A couple months back, Funk told me he wanted to create a tactical and/or strategic wargame loosely based on current USA vs. Insurgents conflict. This turn-based, multiplayer game would ideally be playable on forums as a fairly accurate yet playable combat simulation. He put together the game’s prototype and we had a fun hour testing it–I thought it would be equally fun to document the game as it changes over the coming weeks/months. Most of the work being put into it is Funk’s, so I imagine he might update the column occasionally.

Prototype: Balls-Out For Oil

Our test of the initial map, combat tables and units took place online in mid-February. Funk created the map in Excel and we updated it after each turn with our troop movements and kills through AIM filesharing. Funk won the dice-off so he chose the Insurgents, leaving me with the American force. Refer to the map to see our starting positions. The insurgents started out within their red deployment zone in a Middle Eastern city, shown by the gray blocks, and my force in the orange zone on the left, slightly nearer the oil field shown in green. Funk intends oil to play a major role in future versions, so we included it here to jumpstart ideas.

Insurgent Force: 5 Insurgents (marked as ’I’s) These basic infantry units were technically the weakest unit on the map, although overall they are only slighly inferior in defense to the Foot Soldier. Unlike the USA troops, they move at full infantry speed inside the city.

American Force: 1 Mechanized Unit (M) and 3 Foot Soldiers (F). We should’ve called them Tank and Marines, I dunno why we didn’t. Your loss. Anyhoo the USA has a slight edge in combat and the M hits slightly harder and is slightly faster than the infantry units.

The Rules: Funk’s combat chart worked on simple unit attack ratio comparisons and emphasized draws and retreats, where the losing unit retreats 1 space with no harm done. I think there was usually only 33% chance of a casualty for a given fight. Botches were also accounted for, where an attacker could get himself fragged if he rolled low on his attack. Therefore, only the attacker rolls in combat, and they’re resolved after a move, one at a time. No flanking or ganging up rules yet. Of course we don’t have cool shit like RPGs yet either so hey. The simple winning conditions we came up with went on best 2 out of 3: I get a point as long as all insurgents are out of the city, he gets a point if he keeps a unit on the oil for a turn, and whoever kills the other army off gets a point. The last rule may seem silly, but helped stress the strategic nature of the game.

The Test: I went first and maneuvered toward the oil field. Funk, eager to test his combat rules, charged right out of the city and made for same. After a few rounds of closing the gap, our initial fights between Insurgents and Foot Soldiers were giving us two results: either someone had to retreat a square, or the attacker rolled the ’Attacker Dies’ result. In fact, 3 Insurgents bit the dust early by daring to attack their equally-matched enemies. Then 2 of my boys died attacking. After an hour of play with many retreats and a few draws, my tank squished his lone jihadist. Take that, natives. The game lasted 9-10 turns, about 1 hr, and I was 3/3 pts. Enemy botches get the sole credit.

Game Verdict: It was ok for what it was, although we soon learned that combat wasn’t realistic and was often pointless. The attacker should get an innate advantage over the defender, I’d say. So far, the city had a negligible effect on the US troops, only cutting their speed from 3 to 2 squares, so in future it will increase Insurgent defense at the very least. Lastly, we came up with the oil field rule on the fly, so expect it to have some real significance as the game evolves. Perhaps it’ll even get blown up. I know I wanna see that.

Wishlist: Next version will hopefully have some of the following elements: IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices, a fav. of the insurgents), flanking buffs, unit combos/support, city fighting, Insurgent reinforcements, ranged units, ex. Snipers.