Posted: 12/12/11 Create groups of three units and battle it out on a tactical playing field.

Writing the last entry, [#135 - Tessellation Tactics], I briefly wrote about having units share the same cell on the board. That got me thinking about how I'd implement something like that, and here I am with a new game concept. Funny how that works.

Fig 136.1 - The game board.

The game board consists of a bunch of rectangular cells, each one made up of three different slots to put units in. You do not need to have all three slots filled up. You can have one, two, or three units. Some units take up multiple slots, so you might end up having a 2-slot unit and a 1-slot unit. Anyway, the max number of slots are three.

Each turn consists of moving units from one cell to a neighboring cell or the units from one cell attacking a neighboring cell. You are basically giving orders to cells and not individual units. This follows chess rules where you alternate taking turns, and you can activate the same units multiple times in a row, if you wish.

Fig 136.2 - Moving units between cells.

The basic idea behind movement is that you are moving units from one cell to an adjacent cell. You can move one, two, or three units, as long as there is space. I'm thinking you set up a movement by clicking on a cell, then an adjacent cell. Then you click on the individual units to move them over.

You can not move into cells occupied by enemy units. Instead, you would initiate combat against their cell. You can move into cells containing friendly units, as long as there is room. So, if one slot was taken, you would only be able to move, at most, two units into the new cell. You can not trade units between cells when this happens (you can not move three units into a friendly cell, then move the units that were in the cell out). Some cells have obstacles, like rocks or trees, which only serve to occupy cells and limit the number of slots.

Fig 136.3 - Units and their attack dice.

Combat is between two enemy cells, and involves all units simultaneously. Each unit has a specific set of combat dice. For example, the alien has two green "alien" dice, the thief has three normal dice, and the spectacularly awesome dude has one normal six sided die, and some sort of special die that has hits or misses on it. All the dice associated with the three units are rolled simultaneously to produce the attack value. Then the defending group rolls their defense dice individually to defend against the attack.

Example: Attacking team rolls a collective 14 hits. The defending team consists of three units that defend with 2 dice, 1 die, and 3 dice respectively. The first defender rolls two dice for an 8, taking 14 - 8 = 6 damage. The second defender rolls a 1, taking 13 damage and being defeated. The third defender rolls three dice for a whopping 18 defense, having zero damage done to him.

Some dice have special effects. For instance, one die may have only hits and misses on it, with each hit being worth a static number of damage. Another might by typical damage dice, but represent elemental damage. A flame die may do 6 flame damage, but units immune to flame damage would ignore the values on those dice. Defense dice are standard dice, with the only difference being the number of dice rolled.

Some units have special abilities, like the afore mentioned flame nullification. They can also do things like increase the number of defense die their group members roll or nullify elemental damage for the whole group. They may get a special defense die that they are allowed to roll, like a shield die, which has the potential to nullify physical damage on the 1-in-6 chance they roll a shield on that die. On so on.