Activation, Momentum, and Will in Blast of War

In Blast of War (BoW), my skirmish miniatures game, I had three design goals for the activation portion of the game.

1) Player Involvement
     Too often I play (and design) games in which the player is only making decisions in the movement phase. In a typical game turn - activation (or initiative), movement, ranged combat, close combat - the active player is alternating or determined by a roll of the dice, that player then makes decisions about where to move their units, then dice are rolled to determine the effect of shooting, then dice are rolled to determine the effect of close combat. So out of four phases in the turn a player is only making decisions in one phase.

2) Create Battles the "Swing"
     History is full of battles where one side was making ground at one point, then something shifted and the other side began to see success. Some battles saw these shifts happen many times through the course of a battle, sometimes associated with an event sometimes seemingly at random. Games I am familiar with lack mechanisms to create this swing in a battle, instead if a side begins to lose ground they tend to fall apart soon after. While I want to incorporate morale failure and the disintegration of a force I also want to see an ebb and flow in BoW.

3) Reward Position
     Historically the high ground was coveted, in games it is often reduced to a simple penalty to an enemies attack. In BoW the force that can see the battlefield should be better able to command the battlefield.

Initial Design

Initially I focused on the first two goals, and my first attempt at implementing those design goals was through a card-based activation system. Each unit would have three activation cards, each allowing one action (move or shoot or fight). Players would then add a number of tactics cards to the deck, shuffle, and draw a hand of cards. The turn would play out as follows:

• All players may draw one card from their draw decks
  • If a player has no cards left in their draw deck shuffle discard pile, return it to their draw deck, and discard 1 will
• Inactive player(s) may now steal the activation at any point by paying a tactics card or will
• Active player plays one or more activation or tactics cards until one of the following occurs
  • Player runs out of cards in hand
  • Player voluntarily releases the activation
  • Another player steals the activation by playing a tactics card

This system enables significant player involvement at all points of the game, and I still love some of the moments from playtests - like when I moved my commander up to duel my opponent's commander only to have him steal the activation and ambush me with three nearby units. I moved away from this system because it is difficult to have enough cards and it removes the ability to include the faceless grunt - every unit requires activation cards - ultimately slowing down the game. I also realized that I wanted to reward position in the activation phase (design goal #3). One further issue was the inability to do coordinated actions like moving a shieldwall or firing as part of a Napoleonic firing line.

Redesign

Tactics cards allowed players to surprise each other in the course of the game and I wanted to retain a similar capability while speeding play. The concept of having units make one action per activation also created nice tension, so I settled on the concept of a staggered alternating turn (more on that in a moment) with players managing momentum and will to influence the activation order where momentum is a resource lost at the end of every turn and replenished at the start of the next and will is a resource that defines the overall morale of the force which decreases through the course of the game. 

My "staggered alternating turn" sequence is an amalgamation of Shogun's combat sequence and Frostgrave's activation. Units activate in order of their "tactics" skill, and can activate nearby units with them. Players can spend momentum or will to increase a units effective tactics skill or the number of nearby units it can activate. The refactored turn is as follows:

• Each player rolls 1d20 and adds modifiers below - highest roll  gains the difference in momentum
• Unit with tactics skill, add the highest tactics skill in your force
• Unit in highest occupied position, +2
• Unit recoiled, knocked down, or panicked, -1 per unit
• Leader out of action, -5
• The unit with the highest tactics score activates
• In the event of a tie the player with the most momentum determines the order of activation
• A player may pay momentum or will to increase the effective tactics score of a unit
• If a player chooses to skip a units activation they gain one momentum
• Repeat this step until all units have activated
• If a player is out of will make a discipline test for each unit in their force
• Discard unused momentum and remove one will from each players pool

I haven't playtested enough to determine if the height bonus to momentum is enough or if players should gain less than one momentum per point difference in the roll at the start of the turn.

Momentum and will play very similar roles, but momentum is renewable where will is finite. This leads to players attempting to push hard on turns when they have momentum and playing more defensively when they don't have momentum. Will also limits the game time with a realistic feel instead of simply ending the game after eight turns.

As always, comments and critiques are welcome - more posts on BoWs mechanics will follow in time.