Alright, I feel this is far enough along that I can talk about it confidently.
The next big NWG project is going to be for very small soldiers:
Scifi micro armour :-)
(As a bit of history, this game started as an idea for stand based gaming, changed to skirmish gaming, previewed in the last Battle Pack issue, then changed back to stand based.. so hey, I got it right in the end).
So what is Laserstorm going to be about?
The mantra of the game is to play pretty snap and more importantly, have absolutely zero book keeping, zero counters on the table and zero status effects to keep track of.
With no fiddly bits to track, it means we can put a lot of toys on the table and have big battles with a lot of tanks, infantry and giant robots.
Scale
The scale is the same as the old Epic/Space Marine rules (1 stand is 4-6 infantry or 1 vehicle) and the rules will accommodate super heavies and "behemoths" (titan sized stompy robots and mega-tanks).
What does the turn look like?
When you set up your army, you break it into three "battle groups" which become the core of the activation system.
You can split them roughly equally, to make combined arms groups, have all the infantry in one and the tanks in another, split them by companies or battalions or whatever you feel works for you.
The turn sequence is card driven. Each battle group has a card in the deck for a total of 6 cards (in a 2 player game).
Draw the card for a battle group and every unit in it can activate.
This is sort of a middle point between a "IGOUGO" system or a completely alternating system.
The benefit here is that when you activate several units at the same time, you can do some pretty cool combined arms stuff: Tanks providing covering fire while the infantry surge forward, flank moves and whatnot, but you're not sitting waiting for your opponent to move 100 tanks. (Unless you are playing some seriously mental battles :) )
Additionally (though optional), there'll be a few reaction cards in the deck. These are put to the side and when the next battle group comes up, the other player can play them to react to your actions, moving or firing out of sequence.
Nice and simple, no need to track who is on overwatch or fiddle with order counters.
How do we kill dudes?
Being aimed at big battles, the combat mechanics are pretty straight-forward: Roll to hit, take saving throws and die if you fail.
Some units may have extra saves but fundamentally all units follow this system.
There are absolutely no damage markers or similar.
What sets different unit classes apart is the dice they roll:
Infantry take their saving throws on 1D6, tanks take them on 2D6, super heavies on 3D6 and Behemoths on 4D6.
This allows all units to operate in hte same scale and lets us show things like infantry that are well armoured against small arms, without making them into walking tanks.
If I have an infantry squad with a 4+ save and they take a hit at a -2 penalty, they need to be pretty lucky to save, but the same weapon hitting a tank with the same save will probably bounce off the armour.
Close combat is an opposed roll, akin to the old Space Marine rules, with the loser being chased off and taking a hit.
Generally, troops will be somewhat more durable than in some micro armour games, particularly the old Epic.
That is made up for by…
Morale!
Remember I said no markers?
How does morale work then?
It works in two ways, one small and one game-defining.
The small way is very simple. Roll a 1 when firing (on a D6) and the target is pushed back a few inches.
The big deal is when units lose stands and test morale.
If a unit fails a morale check, they are removed from the board and placed in reserve.
Wait? They're gone??
Yes. Rather than track units on the table that can't do anything anyways, because they are pinned down, cowering, dealing with casualties etc. we just remove them.
BUT
Whenever a battle group activates, every commander gets to roll to regroup units in reserve.
This brings them back to the table so they can be used as reinforcements.
This has a really cool effect on the game:
Remember when you read about a really hard fought battle and the attackers are thrown back, regroup and come back for another go?
That's really hard to do on a gaming table but here, it totally works.
As your assault troops vanish, your commanders can regroup them and send them back into the fray, around a flank or try with a new approach.
Of course, if you have to hold the ground, you can order the grunts to "Stand and Die".
Knock off an extra troop stand and roll again. Hope they didn't die in vain.
Alien hordes will have some cool tricks dealing with this as well.
What about all the crazy scifi bits?
Infiltration, teleport attacks, drop ships and all that will be handled, through the Asset system.
When setting up the scenario, each player gets a number of assets, which can be used on things like unusual deployment methods, off-board support and flanking moves.
There's going to be a campaign too, right?
There's always a campaign, when it's a Nordic Weasel game.
This time, rather than the vague, narrative approach, we're going hardcore with the campaign: Units moving around a map, campaign assets and BIG armies.
Since one game plays very quick, we can be a bit more ambitious with the campaign rules.
This will be the sort of thing where you send an entire regiment across a war torn city, set your own strategic objectives and do the war-thing, epic-style.
Whev! What's the catch?
There's always a catch right?
Here's the deal:
The game won't be very "tech" heavy. The aim is to get a lot of toys moving at a pretty big level.
So all the fancy gadgetry will be abstracted to an extent.
There WILL be a lot of units to pick from and you'll be able to build your own as well, so you won't need to worry about your army being boring but it's not going to really distinguish between whether the tank has a laser or a rail gun.
The troop profiles won't look too alien if you played Epic before.
* * * * *
Hope that caught your attention and got at least a few of you excited :-)
I'll have something resembling an example of play pretty sure.
If anyone wants, I can post up a blow by blow example of what combat between two units might look like.
looks at another boxed set of cyborgs.
