Of late, I’ve been haunting the internet, looking up all the sites that advertise “free wargames rules”… and there are quite a number of them. Some of the rules sets are interesting, some are quite good, the majority - even a quick read of them online - appear horrible, but, for the most part, they’ve all got one thing in common… the spelling is atrocious. However, I have to hand it to the guys who run the sites, continually updating them, posting new material, and knocking off old.
There’s one site that seems to specialize in card games. This fella lists a page-and-a-half of variations on a theme… ancients, medieval, modern, economic, etc. all games that he has derived using unique decks of cards. Many of the games don’t need anything except a simple map, his decks and a couple of special tokens.
If you want to sample the site, try: “www.angelfire.com/games2/warpspawn”
For this article, however, I went to MAGWEB.COM, and found a game in a magazine written by the same guy that runs the warpspawn site, Lloyd Krassner. He called his game WAR FAIR, A GAME OF ARMS DEALING. There was no map in this game… you needed a special deck of some 76 cards, permitting you to select cards which put up specific weapons for sale, select a seller for the weapons and select a buyer for the weapons, thus, in theory, making a profit.
The opposing player could nullify the deal, playing “intercept” cards, and you, in turn, could avoid the interception by playing “evasion” cards. The objective of the game was simply to amass the most money.
I thought I’d try to turn the basic ideas of WAR FAIR (WF) into a table-top area game, using miniatures, transforming WF into a “conquer territory and exploit resources” affair. I typed up three pages of rules, and was wondering who would be the first guy on whom I could foist the rules… when there appeared Scott Holder, who had just driven in from his home in Missouri to go to an HMGS convention.
And so it was Holder versus Simon, battle of the titans. We each started with 2 “corps”, one troop depot, one town, a bankroll of $12, and 5 special cards. Each corps consisted of 2 stands of 3-figures each, a total of 6 infantry, plus one tank… all in 20mm. When a corps took casualties, we’d make change with 2-figure and 1-figure stands.
The table-size map was divided into 50 areas or so… we each placed our town in one area, our depot in another, and our 2 corps in the depots. Except for the depots, the stacking limit per area was one full corps. Depots could hold as many troops as you could cram into them.
The cards came from a deck of 40. In our first game, about half the deck were movement cards (move your corps 3 areas, or move your corps 4 areas, etc.), so you’d need to play a movement card to advance your troops. This proved to produce a slow, slow, slow game… movement cards were not popping up as fast as we wanted, and our troops were fairly stagnant. Another effect of devoting half of the 40 card deck to movement was that the other cards, the interesting ones which provided for wheeling and dealing and developing resources, were limited to 20, so here, too, the action was slowed down.
We played around 6 turns, and then took a pie-and-ice-cream break, and discussed how to speed up the game. A unanimous vote was cast for excluding the movement cards completely. When a side became active, it would dice for the distance in areas each of its units could move. And the deck of 40 cards was solely relegated to the wheeling/dealing issues.
Each side’s objective was to first, conquer land, and second, develop resources in owned territory. There were two types of resources… oil and gold, and if you played the proper card… behold!… an oil derrick or a smelter would appear on your property. Another card would result in oil production or gold mining, at which time, we’d place little barrels of oil on your land, or some golden ingots, whichever were appropriate.
But now that you had resources parked on your property, you needed yet another card to bring the goods to market and enable you to bank the funds. While the barrels of oil, or ingots remained in the area (while you were hoping to draw a “sell resources” card), they were subject to capture by nasty people.
When a side was active, it could play as many cards in its hand as possible. An example of what a player could do with his hand of 5 cards is the following, showing that intermixing movement and card playing were permissible.
- (a) A player dices and finds that each of his corps can move 4 areas
(b) He moves an existing corps into an unoccupied, neutral area
(c) He plays a “build town” card, funds a town for $5
(d) He plays an “establish resource” card and gets an oil well
(e) He plays a “produce resources” card, his oil well gets 3 barrels
(f) He plays a “sell resources” card and sells his oil
(g) He plays a “raise troops” card and raises 2 corps with his new funds
(h) He moves 1 of his new corps, 4 areas, to attack an opponent
(i) If defeated, he can attack the same area with his 2nd new corps
The above gives an idea of the scope of the cards. There were other types… for example, by playing a “rebel force” card, you could have rebel forces pop up in an enemy’s area, preventing his oil wells or smelters from producing until he sent troops in to quell the revolucionistas.
Another type of card, which we dropped, was a “move to intercept an enemy force” card. When a player moved a corps, an opponent could play the “intercept” card, and hope to prevent him from reaching his goal. Most of the time, there was no need to intervene… simply wait for your own turn and then strike back.
Scott and I tried a 4-handed game… we each ran two opposing sides. The first thing we noted was that we needed little flags to denote ownership of the areas on the map. Due to the large permitted movement distances (ranging from 3 to 5 areas per corps), corps could, in a single move, advance over half the field. The result was that it didn’t pay to simply set up your holdings near your depot, i.e., focus on areas near your depot, and form an enclave of your own. All areas were accessible to invasion, hence, as the game progressed, the areas were intermingled as to ownership, and we needed identifiers as to who owned what.
My 3-page set of rules was filled with charts linked to the various cards. Play a “sell resources” card, and you diced to find out the current market price. Play a “raise troops” card, and you diced to see how much a corps would cost.
In all, I wasn’t unhappy with the result, and one of these days, will present it at a PW meeting.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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