Grid-based SciFi OHW house rules

Most of this week's free time has been spent messing around and tinkering with the SciFi one-hour wargaming house rules. The aim was to see if they could be modified to be suitable for a 12" square grid. Apart for the obvious change to the movement mechanisms, I ended up reducing unit sizes, allowing a move and attack option for fast units, and changed combat mechanisms to roll multiple dice rather that just one dice with the one-hour wargaming approach of D6+2, D6 or D6-2 depending the weapon and unit type.

Because of the large 12" square grid I use with my SciFi terrain (and with no desire to rework my terrain). I chose to have all movement of one square and differentiate between fast and slow units by allowing fast units to move and make an attack as part of one action. Slow and normal units can only move or attack, but not both in the same action.

Unit stacking has been introduced. Enemy and friendly units are allowed to occupy the same square. Each side can have up to 3 friendly units in the same square at the completion of an action (excluding Flyer units which do not count towards stacking limits). This way it is possible to have 6 units in a square, 3 from each side. Units may not leave a square occupied by enemy units unless they are flyer units or all enemy units are pinned.

A gridded table set out - the 12" squares can just be made out

Having up to 6 units in a square drove the reduction is troop unit sizes to a maximum of 10 models. Even this can be a bit of a squeeze on occasion, but all my units have a leader model which must be clearly placed in a square, the other models can be allowed then to spill over a bit into other squares without too much of an issue.

3 Guard and 2 Ork units in close combat within one square

The reduced troop unit sizes allowed for a change in combat mechanism from the rolling of 1 x D6 with a plus or minus 2 as used on OHW rules. To the rolling of multiple dice. So instead of D6-2 now 4 x D6 are rolled to beat a defensive score based on the units defence factor. Likewise for a D6+2 now roll 6 x D6 and 4 x D6 for D6.

After a couple a test battles, I'm finding the rules seem to be working and providing an easy flow. Link to rules in top right of page if interested in the gridded ruleset. I can now start planning that mini-campaign I mention in a previous blog.