The WarEngine

What is the WarEngine?
The WarEngine is the underlying rules engine that drives all our miniature wargames.  Dark Tortoise Productions has released this engine to the community through the WarEngine Wiki, and regular players are continuing to contribute to the force lists and settings used.

It has a basic simplicity that makes it very easy for a new player to begin playing. However, features such as tweaks, which modify basic capabilities of a particular figure or weapon, and special powers, which allow for limitless possibilities for expansion, give WarEngine games a depth of character far greater than might otherwise be expected.

Using Dice
Central to the WarEngine is a basic concept to resolving success or failure for any action, whether it is an attack with a weapon, the use of a special power, such as a psychic ability or magical spell, or testing for rout for units that have taken heavy casualties. Dice rolls are made by using multiple standard six-sided dice and adding them up. In some cases, more dice are rolled than actually kept, which is notated as xky, where x is the number rolled, k means keep, and y is the number kept. For example, a 3k2 roll means roll three dice, keep two. High numbers are always better.

Opposed Die Rolls
An opposed die roll, such as a weapon attack, compares the rolls of attacker and defender. To succeed, the attacker needs to roll higher than the defender. So if Sgt. Stone shoots a Dog Soldier Mutant, where his attack value is 3k2 and the Mutant’s defense value is 2k2, it might go like this: Sgt. Stone rolls three dice (5,4,2) and discards the lowest for a total of 9. Dogboy rolls two dice (4,3) and gets a total of 7. Since the attack roll is higher, Dogboy is slain by the attack. If the attack roll had matched or been less than the defense roll, Dogboy would have survived.

Modifiers
Battlefield circumstances, such as intervening cover, moving or not moving on the part of the attacker or defender, tweaks, active special powers, and so on, usually effect either the number of dice rolled or how those dice are tallied. For example, hiding behind light cover, like bushes would add both an extra die rolled and an extra die kept to the roll, notated as +1k1. Dogboy would have had a 3k3 defense and likely have survived due to cover in the previous example.

Flexible Turn Sequence
Along with a flexible system of unit by unit, figure by figure movement, where attacks can come any time before, during, or after movement, and many other simple yet flexible aspects to game play, this basic action resolution system allows simulation of most any type of battle. Small games can be played with only a dozen figures on each side, but the system works equally well at over 100 figures per force.

Ultimate Adaptability
The WarEngine can be adapted to any genre with a little work on the part of players.  Visit the WarEngine Wiki to start learning, playing, and contributing today!