My First Wargame: BELLIGERENTS

I was lying in bed a couple of nights ago thinking about the ongoing turnip28 project, which has been taking the wargaming scene by storm recently (or at least, the portion of the scene that I follow closely). At the time of writing, I believe rules for the tuber-themed fantasy trench warfare are still in development, but the way it sprang into the forefront of the hobby circles I follow got me interested in putting together some rules of my own inspired by the project.

I'm not the only one, either: one creator who I particularly admire, Sean Sutter (of Relicblade fame), put out SLUDGE, his own set of rules inspired by the ʻgrimy napoleonic' aesthetic recently (which has a playtest channel on the Relicblade Discord and a mod on Tabletop Simulator), which coincidentally became available the morning after I drew up my own rules. I'm not quite the jack-of-all-trades he is, but I took an approach I felt comfortable with, and came out with BELLIGERENTS.

Phase 1: Untitled D6 Skirmish

The title of BELLIGERENTS was one of the last details to come. Initially, the idea was a skirmish wargame that requires very little besides six-sided dice, or D6, with rules that are accessible to newcomers and that will be satisfying to veterans. Dice would represent units, and would be placed with a particular face upwards to represent a unit's current strength. Everything would revolve around the D6: all rolls would be made with them, armies would be made up of six units, and I even considered making all distances intervals of 6, though I scrapped that idea as being too limiting.

The rules came together quickly, and are inspired by various other wargames, both skirmish and large scale. The three phases, Initiative, Activation, and Morale, are common to many other games, while the combat system is inspired by Risk and the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, pairing up dice of the highest value, then next-highest, and so on, to resolve fights.

Unit types were inspired by Sean's previews of SLUDGE, which I used as a primer for what sorts of units should be available in a game such as this. Rather than traditional tables of statistics, units in BELLIGERENTS are outlined with a series of descriptive phrases which tell a player everything they need to know.

The aim in writing the rules was to say the most I could in the fewest words, cutting out embellishment in favour of function and readability. I wrote all my ideas in a Notepad document, in point form, then went to sleep.

Phase 2: Cleaning up the Edges

When I saw SLUDGE the next day, I knew I wanted to finish up my own project and make it available. I took all my ideas and copied them to a Word document for formatting, then got started on making language clearer and trimming parts that did not fit with my new, more crystallized vision of the game. 

The main change I made was to units fleeing the battlefield: in my initial draft, units who failed their roll in the Morale phase would run towards their deployment zone, but in my revisions I decided they would lose combat strength instead. I had decided that combat strength would be a more ambiguous statistic than physical health, representing instead a combination of a unit's physical and mental state, thereby reducing the number of mechanics necessary to make the game work.

In my draft, the game was won by eliminating the enemy army. In my revisions, I added a set of alternate win conditions to spice up battles (King of the Hill, Assassination, and Treasure Hunt, which likely sound familiar to anyone who's played a wargame and would be easy to interpret even if you haven't). I also added a section on terrain, giving a few basic, essential options, and a section on army building. Army building in the draft was simply a matter of choosing any six units, but in an effort to make the process a bit more nuanced, I added the extra condition that no unit choice may outnumber your basic Line Infantry, meaning you will never have more than 3 of any other unit type.

Phase 3: BELLIGERENTS

Throughout the process of writing, I deliberately kept the rules no longer than two pages. In part, this is so that new players aren't overwhelmed by information overload, but I also wanted it to be an easy document to pick up and skim out of cursory interest, and get on the table quickly. The actual title is a nod to De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA), a rule set for playing historical battles between ancient armies that I read over several years back. As I recall, DBA had a similarly straightforward way of presenting itself that, real or imagined, influenced my writing of BELLIGERENTS. 

I've aimed for accessibility over complexity in putting the game together, aiming for something that can be played and learned quickly. The rules are essentially miniatures-agnostic, since I wrote them as something that can be played with dice as miniatures. They are more or less setting-agnostic as well: in a fantasy or medieval game, Line Infantry might be armed with hand weapons, while in a sci-fi game they might have futuristic pistols and blades. Equally, the definition of a "unit" is left open, allowing the rules to be used for skirmishes with individual participants (where combat strength represents an individual's energy and fatigue), or pitched battles with columns of soldiers (where combat strength represents the collective state of the column). 

Phase 4: Playtest

The rules for BELLIGERENTS are available now on Wargame Vault. I'm offering them as a pay-what-you-want title, but if you enjoy them and are feeling generous, feel free to drop me a buck or two! I'm also open to feedback and suggestions; this was a fun, quick project but I'm not ruling out tweaking the rules and adding a bit down the road if there's interest.

What's Next?

If you like my work and want to see more of it in the future, keep an eye out. I did say this was me ʻfirst' wargame, which implies that there will be more to come, and that implication isn't false. Currently I'm working on a larger-scale project to adapt the combat rules of ZWEIHÄNDER (an excellent OSR role-playing game) for use as a skirmish wargame à la Mordheim. It's coming along well, if slowly. I have a couple of other ideas tucked away for a rainy day as well. Stay tuned!