Chapter Three: Advanced Combat
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Chapter Sections:
Ranged Combat
Under the Advanced Combat rules, ranged combat becomes a little more complex.
There are a number of situations which affect the difficulty of hitting
a target with a ranged attack. These situations are given Skill Modifiers,
which are added to or subtracted from a soldier's skill when firing.
A positive Skill Modifier means the soldier is firing under advantageous
conditions, and a negative modifier means the shot is more difficult than
normal.
If a soldier wants to improve his chances at hitting a target, he can
put some extra effort into aiming. If a unit stands still and aims
for a full Movement Phase, he fires at +2 skill in the following Combat
Phase.
A target that is behind cover is harder to hit. If 1/3 of their
body is hidden, an attacker fires at -1 Skill. If 2/3 of the target
is hidden, an attacker fires at -2 skill. If the target is entirely
hidden, then he is very hard to shoot indeed. If the target is entirely
hidden, but the attacker somehow knows exactly where he is (maybe the cover
is just that small, maybe the attacker is psychic, whatever), he can try
to shoot the target through the cover. He does so at -5 to
skill, and whatever damage he does has to get through the Armor Rating
of the cover. The target takes however much damage is left over after
punching through the cover.
A target that is especially big or immobile is easier to hit.
If a target is the size of a Light Vehicle or larger, or if it has not
moved for a turn or more, it is targetted at +1 to Skill. If it is
both big and stationary (like a mountain or a building), soldiers attacking
it get both bonuses, for +2 to skill. However, if an object is smaller
than your average Blok, and for every 6" it moved on its last turn, soldiers
attacking it take a -1 penalty to Skill. For instance, a bomb under
the wing of a jet zipping along at 20" a turn is targetted at -4.
Sometimes your only chance to hit an enemy is by pulling off a snap
shot when he's running from one piece of cover to the next. This
is called Opportunity Fire.
If a soldier did not make any attacks on the Attack Phase of his previous
turn, he can do so on his opponent's Movement Phase, when an enemy soldier
moves into his field of fire. He fires at -2 to skill, and has no
chance to aim.
When you miss with some kinds of ranged weapons, you just feel disappointed
for a second and then move on to the next attack. With other weapons,
you'll want to know where they landed. Usually this will be because
you've thrown a hand weapon and you want to pick up again, or because you
launched an explosive and you want to see what got blown up. When
you want to find out where your attack landed, use the NearMiss rules.
NearMiss Rules
Any time you fail a ToHit Roll when you're throwing or launching something,
figure out exactly how much you missed your ToHit Roll by. This is
your MissedBy number. If you were using a launcher of some kind (a
cannon, bazooka, catapult, golf clubs, etc.), then you missed the target
by up to (MissedBy x 2) inches. Your opponent chooses a location
within that many inches of the target, within the firing arc of the launcher
(45 degrees to either side of whatever direction the launcher is pointing),
within the maximum range of the launcher, and at least three inches away
from the launcher (a missile launcher cannot hit itself, for instance),
and that's where the launched object lands. If you are throwing an
object, then the MissedBy number is the maximum number of inches you missed
by. Your opponent chooses a location within that many inches of the
target and within the maximum range of your throw. He is not constrained
by firing arcs, and it is perfectly legal for a SpaceMan to hit himself
with something he throws.
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Close Combat
There are a couple of situations that affect the difficulty of close combat
as well. As in ranged combat, close combat weapons can be used in
Opportunity Fire, and the same bonuses and penalties for size and speed
apply. There's no point in standing around aiming close combat weapons,
and cover doesn't make much difference.
The big difference between ranged combat and close combat is that every
turn two minifigs are locked in combat, both of them get to try
to whack the arms, legs, heads, and torsos off of each other. Every
time one minifig attacks another with a close combat weapon, if the other
one survives and has a close combat weapon of his own, he has the chance
to counterattack. A minifig with two close combat weapons can attack
with both of them in a single turn - if his target also has a second close
combat weapon, he gets a second counterattack. Even if the target
minifig has more close combat weapons than the attacking minifig, he only
gets as many counterattacks as the number of times he is attacked.
If a minifig has no weapons, he can use his fists as a single close combat
weapon (not as two seperate weapons). If he has any weapons in his
hands, he can't use his fists as close combat weapons.
If there's a really tough guy on the field who's causing you trouble,
you can send a bunch of guys to gang up on him. It's just like the
old days on the playground. He gets a seperate set of counterattacks
against each attacker, but every successive attacker incurs a cumulative
-2 penalty to his Skill and Armor rolls. For instance, a SpaceMan
who gets dogpiled by three enemy SpaceMen would defend with his regular
AR and counterattack at unmodified Skill against the first, at -2 against
the second, and (if he survives that long) -4 against the third.
No more than four units can gang up on any single enemy unit at a time,
otherwise it gets so crowded they start hacking off each others' limbs
by accident.
If a trooper tries to break out of close combat, he does so during his
Movement Phase. His opponent gets one free attack on him with one
weapon, and he gets no counterattack. If he has multiple opponents,
they each get one free attack.
Some special units have a Close Combat Bonus. This bonus applies
only when the unit is engaged in close combat. The bonus is added
to their Skill Roll every time they attack with a close combat weapon,
and if they hit, the bonus is also added to their Damage Roll.
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More Ways to Die
We've given you a whole slew of weapons and toys for your little SpaceMen
to blow each other to pieces with, and yet they still beg for more ways
to kill each other. You can't fault their dedication. So, besides
the basic Attack Roll / Damage Roll sequence, there are a couple of other
ways for the eager general to get his soldiers killed, if he's willing
to put up with a few extra rules.
Cumulative Damage
First of all, if you have a bunch of units firing ranged attacks on
a single unit, you can decide to do Cumulative Damage. Roll all the
units' attacks, and for however many of them hit, add the damage together
and roll it all at once. In certain situations you might opt not
to do Cumulative Damage, or to break it up into smaller sets of Cumulative
Damage. For instance, imagine you have nine troopers who can fire
on a single heavily armored enemy SpaceMan. You figure three will
be enough to take him down, leaving the other six available to shoot other
targets. You roll the three troopers' attacks, and two of them hit,
doing enough damage to obliterate the SpaceMan. Unfortunately, the
SpaceMan rolled an Automatic Success on his Armor Roll, so he laughs it
off. You then decide to use three of the six remaining troopers in
another attempt. This time you succeed, and the SpaceMan is toast.
You now have three troopers left to attack other targets.
Explosions
Units may be caught in the blast of an explosion to which they are
standing too close. Any weapon with damage measured in d10's does
Explosion damage, and a number of rules have to be taken into account.
The first and most important is the AreaEffect rule. When an
explosion goes off, it does full damage to everything within 2", damage
minus 1d10 to everything within the next two inches, damage minus 2d10 to everything within the next
two inches, and so on until there are no more d10's. For example,
a SpaceMan standing five inches away when a MkIII Grenade goes off takes 3d10+3-2d10 or 1d10+3
damage. His friend standing one inch from the grenade takes the full
3d10+3 damage.
Anything that is not nailed down when an explosion hits, regardless
of whether or not it survives the explosion, will be knocked back 1" for
every d10 of damage it takes. Things that are nailed down, like trees and walls, will
only be knocked back if they do not survive the explosion damage.
If a SpaceMan takes cover behind a wall of sandbags or a big truck
or some other large object, he can avoid taking damage from the explosion.
However, if the large object is destroyed, or it is knocked back far enough that it
hits the SpaceMan, he will take the explosion damage minus the armor rating
of the cover object.
For instance: imagine a SpaceMan is standing 2" away from a 1d10
brik wall. On the other side of the wall, a 3d10+3 explosion goes
off. The wall is an inch away, so it takes full damage. The explosion rolls for Damage and the
wall rolls its Armor; the explosion's roll is higher. The wall is
destroyed and knocked back 3", smacking into the SpaceMan on the other side. (If the wall had
survived, he would have been fine.) The SpaceMan is 3" away from
the explosion, so he takes 2d10+3 damage, minus the 1d10 armor of the wall, for a total of 1d10+3.
Miraculously, the explosion rolls a 2 on its 1d10, doing only 5 points
total damage. The SpaceMan is knocked back 1" but survives with only a few bruises and
scrapes. It might take him a little while to get out from under the
wall, however.
Getting Smacked Around and Getting Trapped
Oftentimes, a soldier will be betrayed by his environment. This
may involve falling from great heights, having heavy objects dropped on
him from great heights, having heavy objects smack into him at high speed,
having heavy objects tied to them and dropped in the ocean, finding himself
trapped at the bottom of a well, etc. Things like this are covered
in the Moving Around and Brik
Physix sections of this chapter.
Bleeding
We didn't really write any rules for dismembering your opponents, but
if you decide a minifig has lost a limb for some reason, he's going to
lose a lot of blood. He takes 1d6 damage per turn until he gets some
kind of first aid and bandaging, and he is at -2 Skill until he can spend
some serious down-time in a hospital.
Fire!
We always wanted to have things catch on fire during our battles, but
it took us a long time to figure out how to signify fire with plastic bricks.
Then we had a revelation, and in hindsight it seems obvious: Just
get a bunch of and yellow brix and pile them up around whatever is on fire.
Fire comes in three burn levels: 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6. For a 2d6 fire,
pile some white brix along with the yellow, and for a 3d6 fire, put some
red brix in too. This way you'll have no problem telling how hot
a fire is. If an object is on fire, the burn level of the fire that
afflicts it is it OnFire rating. Anyone or anything that is on fire
takes Fire Damage equal to its OnFire rating (i.e. a 2d6 fire would do
2d6 of Fire Damage to its victim), at the beginning of every Movement Phase.
If this damage is enough to destroy it, it is 'burned down' (if it is something
like a tree or a grass hut) or 'burned to death' (if it is something like
a SpaceMan or a SpaceMonkey). Any die that comes up a one on this
damage roll means that the fire died down a little (it loses 1d6 from its
rating for every die that comes up one). If the burning object spends
a turn rolling around in the dirt or getting sprayed with a fire extinguisher,
the fire rating goes down by 1d6. If the burning object jumps in
a lake or is in airless space or otherwise submerges itself in some liquid
(besides molten lava of course), the fire goes out. Anytime one object
touches or is touched by a second object that is on fire, roll the second
object's OnFire rating. For every die that comes up six, the first
object gains 1d6 of OnFire rating. (The first object's OnFire rating
cannot be raised higher than the second object's.) Some things do
not burn, like rocks or concrete or oceans. We didn't put in any
flamethrowers or firebombs in the Arsenal because while fire is a lot of
fun once in a while, all those extra die rolls get to be a pain to deal
with on any kind of a regular basis. If you really want these kinds
of weapons, make them up yourself.
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Moving Around
Not all battles are fought on enormous asphalt plains. In fact, SpaceMen
very rarely have any interest in conquering bare asphalt plains.
This is because there are no trees, animals, or innocent bystanders to
take stray bullets and get caught in explosions. As such, they often
find themselves dealing with rough terrain. Minifigs' and vehicles'
movement rates are modified depending on the type of terrain they're traversing.
- Minifigs moving uphill take a -1" movement penalty. Moving up a steep
grade (45 degrees or greater) gives a -2" penalty. Moving downhill
gives a +1" bonus to movement, and moving down a steep grade gives +2"
to movement. These modifiers are doubled for vehicles.
- Moving in, into, or out of water (or mud, or quicksand, or chocolate pudding)
is done at half speed. If the water is over his head, then all movement
penalties due to heavy equipment are doubled, after halving the
Movement Rate. For instance, imagine a SpaceMan with a 5" Movement
Rate and a Death Gun (which gives him a -2" Movement Penalty) who falls
into a lake. To try and get out of the lake, he can travel at half
his Movement Rate (half of five inches is two and a half inches), minus
twice the penalty for carrying the Death Gun (twice two inches is four
inches). That comes out to less than zero (two and a half minus four
inches), so that Spaceman won't be able to move unless he drops his Death
Gun. Fortunately, he will not drown, because his SpaceSuit supports
him in any hostile environment.
- Minifigs can jump 1" high and 2" away. This is part of normal movement,
and costs just as much as running or walking the same distance.
- Minifigs can hop onto or over any obstacle two brix high or less at no
penalty.. Obstacles two to five brix tall must be climbed over, which
costs 2" of movement. Objects more than five brix tall are impassible.
Walk around them.
- Vehicles can drive over obstacles up to 1 brik high at no penalty.
Driving over an obstacle up to 2 brix high is done at half-movement.
Driving into an obstacle more than two brix tall is a collision.
- Vertical climbing of ropes, ladders, trees, etc. is done at half speed.
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Non-Combat Action
Sometimes, to further his Civilization's cause, a SpaceMan is forced to
take some action besides moving or attacking. This should generally
be avoided, because moving and attacking are very dear to the SpaceMen's
hearts. The morale of early generations of SpaceMen improved greatly
as geneticists eliminated their need for food, sleep, and companionship,
freeing up more time for these two activities. Any actions that takes
time away from moving and attacking make SpaceMen unhappy and cause them
to question their commanders' competence.
However, the needs of victory often take precedence over the concerns
of morale, and SpaceMen must sometimes act against their better instincts
and do somthing other than move and attack. This type of action is
called a Non-Combat Action, and it takes place during the Movement Phase
of the acting soldier's turn. Almost anything that a normal person
could do, a SpaceMan could do. Usually the SpaceMan can perform a
Non-Combat Action without any trouble. If for some reason you want
to try something that seems especially difficult, you and your opponent
will have to decide on a difficulty rating for it (on a case-by-case basis)
and then roll a Skill Roll against it.
There are all kinds of Non-Combat Actions. Civilians go around
holding conversations and attending to their dreary jobs. SpaceSlaves
will traipse around picking up the debris of battle. Medix will attend
to the vivisection of the dying. Soldiers will try to disarm the
MkIII Explosives that inevitably get glommed onto their heads.
Most Non-Combat Actions cost 1" of movement. That is to say,
taking that action took a little bit of time, and now the soldier has a
little less time to spend on moving around. Things like pulling a
lever, opening a door, standing up or sitting down, and picking up or setting
it down objects fall into this category. Other actions may take a
whole movement phase, such as operating a computer, taking off a pair of
pants, or chewing out a soldier when you bust him back down to private.
If the action is something that a soldier could still do at a dead run,
then it doesn't slow him down any. Actions like this include shouting
orders, dropping an object already in hand, sneezing, slapping yourself
about the face, etc.
SpaceMen driving vehicles don't usually take a lot of Non-Combat Actions,
because they're busy driving vehicles. In the unlikely event that
a driver finds himself in the position to take a Non-Combat Action while
driving, the rules are a little different. Any action that would
normally take a -1" movement penalty now takes a 45 degree penalty from
the vehicle's TurnRate. Any action that takes a whole turn now prevents
the vehicle from turning entirely (the driver is steering with his knees).
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Brik Physix
Brik Physix is where BrikWars really comes into its own. Up till
here, there's not a lot to distinguish this game from any of a million
other wargames out there. Why bother wasting your time learning a
whole new wargame just because it uses plastik brix instead of lead miniatures?
You probably fall into one of these groups:
- You already have a lot of plastic brix. Getting a comparable amount
of lead miniatures would cost a lot of money, or at least take some work.
You are too lazy for that kind of thing.
- This rulebook is free. Most wargaming rulebooks are not.
You are stingy and cheap.
- You can download this rulebook from the Internet. For other wargames,
you have to go to the store and buy them. You are either too lazy
to drive or you don't want to attract the attention of the dorks who hang
out in the stores that sell wargames. You are snooty and intolerant.
- You have no idea what you're doing here. You got here by mistyping
"http://www.harvard.edu/admissions/" very, very badly. You are apparently
an imbecile.
- You really, really like your plastik brix and have set out to read every
page on the Internet that has anything remotely to do with them.
You are focused and diligent, as well as extraordinarily good-looking.
Your mental acuity astounds your friends and enemies alike.
If you fall into not just one, but all of these groups, then it sounds
like we have a lot in common. We should do lunch sometime.
Wargaming is fun, and building with plastic brix is fun. What
if you could do both at the same time? Now you can! There's
no reason the building has to stop when the fighting begins. The
nature of plastik brix offers the enterprising commander to modify the
terrain in far more constructive ways than just blasting huge craters in
it and littering it with smoking debris. SpaceSlaves can be sent
out to collect loose Blox and pile them into walls for fortification or
stairs for overcoming obstacles. Mechanix can scavenge the debris
from crashed vehicles to build "like-new" vehicles. Medix can gather
up the scattered body parts of their deceased comrades and sew up some
temporary vivisect zombies. What other wargame offers that kind of
interactivity? Here are the rules that tell you how to move those
Brix into position.
Determining Weight
To know what you can do with an object, first you have to know how
heavy it is. A Blok (a two-by-four Brik) has a weight of five.
Minifigs weigh as much as a Blok (five). Hand tools and weapons have
no appreciable weight. Larger objects weigh as much as their Armor
Value. If a larger object has no defined Armor Value, figure out
about how many Blox big it is, and multiply that number by five.
If the object is "nailed down," like a tree, a wall, or a mountain, you
have to knock it down before it can be moved.
Moving Objects Around
A minifig can pick up or put down any object up to his own weight for
a -1" movement penalty. An object up to twice his weight will cost
-2". While carrying any object his own weight or greater, the minifig
has a -1" movement penalty. Larger objects have to be shoved or dragged
around. An object up to four times the minifig's weight can be moved
in this manner at one-quarter speed, or one-half speed if it has wheels.
If a bunch of minifigs work together, they can combine their carrying strength.
Suppose that you want to move a big boulder weighing eight Blox.
One SpaceMan would have no way to move it, it is too heavy. Two SpaceMen
working together could roll it around at one quarter speed. Four
SpaceMen could pick it up and carry it at -1" per turn. If there's
enough room for eight SpaceMen to get a grip on it, they could carry it
around at full speed.
A vehicle can tow or push an object up to half of its own weight (or
a quarter of its own weight if the towed object has no wheels) at no penalty.
It can tow up to its own weight (half its weight for unwheeled objects)
at half speed. Like minifigs, vehicles can "team up" to tow especially
heavy objects. Remember that you can't just go around crashing your
vehicle into things with impunity - if you try to shove an object with
your vehicle and the object's weight is higher than the vehicle's armor,
the vehicle takes damage. If you try to tow an object, roll the object's
weight against the strength of the tow cable (rope is 1d6+3, cable is 2d6+3,
steel chains are 3d6+3) to see if the cable snaps.
Throwing Objects
A minifig can throw objects it is carrying. The range of a thrown
object is five inches, plus the minifig's Skill, minus the object's movement
penalty. For example, imagine a minifig trying to throw a big Blok.
Because the Blok weighs as much as the SpaceMan, it has a -1" MovePenalty.
The range of the object is five inches, plus the SpaceMan's Skill of 1d6,
minus the 1" penalty of the Blok, or 1d6+4" total. If you want to
throw a Close Combat weapon, the throw has the same Usage Rating as the
weapon, and does the same damage if it hits. Most other thrown objects'
Usage Rating will be three, plus the object's Movement Penalty. These
objects will do 1d6-3 damage, plus the weight of the object. If any
ranged combat modifiers apply, add them to the Usage Rating. If a
minifig misses his throw, use the NearMiss rules
to see where it lands.
Dropping Objects
If an object is too big to throw, then you might try dropping it from
a great height to get similar results. Rolling boulders off high
cliffs or driving cars off the roofs of parking garages onto enemy encampments
is sure to fill your SpaceMen with glee. A drop's height is measured
in stories (one story is equal to the height of six Brix). For the
most part, a dropped object falls straight down, but you can aim it a little
bit. For every story that it drops, the object can move one inch
horizontally. Whatever it hits, the object does as much damage as
its weight, times the number of full stories that it dropped. If
the object has no significant weight, it does as much damage as if it had
been thrown. The object itself takes as much damage as whatever it
hits.
Collisions
The final way to move objects is by smashing into them. Whether
this involves a SpaceMan tackling another SpaceMan off of his SkateBoard,
a heavy tank smashing down the doors of a Base, or a supersonic jet flying
into the side of a mountain, collisions are the spice of life. When
one object collides with another object, the speed and mass of both objects
must be taken into account. First, you have to figure out the CollisionSpeed,
or how fast the two objects were going relative to each other. Find
out how fast each object was going on their most recent Movement Phase.
(the colliding object is usually considered to be going at full speed,
even the collision occurs within the first couple inches of its movement.)
If the objects were travelling in about the same direction, the CollisionSpeed
will be the difference between the two objects' speeds. If they were
travelling at right angles, the faster object's speed will be the CollisionSpeed.
If they were travelling straight at each other, add their two speeds together.
If one object is stationary, only the speed of the moving object need be
considered. If both objects are stationary, it would be difficult
for them to have crashed into each other in the first place.
Once you have determined the CollisionSpeed, divide it by five inches.
(If the two objects collide at a speed of less than 5" per turn, they just
bump each other without doing any damage.) This number is the Damage
Multiplier; higher-velocity collisions do more damage. Each object
in the collision does its own Armor Value in damage, times the Damage Multiplier;
heavier objects also do more damage. Also, for every die of damage
an object takes (d6's or d10's), it gets knocked back one inch, regardless
of whether it survives the damage (unless it is "nailed down," in which
case it only gets knocked back if it is destroyed).
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