Midnight Dark #001 - Core Mechanics

I've talked about my plans and aspirations for Midnight Dark before, but ignore that stuff. It's kind of still relevant, but I'm moving forward from there.

An aspect of the original rules that never really sat right with me was the issue of command and control. This is a major feature of a lot of different miniatures wargames, especially at the strategic level of play. And I kind of touched upon it in the New Adventures section of Over the Horizon, in which players might not always have enough activations for every element to activate twice - or might even have more activations than they needed and suffer fatigue damage from pushing their forces too hard.

Whilst I liked this concept, the method within New Adventure was, I felt, too complex for most players. So one important thing I'm thinking about is importing the bonus actions mechanic from Zero Dark and Infinite Dark into Midnight Dark. Originally, I was looking at a wholesale importation with each activation rolling checks and allocating actions based on the results, but I quickly realized that this was militating against a game played with a larger number of miniatures compared to both Zero Dark and the original Horizon Wars. I really do want people to be able to field much larger armies far more comfortably in Midnight Dark.

To this end, then, I thought about introducing a popular idea from other strategic miniatures games: the command check.

The CHQ in Horizon Wars has always been a bit of a throwaway mechanic. It's important at the army building stage but, after that, it just becomes another element with some extra bells and whistles. But in Midnight Dark, we're going to make it a bit more significant, with several different CHQs to choose from - and the option to add multiple CHQs to a force.

[Incidentally, I'm saying things like "we're going to..." at this point with absolutely no guarantee that this is literally going to happen. All of this could easily change in due course.]

So at the start of a turn, I will pick one of my CHQs and make a test using the element's command rating (or some such similar thing). The twist is that I will get to choose the target number. A successful test will provide me with the number of action tokens they were testing against.

So let's say that I have a platoon CHQ (the lowest level available), with a command rating of 2. Subordinate to that CHQ, I have four other elements (again, the maximum for this CHQ), so including the Pl HQ, there are five elements. The maximum number of activations these can all have is ten (2 each, if you recall). So I have to choose a target number for the test of between 1 and 10 and roll 2d12 against this target. Let's say I pick the maximum of 10 and roll 2 and 8. I've met my target and I get ten activation tokens that I can now allocate to my five elements - two each. But if I roll 2 and 7, I've failed and I get no activation tokens for those elements!

So I have to balance the desire to activate something against the desire to activate everything.

Now, let's say, in the example above, I roll a pair of 11s. One 11 is a success, and the other is a second success. Now I've got a bonus action. I could add this as an extra activation to an element (although this will cause fatigue to that element if I've already got the maximum number of activations), or I could use it to give myself some form of bonus this turn, from a menu of possible bonuses. Rolled a pair of 12s? That'll be four successes, so I'll get all my activations, plus three bonuses.

I've already talked about different qualities (ranks) of CHQ. The loose idea is to have Pl, Coy, Bn and BG CHQs, with each having a higher command rating (probably 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively). You'll normally want to start with the highest level. They can test against the biggest numbers, after all! One of the things a CHQ can do with bonus actions is use one to let a subordinate CHQ take a command test in the same turn, providing extra opportunities to issue orders that turn. This means that a senior CHQ can take a test against a relatively low number, stack up a bunch of bonuses, issue a handful of orders then direct a subordinate CHQ to test again against a higher number because they don't need to worry about earning bonuses.

The problem is that if a CHQ fails the test or doesn't get bonuses, they don't get to activate any more CHQs!

So let's look again at an example.

A Company CHQ commands 12 elements plus 3 Platoon CHQs for a total of 16 elements. With a command rating of 3, they can roll 3 dice with a target of up to 32. But with an average result of 6.5 per dice, I aim for a more modest target of 10. To my amazement, I roll 12, 12, 10. This provides five successes! I gain ten activation tokens, buy three bonuses and then order a subordinate Pl HQ to test. This one also tests again 10, rolls 8 and 10 for one success and I get another ten activation tokens.

I can then allocate those twenty total activation tokens among the company as I like, with three bonuses applying to the whole force.

Alternatively, I could have taken only one bonus and ordered all three of my subordinate commands to test.

The second one rolls 5 and 10 (another success) which takes us up to a total of 30 activation tokens and the third one rolls 10 and 12, for another success and two bonuses!

Now I have 40 activation tokens and two bonuses. As I have only 32 elements to activate, I'm going to be taking some fatigue this turn!

***

I need to run some numbers on this idea and balance how badly having no activations is going to affect a force, but I'm liking this as a significant addition to make command elements more significant during play (obviously, if they get destroyed you're in trouble - so I'm going to need to brainstorm what happens in this eventuality - tempting as it is, I'll not be taking the Warmachine "kill the caster" approach!).

But let me know your thoughts. What kind of bonuses would you like a force to benefit from? With how big and how small a force would you like to be able to play a reasonable game?

I'll write some of these rules up in due course for mech level patrons to get to grips with, but hopefully there's enough here that all patrons can have a stab at seeing how this would affect games of Horizon Wars.