Gaming : ~11/brickbattles


Gaming / James Brown / brickbattles

Spirit: Just a quick note about the intent of these rules. Lego® is a toy (A brilliant, engaging, and challenging toy, but still a toy). The intent is to have fun, and thus these rules are very casual. The primary purpose of these rules is to get together with a bunch of similarly minded Lego® maniacs, build our toys, and then play with them. The object is only vaguely to win.

Introduction

In 1998, I returned from a trip to Holland addicted to Lego® (It’s my wife’s fault!) My initial obsession caused a chain reaction, and within a week of getting back and showing things to our friends, many of them dug their old Lego® out of dusty boxes and the backs of parental closets, and pretty soon we were set up for a war. However, when cruising the net trying to find rules, I only found one or two systems for Lego® wars, and they seemed horribly complicated. Where were the simple rules (mostly made up on the spot) from my childhood?

So, we needed rules, and having spent hours attempting to make things easier by finding someone else’s, we gave up and made our own in about 10 minutes. Those rules, slightly modified, are what you find below.

Rules:

The Basics:

Playing Style:		Each game turn is divided into movement and combat. All players move at once, then everyone resolves combat. However, like all the rules, feel free to experiment & decide what works best for your group.

Timeframe:		I’m a medieval freak, so these rules were designed with the castle era in mind.

Units:		Minifigs, dragons, alligators, they’re all the same to me. I do suggest distinguishing between decoration and actual units that can move and fight.

Heroes:		Everybody gets some number of hero points. I suggest 1 point per 10 or so units as a good ratio. You can distribute them as you see fit (five 1 point heroes, one 2 and one 3 point hero, or whatever). Each Hero point a unit has adds + 1 to all combat rolls, and 1 extra ‘hit’. (hits are explained later)

Weird things:		People have a tendency to build weird monsters and cool-looking things. Creativity being good, we reward this with ‘cool points’. Neat things get 1 cool point, and really neat things get two (or more). Cool points act just like hero points.

Movement:

You will see ‘CM’ used various places to indicate a distance. The abbreviation ‘CM’ stands for ‘Convenient Measure’, which is my way of saying use whatever you like. I use the ‘outstretched pinky to outstretched thumb’ method, and it works just fine. A 1x10 brick is a good CM for a battle in a smaller area.

Rate:

Minifigs can move two CMs.
Horses and flying things can move four CMs.
Most vehicles move at the same speed as whatever is pulling it (slave drawn siege towers would move 2 CMs, horse-drawn chariots would move 4 CMs.), or less if it looks big and slow.
Other things move about as fast as you think they should. (In one war, for example, we decided that alligators moved 2 CMs on land and 4 CMs in water).

Tip: A good way of keeping track of flying things is to stack a number of blocks under them or beside them, indicating how many CMs up they are.

Rough Terrain: Everything goes through rough terrain at half rate. Rough terrain is defined as anything that looks like it. Thick forest, mountain slopes, etc. A good rule of thumb is “if you can’t line up your minifigs in neat rows, the terrain is rough.”

Combat:

Combat is resolved by rolling 6-sided dice. Each combatant rolls a die, modified as below. If the attacker beats the defender, its a ‘hit’ (see Dying). Attack and defense are figured seperately (from the same die roll), and each combatant rolls only once, even against multiple attackers. Each unit may only attack once.

Modifers:

Armor:								Each piece of armor means the fig is armored and adds +1 to attack and defense. Note: a minifig with a helmet and breastplate is at +2. Note: Armor does not add to attack with bows or crossbows.

Shield:								A shield adds +1 to defense.

Weapon:

Each weapon a unit is holding adds +1 to attack.

Halbards will cause an extra ‘hit’ for damage.
Bows are an additional +1 to attack. (+2 total)
Crossbows cancel out any armor bonus the defender has.

These three weapons require 2 hands to use.

Mounted/ Flying/ Height:		Any unit ‘above’ another one adds +1 to attack and defense. This counts mounted units, flying things, and units on castle walls. A unit can’t have this advantage more than once. (mounted and flying is still only +1) note: this is a relative bonus: a mounted unit gets this bonus against a ground unit, but would not have it against a flying unit (who would have it). A flying unit would only have this against a unit on a wall if they were flying higher than the wall, and so forth.

Cover:		If a unit is partly behind cover, (from the attacking unit’s viewpoint) it gets +1 to defense. If it is completely behind cover (ducked below a wall, behind a tree, etc) it can’t be hit.

Charging:		Mounted units with lances get an extra +1 to attack if they move at least two CM’s before attacking.

Creatures: Combat modifiers can also be used to describe creatures. For example, while dragons have neither armor, nor shield nor weapon, we considered them armed, armored and shielded for the purpose of the rules. They also got 1 ‘cool’ point. This made them +4 on attack (armed, armored, ‘cool’ and height advantage), +4 on defense (armored, shielded, ‘cool’ and height advantage) and able to take 2 hits, which seemed about right.

Ranged Combat: Units with crossbows can attack three CMs away, and units with longbows can attack five CMs away. Breath weapons have a range of one CM.

Other Rules:

Catapults (or, tossing things at other things): If you can build it, and it looks (even a little bit) like minfigs are operating it, then you can use it. Equipment needs to be manned by as many units as it looks like it takes. (at least 2)

Traps (and other nasty bits): Anything goes. Keep in mind that cool and interesting is much preferable to nasty. (see Spirit) Although both is of course, better. Traps can be manned or unmanned. If they’re unmanned, decide ahead of time what triggers the trap. A manned trap can be triggered at any time, even during someone else’s turn.

Cannons: References to cannons in these rules are for the older style that actually fire. Cannons kill a unit that they hit, either directly, or on the first bounce. Optionally, treat a cannon as a 5 CM weapon that ignores armor. (no attack bonus, though)

Dying: Your units die if:

they take as many hits as they have. The default is 1 hit, modified by hero and cool points.
hit by a cannonball.
knocked over, squashed down, sent flying, or otherwise abused by a trap, catapult, tossing thing, or other destructive device.
knocked over, squashed down, sent flying, or otherwise abused by giant, uncontrollable monsters. Some people own cats & dogs, and some have children. It is considered bad form to bribe the giant monsters, or to drag string through other peoples armies.

Hazards: The wilderness should be a dangerous place for the unwary. Therefore, have natural hazards out and about. Some that our group has used are the remote shrine and the monorail dragon. Usually we give natural hazards enough ‘cool’ points that it’s easier to just avoid them, but they can be killed if necessary. The shrine was just something that shouldn’t be messed with, as it summoned a very nasty balrog, who stomped on whoever was dumb enough to mess with it’s shrine. In the case of the monorail dragon, it was considered armed, armored and always higher than everyone, as well as shielded. This gave it a basic +3/+3 in combat. We then gave it 5 ‘cool points’, making it a very nasty +8/+8, and able to take 6 hits. Defeating a natural hazard should provide some reward to make it worth attempting (a magic sword, or a chest of gold, or some such thing).

Hard-to-kill Things: Some things on the field (like the monorail dragon, for example) may be pretty much impossible to kill. So I’ve added a rule for multiple units attacking a single target. Each attacker that rolls a six on the die can choose to try and cause a hit themselves (which is normal), or to add +1 to the next attacker who gets a six. In this way, hordes of units can swarm on big nasty things, and eventually kill them (after incurring heavy losses, usually)

Winning: Did you have fun? Then ya won! :)

Optional Rules:

Why? Because there’s always options!

Hero points: The only optional rule that I use much is letting people use their hero points for things other than +1 combat/+1 hit. These included being able to make an extra attack, ‘super fast’ (which let a minifig go at horse speed), extra range (+1 CM per hero point), and anything else which was neat and not too powerful. One person used hero points to make his crocodiles fire-breathing, and another to let his monkey use all 4 limbs and balance on its tail.

Flee Screaming: In our first war, our group decided (shortly after someone let the Balrog loose) that a unit could go twice as fast (4 CM’s) by dropping its weapons (and shield), turning tail and running all the way home.

Lego® is a registered trademark of the Lego® Group.

This document is a Just This Side of Arrogance production, and is copyright James Brown. Inquiries can be directed to galliard@shades-of-night.com. It may be used, modified & distributed, so long as the original rules and all modifications are properly accredited. In providing this document to the public, I require that no profit be generated by the use or distribution of these rules.

Last modified July 02, 2003

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