Using a Card System for Random Events

Objective/Scenario cards are played by players at the beginning of their phase and in a sense become micro-objectives inside the larger game. Some cards hinder and enhance units on the playing surface while other cards describe limitations or restrictions. How many cards are given to each player in the game can vary, but generally the game starts with 5 cards per side. Remember, some cards are fake or blank. Once these cards are spent no other cards are available to a player, but, again, Random Events or even some cards can dictate that another card can be available to a player. The number of cards to be given out to players at the start of the game can be dictated by their overall commander's Command Valuation System (CVS) character trait of Tactical skill. For instance, a 7 value commander would draw only 3 cards (ten minus three = seven), and a 4 value commander would draw 6 (10-4=6).

Some cards enable a player to take cards from the opposing side. During the game, a player may decide to play a card on himself rather than his opponent, for whatever reason, and this is permitted. Other cards affect both sides at the same time such as communication, and other cards create "fog of war," where a player can substitute an item on the table for something that it did not originally appear to be: an example of this is replacing a light infantry unit with a heavy infantry unit at just the right time, or light artillery with Heavy artillery. A World War II example would be replacing a "Tiger" with a Panther or even a Panzer IV; of course, there are restrictions for those kinds of cards. "Shift" cards, or its equivalent random event, causes the positions of units to be shifted from their present location.

At this time, the only cards in use have been for Hex Command Mechanized, but their meanings can be applied to the other rules.

To articulate this "hidden" movement or "fog of war" reality another way, you can't show all the vehicles in a WWII game from the beginning of the game and still be able to say the game "simulates" something. The fact is, in order to have the reality of not knowing where you're enemy was you can't put anything on the table. Well, so, this begs the question "where's the FUN in that?" and "Why play a game where the only thing on the table is little bits of paper as representative markers?"

One answer to this, like the age old Birds-eye-View problem of wargames with miniatures e.g. "if I can see his army how can I play as if I DON'T see them?" is to allow everything on the table BUT every platoon must be given an objective. An example of an unacceptable objective statement or written order would be "your objective is the left flank." In other words, you can't just say "the left flank" you have to say something like "your objective is to hold where you are until further orders." But does this allow the owning commander to adjust the placement of his units? Can't he move the .50 from the left of his position to the center where it might have a better field of fire? Does HOLD mean you can't do ANYTHING or you can't move TOWARD the enemy?

So you see, there is gray area here. The challenge that all wargamers face is coming up with a system that delivers acceptable results in the greatest degree of circumstances. Many gamers have come up with ideas that work, but most of the time this can only be achieved with some fudging of what gamers are willing to accept in the hobby of wargames with miniatures.

One of the ways we saw around the Birds-eye-view problem was with Random Events or a card "draw and play" system, which is becoming more popular in miniature wargames.

For this we can again utilize the Command Valuation System- that series of numbers assigned to the various character traits. (remember that this generic chart was designed for American Civil War, hence the year of the conflict and the percentage of that quality of commander for U-nion and C-onfederate).

One method for using a deck of good and bad things (by the way, decks don't have to be limited to 52 cards) is to say the better the commander (4 is best) or the worse a commander (7 is worst) dictates how many cards they can draw per game from the deck. Also, you need to understand that a deck of any cards is just a list of random events in a fancy mechanical delivery system... you could just as easily roll dice for x number of times and write down the result on a score card. So, for our 10-based value system, we will use the Initiative value: For commanders with a value of Four they can draw 6 cards, a Five Initiative commander can draw 5, a Six draws 4 and Seven draws 3 cards.

Can you draw cards from the deck at other times? Of course.... in fact, you can even devise a card that SAYS that "this commander can draw another card later in the game.."

The fact is, players and game designers can go bonkers with ideas for these cards, like we did with the following list. You can see it was just stream of consciousness and our first thoughts were ambiguous (conduct ambush... what does THAT mean?) and we got really crazy thinking about anything that might seem interesting. The way this works is that players can either play a card on themselves or the enemy, whichever they feel appropriate. Each player also has the limit of not being able to play more than one card from their hand, though here again, another card can be made to permit THAT too. Players should state from the very beginning of the game if they will agree to allow any friendly fire and potential casualties to be honored as a result of the cards, or if they will chose to ignore any card where friendly fire is or may be the result.

Card content example

Card front

Download all 8 pdf files of the cards for Hex Command Mechanized (400kb)