Saturday 20 May 2017

Grid-Based SciFi Rules

This last week I have spent in Wellington (NZ) to see my son's graduation and catch up with family and friends. The hours spent flying between Melbourne and Wellington has allowed me to work through some grid-based Sci-Fi rules I have been messing around with over the last month or two.

One of the earlier test games
The rules include the activation mechanism I started to play around with back in early April. (Post link here.) Writing up the combat/shooting mechanism was the last part of the rules puzzle required and the time on a plane allowed me to pull together all my notes and scribbles.

Yesterday and today I have spent taking photos to support the rules, which are now on a tab above or click here.

Also, while away I was also able to come up with a solo approach for a WW2 naval campaign based upon the book "Destroy the Scharnhorst" which I mentioned in my last post. I will be using some of my scratch built generic WW2 fleet. They are all made from balsa wood, tacks, and plastic dowels.

All models together
Very basic approach to scratch building with guns stuck flat
The different model heights achieved through layering balsa wood
A few years back I needed a few ships to play Panzer8 WW2 naval rules and just go carried away making the models until my stock of balsa wood ran out.


18 comments:

  1. Those ships are amazing. Look forward to seeing them in action.

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    1. Thanks. I just need to draw up the campaign and they can at long last see some gaming.

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  2. The ships are amazing! Great craftsmanship!

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    1. Thank you. It was good fun making them a few years ago.

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  3. Peter,
    Do like your Grid Based 40K Rules - very concise and comprehensive.
    You Generic WW2 naval ships are terrific- well done. Cheers. KEV.

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    1. Thanks KEV. It will be good to get a game in with these models. The rules have been fun to develop and give me a good quick game, without the need to memorise too many rules. Peter

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  4. Some nice activation mechanics. Also becoming more and more switched on to your rules and mechanisms Peter.
    ...and I echo earlier thoughts, the ships are fantastic.

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    1. The activation mechanism took a while to fall into place. It is the one aspect of the rules I am really pleased with as it seems well suited to suit small scale actions.
      Thank you for your comments on the ships. All being well I will start the mini-campaign this week.

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  5. Replies
    1. The grid is made up of 6 inch squares. This size suits my 28mm 40K collection. Five figures (a unit) fit quite nicely into the 6 inch square and a large model can also fit.
      For other scales I would adjust the square size.

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    2. I meant your ships :-)

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    3. Whoops! The large battleships and carriers are 4.5 inches in length and the smaller destroyers 2 inches.

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    4. Lol. Never mind. They just have me interested in trying to make some too.

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    5. When making them I had drawn a top down view which I photocopied a number of times. These were cut out and stuck to thin balsa wood sheets. I then cut them out and glued the layers to get the right thickness/height. Once done a light sanding and plenty of PVC glue to get a smoothish finish before painting.

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  6. Interesting that you switched some element of the SciFi rules, but many others remain the same. I see the big differences are that more units get to act in a single turn and that your combat is step reduction (figure removal) rather than all-or-nothing, like the previous ones. Have you abandoned the company-level rules, or do they scratch an itch that the squad-level rules do not?

    I was also wondering why you did not adjust the ranges as you scoped down to a smaller level.

    Interesting as always.

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    1. I find I play with both rules depending upon the type of game I am looking for. The ranges are different partly due to wanting a slightly different style of game.
      Though it has been a while since I have played either ruleset. Mainly because for sci-fi I am playing Necromunda style skirmish games presently.

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