Saturday, February 21, 2009

Tunnel Attack - Late Introduction, and Turn Sequence

In case anybody was wondering, 'Tunnel Attack' was the cheesiest name I could come up with for an 80's style ameritrash game involving skaven, night goblins, and other underground beasties attacking dwarven or human forts or towns from below. I loved 'Space Hulk' as a kid, and have always wanted to try writing a skaven version of it. I'll be publishing core rules over the next little while, and then early scenarios. I would be grateful for any suggestions, help on how to put things into a .pdf, and most of all playtesting.

The basic turn sequence is as follows. The players alternate.

1) Control
2) Action

Control Phase:
Players allocate any tokens required by the scenario special rules, roll for reinforcements, and roll for continuous events, as dictated by the game. This is also the turn where special actions are taken.

Action Phase:
The current player may activate his warriors in any order he wishes. When a warrior activates, it may use all of its available action points, but may not store action points for later turns. Each warrior must activate exactly once during each Action Phase.

The main actions are as follows:

Move: 1 AP
Rotate 90 degrees: 1 AP
Attack: 1 AP
Power Attack: * AP
Charge Attack: -1 AP
Shoot: 1 AP
Open Door: 1 AP
Close Door: 1 AP
Bash Door: 2 AP
Special Actions: * AP

The move action allows your warrior to move 1 square either straight forward, or, if the way is clear, diagonally to the left or right. Rotate 90 degrees is self-explanatory. An attack may only be made if an enemy lies in one of the three squares in front of the active warrior. In this case, the warrior may roll one dice for each Attack in his profile. If any of these beat the defender's Armour, the defender is destroyed; otherwise, there is no effect. A power attack is a way to ensure that an attack does damage, and is the only way for most troops to damage defenders with armour 7 or higher. A power attack costs a base of 1 AP; for every additional AP spent, the attacker gains a +1 bonus to the attack role. A charge attack combines movement and an attack. It may be declared whenever a given warrior is activated; that warrior may then only make 'move' options until it is in a position to attack an enemy, at which point its first attack or power attack costs one less AP. A charge attack may only be made if the active warrior moves at least 2 squares. The shooting option allows the warrior to fire a missile weapon. This may not be used if an enemy is in one of the 8 adjacent squares. The open and close doors are self-explanatory. The bash door action is an option for any door, and will destroy the door if successful. Simply make a standard attack against the door; if successful, the door is destroyed. Note that power attacks may not be made against doors.

That's all for now - it is unclear whether there should be 'control zones' or such. It seems that games like Space Hulk or Descent do fairly well without them.

No comments:

Post a Comment