastator Squad, Tanks, Imperial Heavy Weapons Squad (lascannons)
Support Weapons	D6+2	D6	Razorback (Heavy Bolters), Chimeras
Ordinance*	D6+2	D6-2	Basilisk, Whirlwind

* cannot attack flyer units unless they have landed.

To use Assault weapons a unit must be within 6" of another unit to attempt attack with an assault.

All ranges are 18" except for ordinance which is unlimited and can attack any enemy units within view (18") of a friendly unit.

Movement
Foot troops and walkers - 3" + average dice score (2,3,3,4,4,5)
Vehicles - 6" + average dice score
Fast Vehicles and troops - 9" + average dice score
Skimmers - 15" + average dice score
Flyers - 20" + average dice score

All measurement is from the unit leader

Unit Basing
Having no wish to rebase my W40K models, each unit has an identified leader from which all measures are taken and is the last model removed. All other figures in  the unit must be within 4" of their leader. If they cannot all fit, in the case of large units, the are placed behind the unit in a "tail". I treat this 4" as a zone of control which other units except for friendly vehicles cannot enter.

All models are placed within 4" of leader or behind

Lots of missing bits which I'll flesh out with a few more trial games.