Happy Winter (Summer) Solstice! During the darkest night of 2024 that is leaving us, it is time for this year’s recap about WeGoWarGo‘s development!
Despite the lack of regular news and updates, many things have been developed during this year in WarGo. Let’s take a look at them!
Contents
- Renaming the game
- Writing up the rules
- Rule additions
- Rule simplifications
- Forces builder
- Next year…
Renaming the game
One thing that happened was the modification of WarGo‘s name. The reason was the already existent card game named “WarGo: The Card Battle Game” by Andrew Sutherland. I was thinking about it from time and time, that it is unfair for Andrew, and I concluded that a slight modification of the name, in a way that the game can still be called WarGo in short, would be a good compromise that wouldn’t need a lot of effort in developing again many things of my game.
I thought about the “WeGo” as a prefix, since the WeGo system of simultaneous activations is the main distinguishing characteristic and novelty of my WarGo. Several people from WarGo‘s more likely audience of more experienced wargamers know what is IGOUGO and WEGO, and hence this will give them a direct clue about the game the first time they hear about it.
The prefix was prepended in the same word as WeGoWarGo to make it more distinguishable and retrievable in a web search. As of now, such a web search indeed brings WeGoWarGo at the top, as well as when someone searches about, for example, “miniature wargames with simultaneous activations” or “skirmish wargames with WeGo system”.
Writing up the rules
Finally (almost)! The vast majority of the online rules for WarGo have been put down on the dedicated website. Sorry, but the website is currently unavailable. I thought that it is better to make it available when all the rules have been written, proofread, and reached a high quality standard. There is also the idea of writing an introductory game guide so that players can learn about the basic features of the game with hands-on experience. Finally, these online rules will be transcribed to other, more portable formats, such as .pdf books and .html wiki/apps.
Let me list, though, the current chapters to give you an idea of what is included in the core rules reference:
- Features of the rules
- Scales of a game
- Essentials for a game
- Models
- Weapons
- Command hierarchy
- Actions
- Preparing a game
- Deployment phase
- Command phase
- Action phase
- Special models
- Special abilities
- Spiritual powers
- Special environments
- Forces
- Templates
Finally, the key terms that are used throughout the core rules are written in ALL-CAPS, and are linking to their explanation in a dedicated glossary of terms. Conversely, the glossary functions and as an index, because each entry in the glossary contains links to all the rules that use this particular term.
Rule additions
Here is a list of things that have been added:
- Model properties now provide a more comprehensive list of features and feature values to more accurately represent model states. This addition might look like making the rules more complicated, but it actually makes them more clear, logical, interpretable, realistic, but also systematic. Examples include the characterisation of a model as EXPOSED, OBSTRUCTED, CONCEALED or COVERED, depending on the exposure of its vital area. This is a standard scheme in manuals of modern combat, and offers a greater operational depth to the game.
- Similar additions have been made to the properties of weapons. For example, the rules now distinguish more clearly weapons that affect a point versus an area, whether their effect spreads sweeping or engulfing, and whether they are of anti-personnel, anti-armour or anti-fortification type (the last one works well with the new chapter about the special environments, such as the trench or urban environment).
- Not an insignificant proportion of injuries and kills in a battle are due to fratricide. The not-so-common, but also not-so-rare, misfortune of friendly fire is now implemented in WarGo via critical failures. The mechanism is not strictly speaking friendly fire, since it applies to both melee and projectile weapons (after all, mistakes while swinging a sword or a spear next or behind your comrade’s tight formation do happen), and its implementation aimed to attain a frequency/proportion that is similar to the one observed in real battles (around 5% of attacks).
- Another realistic feature that has been enhanced but also balanced is the suppressive attack. With the recent modifications and simplifications, suppressive attacks provide great strategic depth to the game.
- Simultaneous activation is a challenge to model in a miniature wargame of skirmish battles between infantry, vehicles, beasts, etc. A new rule that brought more systematic order to the resolution of simultaneous activations is range priority of weapons with longer ranges. The basic reason for implementing the rule of range priority is to offer an advantage to weapons with longer ranges. In that way, strategic playing is also further encouraged in WarGo, since small changes in range can mean who hits first, which can make the difference between life and death, especially in melee combat.
- A major part of the upcoming core rules and rulebook will be about special stuff: special models, abilities, powers and environments. There are now specific rules about special models, such as vehicles, airborne and waterborne models. Models can now be enriched from a core list of 40 special but generic-across-settings abilities, from medics to scavengers to zombies, and from rain-of-fire attackers to wall-of-shields defenders. If the setting allows the supernatural, models can be further supplied from 50 types of spiritual powers belonging to eight functional classes (from deceptive, to protective and offensive powers). Each type of spiritual power is a generic template, so the players can name it as they wish, and further customise its duration, efficiency and range. For example, the “Summon Harmful Wall” type of power can be the template of spells that create any kind of wall, from ice walls to walls of swords, and the players can select the damage and duration of each particular wall falling into this type. Lastly, special environments have been assigned to ten categories, from the aquatic environment to the underground, with each environment further enriching the gaming experience.
Rule simplifications
Here is a list of things that were simplified, for a more direct and immersing experience during play:
- Most modifiers for increasing or decreasing numbers, scores, tests and performances have been removed. In that way, players do not have to remember and calculate long chains of additions and subtractions during the heat of the game. Two workarounds came to replace the modifiers: halving the numbers, and adding an extra roll, e.g. a save from the side of the target model’s players. Halving might need a bit more of math skills than addition and subtraction, but at least players know that this is the only thing that operates on the scores. The extra roll might seem more of a complicacy than a simplification, but it uses a fixed number that is easy to remember, and which means that players do not have to look up at the model profiles once again.
- The weapon profiles have seen the reduction in the number of stats from six to four. In the previously explained logic of getting rid of modifiers, the two weapon modifiers for Melee Attack (MAmod) and Projectile Attack (PAmod) have been removed. Consequently, the model stats of Melee Attack (MA) and Projectile Attack (PA) have now absorbed these two modifiers, by changing the definition of the two model stats as general indicators of a model’s combative ability in melee and with projectiles. There is an idea of simplifying further, by merging the two attack stats into one, but it will not be considered for now.
- Based on the Warzone 2nd edition game, WarGo had also inherited the comparison roll, where if two numbers are equal, the base for rolling in a d20 was 10, and the base was increasing (decreasing) by how many points the focal score was larger (smaller) than the opposing score. I understood that this mechanic is not essential, and it adds a couple of computations in the mind of a player, removing fun from the game. Thus, this mechanic was removed, and any rolls that need to implement the comparison between two numbers, do that by simple subtraction. For example, a weapon’s damage has to just be subtracted from the damage resistance of a target, to now test whether the target receives damage.
- A good way to make the realisation of simultaneous deployment, command and action more systematic and reproducible was by simplifying and breaking down the three phases of a round. The simplified rules now have two subphases for the deployment phase of each round, three subphases for the command phase, and four subphases for the action phase. This plethora of subphases might sound too much, but the aim was for only a few things to happen in each subphase, and in that way players know what to do in order, which is actually easy to remember after a few iterations.
Forces builder
At the time of this writing, I am preparing a wiki/app that will enable users to build their own weapons, spiritual powers, models, units and forces. This hierarchical structure of the forces builder provides the desired possibility to edit all the things a player has built so far, and to recombine them in different ways for different games. As you can possibly tell from the image at the top, most of its functionality is ready. What needs to be done is more related to the aesthetics, navigability and usability of the forces builder (for example, the glossary of the core rules will be included in the forces builder, so that players can have a quick look on key terms as they build their models, units and forces).
Coupled with this endeavour is the development of a point cost system. Most of it has been done, and slight modifications are expected to be made during further playtesting.
Next year…
Although most of my plans fall short, let me give a rough estimate of how the next year will unfold:
- January to March, the forces builder will be done.
- April to June, final refinement of the online rules, finalising the templates, markers, dials, etc.
- July to September, transcribing the rules into a wiki and pdf rule book.
- October to December, preparing the introductory game guide.
Yes, designing a game by your own takes effort and time.
By the next year’s recap, am expecting to enter the “sweeter” face of making my first peripheral module of WarGo for a specific genre and setting, my own miniatures, terrain, instructional videos and battle reports!
I hope you will be there during the Happy New Year 2025!
Best regards,
Danis, the WarGo designer
Make WarGo, not war..!
