Warstuff 2.2 Proposal

[rulebreaker]

I arrived at most of these changes from borrowing some core concepts from the one-off Army Men and from Grimdark Future Firefight. Any thoughts on this are welcomed, the goal is to retain Warstuff as a completely model agnostic and setting agnostic wargame while enabling scaling between small skirmishes up to larger armies. To increase balance and include the possibilities of squad tactics & rolling multiple dice . I have tried keeping this revision as true to originals in its wording as possible. Changelist:

• Rebalance quality costs. (Discussion: As mentioned in my thread here, the existing point
  cost for unit quality does not seem to scale with the actual value that
  players receive from the upper qualities. This incentives all players to
  just always pick 2+. My change proposal sees each quality level cost
  increase an additional 5pts from the previous. The end result is that
  more expensive special rules now make sense to pair with more important
  units, since the player has already spent at least 30 points on the
  quality stat.)

• Merge "Multi-Player Games" into Preparation. (Discussion: Player count scaling can be handled in the verbage already
  in Deployment/Playing the Game, this change merges these sections for
  simplicity.)

• Integrate multi-model unit rules. (Discussion: Rolling several identical models into unit groups can trade
  off activations for wound/stun resiliency. This change allows players to
  customize their army to their playstyle for very little added
  complexity, and for those who find it easier to create only a few unit
  types and then blanket apply them to several models (i.e. "All robots
  are: 3 Quality, Fast, Armored"...) to streamline list building.)
  

• Use objectives in mission. (Discussion: Others have described Warstuff as a bit bland, I agree to an
  extent as it only uses a kill 'em all approach. This change attempts to
  integrate the objective tokens seen in other OPR games. I don't think
  that this is make-or-break and could easily be set up as an optional
  mission objective.)

Attachments:

WarStuff 2.2 Proposed.pdf (207.89 KB)

[todd]

This is great! I also house rule that you can add additional attack dice by 5pts. So medium range is 10pts, five more could allow you to have 2 attack dice when shooting. You can even make it more refined where the 2 attack is anything above short range and up to medium range. I find it opens up the customization side of weapons.

[rulebreaker]

Sept 4, 2021 6:30:12 GMT todd said:

This is great! I also house rule that you can add additional attack dice by 5pts. So medium range is 10pts, five more could allow you to have 2 attack dice when shooting. You can even make it more refined where the 2 attack is anything above short range and up to medium range. I find it opens up the customization side of weapons.

I like your idea as I had been looking for a reasonable way to incorporate A(X) weapon values. Tough does this as a special rule (pegged at Tough(3) in GF/AoF terms) so I expanded that and used that method as a template for importing additional attack dice. Please see the following changes:

• Rearranged the Special Rules into the following order to streamline:
  • 1 - Defensive abilities
    
  • 2 - Attack abilities (Melee only)
  • 3 - Attack abilities (Ranged compatible)
    
  • 4 - Passive attributes
  • 5 - Movement abilities
  • 6 - Psychic/Wizard last because it doesn't fit neatly anywhere else.
    
• Added "Powerful" to Special Rules, which can be used to assign additional attack dice for units.
• Subdivided "Tough" into (2)/(3) for 15pts/30pts (Tough is normally kept in multiples of 3, although I believe a simplified approach may be appropriate for this simplified ruleset).
  

Please let me know if the points values for Attack Strength seem appropriate, considering that units effectively get to attack 2/3 times (better than Frenzy, even since Frenzy is just a simple re-roll rule).

[todd]

I think your points for Powerful should work nicely, I definitely want to try it out. Does it also work with melee? Does mounted add dice in the same way, and if so does that stack? I was always a little confused what mounted meant. I think tough (2) at 15pt might cancel armor as an option, not so sure. Thanks for trying new ideas I love this game system!

[kisshead]

Hey there,
I am a big fan of Warstuff and over the years have tried various ways of incorporating different ideas.
Love the work you are doing and will be watching.
I may have some old stuff I had created if you like I can post or PM them to you.
Cool,
Kisshead

[rulebreaker]

Sept 12, 2021 22:26:55 GMT todd said:

I think your points for Powerful should work nicely, I definitely want to try it out. Does it also work with melee? Does mounted add dice in the same way, and if so does that stack? I was always a little confused what mounted meant. I think tough (2) at 15pt might cancel armor as an option, not so sure. Thanks for trying new ideas I love this game system!

1) Good find on Mounted, I initially interpreted that as having two consecutive attacks. It should probably be +1 to attack roll, and I have adjusted the wording for now. Please let me know if you think two consecutive attacks works better (i.e. Resolve one attack > enemy either blocks or is stunned > resolve a second attack immediately after).

2) Powerful is for any attacks, melee or ranged. Abilities I rearranged to be listed after Shooter are only there because they can be used in conjunction with Shooter, but they are not limited to shooting.

3) Tough 15pts option behaves just like Tough 30pts, just a notch lower. Armored operates separately and can be used in conjunction with Tough (this would make for a very resilient warrior!).

The only problem I foresee with stacking Mounted is that charging melee units could potentially get 4 rolls in an attack when also using Powerful 20pts. Group them into a unit of [6] and they would get an attack roll consisting of 24 dice! That is almost certain death for the recipient of the attack. And not everybody has so many dice. After some playtesting, I observe that things balance out. Tough and Powerful both scale upward and downward, while directly opposing eachother's effects.

Test 1: Side A, small group of strong quality units with Powerful 20pts vs Side B, individual moderate quality units. The strong group was at an activation disadvantage. While they did manage to take out several of the moderate quality opponents, the moderate quality opponent needed only to score a single kill (wound=immediate death for group members) to earn more victory points (value of unit killed). They were eventually able to swarm the strong group unit and out-activate them.

Test 2: Equal quality units; side A having lots of abilities including Powerful, side B having only Shooter 5pts. Side A, one big group unit. Side B, several [4] member groups and some individuals. Sacrificing even a few activations (to use groups) for Side B was a strain on their strategy, several units needed to charge in as meat shields to eat the first volley from Side A, while their friendlies approached behind. Side A got more kills numerically, but by the end or round 4 side A had lost control of the battlefield and any additional rounds would have seen their numbers dwindle toward defeat.

Please see the recent changes:

Mounted: Clarified as +1 additional attack roll when charging in melee. Changed name to Ramming, to lower the implication that this must/can only be used with models that are riding a mount.

Undead: Changed name to Unwavering to lower the implication this must/can only be used with zombie/afterlife themed models.

Because there are many abilities that can be used with Melee attacks, but only a few which are compatible with Shooter, the following abilities have been adapted from GF:

Indirect (10pts): This unit may shoot through obstructions whenever any friendly unit has direct line of sight to the target.

Sniper (5pts): When making ranged attacks, this unit ignores Cover Terrain effects.

To expand the available passive abilities, the following has been imported from GF:

Hero (5pts): Friendly units within 12" of this unit may use its quality for morale tests, as long as it isn't Stunned.

Sept 13, 2021 15:28:36 GMT kisshead said:

Hey there,
I am a big fan of Warstuff and over the years have tried various ways of incorporating different ideas.
Love the work you are doing and will be watching.
I may have some old stuff I had created if you like I can post or PM them to you.
Cool,
Kisshead

Thanks and please do, preferably an open post here for the wider community. One of the goals with this is to aggregate these various fixes from around different posts and revisions into one place, while also keeping this version as true to the currently published official WarStuff as possible. To anyone interested; please share findings from playtesting here, I would be very interested in getting potential issues ironed out.

[kisshead]

Could we add something like this for creating Machine Gunners.



Pinning: Pinning [+10pts]Whenever this unit target an enemy unit with a shooting attack the target has to take a morale test (or make them unable to move somehow).

Maybe do like in the Freeze rule: Freeze (5pts): When dealing hits to an enemy roll one die, on a 4+ it may not move during its next activation.


Also some of the older 1.7 version special rules may be able to recycle them.

[todd]

I like the indirect fire trait but I also thought that it was part of the Wizard trait. I like the idea that they would also need line of sight or the aid of a spotter. I usually play with Sci-fi characters so Wizard is usually a rocket launcher or telekinetic power. Would Indirect not be really worth the points compared with Wizard?
I’m also considering you’re going to have to spend 10pts on the shooting and the additional 5pts for indirect, and finally the points to get quality 4. Any skill with Wizard just needs to roll a 4 to activate the spell. The only bonus I see with indirect is that you can move then shoot. Also would these two stack?

[rulebreaker]

Sept 16, 2021 0:04:21 GMT todd said:

I like the indirect fire trait but I also thought that it was part of the Wizard trait. I like the idea that they would also need line of sight or the aid of a spotter. I usually play with Sci-fi characters so Wizard is usually a rocket launcher or telekinetic power. Would Indirect not be really worth the points compared with Wizard?
I’m also considering you’re going to have to spend 10pts on the shooting and the additional 5pts for indirect, and finally the points to get quality 4. Any skill with Wizard just needs to roll a 4 to activate the spell. The only bonus I see with indirect is that you can move then shoot. Also would these two stack?

Casters in GF and AoS can cast as a free part of their activation, and still go on to attack normally. I believe it is the same in WarStuff. Indirect range is determined by shooter, so up to 27", reaching farther than Wizard.

It turns out WarStuff already anticipates players having multiple dice: "...6” high instead of climbing down. Roll X+1...". However, it may be best that max group unit size be 5, consistent with One Page Rules adherence to multiples of 5, and making the maximum possible attack roll at only 20 dice. Also to exacerbate potential imbalances to a lesser extent.

I was going crazy trying to remember where I first saw those old special abilities. I kept going back to 2.1 to find nothing but I finally found an upload of 1.7 in an older thread. Reading into the old 1.7 rules has provided some clarification to me such as Leader; the activations should only occur for unactivated friendlies, the point of this ability is that they all get to go during the Leader's activation, uninterrupted by enemy reactions. Also Stunned Units: "...and they must use Recover as their next action (the model stands up)." this is never explicitly explained to new OPR players so I find it amusing that an old one-off rule page is the only place this is explicitly stated. Okay enough with side notes, now on to the meat and potatoes.

After reviewing the rules, it has occurred to me that WarStuff 2.0 special abilities mainly use dedicated dice rolls instead of modifiers. The reason for this is that adding negative modifiers to 6+ would effectively mean 6+ quality warriors can never hit (or defend, depending on circumstance). Likewise, 2+ warriors can be made to brokenly always succeed without even needing to roll. One way to address this could be to use criticals rules: "6 is always a success regardless of modifiers, 1 is always a failure regardless of modifiers". A lot of these old abilities relied on +1/-1 etc modifiers, so they would need to either be adapted in the way that 2.0 handles checks or WarStuff would need critical rolls introduced.

Some thoughts on the discarded special rules:

1. Both Counter-Attack and Trapper cost the same but Counter-Attack is the obvious choice. I understand why they probably got discarded.
2. Both Fear and Brutal seem they should fall under the Intimidating
   umbrella.
3. (I just want to note I appreciate the way that Healer worked in 1.7, giving
   them a more active role, and decisions to be made)
4. Pinning does not state what happens if the target fails their morale test. A bit strong if it makes them Rout. Maybe Entangle can be adapted into Pinning to do what you describe. Nevermind, I've handled it, please see changelist.
5. Powerful is in a way a successor to both Power Shot and Power Strike.
6. Sweep Attack's functionality is now covered by Deadly, since automatic hits = always stunned from Deadly.
7. Pathfinder became Strider.
8. Poison was rolled into Fire/Poison.
9. Scout was renamed to Stealthy, and Stealthy used to be a modifier, bringing with it the baggage of modifiers described above.
10. Vanguard was kind of overtaken by Stealthy(Scout).
11. Vicious: Sort of like Blast(?) from GF.

ron93 also had a good movement ability idea in 2019: "Aquatic/amphibian (normal movement in water) 10 pts". Anybody got an Atlantean army handy?

Some additional things I am mulling over:
How does Freeze work exactly? Is it not wasteful when units taking hits will likely be stunned anyway?
Consolidate Hunker and Guard? The only other OPR game to use it that I'm aware of is Army Men Combat.
I will certainly need to field some test skirmishes to work out much of the above.

Recent changes:

• Adapted 1.7 Pinning, with inspiration from Covering Fire in full rules, into Pinning (10pts)
  
• Indirect - decreased cost to 5pts, needs to be competitive with Wizard.
• Imported Counter-Attack from 1.7 Warstuff - existing melee abilities do not have anything like this. Also pads against the new ranged-only abilities added earlier.
• Other misc. condensing and clarification.

I do not think I can justify bringing in more additional abilities after this point, the Unit Creation page has something for just about any scenario. Any more and we also risk diverging too much from the existing WarStuff 2.0. Refocusing my efforts to tweaking and balancing now.

---

EDIT SEPT 19th:

• Changed forward slashes in multi-cost rules to vertical slashes for readability (preclude details from looking like fractions)
• Aquatic - Forgot earlier to include Aquatic, of ron93's suggestion.
• Made consistent the use of the term shooter in new special rules.

[rulebreaker]

Posting this comment as a blank canvas for new adjustments.

I have been examining the Guard action. It maps to the "Overwatch" extra action from GF/AoS full rulebooks, however in those games this action can only be used by a unit to react once. Considering how strike back in melee only succeeds on 6+ is subsequent melee for that round, it is probably consistent to have Guard units also hit only on 6+ after their first reaction, or just not at all like in GF/AoS. I am currently testing these things and will post an update.

---

[kisshead]

This is some stuff I worked on a couple years ago.
If any of it can be used is up to you.
I tried adding and incorporating Advanced Missions, Random Events and an AI system from the other games.

Oct 11, 2019 15:42:00 GMT kisshead said:

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[rulebreaker]

I really like the mercenary mission concept. It makes me want to try a house rule game where players race to retrieve a super soldier from cryostasis, he sides with the first team to activate him. Anyway, the AI Rules and Advanced Rules have been pulled in as expanded section packaged for its own printout, no changes have been made except to the formatting and presentation.

Playtest scenarios, expand spoiler for details:

SPOILER: Click to show

Note: All of these test scenarios were played without objectives and at 150pts armies, always padding out leftover points with weak filler units. The map was some amalgamation of barricades dividing the battlefield between the two teams with a cliff edge along one side.

Guard spam - Failed guard interruptions allowed opponent to break through. Guard spammers lost one more warrior than opponent (all average shooters). (Units which have used Guard: they get marked as activated after reacting to an enemy?)

Team Indirect vs Team Pinning - Team Indirect's spotters kept getting taken out, they were basically suicide runs. Perhaps in a larger battle they would be accompanied by some kind of support. Indirects benefits were also nullified once Team Pinning's guys had decided to advance beyond the obstructions but failed to pin the remaining Indirect shooters (who were situated close together) as they passed their morale checks. Again, in a bigger battle with more opportunity to try, pinning fire could catch a holdout off guard. This may be worth a redo at larger scale. The question that this test actually generated: Should only non-Stunned units be able to spot?

Team "strong defense" vs Team "breakthrough (on successful hits)" - Strong defense = Armored + Camouflaged + Regeneration. Deadly (on the lone melee Team "breakthrough" successfully circumvents the Armored wall getting wounds through. Team breakthrough's Shooter units eventually decided to begin charging to melee since Camouflaged kept voiding thier ranged attacks. This scenario was to test how badly "check for X" defense abilities can be stacked. Lessons learned: Deadly counters Armored, melee counters Camouflaged.

Team "persistent" vs Team "melee brawler" - persistent = Healer + Regeneration (+Shooter), melee brawler = Intimidating + Impact + Counter-Attack. Questions which arose during the scenario: Do Stunned units, when charged, roll for Regeneration or Healer? Or is that only normal combat actions? One of the persistent warriors took 3 charges in a row before being kill off. Also found that going all-in melee can backfire when your opponent is 100% shooting, be sure that you can reach them quickly and decisively. Match ended with 2 persistents and one [disgraced] melee brawler.

Scenario "7", Wizard spamming/stacking (Shooter + Wizard/Psychic): Getting essentially an extra activation scored at least 2 kills for the Wizards. I find the balance derives from being fixed at 4+ rather than scaling with Quality. A good strategy would be to take some 5+ or 6+ Wizards and pray that they don't fall into melee situations. The opposing team *had* a Leader unit which got shredded by Fireballs in round 1, so no opportunity to playtest Leader. Ending: 3 kills for Wizards, only 1 kill for Shooters.

Fearless, Unwavering, Heroes vs Indimidating Shooters - Fearless re-rolls of failed morale checks allowed the Unwavering Heroes to avoid being Pinned by cover fire, very lucky. Noteworthy: This scenario had a two instances of pushing a wounded Shooter off of a cliff edge to their deaths. Fearless then saved Unwavering Heros from Routing. The scenario ended with 2 dead on either side. Fearless is a very well matched counter against Intimidating and Pinning, I find no adjustments to be made.

Giants (Large, Intimidating) vs Dwarves (Small, Shooter) - The scenario ended up being about trying to control distance. Small units should have Shooter, in fact, it would be wasteful not to. The Large units suffered 3 losses, with a weaker friendly unit remaining. Because Large needs to close the gap for melee, players would find it beneficial to pair with Armored, Tough or Fast. I find that these balance against one another perfectly, no adjustments needed.

Section for already tested scenarios, repeated for this latest revision:

Powerful+Tough vs group unit - ended with 2 models left on either side. Additional rounds would have seen the group whittled down, but their presence persisted with enough to contest an objective, if that were the goal.

Melee against shooting - the shooters sent out two bait units and put the remainder on guard while the melees traversed along the cover of barriers. Melee sent in squishier units first to exhaust all the guarding opponents (again, does it work like this?). The strong melee units then entered past the barriers and claimed 2 shooters. Melees ended up losing more warriors overall with a lone survivor heroically dodging a last volley of fire at the end of round 4.

Few high quality vs lots of low quality - High quality team got into position, with one on guard. The low quality team was able to charge with three, the rest lined the barricade walls awaiting thier opportunity to strike. Noteworthy: Because all of the low quality melee warriors had Death Blow, a chain reaction situation emerged (Death Blow affects ALL units within 3" right?) causing the majority of losses for team low quality. However, a 6+ warrior did succeed stunning and killing a 2+ opponent in a single blow! What are the odds? Both teams were down to half by the end of round four. Takeaway: Use Death Blow sparingly.

Flying Wizards vs Snipers - all 4+. The first game was total loss for Flying Wizards as they were too aggressive. Waiting out in hidey holes and drawing long range opponents out is a better strategy when you can cast powers through walls, the second game ended much more even when the Wizards leveraged their powers appropriately. Flying would have been more beneficial if these were full games with objective points.

Conclusion: These tests were run for examining stacking situations where the entirety of a team is composed of the same, similar or complimenting abilities. Real games will probably have a healthier mix of different abilities. The heavy lifting of balancing Special Rules usage is actually not really from the point cost, but from the fact that they are limited to 3 per unit. A rule which is inexpensive (or has nothing/negative cost) is still "expensive" in that it takes up a precious slot. Also, I have no delusions of WarStuff being cast into a competitive scene so, in that light, imbalances which I *couldn't* detect may be negligible in this already well rounded casual ruleset. Additionally, in my testing within the recommended 150 point army allocation, the increased costs for higher Qualities balances out incredibly well. I think it was my "High quality vs Low quality" test scenario above that I found both sides rather equally matched by the end of round 4. Could just be dice rolls as every game is different although that observation persisted through the other games as well (most units where 4+, with only some being 3+ or 5+ as needed). These proposed Special Rules and Unit Creation get my 👍

Observations: It might be pertinent when starting a game with new players to agree on a "default" such as all melee are 4+, all ranged are 4+ with Shooter 18" unless otherwise specified. Even though the whole point of unit creation is total freedom of customization, some may not be keen on custom tailoring every single unit in their warband individually.

---

• Unified Guard Actions with the full rulebook's equivalent concept in
  that Guard units may only react once. The rationale for this being to
  reduce Guard reactions from slowing down the flow of gameplay.
• There has been a trend in WarStuff special rules to share names with
  their GF/AoF counterparts albeit while having slightly differing
  concepts or mechanisms. In this light, Mounted (Ramming) has been
  renamed to Impact.
• Clarified Wizard/Psychic activation usage as independent from normal attack actions.
  
• Beautified page art and formatting of this proposal as my vote of confidence to this being the most up to date WarStuff.

I have also formatted the Advanced rules from 2.1 into this formatting
style, I have not played any of the advanced rules or made any
modifications:

Attachments:

WarStuff 2.2 Expanded Rules.pdf (213.17 KB)

[artmonkey]

Is there a way to download your final version as a pdf? I tried saving it but it comes out really grainy.

Love what you’ve done!

[rulebreaker]

artmonkey I have increased the preview page resolution so it should be a little bit better, although this forum has a file size upload limit which restricts the image quality. The first post of this thread has the PDF version under the attachments section:

New:

• Unified phrasing of Fearless and Hero Stunned clauses - "...unless it is Stunned."
• Created a separate, very basic, pre-calculated examples sheet. (see below)
  

Attachments:

WarStuff 2.2 Quickplay Units.pdf (187.74 KB)

[kisshead]

Your doing great work Rulebreaker.
I have one modest request, I see you did a sample unit page, would it be possible for you to also add an updated version of the Quickplay Unit page like one that was in the original.




I had asked someone a while back and they post it for version 2.0 I think but it has since been removed from the thread?
The person who transposed it was Spinjitzu.


forum.onepagerules.com/thread/1795/warstuff-quick-army-sheet-translate