Re: [SG] Luring players

A randomized activation system does wonders for almost any miniatures 
game. I first ran into it in The Sword & the Flame (new edition just 
came out) years ago and I've been using it whenever my opponent will go 
for it ever since. The two main variants are giving each unit its own 
card, and allowing the player to choose where to spend each activation. 
The latter can let units be activated only once, or more frequently.

Firepower (AH) [1]  had an interesting twist on this idea. They gave 
each squad a certain number of chits, and a certain number of 
activations per chit drawn. Elite units had lots of chits, big and 
clumsy units had chits worth lots of guys. Really bad units had more 
guys than chits. This is one of the games that allowed you to freely 
reactivate your units, which made for a more realistic pace to combat 
-flurries of firing with everyone else staying low and looking around. 
the game was killed by rules that made SFB look clean and simple, then 
the grave was desecrated by keying all of the equipment on the OOBs by 
the code numbers from the equipments sheets: an M-16 was listed as C6, 
and the Mk48 grenade was the D8 [2]. That made the squad lists look like

a bingo call at best.

Firefight, by Alternative Armies, had an elegant system of actions based

on using dice as markers to represent actions. It also had a very 
involved reaction system. They allowed you to react to a reaction, much 
like chaining interrupts in MtG, and it worked as well in play. 
Firefight is optimized for closer quarters, room clearing actions. 
Chains of reaction moves and fires go off in one area, then the attacker

sets up to push into another area. I've had 40K players hopping up and 
down by the end of a demo game as the unpredictability of the sequence 
gets the adrenaline up. Since the game was backing a line of minis 
competing with 40K, they got it balanced so that your heroes with melee 
weapons are almost viable. And there are campaign rules.

Victory Games even used the concept in Panzer Command, are rare 
appearance in a traditional wargame. Your division was made up of 
 regiments, each of which activated its member battalions when its chit 
was drawn. The German command advantage appeared in the chrome of the 
system, but the fundamental concept worked very well. Panzer Command 
made for a nice study in command structures.

[1] And Close Assault by Yaquinto, but you can still find Firepower.

[2] All numbers, designators and other specifics in the preceding 
sentence were made up on the spot for rhetorical purposes.

laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:

>If we use a randomized activation system--cards, for instance, with a
>leader's option to override occasionally--that should speed things up. 
If
>we use the alternate wound fire results in SG, that should also speed
>things up a bit.  Other suggestions?
>
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