Tracks Turrets & Tokamaks: Playtest (in progress)

I set the moon table back up last weekend, in order to finally test my rules for future tanks, Tracks Turrets & Tokamaks (TTT). I intended to test the rules last August, after making a terrain mat but that stalled. Although I didn't expect 10 months to pass between another attempt, I took advantage of the time and doubled my number of lunar scatter terrain pieces. More significantly, I've redesigned the rules for the third time.

I've sought a set of solitaire tank miniature rules ever since completing my first future tank sculpts (10 years ago now!). TTT started as a modification of Andrea Sfiligoi's Song of Blades and Heroes (SoBaH) family of games, since those wonderful rules work very well for solo. The modifications became so extensive however that I decided to just create a solo tank game from the ground up. Still, TTT's origin as a SoBaH hack shows in its use of activation dice, although I shifted to d10s.

The genius of Andrea's SoBaH activation mechanic lies in its "press-your-luck" aspect, where the player has to decide between retaining the initiative by acting conservatively, or potentially losing initiative while attempting a decisive action. Unfortunately, the brilliance of this mechanism dims a bit in solo play, as the solitaire player always knows just how aggressive or conservative the "other" side will be.

My solution for using activation dice in solo play involves playing cards. The suit (color really, red or black) indicates which side activates, while the number value indicates the amount of information available to the activating unit, which in turn influences the effectiveness of the activation. Face cards represent either support element activation or exceptionally precise/accurate information and therefore offer even more player decisions. So in my system I've unfortunately lost the "gamble for initiative" aspect but at least preserved the unpredictability of who's going next.

The activation rules have weathered three iterations of rewrites, essentially unchanged, while I've extensively tinkered with movement and shooting. Originally the game featured move distances read directly from the activation dice, requiring a lot of tape measure use. I returned the game to its SoBaH roots, opting instead to sacrifice a little tank-design individuality in favor of movement bands.

Quick Reference Sheet

I decided to incorporate the movement bands into the design of a quick reference sheet (QRS), instead of creating movement sticks. The resulting size of the QRS gave me a lot of real estate to put nearly all of the required tables on one side, leaving the other side blank for unit rosters. The QRS' most notable feature, the 33mm hole, allows the player to extract information from a die face's position.

I stole the idea of getting information from dice face position from Joe McCullough, the designer of the popular Rangers of Shadowdeep and Frostgrave games. I've never played any of Joe's games but I heard him talking with Matt over on my favorite podcast, Bedroom Battlefields Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast. On that episode, Mr. McCullough mentioned his brilliant realization that the triangular faces of an icosahedron come up pointing in a random direction with each roll; the die face therefore acts as a perfect indicator (in his games) of random scatter direction. I realized that with a template this idea could be extended to other information, with the die indicating a wide variety of results ouija board-style.

Representing technological warfare on the tabletop requires accounting for a lot of different factors: target signature, shooter tracking ability, countermeasures, counter-countermeasures, weapon/armor interaction, etc. I wanted to incorporate as many of these factors into the shooting mechanic as possible without being bogged down by cumbersome matrices with tiny type, tons of on-board markers, or a list of endless modifiers. And I wanted shooting resolution to avoid a time-consuming multi-layered approach, i.e. "roll to lock-on, now roll to hit, now roll to penetrate, now roll to save". Originally I tackled this problem by using dice colors and sums, allowing the dice results to do double and triple duty in a single roll. For example, in a previous rules iteration, each individual die result indicated potential damage, while the sum of the values on two of these same dice (sharing a discrete color) indicated potential ammo exhaustion. The problem with this approach was that the results, while supposedly representing disparate factors, were coupled. The QRS template versus die face method beautifully decouples the factors, while allowing me to keep it to just one attack roll.

The playtest scenario was a straight skirmish, with each side starting with 3 tanks on the board and 3 in reserve. The session's yielded a lot of insight, even though I'm still only in the opening phases. Things I've learned already:

    - The QRS works well; it's large enough to write on but small enough not to be obtrustive, even with one per platoon.

    - I've fallen out of love with on-table tokens. Originally I planned to track all sorts of tank statuses though tokens. Sounded good on paper but as soon as I saw how cluttered the board was, I ditched that idea for paper recordkeeping.

    - Don't design during playtest! I kept coming up with new rules, and immediately implemented them, during play. Very quickly this led to confusion. A great lesson-learned for me was "design-playtest-iterate" not "playtest-iterate-playtest"

    - The game moves fast. I've only drawn maybe twenty cards and already one side has lost a tank while the other side has suffered heavy damage in one. While I'm trying to avoid the "fight in a parking lot" feel, initial results indicate at least 5 v 5 would be a better lineup.

    - I need an objective-based scenario. Two opposing forces employing sound tactics simply results in an inevitable stalemate, with reckless action needed to inject some interest in the fight. Hopefully support elements will also force action but I've yet to activate any!