RUIN - building empires and destroying them.

[S W Dickson]

I've been struggling with how to populate the worlds and see a good opportunity to gain another game concept for the bag of tricks.

In need of some form of campaign/tactical map game.

This is taking inspiration from many places, but I'm thinking a versatile game that can be used with regionalised maps, tabletop models, to hex gridded stuff. Simple but strategic, it would be all about numbers in battle, but could also have a development system too.

I'm thinking -

Battalion - 1 dice roll
Army - 5 dice rolls (counts as five battalions)
Commander - +1 dice roll to units in same region

Standard movement is 2 regions. Some units will have slower or faster movement. If traversing mountains, forests/jungles, rivers or marshes, then lose 1 from movement.

To take a square, choose how many units will be attacking, and roll the appropriate dice versus defenders dice.

An empty region does not roll any dice in defence.
A region with a town rolls one dice in defence.
A region with a city rolls two dice in defence.
A claimed region adds one dice to roll.
Fortifications add another dice.
(e.g. a claimed town with two battallions will roll 4 dice in defence)

Each player will have flags/tokens to indicate their owned squares.

Each owned square will generate revenue at the beginning of their turn.

Plain tiles will generate 1 credit
Towns will generate 2 credits
Cities will generate 3 credits

Mines may be built on hills/mountains surrounding a city and generate +1 credit.

You may spend you credits every turn.

5 credits - Battallion
20 credits - Army
20 credits - Commander

You may also choose to play with more advanced units -

Port - May use naval units from this city - 15 credits
Flotilla (may only move in sea/coastal areas) - 1 dice - 5 credits
Armada (may only move in sea/coastal areas) - 5 dice - 20 credits
Naval Transport (may transport 5 battallions or 1 army across sea) - no dice - 10 credits

And similar with an Airport if you wish to modernise things! Or call it an aviary/engineers workshop!

At most you would include two or three upgrades to each city to further protect your empire -


Certain races/armies would gain benefits befitting their archetypes.

Dwarves - Battalion/Army movement 1 - does not slow for mountainous terrain. May build 1 mine for no charge each turn.
High Elves - Battallion/Army movement 3 - Each unit costs an extra 5 credits.
Orcs - Orc Commanders give units ability to re-roll one dice when attacking.
Wood Elves - Battallion/Army movement 3 - Does not slow for passing through forests. Each unit costs an extra 5 credits.
Undead - Movement 1 - does not slow for rivers and marshes. Must have 1 commander for every 5 Battalions/1 Army.
etc.

You can play "global conquest", "Monopolise", "Capture the capitals", or various other scenarios. Or just keep going on a massive map ad-infinitum. Very early, but I forsee this being a single page document - two if you count the army selections. I'm gonna knock out some hexagonals and some markers and see how we go.

[S W Dickson]

I forgot to mention - winning battles -

"To take a square, choose how many units will be attacking, and roll the appropriate dice versus defenders dice."

The player with any numbers higher than their opponent wins the battle. However many dice are more than the highest their opponent scored is removed from their opponents units. This can continues until a region is won, or the attackers are down to one unit and stays in the attacking square.

Commanders do not count for damage - they do not attack, they inspire their troops. They can be captured if found on their own, or are part of a losing battle. Possibly.

[S W Dickson]

Oh yeah, and easily enough scope to use as the basis for a campaign system. Attack and play a game with appropriate amount of troops. (think, 5 vs 4 could be a 500 vs 400 pt, or 1000 vs 800 etc.)

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