BOOK ONE: SKIRMISH Chapter One: The BrikWars Basic Guide --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.1 The Grand Overview ---------------------- Regardless of the size and scope of the battle you're staging, every BrikWars game follows the same basic steps. Pre-Game Step 1 - You and your opponent need to clear off a table or suitable flat surface on which to play the game. Ping-pong tables or large sheets of plywood make good playing surfaces. For particularly huge battles you'll need to clear up some floor space. Step 2 - Next you have to set up some sort of terrain for the game to be played on. This can range from fancy modeled trees and mountains, to a couple of PBB trees and a couple of stacks of books for hills. You can build a huge city out of plastic bricks if you like. Of course, don't expect us to give you any respect unless you surround your city with forests, mountains, gorges, seaports, launchpads, and of course scattered villages with quaint little PBB coffeeshops. Step 3 - Now it's time to amass armies. Each team assembles as many soldiers, weapons, vehicles, emplacements, and bases as is appropriate to the battle. Army size may be determined by Construction Point limits, by the size of the battlefield, by scenario constraints, or by ego. Step 4 - Finally, you have to place your troops and equipment. You can do this in any way that seems reasonable, as long as each side's units' initial placement is out of its enemies' weapon ranges. Once all the players are satisfied with each other's setups, the battle can begin. (Sometimes the battle you're staging will require you to do these things a little differently. For instance, if one player has a base and the other player is assaulting it, the first player will obviously place his troops in the general area of the base, and the other player will put his troops in the surrounding countryside. If there is some kind of ambush situation, troops might start out in each other's weapon ranges. If one side has the advantage of surprise, they will get the first turn. If one side has superior advance intelligence, the other side has to set up its troops first. Most of the time these changes will be pretty obvious, just use your head.) 1.2 Game Cycle -------------- Players alternate taking turns for the duration of the game (as you would expect). The game ends when all but one team or group of allied teams has been defeated (either having been killed or having surrendered), or when it's time to put the PBB's away because it's three in the morning and you need to use the table because you can't really delay dinner any longer. During a player's turn, he chooses a unit, moves it wherever he likes (within the limits of the unit's Movement Rating), and makes whatever attacks he wishes (most units can only make one attack per turn). To resolve attacks, check the rules in the Basic Combat section later in this chapter. A player repeats this process for every unit he controls, and then his turn is over. Optional Rule: Phases --------------------- Wargaming purists may choose to divide turns into strict Movement phases and Combat phases. This isn't really recommended, since it can get to be a kind of a pain. Movement - The player whose turn it is moves all his troops and vehicles their allotted distances. Non-combat actions, such as operating computers, eating pizzas, and mailing letters are also handled during the Movement phase. Except for bomb drops by Flyers and Opportunity Fire, no attacks are made during this phase. Combat - Next, all the troops and vehicles that want to fire their weapons may do so, checking to make sure their target is in range. Optional Rule: Simultaneous Action ---------------------------------- Other wargaming purists may choose to have everyone take their turn at the same time. Every player rolls a die; whoever rolls highest goes first. Each player handles the movement and attacks for one unit under his control, and then the next player handles the moves and attacks for one unit under his control, and so on, until all players have moved all the units they wish to move (no unit may move more than once in a given round). This can become confusing in large battles, as players forget which pieces have moved and which have not. If players are really dedicated, they can choose to play with both Phases and Simultaneous Action, each taking turns moving one unit at a time, and then each taking turns handling the attacks for one unit at a time. This becomes exponentially more tedious as the battles get larger. 1.3 The Trooper --------------- The Trooper is a grunt, the generic infantry unit. Depending on the setting, Troopers might be islanders with spears, sailors with cutlasses, medieval swordsmen, gunslinging cowboys, spacemen with laser rifles, Indian braves, members of the local S.W.A.T. team, army riflemen, elven archers, etc. - the list is endless. The Trooper has been fully combat-trained, and is proficient in the use of all weapons appropriate to his culture (i.e., a medieval knight would have no problem using a halberd, but wouldn't be able to use a semiautomatic rifle for much except as an unwieldy bludgeoning weapon). The Trooper ----------- Move: 5" Armor: 5 Skill: 1d6 Cost: 5 CP The system we use for the description of units is simple enough for even Timmy to comprehend. First of all, we give the name of the model, in this case "The Trooper." The "Move" statistic refers to how far this unit can move during a given turn, in this case five inches. (If you don't have a tape measure, an inch is about three dots, so five inches is about fifteen dots.) The unit will be slowed down if he is carrying heavy equipment (any item with a MovePenalty rating), or by certain kinds of actions (covered in later chapters). The "Armor" statistic, or "AV" for Armor Value, tells how much damage a unit can take in one turn. In this case, the Trooper's AV is 5. Some units have a variable AV (like 2d6+2), and rolls using this AV are called Armor Rolls. The "Skill" rating determines how strong and skilled a unit is. A unit must make a Skill Roll whenever he fires a weapon or attempts certain actions (covered in later chapters). In this case, the Trooper rolls 1d6. The final rating, "Cost", refers to the point cost for one Trooper. In this case, the Trooper costs five Construction Points or CP. The cost of one Trooper does not include the cost of his weapons and equipment, which are covered in Chapter Two: The Fabulous Troopers' Arsenal. Optional Rule: Point Budgeting ------------------------------ CP costs have been included for every type of troop, vehicle, weapon, and building, depending on the item's general usefulness in battle. You are in no way obligated to pay any attention to any of these point costs. There are three ways to deal with CPs: 1. Ignore CPs Completely (recommended in most cases) Ignoring CPs will save you a crazy amount of time and trouble, especially as your battles get larger. Seriously, if you can possibly avoid having to tally points, do it - it will save you all kinds of headache. The most important reason is that if you spend too much time thinking about maximizing your numbers rather than thinking about building the coolest military force, you'll end up with a boring and generic army every time, guaranteed. Every player puts together as big an army as he wants to field, limited only by how much effort he wants to put into constructing buildings and vehicles. If there are only two sides in the battle, then you're probably going to want the armies to be of nearly equal strength; your best guess is probably good enough when you try to even them out, no need to whip out the calculators. If there are more than two sides, then it's perfectly all right if no two armies are the same strength, as long as no one army or alliance obviously has more power than all others combined. 2. CPs as an Afterthought (second best) If you are determined to field perfectly matched armies, have every side assemble however many forces they want, until everybody's got about the same amount of military strength (by your best guess). Wait until this point before you let anybody even think about CP costs (We mean it - if somebody starts talking about their budget before they're done building, you are required by the rules to smack them upside the head with the handiest nearby blunt object). Once everyone's finished, have them each add up the total cost of their army. Whichever total is the highest becomes the new point limit, and the players whose totals are below that limit must add units and equipment to their armies until they reach the point total. 3. Specific Pre-Set CP Limits (avoid if possible) In some situations, such as tournaments or BrikWars parties, players may be asked to assemble their armies at home and then transport them to wherever the battle is being held. In situations like this, the only way to assure evenly matched armies is to set a specific CP limit beforehand. Optional Rule: Limited Point Budgeting -------------------------------------- Another way to avoid wasting time on point budgeting is as follows: put all your minifigs, animals, weapons, and equipment in a big pile. Players then take turns picking one item from the pile (roll dice to see who goes first). When everyone agrees that they have as many items as they want, toss whatever items may be left in the piles back into the containers. Players then start building an army out of the items they have chosen. If you put a weapon in a minifig's hand, he becomes a Trooper, a tool makes him a Mechanik, a suitcase makes him a Medik, and so on. In this way, you've built almost your entire army without spending a single point. Once you're done putting your main force together, you can start paying attention to CP costs again in order to buy buildings, vehicles, robots, and supernatural units. 1.4 Basic Combat ---------------- There are two types of combat in BrikWars: ranged combat and close combat. Ranged combat takes place over long distances, using guns, missiles, rocks, decapitated heads, or whatever else comes immediately to hand. Close combat is when things get personal, and troopers take it upon themselves to engage each other one-on-one with hand weapons, fists, teeth, head-butting, elbowing, kneeing, kicking, and sitting on the enemy for extended periods of time. The attacker chooses the weapon he wants to use and the target he wants to attack. An attacker may attack with one ranged weapon, with two hand weapons, or with any number of vehicle weapons, but each attacker can only focus on one target in any given turn. For each weapon the attacker is using, he makes sure the target is within range of the weapon (in the case of Close Combat weapons, the attacker has to be able to touch the target with the weapon) and make an Attack Roll. He does this by making a Skill Roll (i.e., a Trooper would roll 1d6), plus or minus any Skill Modifiers that apply (you won't have to worry about these until you get into more advanced chapters). If his modified Skill Roll is equal to or greater than the Usage Rating (UR) of the weapon, he hits his target; otherwise, he misses. (If all players agree that there is no way for the attacker to miss his target, then there is no need to bother making the Attack Roll. Example: A Trooper is standing next to a glass window and decides he wants to break it with his BaseballBat. Everyone agrees that the window doesn't stand a chance, so the Trooper goes ahead and breaks the window without bothering to roll any dice to see if he hit the window or if he did enough damage to break it.) When an attacker successfully hits his target, the attacking player rolls the Damage Roll of the weapon being used, and the defending player rolls the Armor Roll of the target. If the Armor Roll is equal to or higher than the Damage Roll, then the target survives unharmed; otherwise, it is destroyed (or damaged, in the case of vehicles or buildings). Destroyed vehicles are ripped apart, and the pieces are scattered around the area it was destroyed. Remove half the pieces from the playing field, leaving realistic debris behind. If a trooper is destroyed, leave his dead body wherever it falls. (Feel free to change the method of destruction whenever it seems appropriate. A Trooper hit by a missile would leave scattered body parts. A grenade tossed in the cabin of a pickup truck would only destroy the front half of the truck. A blasted building would lose an appropriate-sized chunk of wall. A Flyer hit by an experimental Annihilation Ray would just disappear.) Optional Rule: Critical Rolls ----------------------------- If a player rolls a Skill Roll, a Damage Roll, or an Armor Roll, and the die ends up (or all dice end up) on a one, the Roll is an Automatic Failure, no matter how easy the task he was attempting. Contrariwise, if the all the dice in such a roll end on the dice's highest numbers (i.e., a six on a d6, a ten on a d10, etc.), the Roll is an Automatic Success, no matter how difficult the task was. If there is a contest between two rolls, and both sides roll Automatic Successes or Failures, ignore the Automatic Success/ Failure rules and just resolve the rolls normally.