48 Hours Left! A Look at Skirmish's Rules
over 3 years ago
– Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:15:10 PM
Hi there! We’re coming up to the final 48 hours of the Skirmish Kickstarter, and we’ve been absolutely floored by the response so far to our project. We’ve smashed our initial goal and are now committed to getting the Collaborator Chronicle sorted out with the original print run - thank you so much for your faith and support into largely unexplored waters!
We’ve been hard at work on the rules - and battling the existential nightmare that is quarantine/working from home - so the end of the Kickstarter snuck up on us a bit. I know several of you have questions relating to how the game actually works, so we thought we’d lift the curtain a bit to show you the work in progress with a quick rundown of the base rules and a look into one of the Mordaunt Empire’s forces.
Please bear in mind all typesetting, page layouts and illustrations are subject to change in the final book!
Army Building
Making an army in Skirmish is really easy, as there’s no cumbersome wargear or myriad special rules to roll up. You can use the blank Army List template in the back of the book for a more formal system, or simply write down what you’re fielding on a blank notepad. Choosing the armies you want to field comes in a couple varieties, too. If you just want to play with a prebuilt list, you can play a Quick game - set up your units and get going! But if you’d prefer something with a bit more strategy to it, we have the Draft system that allows a bit more counterplay:
Draft allows for more specialised units to shine, and avoids you being stuck in a situation where your chosen army is simply not up to the task of taking out your opponent’s choice. It also means that you can ensure you never fight an army that you really don’t want to face - if you’re not a fan of chunking through a whole Machinist Core and its networked nacelles, you now never need to.
But What Is An Army, Really?
One burning question we’re getting a lot is, simply put, what does a Unit in Skirmish look like, and how do you play? The rules are pretty simple - we’re refining the glossary and turn flow with a diagram that’s stretching our graphic design limits - but we can walk you through how Units appear in the book and the sum total of its stats.
That’s all the information that you need for a Unit in the starting Chronicle - you usually won’t need to look at anything aside from the table to instantly know what your units can do. We’re also including a problem-solving Glossary to ensure there are no quibbles about exactly what constitutes Range 1, or what the heck Resist is. In Skirmish, each Unit is its own health track, so you won’t get confused managing the health of multiple units in a confusing melee.
Units aren’t the only things you can buy with your Budget, either. You can also purchase Cover to set up defensive walls and sniping positions:
Cover will be vital for ensuring the success of your forces, either by establishing defensive positions or obscuring your softer targets as they move into range of the enemy. Best of all, you can use just about anything for it - as long as it’s clear which spaces it’s occupying, and whether it’s half or full cover, anything from dice boxes to Werther’s Originals can be used to set up the field. No longer will you need to pay £35 for a set of two miniature shipping containers!
An Introduction to Tourlian
Now that you’re up to speed on how the game itself works, we’ve got a full army ready and fluffed up for you here. Meet the Marital Knights, a Mordaunt army who are the antithesis of the stilted, formal soldiers of the Imperial Corps:
As you can see, each Army will have a brief bit of flavour text, as well as a brief overview of their tactics and options. The Marital Knights live and die for each other, whether this is as devastating melee units or as fuel for the Mania’s Hysteria, which can be powerful enough to break almost any unit in a single hit. We’ll also be commissioning some art for some of these units to help add a bit of life to the Tamerlane Wars.
With the above rules pages, you have nearly all you need to play the base rules of Skirmish already - it really is that simple! Now that you’ve got a better picture of the rules, we hope you’re as excited to play Skirmish as we are to make it. If you are, please share the campaign far and wide for its last 48 hours! If we get to £5000, Biscuit Fund Games will commit to a year of additional armies and rules, so the game will continue to live and grow; and all backers will get the extra content for free!
To summarise: thank you! If you’ve any further questions, send us a message through Kickstarter and we’ll get back to you either in messages or a further update!
Alyssa