"Moving from the opposite edge." Topic

Dear List

By a concatenation of events that need not concern us, I had occasion to read some old war game rules that used the methodology of Featherstone for movement. That is one player started at the left hand of the table, or his line, and began moving units, while the other player started on the opposite edges doing the same. This yielded something of a rough simultaneous movement. Or at least it allowed both players to be doing something at once which is becoming more and more important to me rather than having people sit there supinely till their turn or their activation card came up, which I hate. It seems to be a rather nice way of doing it, though not without problems, but they do not seem insurmountable.

The methodology seems to work, in that on one part of the field one side will get the "jump on the other" but himself get jumped on the other. Contrawise, On one flank you will see what the enemy does and get to react to it, while on the other he does the same to you.

I am presently use this, sort of for allocation of combat cards, though with multiple players everyone just sort of throws their own. It works fine.'

Might be able to do it with multiple players in movement so long as strict left to right is done. That is, each sub commander moves left to right. Initiative player gets benefit of the doubt. I don't know if I need this. Ogabas moves pretty fast now. Both sides do simultaneous combat, rallies, combat results blah, blah blah. The problem with movement is of course the change in position of the troops and who gets there first.

It MIGHT work well because one of the things about OGABAS is that the big clunky units with their "flypaper" Zones of control pretty well gum up units quickly so doing these long slithery actions you get with troops on 4" stand wih only 1" effective ZOC (melee) on the enemy allows for more fluid movement. But that's not the way I see combat between formed units.

I'm actually wondering if it would be possible to just do real simultaneous move with the rules as they are now. After all any player can only really move ONE unit at a time…. I'll have to try it out.

The advantage to this is that you eliminate all the folderol of who goes first, and the very mechanism determines where you are going to make your major effort. Certainly the side you start on is therefore rated as your defensive or offensive flank, but more, it seems an elegant way to do away with a thorny problem and really does achieve far more "simultaneancy" (Simultaneousness) than other more complex systems.

One local club uses simultaneous movement all the time. Works fine even with 3 or 4 a side.

I'll say it again – arguments come more often from who is around the table than the rules that govern what's on it…

Of course, the club is comprised of a bunch of fine fellows….

Dear Extra Krispy

Can't argue with that.

Good guys will always find a way.

For our games with simultaneous movement, we just adopt the "gentlemen's honour" rule. Before movement starts, everyone takes a 1-minute-look at the battlefield, and for each unit under their control "make up their mind what they want to do with that unit."
Then everyone moves simultaneously, and you have to move according to what you had in mind, even if it turns out to be a very bad move. That's the gentlemen's honour part.
If a tricky situation arises, we throw a die to resolve the matter.

It works well in practice, but as stated before, it takes like-minded spirits to make such a system work.

extra crispy nailed it……

Another way is to use the chess principle; move what you want but there is a time limit for movement and once you take your hands off a unit it stays where it is.

Neat idea! I guess it works best when dealing with roughly equal "battle lines" of medieval/fantasy regiments. It would be harder (but not impossible) to do something similar with sci-fi squads.