Goblins versus Trolls - rules ideas

[Jagannath]

Hullo all,

I've had a real hankering recently to collect some fairly small, self contained 'mini-wargames', and one idea I had was to do some little versus large gaming, which I'll probably have as goblins vs. trolls - likely in 15mm with Demonworld minis.

Question is, any rulesets catering to that sort of thing well? In particular I's like a ruleset that will allow some 'dynamism' with the goblins 'bouncing' off the trolls maybe, or being thrown, so that we don't end up with a game that is 'move some inches, charge, roll a few rounds of combat'.

I may brew them myself, possibly by hacking the excellent Crom, but I'd be interested to hear if there's anything like that out there?


Cheers

[fred]

Songs of Blades and Heroes

Has good rules for ganging up, and gives a good small game anyway

[Jagannath]

D'you know, I don't really like SoBH, but it might actually be pretty perfect for this, thanks!

[Hobgoblin]

I'd second the SOBH recommendation - especially if you look at ASOBH and all the various relatively new special rules. I think it'd be easy to engineer quite a flavoursome clash. For example, the Gang trait allows batches of weak creatures to move as one, which helps to speed up games with lots of puny goblins.

Another recommendation, though, is Rogue Planet. It's ostensibly a science-fantasy game that caters to 40K-type "power swords and bolt guns" skirmishes, but it can very easily be used for fantasy. It has a very smooth system for pitting large groups against small ones, and its rules encourage things like throwing opponents into terrain features and so on. If you wanted, for example to do four trolls against 40 goblins, it would be perfect. You'd probably "build" the trolls by giving them power armour and power gloves or whatever, but the battlefield effects would be exactly right for big humanoids against small ones.

[Jagannath]

I LOVE Rogue Planet! Hadn't really considered it for this but thinking about it, the unlimited movement should make for a really cat and mouse game where if the trolls change too soon they'll be overwhelmed and if the goblins charge unsupported they'll be picked off. I could make the trolls 'heavy' so they perform throws, but not too dangerous other than that... I don't want them to squish the goblins to easily either! Brill!

I might also make a rule where the goblins can make weak attacks by 'passing' which if successful have a low chance of causing damage but don't leave the goblin in combat. If they fail though, the auto hits next go ..... or something like that.... hmmm.....

[nervisfr]

I LOVE Rogue Planet! Hadn't really considered it for this but thinking about it, the unlimited movement should make for a really cat and mouse game where if the trolls change too soon they'll be overwhelmed and if the goblins charge unsupported they'll be picked off. I could make the trolls 'heavy' so they perform throws, but not too dangerous other than that... I don't want them to squish the goblins to easily either! Brill!

I might also make a rule where the goblins can make weak attacks by 'passing' which if successful have a low chance of causing damage but don't leave the goblin in combat. If they fail though, the auto hits next go ..... or something like that.... hmmm.....

definitively , you need to play AdSOBH.
The rules is different from the old one SOBH with the Action - Reaction system.
Now, you can use Goblins like a gang, not very powerfull (some traits can be given for that) but numerous and very boring for a lone Troll to fight with. You can even add a disciplne Master to make your goblin more warlike vs a "big" Troll...etc....

i use this to built a monkey gang (like mago/macaque) : Puny, difficult target and gang can feature your idea of goblins fight.


Cheers
Eric