SciFi or Steampunk vs WW2

[Andrew Beasley]

Odd title for a wandering thought while trying to sort a disk drive.

The One Hour Wargame rules stop at WW2 and I had been dreaming /  trying to work out what would need changing to use with SciFi and a Steampunk variant.

The standard rules have Infantry, Mortars, Anti-Tank Guns (giving you direct and indirect heavy weapons) and Tanks. Like all the OHW rules, there are no differences within the types (e.g. Tigers are the same as Pz 1 tanks) and one bit that bugs me – no aircraft (and so no AA needed).

Flyers need to move fast, hover, strafe, be fragile, impossible to hit by some type of troops (maybe tanks but Ogre type could have AA) and have AA guns with limited effect on other opponents (maybe – 88s etc could be effective in both rolls).

Within the context of simplicity and ‘spirit’ of the OHW rules, I’ve been trying to think of ways to differentiate fiction from fact and so far come up with:

• Walkers move differently to tanks (terrain / slower)
• Hover (g.e.v.) move differently to tanks (water / speed) are more fragile and could carry troops
• Flyers – bugbear as they may change things totally
• Area weapons (NBC)
• Shields (effectively more hits or invulnerable to some weapons)

Steampunk could tweak:

• Boiler explosions
• Native / alien troops or hordes with older arms or hand to hand weapons
• ‘Lift wood’ i.e. flyers and see above for my thoughts

I suppose I’m unsure if this is either making the game too complex or not different from WW2 without more changes!!

[ian pillay]

Andrew all good ideas. I will dig out my OHW scifi ideas and ping them across to you.

Tally-Ho! Check out my blog at…..
http://steelcitywargaming.wordpress.com/

[Andrew Beasley]

Mucky buckets for that – feel free to add to the thread as and when.

This is a slow burn mumble as I tried 6mm figs under WW2 rules on hexes but decided that did not do it for me – not sure if it was the 6mm or the default rules or size of hexes that jarred and away they went as I changed to the blocks and Napoleonic-ish games.

It was only while sorting the first sales pile out that I came across them again and got me thinking. Still not convinced flyers will work at all without major changes but very interested to read your ideas even if they are land units only.

The area impact (explosive / NBC) can be represented by adding terrain markers and simple rules for damage to units in the area or crossing the resultant mess.

I also forgot minefields and robots:

• Mines act as one-off NBC area effect with the option to trigger by entry or when I want (i.e. when lots of units are in the area).
• Despite loving SJG Ogre / GEV games, robots do not work for me on the battlefield – hordes of Necron or Terminator troops just feel wrong compared to humans and aliens!

Not sure how mines would be represented – in a face-to-face game you can have hidden deployment and write the location down pre game. In a solo game I would have to ignore an area marker!!!

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