Dice-less rules ? Malifaux and ???

[adlerhobby]

Malifaux is a very good dicless game system ( a deck of cards is very old west themed) with heavy wild wild west over tones. but the fantasy side of it doesnt fit well for a pure wild west "Red Dead Redemtion" (x box fans) table top themed game.

So has anyone combined a diceless game mechanice to this theater of gaming?

[Smith]

I always thought the Doomtown CCG approach could be applied to a wargame.

Each player has a deck of cards (keep jokers in as wildcards). In the CCG, you'd stack the deck, and cheating (provided you got away with it) was legal, but for a wargame, the same approach would work. You could be truer to real poker by having one deck, perhaps using initiative to determine who draws first (though this is only really useful if there's some in-game way of stacking the deck – rather than just cheating!).

For example, to try and use a character to shoot, draw 5 cards, plus however many you are entitled to by the quality of the character, plus any entitled by situational modifiers such as aiming, firing on the run, or quickdrawing (perhaps allow additional starting cards or redraws based on special skills), and try and beat the hand drawn by the defending player (5 cards, + for cover, + for armour etc.). Both players then discard down to their best 5, and compare – if the shooter has the higher hand, they hit (maybe do damage equal to the hand rank, or the difference between the two hand ranks).

It's a little awkward, perhaps, but it wouldn't really be intended for more than a few figures, and the only time you'd need the cards would be when there was a conflict to resolve.

[DS615]

I haven't played the game, but couldn't you just use regular folks and leave the fantasy stuff out of it?
Or is the weird stuff somehow entwined with the card mechanic?


Also, calling RDR non-fantasy cracks me up. 

[Ramirez Noname]

Hi Adlerhobby,

A bit late, but Warrior Games in the UK used to do a fairly straight forward set of rules which used playing cards and no dice. If I remember correctly each player was dealt a hand of five cards; the different suits determining movement, health, combat and initiative, each round playing a bit like a round of poker.

The rules were about a dozen pages long and produced as an A5 booklet - nothing fancy.

RMZ

[lostpict]

I have a card-driven old west game called "The Movie Cowboy Game".  Each mini is worth 1 to 5 cards and receives this many cards per turn.  This is also the number of wounds they can take and the number of actions they can take per turn.  Card by card each mini takes an action slowly play out the hands.  As an example, if Black Bart had 7H, 7D, and 3C he would play the two "7s" before his opponent Shifty Smith with 2H, 3H, 6S, and QH went.  Then Shifty would play the Queen, and so and so forth.  Combat is resolved for "gunfights" and "brawls" by flipping cards.  Aces & deuces are critical fails, Kings & Queens are critical hits, 3 to 7 are misses, 8 to 9 miss if the mini has cover, and 10 & Jacks always hit.  For flavor the minis receive one trait for each card they are worth.  Traits are things like Trick Rider, Pistolero, Brawler, etc. (52 in all).  We use poker chips to keep track of wounds (red are gunshots, blue are crippling results, and white are brawl results) - when you take a card, you loose your current high card and get fewer cards each turn.  As the bullets are expended, we keep track of empty using spent .22 cartridges.

I printed up sets of cards with the traits, Gunfight results, and Brawl results so that I can run the game just from the deck.  I hardly ever roll a dice.  It takes about 5 minutes to teach and I regularly run the game with kids (quick learners) and adults (a little longer learning curve) at Cons.  I will be running this at Southern Front in Raleigh NC this fall.

Here are some pictures of a game this weekend: http://lostpict.6sided.net/2012/06/11/hung-by-the-neck-until-dead-movie-cowboy-game-09jun2012/ Some characters from this game include Reuben Cogburn with 5 cards and has the traits Rifleman, Quick-Draw Artist, Pistolero, Cavalryman, & Brawler, Deputy Barn with two cards and traits the Shakes and Whistles (the Mayberry tune of course), and the grave-digger Ben Rumson a 4-card lad that Hums (Paint your Wagon), Pistolero, Quick-Draw Artist, and Brawler.

Send me an e-mail if you would like to try the rules. jimmyclone at yahoo dot com

Jimmy (http://lostpict.6sided.net/)

[Croaker343]

I haven't played the game, but couldn't you just use regular folks and leave the fantasy stuff out of it?
Or is the weird stuff somehow entwined with the card mechanic?

Actually, the weird stuff (magic, demons, steam-punk, etc.) are very entwined in the whole game system.  There are very fews figs that are pure western.

[Varangian]

Actually, the weird stuff (magic, demons, steam-punk, etc.) are very entwined in the whole game system.  There are very fews figs that are pure western.

Sure, but the Ortegas for the most part are fantastic western miniatures. Also, any company's miniatures could be used for western.