"WOTC Star Wars Minis Rules Questions" Topic

Okay, I'm way late to the party, since these have been out for some time, but they look quite nice, and many of the more common figures are reasonably priced, especially considering they come prepainted.

In testing out the game, I do have a few questions/observations:

1. Why are Storm Troopers in full body armor rated about the same as Rebel Troopers without armor (excepting their helmets)?

That just seem wrong to me, so assume just for play balance.

I can see the slightly better +5 mod for the Rebels to hit (as opposed to the ST's +4), since they aren't wearing all that cumbersome armor, so can presumably get their weapons aimed a bit more easily for firing.

Still, you would think battle armor would be a bit better, e.g. with a defense rating of 20 – 21 or so (compared to their current 16), making only about 25% of the shots killing the Stormtroopers, as opposed to the 50% chance for both Rebels and Stormtroopers.

Of course, in order to keep the points balance, their costs will need to double.

2. There's no modifier for moving, and then firing. Granted, maybe the trooper stops, and then fires, but running hard, then trying to lower your heartrate and breathing, in order to get off a decent shot is a bit difficult, even for olympic caliber shooters.

I think a – 2 to – 4 would be appropriate (I'm leaning towards at least a – 3, to a -4).

3. I think there should be at least a -2 to hit a moving target.

4. I can live with the -4 for cover specified in the rules.

5. I've seen some people mentioning negative modifiers for firing at longer ranges, but don't know what they are using.

I'm thinkig about a -1 for every 6" of range, after the first 6", or so.

I don't want to add too many mods in order to overwhelm the simple, fun, gameplay, but adding a few extra modifiers seems to make sense in order to make the game a bit more "realistic" (at least as far as fictional Sci-Fi goes).

I can see measuring to the targets too, instead of using the diagonal rules, and counting squares, for miniatures battles, just to make things simpler.

Have any of you come up with other modifiers/changes to the game you think are appropriate, or that make the game more interesting?

The game is designed for general release, and is kept simple on purpose. Trying to figure out why it's not more realistic is just going to lead to headaches.

Basic stormtroopers have a defense of 16 and basic rebel troops have a 13. That's a big difference for basic troops. A 20 or 21 for regular stormtroopers would put them just under Vader. A base defense value is 10. Rebels have a helmet and a bit of dodging ability giving them a 13. Stormtroopers aren't that agile in their armor, but it's tough, so they have a 16.

As for moving targets, how would you keep track of who moved? Chits would litter the board. Think of their movement as combat movement. 6 squares is only 12 meters. They're not sprinting.

I thought not having range modifiers was fine. People moan about how the ranges in minis games are all too short. This is a shooting game, so they make it easy to shoot. Making it harder just makes a longer game without adding a real benefit.

But it would be very easy to move to an actual terrain board and measure instead of using the squares and use common sense cover and LOS guidelines.

I have played the WOTC StarWars games a fair bit with 3-D terrain. We typically put out enough intervening terrain to pretty much obviate the long range issue. We also do not account for movement – just cover. The bigger issues is what to do with 40 or 50 minis per side. The alternating pairs phasing quickly breaks-down and the leadership advantages are not meant for large groups. We end up moving minis by halves and let the leadership advantage apply to the activated piles of minis (more or less). Lots of fun and nice and simple. Here are a couple of the games we did: link

I have also tried StarGrunt and others for larger battles. Haven't found one I really liked yet for big rumbles.

Lost Pict

Another thing about penalties for movement. The rules pretty much assume movement in the attack bonuses given. Several models have bonuses for not moving. Imposing a penalty on shooting while moving gives those models a "double dip" of bonuses.

LostPict,
In one of those shots you have a sandcrawler, homemade or toy? Very nice looking.

I have tons of figures, but not found a ruleset that I think gives the right flavor.

Hey Rob, in the rules they state that you can use the modifiers and weapon ranges from the Star Wars RPG game. Not the newest edition but the older set. You should be able to pick up the basic book pretty cheap on E-bay.

Thanks for the info, and the RPG suggestion.

I have the SWMB book around somewhere too, but am dubious about finding it anytime soon.

The Sandcrawler is one of the plastic action figure vehicles. It is probably a great table scale, but probably undersized versus the real thing. In that picture, Tusken Warriors took it out using Kamikaze Bantha riders in retribution for riding over their village. There were about a dozen Jawas shooting over the edge of the roof that all failed savings rolls and plunged to their deaths. Revenge of the Jawas ending up being a sub-theme in the two follow-on scenarios.

You can also use the Ranges and Combat Modifiers from the D20 WOTC SW RPG books. I decided that this ended up adding to much detail for little extra flavor and did not do this, but the miniatures game and the RPG are plug-compatible much like the D&D minis and D&D RPG games. You can also use those WOTC references to flesh out other vehicles etc. that have not yet made their way into the SW Minis game.

I wonder if anyone has tried a GW LOTR SW variant? I have even toyed with GW WOTR for a Hoth battle.

Lost Pict

Top Gun Ace, when the game was first released, we were told that the Stormtroopers are intentionally undercosted, because WotC (and maybe Lucas?) wanted to promote people putting a bunch of them on the board. I don't recall if we were ever told by how much. This was from Rob Watkins, who was one of (if not) the lead developers from the beginning. I don't believe he's still with them now, though.

Stormtroopers should die in droves. It's what they're for. Conversely, with the right combo of units and leaders, you can have a very nice stormtrooper army. I'm very partial to a classic Vader and stormtroopers army. I beat my buddy with one several times. And he was notorious for squeezing every bit of cheese out of his lists.

I thought that might be the case.

They should be fielded in high numbers, to look good, match the movies, and to sell product.

They just seem to be a bit anemic to me, since their stats are roughly similar to non-battle-suited troops, if you think about it, e.g. non-suited troops get a +5 for shooting vs. the stormtroopers +4; defense ratings are 16 for the ST's, and 13 for others. Both have 10 damage, and their weapons also do 10 damage.

So, basically, Stormtroopers die 50% of the time when fired at, and others 60% of the time.

I would think that to make their armor worthwhile, a 1.5x – 2x modifier for wearing it would be in order.

I'll have to try that out at home, to see how it works out.

At the very least, it should make them a bit more feared, even if they do shoot as poorly as those depicted in the movies (which is contradicted by Obi-Wan's comment in the first movie, noting how precise the Imperial Stormtrooper shots were on the Jawa sandcrawler attack).

Top Gun Ace, spotting contradictions in the Star Wars movies is like shooting fish in a barrel. There is no way in Hell you can get the movies to make sense.

Either:

1) play Star Wars, in which case stormtroopers die in droves.

2) play some other game which is not Star Wars.

What you feel is an appropriate "correction" to Star Wars is just going to be seen as playing some other game to most people. Why go there?

I did a set of skirmish rules for Star Wars that I used at cons based on the D&D Miniatures Handbook conversion – added morale rules, free movement (no grid) and vehicles that behave like vehicles.

It included conversion rules for taking a character from the previous d20 edition of the SW RPG and dropping them into the skirmish game. Worked well for some really big games with hundreds of minis on the table.

Drop me a line at michaelewebb@yahoo.com and I can shoot you a copy if you like.

Hi Michaele,

Thank you very much for your kind offer.

I will send you an e-mail message shortly.

Best regards,

Rob