Inspired by chantolove's thread, I'm starting this thread to keep me honest while developing my tabletop wargame. Right now the pitch goes this way:

Xenoblight (working title) is a sequel wargame to the story, The Vanguard of Venus. After the story's end, the wargame picks up after the alien apocalypse happens, when the Venusians blew up many major cities with their Venusite bombs. Thanks to the protagonist's efforts, humanity actually had enough time to come up with a plan to save many people, but hundreds of millions still died that day.

In Xenoblight you take control of a company of alien hunters or a cadre of Venusian vanguard. The tabletop is very much inspired by the wargame Mordheim and the video game X-COM. Humans have adapted after years of fighting Venusians and they used esoteric weapons like gas grenades, new alloy close combat weapons, and flamethrowers among others alongside conventional weapons. Venusians have access to deadly Venusite weapons, deadly energy weapons capable of vaporizing enemies.

The setting and aesthetic are very much Interwar with aliens. You can use any minis from WW1 to WW2 if you wish with some strange gubbins attached to them. I'll be providing paper minis and if time permits at least a basic TTS module.

Ruleswise, the game is inspired by Oldhammer rules like Mordheim's with some modern twists. Phases are a thing but you alternate with your opponents, everyone acting one after the other in each phase. Things like variable phases means you get to choose which phase happens next for you and there will be old school goodies like blast templates involved.

Hope this sounds entertaining! Will add more tomorrow as actual progress happens!

Phases

The first thing I want to cover is something that's ready already. It's a topic in the wargaming community, how to activate units? Oldhammer style has game turns and phases. Newer games opt for alternating activations with variations. Ultimately, since I want to go with Oldhammer inspiration, the phases is the way to go, but I'm going to make it more interactive.

Phases in Xenoblight come in two forms: set and variable. The set phases are Initiative and Command. The variable phases are Movement, Shooting, and Hand-to-hand.

At the start of every game turn, players simultaneously participate in the Initiative phase. The Initiative phase is to determine the order players will act in the game turn.

The Command phase follows and it's where players get organized. First, if any friendly models are Wounded, you have to test them to see if they Break (Break test). Next, you have to determine the order you want your variable phases to be in. These three phases are each on a card and you put them in order from first to last (top of deck is first) in secret. Finally, you decide which friendly models receive your Leader's limited orders. Players do this step in order but it can be done simultaneously (have to test this).

The first variable phase is the Movement phase. During this phase models have to move in order of which types of moves they either want or have to do.  Meaning, any Break Moves are done first (models that failed their Break test), next models that you want to charge must do so (moving into close combat), and finally any normal moves and running can be done.

The next variable phase is the Shooting phase where you choose targets and have your models use their ranged attacks to shoot them. This is the most straightforward phase.

The final variable phase is the Hand-to-hand phase where models attack targets that are in melee range of them or perform Retreat moves (with risk of being attacked).

So the set phases are always done in order and the variable phases are different for everyone. Player A might have their variable phases like this: shooting, hand-to-hand, movement. While Player B can have theirs as: movement, hand-to-hand, shooting. But each player alternates each of the variable phases, i.e. Player A performs the shooting phase then Player B does the movement phase.

To wrap up this long post, the reason why I chose to do it like this is because it allows two things to happen. One is the macro decision space and another is the micro decision space. Players spent most of the strategy planning stage in the command phase (macro decisions) and should things go awry, they still have flexibility to react accordingly in the phases (micro decisions). I feel like this is a decent balance but playtesting will tell if it is.

Thank you for reading! Feel free to ask anything :)

Dice and Resolution

The most important part of the game, the resolution system. A bit of an admission on my part, I heavily dislike (mostly) D&D 5e in part due to how it handles its D20 mechanics. It's very cumbersome and way too swingy. Modifiers are less but still present as well (look at cover). Most games handle D20's either way too simplistically or feel undercooked. The one game system that really impressed me was Infinity, a really nifty sci-fi wargame. Sadly, it's high kill rate turned me off from it, but its D20 mechanics are near flawless. Really impressed me. Ultimately, I like the D20 and its broad range of values so I decided Xenoblight would be a D20 system.

The question became "what do I want to do with a D20?" since there are a few ways to go about it. I settled on a roll under system for a few reasons. The main one is that it's really straightforward. Roll under your attribute value. Done and easy. I'm also not crazy about modifiers so there are none. This system works great since it purely represents the skill of the fighter. But like in any battle there are different factors that can change how well someone can act.

Here come in one of the few amazing concepts D&D 5e introduced, at least in my humble opinion. Advantage and disadvantage. Such a great concept. Roll an additional die and if it's advantage, keep the one you want. If it's disadvantage, keep the lowest or highest in the case of Xenoblight. This frees me up from thinking of multiple ways fighters can gain bonuses or detriments. A lot of wargames get bogged down with rerolls, modifiers, multiple extra dice, etc. This game is meant to be easy to understand, at least as much as possible. So limiting the complexity to just advantage and disadvantage helps a ton.

The worry comes from expanding factions if the core rules are simple but that's a topic for another time as there are still ways of influencing the system despite it being simple.

Going back to attributes, those are straightforward too. Speed, how many inches the model can travel on the board; Melee Attack, how good the model is in melee; Ranged Attack, how good the model is in ranged combat; and Nerve, how well the model handles stressful situations. HP is different since it is the hitpoints a model needs to lose before being removed from play. Each of the other attributes (except Speed unless it's a vehicle) will normally be higher than 10 simply because the game is about at least somewhat experienced people fighting each other. You will be succeeding on average more than not. 

This one is a bit shorter! I plan on adding a few more basics but hopefully will be playtesting this week so the game is ready to go near the end of the jam. Really excited to see how it plays out.

So, sadly I've not been able to update here enough, but the good news is that the core rules are ready to be internally playtested. The unit rules are almost done so this week I'll be playtesting the game and shaping it up for submission. I'll be throwing something quick together for TTS which hopefully the judges can use. The paper minis sadly have to be put on hold. In order to get the game to the finish line, this week is purely dedicated to finalizing it. Thank you for reading! I'll update more soon.