I am drafting out a rough sketch for a war game I have had in mind for sometime. It will play vaguely similiar to titan, although much simpler and quicker. The board will be comprised of 6 differing terrain types, with each terrain type generating a different type of "energy" (or magic/ mana). For simplicities sake, I'm going to have 3 different tiers of summonable creatures available per terrain type. In total, there will be 18 different "units" which can be combined to form an army. The board will be hex, with free movement of armies. I'm having a lot of trouble brainstorming movement methods for armies. I'd like to avoid using roll and move.
The current system I am pondering is this - each player will have a variable number of action points to spend each turn. 1AP = 1 point of movement or it can be used to summon additional creatures to the battlefield. The number of available action points would be determined by a set of cards each player has... maybe 3,4,5,6 and a *special* card. At the start of a turn, the player choose a card and it yields that many AP for that turn. Then, the card goes into into a used pile where it remains unable to be used again until the player picks the special card. The special card awards no AP, but resets the deck allowing anything to be used. I was also considering that on choosing this option a player would also gain VP through the number the of towers they control. (Towers will be one of the VP/win mechanisms) Effectively you would forfeit your turn, reset your available AP cards, and gain VPs on choosing the "special" action.
My other thought is that I'm overcomplicating everything. My 8th grade science teacher often said, KISS - keep it simple, stupid. Perhaps just have phases. Summon, move, end phase. Movement would simply be x spaces per army.
I'm curious as to what other people think. Or have come across in their gaming experiences.
