/dev/null productions

Anyone remember these things? A couple of us gathered in Straith’s basement and yanked out our collection of WizKids Mechwarrior miniatures for the extended weekend. Someone had the inspiration to try and mix board games, so we set up the Settlers of Catan board, threw out some of the numeric tags and made sure the resource “commonalities” were evenly distributed, and then set up our “capitals”.

Anyway, I think we managed to playtest a new kind of nerdiness into being. The following section is just how we played the first game. We’ve gotten a lot of lessons from this game, and later on I’ll expand upon some of those. For right now, though, I’ll just relate how we played.

Game Setup – Initial Test Run

REQUIRED FOR PLAY
• WizKids Mechwarrior – the Dark Age miniatures
• A Territorial Game Board (Such as the one from Settlers of Catan)
• Counters (chips, pennies, something)
• Terrain (such as minature trees, rocks, paper buildings, whatever)
• 2 or more nerds to play

Preparing the Game
The first thing to do is to set up the world. I prefer to think of this game as a videogame in boardgame form. Think of the two views of the world: the MiniMap and the Battlefield.

The MiniMap
For the first game, the default configuration for Catan works fine. Even if you do not have a Settlers of Catan boardgame, do not fret. It’s essentially a patchwork of six-sided tiles. Open some kind of vector-editing software, or find a hexagon on Google Images and start copy/pasting until you have something that looks like this:

Figure 1.1 – The Game Board

Don’t print it off yet. We’re not quite done.

The first thing to do is specify capitals. Capitals are… as they sound… bases for each player. It signifies where they start and from where they must EXPAND. For this first game, given that the entire board is symmetric, player capitals should be placed as evenly away from one another as possible.

Figure 1.2 – Player Capitals

Wait, there. We’re not finished yet.

This game will deal in no small point with resource management. Every territory should offer a finite amount of resources for a player to control. Within Catan, this is easy. Catan ships with alphabetical chips, each with a number of dots ranging from one to five. The dots in Catan represent statistically how often a territory will generate resources. Well, for our purposes in this game, the dots ARE our resources.

If you’re generating your own board, you’ll need to create a resource counter system. For our game, we had each capital generate 5 resources, while the 3 surrounding territories generated a cumulative 8 (two threes and a two). That’s thirteen resources in each “corner”, ensuring each player started evenly. The center territory was given a full five; we intended this territory to be the “contested” hot-zone that people would fight over to secure resources. The rest of the territories were given randomly-arranged chips, though we made sure each “spoke” from the center had an even overall number of resources.

The end result will give you a board that looks theoretically something like this:

Figure 1.3 – World of Resources

A Normal Turn
Randomly decide who gets to go first. We discovered that this person typically will be ganged up on later on. The rationale behind this is that the board will be clear for player one when it’s his turn to move out. It’s easy to succumb to the temptation to move out light forces to simply hold massive territorial positions, so don’t be surprised if you’re constantly drawn to battle if you do this.

GAIN RESOURCES
At the beginning of the players turn, count up all of the bits on all territories. Capitals will give 5. The surrounding territories, if controlled, will give another 8. That’s 13 bits potentially by turn two. One bit buys you one resource token, which is placed immediately at the player’s capital.

MOVING RESOURCES
Resources move at the beginning of the turn in a similar fashion to units in Axis and Allies. Resources may move from one space to another one space a turn. You may move any amount of resources per turn, so long as a particular resource only moves that one space a turn. For example, you may move four resources into a territory already containing six resources. Those six may move to a different territory.

When moving into an empty territory, your resources claim the territory for you. Place a token marking the territory as yours (For example, a powers token from Axis and Allies).

Figure 1.4 – Example First Turn – Expanding Out

ATTACKING

Moving any resource amount into a territory with an opponent’s resources is called an attack. No shocker there.

Attacks are resolved one at a time, though are thought to all occur near-simultaneously. Attacks occur in several phases:

• Purchase Units
• Create the Battlefield
• Deploy Units
• Engage
• Resolve Damage and Remove Resources

Battle Phase – Purchasing Units
To begin preparing for battle, count up the number of resources available on the territory being contested. One resource is equal to ten purchasing points. So if a player has six resources available on any given territory, that is the equivalent of sixty purchasing points insofar as buying units.

Units are purchased normally according to the rules of Mechwarrior: The Dark Age. Any extra purchasing points not used by the player are ignored for this battle. For example, a player that has the aforementioned sixty purchasing points that only spends 56 is not credited in any way for the remaining 4 points.

Command points are determined per hundred purchasing points by either player. The minimum number of command points at any time is one. Both players will have the same number of command points in any battle. For example, if the attacker is committing two hundred points to a battle to earn two command points, yet the defender only has eighty points available, both players still enter battle with two command points.

Battle Phase – Create the Battlefield
In a two-player game, the attacker creates the battlefield and the defender chooses which spawn point he will use. In a three-player game, the third player is responsible for creating the battlefield (and is encouraged to be creative. He does not need to ensure the battlefield is equal for both players. Not all battles are fought on equal ground). In a three-player game, the defender still selects his spawning point first.

Battle Phase – Deploy Units
Defender selects which spawn point he will use and the attacker places his units first. The defender then places his units at his spawn point. All units deployed must be touching the spawn point. The exception is if any unit has the INFILTRATE ability. Units with this ability may deploy away from the spawn location as normally allowed.

Battle Phase – Engage
Enter into and resolve battle as normal.

Battle Phase – Resolve Damage and Remove Resources
Battle concludes when all of one player’s units are either destroyed or “neutered”, meaning they can do no damage. Units such as mechs may still be mobile, but if they can cause no damage, they are still considered “neutered” for the purpose of battle resolution.

Each player should calculate the value of any destroyed or rendered-useless units. This value is subtracted from the total number of resource points on the given territory, rounded up to the nearest 10. If no units remain on a given territory after a conflict is resolved (whether the units were destroyed or neutered) then the territory is again neutral.

Continuing Play
Play will continue until all opposing capitals are eliminated. Players without a capital may not generate new resources; however, they may continue to move existing resources in an attempt to recapture their capital. Or they can be a general annoyance to other players… whichever is preferable.

These rules should be enough to get a version of this game up and running. I will post additional details as we come up with them, including some expanded rules for quicker play that I have in mind. Stay tuned and watch the comments section for more information.