If you are one of my friends, click here. If not, read on.
Second edition (harder) rules are found here.
The game in question (It has no name, so I'll call it the SC game for no real reason.) is one myself and a couple of friends have created to pass the time in lessons and such.
Rules:
Starting the game:
The playing area is a map. It may be of Europe (as we are currently playing), the world for more players, the USA, whatever. As long as it's a map marked with clear boundaries. You may want to split areas up into smaller, evenly sized chunks.
For each area of the map, a certain number of points need to be given. This is essentially resource gathering. For example: in Europe, Germany produces 4 points, Italy 3 points and smaller countries like Serbia 1 point. This needs to be done with all the areas you will play with.
Consider next the statistics of each military unit. Obviously tanks are better than infantry, and battleships don't often lose to transports, but BY HOW MUCH? A nice table with show you:
| Pic | Attack | Defense | Move cost | Price | |
| Infantry | |
1 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Tanks | |
3 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| Battleships | |
5 | 4 | 3 | 8 |
| Transports | |
0 | 4 | 3 | 5 |
(you don't have to go by these, but we are for our first SC game)
Then, each player chooses a country or area to be their homeland. This is where new troops are produced and where your headquarters are located. It is vital to defend this country well.
It is about this point you should consider what each player starts with. Bear in mind this should be balanced, but also give an indication to what each country is like in real life. With the help of this spiffing chart, I will demonstrate:
| Germany | Balkan states | Scandanavia | U.K. | |
| Infantry | 5 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| Tanks | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Battleships | 3 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Transports | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Then all the units are placed in each country/area, and it is decided who goes first. I did this with my "fabulous" calculator and it's random function. Out of four people, I came third. Typical.
The typical playing map may look like this, only with your territories coloured in different colours to make viewing easier. units are in your country's colours as well. The map will need to be updated every turn or so.
The person chosen to go first, obviously goes first. S/he gets to move units about the map, take neutral countries (which have no defending units and so let you walk over them) and fight other players. Units may travel up, down, left and right but not diagonally. It's at this point you realise why the areas need to be split up. First time round on our game, we quickly realised that one infantry unit could capture the whole of Russia in one turn!
Battles are fought whenever two enemy units arrive in the same territory. There is no way to avoid conflict other than not being next to the enemy (which is easy enough).
Should you wish to fight another person, the D&D style of combat is gone through. in case you don't play D&D, here is the idea. First, you subtract the armour class of the defender from the attack value of the attacker. The resulting number is what must be rolled (with a die) to hit the enemy. If you roll the number or lower, the attack is successful and the defender is destroyed. If the number rolled is higher, the aggressor is lost. Simple. If you don't have a proper dice, then this small table will show you how to use a 6-sided die with the stats above.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Land is captured when your troops are the only one in a particular territory. So if a unit is in a country all on its own, the land is now yours. If there is at least one other unit, you will have to battle it to take the land. Units may only attack once per turn. This prvents units from taking vast land masses in one turn or slaughtering thousands of troops very quickly. Battles are also fought at the end of each unit's turn, so hit-and-run attacks cannot be used.
Once player one's turn is over, player two does his/hers. this contiunues until all players have had one turn.
Then points from each territory are added up. If you own a few countries, then you get their resources. For example, I had several countries under my control, so I got 18 points from all of them put together. After the adding is done, players may use these points to spend on new units. Look at the top table for reference. Points not spent are accumulated for the next round. When everyone is happy, then the next round begins, with player one moving his/her units all over again.
The game ends when one country is left "standing". All other homelands must be captured or destroyed. If another country captures an enemy homeland, they can switch headquarters to the new land. So the victor is the one left with all the headquarters in their control.
Well, apart from modifying the rules slightly, so the game is more fair, more units have been added. they are as follows:
| Attack | Defense | Movement | Cost | ||
| Anti-Tank Infantry |  |
2 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Artilllery |  |
4 | 0 | 1* | 4 |
| Bombers |  |
4 | 1 | 3* | 7 |
| Fighters |  |
3 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| Submarines |  |
4 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| Missiles |  |
5 | 0 | 4* | 4 |
| SAM sites |  |
5 | 5 | 0* | 8 |
| Destroyers |  |
4 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Mines |  |
0 | 5 | 0* | 3 |
| Minesweepers |  |
0 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Details of these new units are here if you want.
If this is missing anything, tell me
Oh yeah, almost forgot. i may post updates of my games here. Seems pointless at first, but there is a reason.
First installment: Game 1 (alpha testing)
Game 2: Trying the public
If you don't have a die around, or can't trust people's rolls, I handily created this spreadsheet, which claculates all that you need to know.
To test out my Javascript skills, I created this page. Like it, I sweated hard over it.
