"Your Favorite Solo Wargame Combat Mechanics" Topic

What are some of your favorite solo wargame combat mechanics?

I really, really like the old d6, roll it and the result is the damage done to the enemy as seen in One Hour Wargames from Neil Thomas and some older stuff by Donald Featherstone and others.

There are is also the opposed die rolls with or without modifiers.

I read some Don F. stuff once where you roll 1d6 for an attacking foot unit and 2d6 for an attacking mounted unit. Any result of equal or one better was a draw and a result of two or better caused a hit.

I also like Memoir '44 combat where you roll a number of attacks which hit depending on the target and number rolled.

What are some of your favorite solo wargame combat mechanics?

But all of the examples you cite are just standard wargames rules, not specifically solo.

The Song of Blades and Heroes inspired activation – roll 1-3 dice to activate a unit. 2 failures ends the turn. I describe it more at link

It really works great for solo gaming by adding a lot of uncertainty (which makes solo gaming interesting). I'm never sure if a unit is going to act as ordered

I've not tried any solo wargaming mechanics but I have played plenty of excellent solo board wargames: Ambush is great but is less random than Hornet/Apache Leader. Raid on St Nazaire is a wonderful game which has very good enemy activation mechanics which changes the longer the game goes on and the more carnage the Commandos cause. Where There Is Discord was my favourite strategic solo wargame. I don't know how any of their mechanics would be transferrable to tabletop wargaming.

The THW reaction system gets my vote. Both the skirmish version and the mass battle version. Just enough uncertainty in how the figures on both sides will act.

THW's Reaction System and Possible Enemy Forces (PEFs).

I will second Song of Blades and Heroes mechanics for skirmishes. There are also several developed programmed opponent systems for SoBH available free in PDF on the internet (I can provide links if someone is interested) for fantasy and Napoleonic periods to further improve your solo wargaming experience.

For a bit larger battles, very similar mechanics is used in Osprey's Dragon Rampant (fantasy) / Lion Rampant (historical) games, which the difference that here you command units, not individual soldiers.