Angry miniatures

Placeholder cover and logo. Illustration by Jarom Swenson

A rules-lite fantasy beer-n-pretzels skirmish game. Designed to allow you to play with any of your fantasy themed miniatures. (sci-fi edition coming later) The idea is you and an opponent choose any 3 miniatures from any line, stat them up based on the visual appearance and perceived personality of the miniatures, then battle them out on any square grid map.

CHARACTER CREATION

Start by looking at a chosen miniature, then you have 9 points to distribute however you want among 3 stats. Mind, Body, and Spirit. Be careful about dump stats, because they also act as defenses against certain attack types. Melee attacks roll against target’s Body score. Range attacks against Mind. And Magic attacks against Spirit.

Again, choose based on the appearance of your figure, including equipment. For a guy with a huge melee weapon you would want to put more points into Body. A character with a wicked beard and robes would probably want more points in Spirit.

The three scores are compared to tables to determine the character’s Speed (squares he can move in a turn), Health (hit points), Distance (attack range in squares for Range and Magic attacks), then its Melee, Range, or Magic attack roll.

Next you choose from a huge list of Perks, Crits, and Flaws. Perks are passive bonuses to your character. Flavored specifically to common tropes seen on minis. Crits are abilities that trigger when your dice come up with certain results. So they don't happen that often, but they do awesome things. Flaws are passive hindrances.

Each character gets to choose 1 of each. And that defines a figures stats!

THE DICE

The game uses poker dice. I chose these for a reason. They are sort of like fudge dice, but with more options. Each symbol on the dice has meaning:

• Ace: Sort of a wild. They don't count as hits, but are used in determining superiority in rolls, and towards most Crits.
• Faces: King, Queen, and Jack. These count as 'hits'.
• Numbers: 10 and 9. These count as 'misses'.

Superiority is of course Ace>King>Queen>Jack>10>9. More on this later.

COMBAT

Turn sequences and movement I haven't really fleshed out yet, but here is how combat and fighting goes.

When a miniature is attacking another, the attacker rolls an amount of poker dice equal to his appropriate attack stat. Then the opponent rolls the amount of dice equal to its defense stat. Rolls are compared, and the one with the higher amount of hits (faces) wins the combat.

With range and magic attacks, if the attacker won, he takes the difference in hits over the opponents defense and that's how much damage is dealt. If the defender won, no damage is dealt.

With melee attacks, whoever won the roll gets to deal damage to the other based on the difference in the winning roll.

In the event of ties, that's when superiority comes into play. The winner is whoever had the most Aces. If none or tie on that as well, then go to Kings. The winner is whoever has the most kings. And so forth. When a winner is determined after a tie, then a maximum of 1 damage can be dealt, no matter what any Perks or Crits say, as it was a well defended hit.

Modifiers are treated in a simple fashion. They simply add or subtract dice from your rolls. Like being in cover adds 1 die to your defense roll, charging adds 1 to your attack roll, etc.

CRITS

Crits specify when they can trigger, and what triggers them. For example, one may say:

Forceful Weapon: [A][K] When attacking in melee, move the target 1 square in any direction.

The [A][K] means when attacking in melee, and any of your dice come up with an Ace and King, then you carry out the Crits effects.

Watch out for Crits with your characters. A lot of times they can change a loss or tie into a win for that roll.

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Development Blog http://thefairlyunkempt.blogspot.com/