I have been thinking about designing my own strategy wargaming board game. I really enjoy playing Axis & Allies, the greatest strength of the game is definitely combat system. It's simple in execution, but complex in tactical considerations and forces you to have a good mix of units.
Each unit has different values for offense and defense, and in combat you "roll for hits." For example, troops on defense have a value of 2 and tanks on offense have an attack value of 3. So 5 attacking tanks would roll 5 dice and any dice showing 3 or lower would be hits. A roll of 4,3,6,1,2 would be 3 hits. 3 defending infantry would roll 3 dice (2,5,3) anything 2 or lower would be a hit (1 hit) and each player would lose 3 and 1 units respectively.
In the game I would like to create, I want to start out in the 1910 era and have players start out with basic units, but be able to do research and develop better, WWII weapons and possibly even a third level of late-cold war weapons (biplane into mustang into F16).
Rather then reinvent the wheel, I would like to use the same system, but I am worried about copyright infringement. I would like to use d10s or d12s for more flexibility in assigning values (because there will 2 levels of each unit) but other then that it will basically be the same.
Would that be acceptable, or would I be setting myself up to get sued?
I also asked about this on Reddit: Ask Reddit .