A game I've revisited is Osprey's Ronin and En Garde, not actually played just reading the rulesbook.
Skirmish scale, they use combat pools as a mechanic. When melee happens you divide your pool secretly into attack and defense dice, then reveal. I like this player input element so it's not just mathing out
The combat pool is something that looks really appealing, the shared pool is also a cool mechanic... though it does seem like it could be gamed in a way where you have one super dude siphoning dice from the lowliest fodder
Last edited by OgreBattle on Mon Aug 27, 2018 3:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
So in Osprey's Bushido and En Garde you add all of the D6 results together.
In Bushido, an older game that seems to be the inspiration, you only count the highest D6 rolled, then up to two D6's that didn't roll a 1 are added to the total. So 8 is the maximum number no matter how many d6 results of 6 are rolled.
It's a way to keep someone with a larger combat pool from squishing all people with smaller pools, though I'm not really sure how to calculate the odds.
Dang I just thought of something, what if each of the dudes has a hand of cards to use, and when combat happens both players put down some number of cards and flip.
Options include...
- Cards are numbered, higher is better. So you're hoping your medium speed horse is against their slowest horse
- Cards are specific abilities. More complex, it's what the card game Yomi does in a way
The hand size can also be a measure of how many actions that character can do a round. Effects like being stunned would discard cards from their hand.
