http://www.mj12games.com/quantumlegions/

This was just reviewed today on Tabletop Gaming News. If anyone has a scoop on this, holler!

I purchased it today on an impulse. I've only skimmed it thus far but it looks like a nice simple set of rules. it is mainly meant to be played on a hex map, but they do provide a few pages at the end for converting it to a hexless miniatures game.

The miniatures game version reminds me a lot of prophecy of war, insofar as the "size" characteristic actually refers to the number of elements that make up the unit. So on the hex map it would be one vehicle or counter, but on the tabletop it would be 3 (if the size value was 3) individual models that act as one unit, with one set of stats. The extra elements are removed as you take damage, thereby also reducing the effectiveness of the unit in combat.

There do not seem to be rules for infantry transport, or hand to hand combat. Its definitely a very simple ruleset, but it will allow you to play ginormous battles in a short time.

I'll update as I have a chance to read through it.

Having a quick look at the demo rules, there are some interesting ideas at work here.

It's clearly representing war at a much higher level of abstraction than epic. Whereas epic is roughly company or battallion sized engagements, with fireteams and individual vehicles as the smallest represented units, this seems to be more on the scale of regiments or even higher, with whole platoons represented by a single piece.

I quite like the idea that orders are place at least a turn in advance. It adds an interesting element of fog-of-war to the game. By the time the order is carried out it may no longer be relevant. In fact battlefield friction seems to be the defining feature of this game; order tokens unseen by the enemy and possibly not activated for several turns, random command points and extensive suppression all lead to a sense of not having a godlike general keeping it all in perfect coordination. I can see it being very frustrating though.

Not keen on the totally random number of command points, that seems like it could have too much of an effect on the game, especially considering the wide 2-12 range. I'd expect something like D6 + 4 would be fairer.

It seems to me that given the order counters and hex based map a system of similtaneous movement could have been interesting to build the game around, though they haven't gone that way.

I picked it up and read it yesterday. Very simple and very abstract. In a nutshell:

You roll 2d6 for command points, and spend them, sequentially, on the following: remove suppression, activate, issue orders.

Suppression keeps you from activating.

Activating allows you to carry out an issued order.

Orders allows your units to shoot at a +1, move and shoot, or move twice-ish (each unit has two speed values).

Each unit has a size (number of elements in the unit) which acts as a damage track, an attack value (# of dice you roll which degrades as you take damage), two movement values, armor value (your opponent must roll over this to damage), a weapon range value and AP value.

Coming from Starmada I was a little disappointed at the lack of unit customization but the site plugs it as a "a series of games simulating battalion-level conflict", so hopefully will see more options in the future. I'm also not a fan of IGOUGO but given how orders works it's very unlikely that you'll see an entire force activate before you can do anything, more likes chunks of an army activating at once.

As Z said, command and control/battlefield friction is predominant.

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Dave

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