War maker related

inspiration
question
#1

Hi there shield wall, i’m not a regular topic maker, but i require help from the hive mind this time.

Me and 2 friends will make 3 armies to play sorta like a campaign using war maker rules, but besides large scale battles, they also want to play some scenarios where the scale is smaller, something similar to kill team, for some infiltration missions, or some critical cover ops missions, supplies recovery, etc, etc.

How would you adapt the war maker rules to fit a skirmish style, where each team is composed of a single squad of 5 let’s say “selected” soldiers?

I was thinking about making each squad composed of 4 heroic units, wich would be the regular members of the squad and 1 elite unit aka the squad leader.

Maybe using durability, maybe not, i don’t know, i’m really lost and out of ideas right now =(

#2

I need to reread the rules, and honestly only played one day, I think it was 3 half games and 1 or two full games trying to find a fun exchange.

I’d go with all heroics. But with 5 upgrades…players choice on distribution.

As upgrades I’ll need to reread the rules, but I’d add some prebattle options that can be exchanged for “Upgrades”

Examples:
IEDs; 1 area effect explosion. (Can be used 1 time on enemy move, effective only on 5 or 6 on a roll of D6, if fails…it’s lost)
Focused fire; 1 time total activation, (one use, all units active after an enemy movement, roll 1d4 to know how many units can still activate on their turn).
Artillery; ( same as IED but activates with all but a 1…however has a drift mechanism)
Bribery; (single basic ranged squad appears and makes single attack on enemy, and then disappear) opponents bribery can cancel…bidding war can reactivate or re-cancel.
Lay of land; (can add or remove piece of terrain.) Single use.
More ideas tomorrow.
Turn order should probably be changed a tad. But I think if some advancement for heroics, countered by one use privileges are calculated out…you can have some Really lively exchanges.

#3

This is going to be Long and in three parts, An Idea on how to work it, my thoughts on War Maker overall and Lastly other alternatives

Response on how to make a fun skirmish game with War Maker.

  1. Your Table your rules…this is just a mental exercise/procrastination method for me.
  2. All Heroic forces…but with a twist.
  3. Each force is 5 Heroics,
  4. You have 15 abilities to distribute.
  5. Theme…every heroic in your squad must have 1 ability they share in common (this will eat 5 abilities)
  6. No reserves.
  7. Have one use abilities, in exchange for abilities on your forces.
  8. eliminate abilities that slow down game play or requires extra tracking.
  9. give opponent your fighting force list to review.

I’ll expound on 8, all the others have been explained to some degree. Examples: Rally Point, Evasive, Armor, Bolster, marksman, stealth…all seemed to just make combat endless…mileage may vary, who you are playing with may vary.

Thoughts on War Maker.

War Maker is a large Skirmish level game DIY framework.
I feel many of the aspects make certain war games fun, are completely missing, and need to be added in the DIY phase. It attempts to make the leap that the Free Kreigsspeil Revival (FKR) or ultra light gaming rules games live in. (link to a decent post on the FKR topic from a role playing perspective)
Ultimately I don’t feel it accomplishes its goals of providing a bridge from RPG to war gaming, being the ICRPG of war gaming or of being a game that is fun to play more than once, without a lot of DIY added by the army maker.
It’s not a read the rules, you build your theme army, I build mine and see who wins fun time.
It can be a build 2 or 3 armies, play it, play it again…adjust a few things, play it again, adjust and add or remove abilities, try it a fifth time rinse and repeat until you have something fun…by the time you are happy with it all, you want to do something different and your rules and adjustments gather dust for 8 months…and when you review them…you ask yourself why you bothered…Then again I am defiantly projecting here.

Alternatives

there is a ton.
One Page Rules
most obvious and strongest…but has become a commercial enterprise, and is no longer 1 Page.

Fistful of TOW
The second edition was probably the most fun I ever had in a wargame with only one other person I played with. I think I easily logged 2 or 3 hundred hours of that game with crazy DIY Rules…but now seems abandoned…That said fist Full free rules might be worth a gander

I’m having trouble finding other examples… of the free DIY games I used to play.
https://www.wargamer.com/free-wargame-rules has an interesting list of free miniature rules.

#4

Nice, thanks for the answers. Lots of DIY then, right on my alley.

I have the OPR stuff as well, so i may try to mix stuff up, will see what can i come up with to feel confortable and have a blast with friends.

Again, thanks for the guidance =D