Monday, March 14, 2022

War College: The Demo Rules

Once upon a time, Vincent's version of the Demo Rules could be found in a few locations.  One of them is gone (G+) and the other is not fully functional (the Hangar).  I know CADmonkey saved a copy, and I still have behind the scenes access to the Hangar so I can grab them if needed.  But that leaves a lot of people out in the cold so I'm going to post them here so we have another place they can be found.

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One objective in the middle of the battlefield. Everybody gets two frames, one soldier and one hand to hand or one soldier and one artillery, nothing weird. I set the frames up myself in appropriate places on the battlefield, by eyeball*. Some in cover, some out. It's important that everybody has a frame at 5-6 away from the objective, but nobody has one closer. Because everybody's sides are equal, everything on the board is worth 5 points to everybody, so I just say that: "in the full game, things are worth different points to different players, but here, everything's worth 5 points. You each have 2 frames so you each have 10 points. If you lose a frame, you lose 5 points. If you grab the objective, you gain 5 points." Set the doomsday clock to 3. Expect to play 2 turns. "When the doomsday clock hits zero, whoever has the most points wins." Since everybody's sides are equal, nobody has initiative. "In the full game, initiative depends on how many points you have, and maybe we'll see that next turn, but since everybody's equal, we'll just start on the dealer's left and go around." If you're quick with the rules, this is a 15- or 20-minute demo for 3 players, maybe a 30-minute demo for 5. If somebody's not getting the rules, I try to just talk them clearly through the decisions their dice are asking them to make. "First choose your target. Now gather your dice: you get [these]. Roll 'em! Okay, now you need a defense number. Choose a blue or a white. Perfect. Now, do you want to move first, then attack, or attack first, then move? Great. Here's what we do..." * Basically in roughly equilateral triangles whose sides are the length of direct fire range. Some of the triangles include the objective as a corner point, some don't. The idea is to put every frame at a moment of decision, and an easy way to do it is to put them just within direct fire range from an enemy or a goal.

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There you go.  I do things a little differently so I'll post those at another time.

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