Saturday, May 22, 2021

Combat Ready! (Toying With an Old Idea)

I have a rotating list of projects that I keep working on in my spare time.  Some are in various stages of completion and will be finished someday.  One idea that seems to pop up most frequently is a simple wargame using those little green Army Men that should be instantly recognizable by most everyone.  I purchased a few sets at the Dollar General and Wal-Mart so I have a pretty sizable collection so far and I have spent around $12.  I thought I was done buying these figures until I went shopping earlier.

When I stumbled across these two packages at the Dollar Tree earlier I immediately thought that it was the perfect representation of what I am aiming for with the Combat Ready! rules.  Each package in the left picture was $1 so for $2 you get 10 dice and 35 figures; a small force of tan and one of green.  That would be perfect for a pick up and play battle system.

Now that I have plenty of material to playtest some rules with there are some things to take into consideration while designing the rules:

1.    I want a simple and satisfying game.  There is no need for page after page of complicated rules concerned with the smallest of details.  Advanced rules can be developed later.  The basic game should be easy to understand and implement.

2.   Simple stats such as Attack, Defense, and Special.  Other rules to consider would be sniper fire, supply drops, air support, getting lost, etc.  

3.    Movement should be done in a simple manner such as a measuring tape.

4.    The focus of the basic game will be on squad to platoon level engagements.  Larger forces tend to complicate game rules.  Maybe they can be covered in an advanced rule section?

5.    Your force will be assembled from what you have available instead of trying to assemble a rare collection of figures.

6.    My goal for the page count of the basic game is 6 to 12 pages.

7.    I know you can find other sets of these figures such as western themed, science fiction, etc. so maybe other genres can also be adapted? 

Just a few ideas to get started...



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