On to Richmond – Re-imagined!

On To Richmond is on eof my very favorite games.  It is old and does have a few warts, melee combat being one of them.  It’s just way too “mathy.”  I had a crazy idea to make my own version of this fine game.  The rules I have so far, though untested and quite a rough draft, generally follows the flow and vibe of its venerable predecessor.

The game still uses the card activation system with each division going in turn as its card is turned up.  One change I made was to distill everything down to a single six sided die.  Yep!  That’s right!  no more ten sided die.  It actually fell in line very nicely.  Musketry, for instance has a 50% chance of causing a casualty and a 30% chance of causing a morale marker.  A total of 80%.  In D6 terms, that would be 1-3 causes a casualty and a 4-5 causes a morale marker.  About 83% chance.  As it turns out, artillery falls into the same pattern.  It was easily reproducible with a six sided die.  Modifiers were greatly simplified to about a half dozen.  Mostly +1 or +2 for various cover etc.  Several minuses for flank fire or shooting at a column.

Melee is the big change.  The base value is 1 for each side.  Then each player rolls a six sided die.  Each total is modified for various situations including numerical advantage and the unit with the higher combat value gets the difference between the two units’ combat value.  The winner usually will lose a stand.  The loser will lose one or more stands based on how severe the loss was.  The loser is also driven back a half move per stand lost.

Morale works similar to the original game but, you guessed it, it is a simple chart based on a six sided die.  The basics are covered including half moves, redeployment routs, retreats and even revenge moves.

I hope to post a clean draft in the next couple of weeks and even a battle report or two.