Medium Luck Combat System

I designed an alternate combat system that could be used on any A&A map. The primary goal is to provide an intermediate amount of luck – more luck than low luck (where you are guaranteed a hit for every 6 pips of strength), but less luck than full dice (where you can roll a large fistful of dice and hit absolutely nothing). I also wanted to properly reward combined arms; players who attack with a well-balanced mix of infantry, artillery, tanks, and planes should get better results than players who attack with a similarly-priced stack of nothing but tanks.

At the start of combat, players assign each of their units to a particular color. Players then roll dice based on how many units they have in each color. You typically need 3 units to receive 1 die, but you always round up. This means that if you have 1, 2, or 3 tanks in the red column, you’ll roll 1 red die. If you have 4, 5, or 6 tanks in the red column, you’ll roll 2 red dice. If you have 7, 8, or 9 tanks in the red column, you’ll roll 3 red dice, and so on up to a maximum of 6 dice per color per player per round of combat.

Players then compare the dice they rolled in each color, matching up high dice to high dice as in RISK. For example, if I rolled [5, 4, 3] and you rolled [6, 3, 2], then we would match up your 6 against my 5, your 3 against my 4, and your 2 against my 3. Each pairing that you win causes your opponent to take one casualty. In this example, I would take one hit (because your 6 beats my 5), and you would take two hits (because my 4 beats your 3, and my 3 beats your 2).

If two dice are tied, then both sides take a casualty. If I have extra dice, then they automatically beat your missing dice. For example, suppose I roll [6, 3, 2] and you roll [6]. Our 6’s tie each other, so we each take one hit. Then, my 3 and my 2 are unopposed, so they both hit you. I take a total of 1 casualty, and you take a total of 3 casualties.

Your opponent can generally choose which unit to take as the casualty within the guidelines set by the current color. This is referred to as “victim’s choice” because the player who is losing the unit (the victim) gets to choose which unit is lost. The only exception is that the player who scores a hit with a red die is entitled to choose which unit will be killed by that die. This is referred to as “winner’s choice” because the player who won the red die roll gets to choose which unit is lost.

Some colors allow a unit to be assigned to boost a particular type of die. This means that the die’s value is increased by 1. Each die can only receive each kind of boost once per round. Most dice can only receive one type of boost, so the maximum possible value on those dice is a 7. White dice can receive a boost from artillery and another boost from airplanes, so the maximum possible value on a white die is an 8. If you have enough dice and enough boosting units, you can boost multiple dice once each. For example, a stack with 9 tanks and 3 mech. infantry would roll 3 red dice, each of which would be boosted by +1. If you roll [6, 5, 4] on your red dice, then you would treat them as showing [7, 6, 5] instead. You assign boosts to your dice after seeing everyone’s dice rolls in that color. If both sides have a boost in a color, the attacker must assign boosts first.

The same unit cannot be used to both boost a die and roll a die – you must assign each unit to exactly one function at the start of a battle, and then those units stay put and keep performing that function all throughout the entire battle. You may never move units between colors in the middle of a battle, not even between rounds of that battle. If you have extra boosts that you cannot use, those boosts are simply wasted. For example, with 3 artillery and 1 infantry, you would roll 1 white die and then boost it by +1. The extra 2 artillery don’t accomplish anything, although they may still be taken as casualties.

Each color is resolved in order, from the top of the chart to the bottom of the chart. Attackers and defenders roll simultaneously within each color, but a unit that is killed by an earlier color is not available to contribute its strength to a later color. For example, a bomber killed during the yellow dice roll does not count toward your “1 die per 3 bombers” in the black dice roll.

All rounding takes place within the same type of unit, not across multiple units types. For example, if you have 1 battleship and 2 bombers in the black die row, you would roll 2 black dice: one for your battleships (rounded up), and one for your bombers (rounded up). You would not combine 1 battleship + 2 bombers to get 3 units.

Chessex and many local gaming stores will sell you a block of 12 dice of the same color for about $4, so you can buy a custom set of all 6 colors at a reasonable price, but you could also play without any particular color; just roll whatever dice you have for the “yellow” category, then re-roll those same dice for the “black” category, and so on. The colors are just to enhance the theme and make it easier to remember what part of the combat round you’re in.

I would love to get your feedback! Let me know what you think. :)

@general-6-stars Hello there!

So, thematically, the idea of planes boosting destroyers is that they’re helping you hunt for submarines – the planes fly over the region and look for periscopes, and then when they find one, they radio the location to the destroyers, which then sail over and drop their depth charges. A fighter plane by itself can’t really do much to hurt a fleet of submarines, but your fighters increase the effectiveness of your destroyers.

Mechanically, the way that works is that if you have, e.g., 4 destroyers hunting for subs, then you roll 2 green dice. If you have 4 destroyers and 1 fighter hunting for subs, you roll 2 green dice and increase one of those dice by +1. If you have 4 destroyers and 2 fighters hunting for subs, you roll 2 green dice and increase both of them by +1. The examples below show how that plays out if you happen to roll a 5 and a 3 on your green dice.

• With 4 DD, 0 ftr: [5, 3] --> [5, 3]
• With 4 DD, 1 ftr: [5, 3] --> [6, 3]
• With 4 DD, 2 ftr: [5, 3] --> [6, 4].

You could play with d12’s instead of d6’s if you want to, but the effect would be that boosting becomes less important relative to just having lots of the main units for each color. That would tend to weaken cruisers, AAA guns, mech. inf., and artillery relative to the other pieces. It would also make it somewhat harder to hunt down submarines.

@general-6-stars Sounds like you’ve got a few different “modes” for your submarines, which is cool, but yeah, that’s not what’s going on here in this system. This system assumes submarines are always at about the same depth and treats all submarines alike.

Thanks for testing; I’ll be curious to see what you discover!

@general-6-stars I’m really glad you tested this out, because it gives me a chance to explain more carefully what I intended!

Dice should only be compared within each color, not between colors.

So for the land battle, attacker has 3 fighters, which could roll 1 yellow die – but the defender doesn’t have any planes, and yellow dice can only hit planes, so there’s no point in rolling the yellow die. Instead, it would be better to assign the planes to boost the attacking infantry.

Attacker has 3 tanks, so rolls 1 red die, and boosts it by +1 because of the mech. infantry. You had the attacker rolling a 6, so the attacker is showing a 6 + 1 = 7 on his red die. The defender also rolled a 6, but has nothing to boost it with. The attacker’s 7 beats the defender’s 6, so the attacker gets to inflict one casualty on the defender, and the attacker gets to choose who dies. In this case I would suggest choosing the artillery, since the artillery has not fired yet and the artillery is more immediately useful than the second defending tank.

Next up is white dice. As you correctly figured out, the attacker rolls 2 white dice and boosts each of them by +1 for the supporting artillery. The attacker can also boost each die +1 for the supporting fighters. With both artillery support and air support, the white dice each get +2. You rolled a 2 and a 4, so that becomes a 4 and a 6.

The defender also rolls 2 white dice, only one of which gets boosted (because the other artillery got killed by the attacking tank). The boost is only +1, because the defender only has artillery support, not air support. Defender rolls a 2 and a 4. The defender can choose which die to boost, but it doesn’t really matter; you get the same results either way. Let’s say they boost the 4, so defenders’ rolls are a 2 and a 5.

The attacker’s 6 beats the defender’s 5, and the attacker’s 4 beats the defender’s 2. The defender has to take two casualties. They can choose which casualties to take. I’d suggest taking 1 infantry and 1 tank, because taking 2 infantry would cost the defender a white die in the next round of combat, since the defender would then only have 3 infantry left.

So, total casualties from the first round are zero for the attacker, and 1 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk for the defender. The tanks and planes didn’t roll very many dice directly, but because the attacker had better support from stuff like tanks and planes, they were able to boost their dice to high numbers, which means that the attacker got much better results in the end.

@vodot Great questions, as always. And yeah, like you said, it’s a tough sell – but I don’t think it’s that much crazier than BBR combat rules. When you add up the rules for submarines’ special abilities, for the way they get cancelled by destroyers, the various bonuses you get for having different types of pieces together, e.g., fighters + tac, or tac + tank, some of the stuff people are playing with already is pretty complicated. This system has kind of a minimum amount of crunchiness that you have to be prepared to swallow or you can’t play it at all, but once you digest that, there aren’t a ton of extra rules.

1. I think it probably makes sense for the attacker to dispose all their forces first, all at once, followed by the defender.

2. I’d be very open to the idea of a ‘reserve’ pool. You can place units in reserve at the start of battle instead of putting them in one of the color rows. You can do this regardless of whether you’re over the six-die limit or not. At the start of each round of combat other than round 1, you can move as many units as you like from reserves to one or more particular color(s). Once they’re deployed to a color, they stay there for the rest of the battle or until they’re dead. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

3. My design goal in terms of the relative power of each band is that the relative power will be almost 100% situational. If you’re attacking with a small group of infantry and a large stack of bombers, then the yellow band becomes much more important for the defenders, because air power can sweep your bombers off the field. On the other hand, if you’re engaging at sea with mostly battleships and destroyers, then the yellow band is not very important and you might struggle to find a use for your fighters. The red band is normally very important in land combat because it’s the only band that allows you to eliminate units of your choice, so you can pick off enemy tanks or planes, which simulates a blitzkrieg that gets behind enemy lines and disrupts HQ areas. However, if you’re fighting a stack of 20 infantry with no heavy weaponry, then choosing your casualties is much less important – although it’s still marginally useful to have some tank support, because the red casualties get eliminated before the white dice can fire, and because your first tank gets a whole die to itself, whereas you might need 3 more infantry to get an additional white die, or you might be capped on white dice if your infantry stack is large enough.

4. The defender gets an extra white die in every combat, which matters a lot in small battles. The attacker also has to dispose their forces first, which can create a tactical advantage for the defender. In very large battles like Kursk, Stalingrad, Normandy, Midway, etc., it’s difficult to say that there was a defender – both sides historically launched dozens of attacks and counterattacks over the course of what would be considered “one battle” in A&A game terms. One effect that bothers me is that the defender in a closely contested front will typically have no air support at all – you can’t land fighters in a newly conquered territory, and under my system an AAA gun is only useful to boost the power of fighters. One way to handle this is to allow fighters to intercept from an air base to any neighboring battle, whether that battle involves an amphibious assault or not. Another is to say that you can land, say, 2 planes in a newly conquered territory, representing your first couple of rough airfields that your engineers throw together there.

@general-6-stars It’s mostly a matter of perspective. If you’re used to playing BBR or G36 or G40, then of course they’ll seem natural to you.

If you’re not used to those games, then learning that each AA gun rolls up to 3 dice, but only in the first round of combat, and only up to the total number of attacking planes, and they can only hit planes, whereas strategic bombers roll 2 dice that hit at 2, but only in the first round of combat, and they can hit anything, and tactical bombers attack at a 3 unless they’re paired with a fighter or tank, in which case they attack at a 4, but they always defend at 3, even if they’re paired up, whereas fighters always attack at 3 and defend at 4…is a mouthful and a lot to keep track of.

It’s not obvious to me that this is easier than putting your pieces in a colored band and then rolling 1 die for every 3 pieces in that band. It’s just that the BBR rules are more familiar.