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

The point behind Angry Miniatures is to make a game where you can have a battle between any team of miniatures from any fantasy line. One of the most fun parts of this game is creating your characters, or making the stats for your minis. Try this by reaching into your bucket of minis (if you have one) and pulling out 3 random minis. Now stat them up!

Step 1: Three Primary Stats

Preliminary character sheet. Small enough for about 4 to fit on a single page.

You have 9 points to distribute how you want among 3 stats. Mind, Body, and Spirit. These 3 stats directly act as your defenses. There can be no less than 1 point in any stat, and no more than 7.

So you could have a guy be jack of all with 3/3/3, or a guy uber in one and weak in the others with 7/1/1. Beware the later, because you may hit hard and be tough in one defense, but if anyone hits your other defenses you're screwed.

Each stat is referenced to tables and fill in the remaining necessaries on the character sheet.

Step 2: Table Look-ups

This is the only time in playing this game that you will use tables. I swear.

First, choose what type of attack this character will have. A character may only have 1 attack type. This is to keep things simple and interesting. There are 3 attack types:

• Melee obviously can only effect enemies in adjacent squares, but hits hardest of the 3 attacks.
• Range uses the Distance value to determine its reach. You cannot make a Range attack on an adjacent enemy.
• Magic also uses the Distance value for reach. It's generally weaker than Range attacks, but has an aoe. Which means the target square you hit, hits all figures adjacent to it.

Once that is chosen, calculate your characters Health (hit points) by referencing its Body score to the following table:

Body	Health
1	3
2	3
3	4
4	4
5	5
6	5
7	6

Next calculate your characters Speed (movement in squares per turn), by referencing its Spirit score to the following table:

Spirit	Speed
1	4
2	4
3	5
4	5
5	6
6	6
7	7

Then if it is a Melee character, reference its Body and Spirit scores (added together) to the following table to get its Melee attack value. If it's a Magic or Range character, move on to the next table.

Body+Spirit	Melee Attack
2	4
3	5
4	5
5	6
6	6
7	7
8	7

If it is a Range character, reference its Body and Mind scores (added together) to the following table to get its Range attack value. If it's a Magic character, move on to the next table.

Body+Mind	Range Attack
2	3
3	4
4	4
5	5
6	5
7	6
8	6

If it is a Magic character, reference its Spirit and Mind scores (added together) to the following table to get its Magic attack value.

Spirit+Mind	Magic Attack
2	2
3	3
4	3
5	4
6	4
7	5
8	5

Finally, the last table is for Distance (reach of magic and range attacks). This is only for Range and Magic characters. Melee may skip this table. Reference your Mind score to the following table: If it is a Magic character, reference its Spirit and Mind scores (added together) to the following table to get its Magic attack value.

Mind	Distance
1	5
2	5
3	6
4	6
5	7
6	7
7	8

Step 3: Perks, Flaws, and Crits

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/