Many a Sunday afternoon during my youth was spent watching badly-dubbed Asian martial arts films with my family. To this day I will still stop and watch just about any Asian martial arts film, however bad the production values. So, one day I picked up a bag of peasants from the Old Glory samurai wars line, converted some of the farm implements into weapons, and set to work on a rules set. There were two key concepts from the movies that I wanted to be sure to reflect in this set: 1. Different schools of martial arts have different types of attacks, with some favoring kicks, others favoring punches, etc. 2. A master in a fight against any number of run-of-the-mill students WILL defeat them all, and can only be defeated by another master. THE RULES SCALE - 1" = 6 feet, more or less; 1 figure = I man; 1 turn = a variable but short amount of time KINDS OF FIGURES - Figures are divided into one of three categories: TYPE STANDARD DIE STRENGTH Student d6 6 Apprentice d8 8 Master d10 10 Typically in our games one player will control one school of kung-fu, consisting of 1 master, 1 apprentice, and 2-4 students. MOVEMENT: Walking 1" Running 2" An action card may be discarded to allow a figure to jump up to 4" in any direction. Turning any amount at any time is free. ATTACKS: There are 4 attacks, based on optimal range: Grapple Base contact Trap Up to 1" Punch 1" to 2" Kick 2" to 3" TURN SEQUENCE Players dice for initiative. High die goes first. Players alternate moving/attacking one figure at a time. A figure may be moved any number of times during a turn, so long as the player has sufficient action cards to do so. The turn is over when both players are out of action cards. A player may pass on any move, allowing his opponent to move twice in a row. The turn ends when both players have played all their action cards. At this point they pick up all the cards, shuffle them, and a new turn starts. ACTION CARDS Each player will have a deck of action cards based on the number and type of figures he controls. Each card will state the type of attack it allows the player to use and the maximum strength of the attack. Two example cards are: KICK: d6 PUNCH d10 A figure using an action card will use either the die listed on the card or the standard die for that figure, whichever is weaker. (NOTE: If you like, instead of making action cards, you use ordinary playing cards, assigning each of the four kinds of attack to a particular suit and indicating strength of attack as follows: Ace-6 = d6, 7-10 = d8, face cards = d10.) HOW TO ATTACK 1. You must be within reach of your opponent (range of less 3" or less). Choose your type of attack with an eye to range, as you will incur a negative modifier if you are not within optimum range for the type of attack you are using (base contact to grapple, 0-1 inch to trap, 1-2 inches to punch, 2-3 inches to kick). 2. Lay down the action card and state which enemy figure you are attacking. 3. Your opponent has the option of either counterattacking with any attack card (regardless of range) or of blocking (using his standard die). 4. Both players roll the appropriate dice, add any modifiers (see below), and compare the results. 5. The player with the higher modified roll is (naturally) the winner. The loser is knocked away from the winner either 1" or to the maximum optimal range of the attack, whichever is the greater distance. 6. If the winner's modified roll is higher than the loser's strength, the loser is knocked unconscious and is out of the battle. At the end of the turn, the losing player must remove from his action deck the cards belonging to that figure. (See "CONSTRUCTING THE ACTION DECK," below.) Exception: If the winner is the defender and won by blocking, not counterattacking, the attacker is not knocked back and may not be knocked out. ATTACK MODIFIERS There are, at present, two attack modifiers which these rules take into account: Range and Weapon Range: Subtract I from the die roll for each range band greater or less than the optimal range for that attack type. (e.g. For a kick while in base contact, subtract 3). Weapons: Different weapons have different modifiers based on the range at which they are being used. Some sample weapons are shown in the table below. Feel free to add more. Weapon Grapple Trap Punch Kick Sword -1 0 +1 +1 Staff -3 -1 +1 +2 Nunchaku +1 +1 0 0 Mallet 0 0 +2 0 CONSTRUCTING THE ACTION DECK Construction a player's action deck is a very straightforward process. All one has to do is reference the figures the player will be controlling in a style chart, such as the ones below, and add those cards to his deck. Type Grapple Trap Punch Kick CRANE STYLE STUDENT - - - 1 APPRENTICE - - 1 1 MASTER - - 1 2 TIGER STYLE STUDENT - - 1 - APPRENTICE - 1 1 - MASTER - 1 1 1 MONKEY STYLE STUDENT - 1 - - APPRENTICE 1 - 1 - MASTER - 2 1 - Of note, an apprentice will add the cards for a student of that style as well as the addition cards for an apprentice. (e.g. An apprentice in the monkey style will add 1 trap at strength d6, a grapple at d8 strength, and a punch at d8 strength.) It's easy to design your own style; just select one attack for students, two for apprentices, and three for masters. (There are 800 possible different styles under this system!) Also, please note that the cards added to a player's action deck do not have to be used with the particular figure that caused them to be added. However, if they are used in conjunction with a weaker figure, they act as a weaker attack of that type. (e.g. The monkey style player in our example above decides to use his master level punch card to have a student punch. The attack is allowed, but instead of the d10 of a master level attack would roll only the d6 of an apprentice level attack. This represents the student attempting to imitate moves he has seen his master do but not having been fully trained in them.) Back to MWAN #114 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com