"melee dice" Topic

Experimenting with this for close action:

First, the two sides exchange simultaneous fire at close range: every gun barrel, every revolver is emptied, and warriors shoot six arrows. Test morale for casualties.
THEN the chargers continue into melee.

MELEE DICE
We resolve hand-to-hand fights by each side rolling a handful of d6s of various colors. A 6 kills an enemy. We use white, red, green, and blue, but use whatever colors you have.

WHITE dice are rolled every round of melee.
Green dice are rolled only for the first round.
Red dice are rolled until a 6 is scored.
Blue dice are defensive: any 6 scored cancels an enemy 6.

Each man, each horse, and each skilled rider gets a white d6. (A unit of 20 skilled riders will be rolling 60 white dice. Just divide by 6 and count that as 10 hits. If it is 63 roll the extra 3.

Each man charging on foot gets a green d6. Each ridden horse charging gets 3 green d6s. An unridden horse or bison in a stampede gets 2 green dice. Thrown weapons such as pila (once only, as part of a charge) get a green die.

A lance gets a red die, which lasts until it kills with a 6. (We assume it is then stuck, or broken, or the enemy is inside its effective radius.)

Shields get blue dice, and armor, and defensive positions like uphill or behind a wall get an appropriate number of blue dice. Blue dice are rolled every round of melee in which the defensive advantage applies. If defenders are pushed back from a wall, they would lose the blue dice for it.

Comments? other factors that should be included?

This is going to be very lethal. But skilled mounted lancers OUGHT to be very lethal. One way to reduce lethality might be to let the losers' hits cancel out against the winners. So if 12 Comanche ride into 20 mounted Texan militia, and the Comanche score 14 6's while the Texans score 8, treat that as the Comanche killing 14-8 = 6 Texans.

We will be playtesting this extensively.

The close action exchange of missiles is also likely to be very lethal, and it will probably be the case that after testing morale for casualties from the shooting that one or BOTH sides fail and no melee occurs.

I have been wrestling for months with how to treat rapid fire pistols and also the Indian ability to fire many arrows very quickly. Having everyone shoot everything they have very quickly at the start eliminates the need to keep track f ammo, and means everything does get counted in the action for effect. If anyone has a better idea I am eager to hear it.

Some percentage of the warriors carried a single shot musket. Presumably they also had bow and arrows, and a lance. It WOULD work to treat the musket like a green-die pila, fired as part of the charge into melee. And it might also work to assume each Texan has a last resort pistol that he fires as a green die in the first melee round. Probably doesn't matter as the weapon will get used either way.

In the butchering scenario, the children and elders trying to discourage the coyotes and vultures will throw rocks and sticks etc. as close action, then have to fight (with their dogs' help) in a melee if necessary -- which it is unlikely to be unless the predators and scavengers are very numerous. Wolves will be tougher.

An attempt to stampede Texan horses can be treated first as a Comanche "missile" attack -- waving blankets and shouting -- and then when/if horses stampede as a melee with the panicked horses rolling against the men on foot and also men on horseback trying to control them. A "kill" by the Texans mean a panicked horse is pacified.

This is an intriguing concept! I can see this being a useful skirmish-level mechanism. How about using something similar for missile fire as well as close combat?

I guess this all reminds me to a degree of the Bolt Action combat dice rules (altho' I've only played BA a couple of times).

piper, yes, though the missile fire will include saves -- but I guess that is what the blue dice amount to, also. It might well be the same procedure works for both. Hmmmm.