I've be trialling/solo-gaming some Grimdark Futures Firefight over the weekend. This required a few specific situation/clause lookups in the rules, which is standard procedure while in the learning phase for a new game.
I ran a couple of (havoc brothers) chaos cultist vs inquisitor warband games - just 6 activations and <250pt per side. Ended up with a nominal draw both times*, had fun with it, learned stuff, so yeah, it was good.
[* the point was pushing models around and using the mechanics as much as possible to learn, not to achieve a victory.]
One of the look ups I had to do was regarding AP (Armour Penetration) vs defence rolls... specifically if you have a high AP (i.e. plasma pistol = AP4 = remove 4 armour levels) vs a chaos cultist with Armour save 5+... what happens*?
[* because 5+ (to save) + AP4 = 9+... which is not possible on a d6.]
So I looked it up and found an answer easily [such a simple system] and it makes sense and I continued on. Then a while later I was thinking about how the different games I play all have different ways of handling this.
As I was thinking about it I didn't/don't have the impression that any one of them is more correct than the others. They're just different.
Do I have a preferred?... no, not really.
At the end of the day all of these games are an abstraction, not a simulation. For example, in real life all the events/interactions would be happening simultaneously, but in a game we activate one model at a time sequentially *.
[* and attempts at simultaneous stuff can be annoying/confusing. Looking at you Epic Fire Fight.]
An aside: In some games there is a 'initiative' stat that allows some models to activate before others... but even this isn't really accurate or simultaneous.
IMO that level of detail is overkill. I'm looking for the easiest possible mechanics, stats and game play, aka the mechanics that allows the game to play out smoothly and keep the story telling front and centre.
A summary of the different mechanics is...
Grimdark Future Firefight (GFF): Target has defence roll of 5+, weapon has AP4. Required roll is 9+. There is no way to roll over 6, however a roll of 6 (unmodified) is always a success. So the target unit should always roll defence dice because they save on 6 regardless how powerful (AP) the attacker's weapon is.
Necromunda: Target has defence roll of 5+, weapon has AP4. Required roll is 9+. There is no way to roll over 6 and natural 6 is not an auto-success. So if the AP modifies the required armour save to greater than 6 then the target is automatically wounded.
Kill Team: This is an outlier. Normally a target model has 3 defence dice and thus 3 possible chances to save hits. AP in Kill Team removes a defence dice, reducing the number of saves a target can make. i.e. AP1 removes 1 of 3 dice, AP2 removes 2 of 3 dice etc.
Epic: I confused myself thinking about this one and its unusual 7+ 8+ 9+, which is to hit only, not to save.
Again, I don't really have preferences in either direction. On one hand, with Necromunda it's nice that powerful weapons are quite undefeatable with low armour targets. Which is logical.
On the other hand, with GFF it's fun that there's a chance that the shot might not be critical.
As per Necromunda, Kill Team gives an undefeatable benefit for taking higher power weapons.
They're all ok, and I can't honestly say that if they were all like e.g. Necromunda they'd all be that much better.
Until next time...
