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Chapter Twelve
Armies
Controlling thousands of worlds across the Tharcan Galaxy, the M-Throne Empire is committed to establish the Greater Good for all life-forms by all means necessary.
No one has been able to define their "Greater Good" precisely, but their "all means necessary" is the largest assembled military force in intergalactic space. A Faction's Army is the physical collection of minifigs, vehicles, and other units assembled by the Faction's player for fighting in the campaign. When attacking or defending, the player selects some or all of the units from the Faction Army to take to battle. Depending on the campaign fiction, the Army may represent a unique group of units that moves from Battlefield to Battlefield, or they based in a specific Location, or it might be a representative collection of the units available at any Battlefield in the campaign sphere. Regardless of the size or power of a Faction overall, the units that it's able to assign to any specific campaign always tend to be roughly equivalent to the threats they're opposing. By Koincidence, a Faction's other military assets are inevitably deployed elsewhere and committed to unrelated agendas. 12.1 Military Development
The condition and composition of the Army will change over the course of a campaign as it takes damage and casualties, and as it recruits, builds, or captures new units and equipment. An Army can include units that its Faction isn't currently able to build (based on its Production) or field (based on its Alert level), but if those units are damaged or destroyed, they can't be repaired or replaced until the Faction gains (or regains) the necessary Production abilities. Army Value
While this covers basic units, the full Campaigns system allows for some extra variations. The list of available minifig Specialists is greatly expanded (Chapter S: Minifig Specialists). Almost all of them are worth one Unit Inch, with a few exceptions. Bargain-bin Specialists like the Worker and the Cannon Fodder are worth one half Unit Inch each, and unique Specialists like the Hero and the new Great Leader are each worth two Unit Inches. Creations, weapons, and equipment items can also be enhanced by Heroic Feats and the new SuperNatural Dice (D.2: SuperNatural Dice). These can be included as part of a Faction's starting Army, or won through combat by campaigning Heroes on a Heroic Escapade. Recruitment At the beginning of a campaign, Players can spend up to half of their Faction's Budget building its starting Army with whatever units they feel are appropriate. These starting units ignore the Faction's current Alert Level and Production limits; they're made up of veterans and survivors of the Faction's previous campaigns and adventures. Once the campaign is underway, Factions recruit new units during Development at the end of each Campaign Round. The types of new Creations a Faction can add are determined by its Alert Level, its Production resources, and its Budget. The Alert Level This limit doesn't apply to the Weapon Size of any equipment or mounted weapons on the new units. At Alert Level 2, a Size 2" artillery piece can be equipped with a Size 4" Cannon without any issues.
A new Creation receives Size Enhancements according to its final Size, as usual (MC.1: Making MOCkeries). Production Resources Without Production resources, a Faction is limited to building with whatever loose materials are lying around its shops and local countryside. A Faction can always build basic Structures and weapon emplacements with Weight ½ / Armor 1d6, along with any standard weapons and equipment. For units with the Actions to operate those weapons, or for anything more durable, a Faction needs resources.
Production resources come in three varieties: basic unit types, structural materials, and Specialist training (11.3: Resource Production). A Faction's main supply of Production resources comes from the Production of Battlefields it controls, but it can also use any material resources it stole in combat earlier in the same Campaign Round. Material resources can't be saved from previous Campaign Rounds. Minifigs inevitably embezzle any leftovers to build monuments to their own greatness or to throw victory parties.
A Faction's first Production resource is the armed minifig, which is Produced by its Headquarters. In some campaigns, this resource is enough by itself to replace ongoing combat losses and carry a Faction to victory. Most of the time, though, it takes heavier and more specialized units to overcome an enemy's increasing Fortifications as a campaign progresses. Factions will need to mobilize or conquer Battlefields to increase their Production capacity for more advanced Creations. Every new Army unit is based on a basic unit resource like the minifig. A Faction can develop Production of other basic unit resource types - new units might be based on the Production of Horses, Ground Vehicles, dinosaurs, submarines, or space amoebae, according to how the campaign develops. The maximum Armor a Creation can have is based on the number of Facilities the Faction has for Producing the material it's built from. Each Facility allows one Armor Enhancement, if appropriate; it's up to the players to decide how strict they want to be about which materials are appropriate for which kinds of units. A Specialist training Facility can be used to turn a minifig into a Specialist, or to train a unit with the associated Specialty or Specialties. Standard weapons, equipment, and other types of Size Enhancements can be added with no additional resource requirements. Non-standard items like Heroic Weapons and SuperNatural Talismans can't be Produced; they're only available if the Army is already carrying some they brought at the beginning of the campaign, they won in Heroic Escapades, or they looted from foes. Budget When a new unit is ready, the player determines its Unit Inch value and subtracts that amount from the Faction's Budget.
Retrofits and Repairs A Faction doesn't get any Unit Inches back for scuttling, selling, or self-destructing its old units. Instead, their useful service can be prolonged by using the Faction's Production resources and Budget to upgrade obsolete units and repair damaged ones. A Faction can add, replace, or repair parts of existing Army units with any Production materials it has available. If the original unit is built from materials the Faction doesn't have access to, it can keep those parts, but any new features added must be made with the Faction's own materials. Other units already in the Army can be combined or used as spare parts as if they were Production resources in their own right. It's common to pull minifigs off of infantry duty to replace missing operators, reassign Horses to pull abandoned chariots, or pull the cannon turret off a non-functional tank to reattach it to a functional golf cart. The Budget cost of a retrofit or repair is the difference between the value of the unit or units the Faction started with and that of the unit it finishes with. (The minimum cost is zero Unit Inches; a Faction can't get Budget back by downsizing units.)
12.2 Squad Combat
Running this many soldiers as individual units could take hours. Organized into Squads, there's a much greater chance of players reaching the second turn.
Elements shown: LEGO, Mega Bloks, Little Armory BrikWars is well set up to send handfuls of individual minifigs and vehicles into tactical skirmishes. For more epic campaigns, with units numbering in the dozens or hundreds, handling combatants individually can slow a battle to a crawl. Instead, it's best to group units together into Squads. A Squad moves together, takes its Action together, and attacks and defends together as a single coordinated unit. Besides improving command efficiency, Squads enjoy a number of other advantages. Attacking and defending as a single unit, a Squad can pool and combine Damage, Momentum, and Counterattacks in a way that its individual units can't, and it can coordinate Action-based movement like Sprints in order to stay in formation. A Squad also enjoys Safety in Numbers, allowing it to distribute incoming attacks away from its most critical or vulnerable members and soak them up with more durable or expendable ones. And because a Squad is treated as a single unit, many types of bonuses that are normally limited to an individual can be expanded to apply to a whole Squad. But the most important advantage of organizing units into a Squad is not that it allows them to be directed to horrible deaths with greater machine-like efficiency. It’s that, as they are methodically slaughtered, they can know that they died as entries in an org chart rather than as people. While groups of foot soldiers are the most common, any types of units can be grouped into Squads - Squads of horsemen or assault helicopters operate by the same rules. A Squad is much simpler to handle if it's composed of identical or similar units (a group of knights all on horseback, or a squadron of starfighers), but heterogeneous Squads are just as common (a catapult and its defending crew, or a necromancer and his summoned undead). ![]() Tired of flintlock muskets, this squad of redcoats can't wait to give the rebel colonists a taste of their new submachineguns.
Elements shown: LEGO, Best Lock The constructible nature of brick warriors makes them easy to group into quick formations. Players just take all the Squad members and stick them to a shared baseplate. The Squad Plate combines a number of lesser units into a single super-unit. Instead of having to move and attack with Squad members individually, players can now move the Squad Plate as a unit and roll all of its attacks together. Players measure Ranges to or from whichever Squad member is most convenient, and instead of having to touch individual units to an object they want to act on, they touch the object with the Squad Plate and all the Squad members gain access to it implicitly. In the best-case scenario, a Squad Plate should be an appropriate size for its Squad. There should be a roughly 4x4-stud area for each minifig on foot, for example, or 4x8 for each rider on horseback. These numbers can be fudged quite a bit, however, depending on the sizes of available plates in the players collections, and whether the troops need to be arranged in some specific formation. If players don't have appropriate plates available for their Squads, they'll have to decide who is or isn't in a Squad by mutual agreement rather than by putting them on Squad Plates.
Units can create, join, leave, or change the formation of a Squad Plate at any time during their own turn. On other players' turns, units aren't able to create or join Squads, but they may be able to leave the Squad Plate as part of a Response Action (for example, if they're forced to Bail out of the path of an incoming attack) or as a consequence of opposing players' actions (usually because they're Knocked Back by an Explosion or Collision). Combined Movement A Squad moves as quickly as its slowest member, and is as maneuverable as its least manueverable member. A Squad can move through spaces that don't have room for it, if there's enough room for the Squad's individual members to pass through (for instance, moving through an archway wide enough for each of a Squad's minifigs, but too narrow for the entire Squad Plate itself), but a Squad can't end its turn in a position where it doesn't fit. Combined Action A Squad is most effective when several or all of its members take the same Action together for a single Combined Action, although individual members are still allowed to take individual Actions with no penalty. A Squad treats its members' Combined Actions as a cumulative effect, combining (for instance) their Damage from successful attacks, their Momentum in a Collision, or their Size for the purpose of handling large objects. Any bonuses from Bennies, SuperNatural Effects, or unit Specialties that affect a Squad as a whole can only be applied to the Squad's main Combined Action or movement, not to individual units' Actions or movement taken independently from the rest of the Squad. If a Squad uses its Action to Sprint, it makes a single Sprint Roll with its smallest Action die, allowing the Squad to stay in formation. If a Squad uses its Action to Bail, on the other hand, all Squad members roll individually. For other types of Actions, each participating Squad member makes a separate Action Roll. Often, these rolls can be combined - if a firing Squad of ten minifigs with identical Action d6es all fire at the same condemned prisoner with ten identical rifles, they can simply roll 10d6 and count the number of successful hits. All that matters is how many hits occur, not which specific minifigs were the ones responsible for them. Taking Damage ![]() The ambassador from Reptilia keeps his personal medik close at hand, and puts as many armored bodies as possible between himself and possible danger.
Elements shown: LEGO, Little Armory One advantage of forming a Squad is that it's harder for enemies to focus Damage on any single unit. The drawback is that targeting a Squad as a whole is much easier than targenting individuals. As long as an attacker can target any unit or object within the Squad, it can make an attack on the Squad. Opponents making Ranged Attacks on the Squad take an Action Bonus for the Target Size of the whole Squad Plate (5.1: Making Attacks). Close Combat attacks are still based on the Size of the individual Squad members. Single Attacks Whenever a Squad is hit by a single attack or other source of Damage, the Squad's player may assign the Damage to any unit within the Squad they wish. There are exceptions to this rule: an attacker can Single Out a specific unit or units within a Squad if striking the target would be an Automatic Hit ( for instance, if the target is Disrupted, involved in a Grab, or otherwise immobilized) or if the target units are at least twice the attacking unit's Size. A Rat (Size 0") could Single Out a Peasant (Size 1") in a Peasant Squad; the Peasant could Single Out a mounted Knight (Size 2"); and the Knight could Single Out an individual Giant of Size 4" or more. Otherwise, Damage done to a Squad is distributed according to the defending player's preference. Multiple Attacks When a Squad is hit by multiple attacks at once, the attacking player makes all their Attack Rolls first, and the defending player distributes the successful hits among the Squad members. The distribution of hits should be as equal as possible - no Squad member can take a second hit until every legal target has had its first - but otherwise, the defender can favor whichever units they want when assigning hits. Remember that minifigs can't be hit by more than three Close Combat Attackers in the same turn. If a Squad is hit by enough Close Combat Attacks to exceed this limit, the minifigs who have already hit the limit will have to be passed over. The extra hits must either be distributed to larger targets or lost without effect.
If there are targets the attacking player would like to Single Out with specific attacks, then those targets are handled first. First, the attacking player delivers the attacks on Singled Out targets that are Automatic Hits, since these require no Attack Roll. Next, the remaining attackers make all of their Attack Rolls and count the successful hits, assigning as many of the hits as they like to the targets that can be Singled Out. If there are any hits left over, or if the attacker declined to Single Out any targets, the defending player then distributes the remaining successful hits among the defenders. The defender's distribution of attacks must still be even, taking the Singled Out attacks into account - if the attacker loaded two attacks onto one of the Singled Out units, the defender can't distribute a third attack to that unit until every legal target has also had two attacks. Regardless of who is handling the distribution, Damage is rolled as hits are assigned. All Damage from multiple simultaneous attacks is cumulative. When a unit is destroyed or killed, it is no longer a legal target, and further hits can skip over it. If there are a large number of victims with different Damage levels to keep track of, it's good to have a pile of extra dice lying around to use as temporary Damage counters for each of them until the turn is over.
Location-Specific Damage Some sources of Damage are location-specific, or have additional location-based effects after the initial Damage has been distributed. A nearby Explosion might go off, causing Damage and KnockBack to everything within its Explosion Radius. A massive laser blast might have enough Overkill to take out a series of Squad members along its line of fire, or a rocket-boosted bulldozer might be Plowing Through an audience of monster truck fans. Location-based effects are based on where the Squad members are standing, rather than the defending player's choice. Squad Close Combat Ranged combat between Squads is simple - players measure the Range between Squad Plates, make their Combined Attack Rolls, and distribute Damage from the successful hits accordingly. Squad Close Combat is a more involved process. Levels of Engagement In Close Combat, a Squad has two possible levels of Engagement, depending on whether it has brought its Squad Plate into contact with its opponent when it first engages. If a Squad is close enough for some or all of its members to strike an opponent, but has not brought the Squad Plate into contact with it, then the Squad can make a Skirmish attack. Only the Squad members and opponents who are close enough to strike or be struck with melee weapons are involved in a Skirmish, although the Squad still takes its Angry Inch all together. This is especially useful for Squads with longer Two-Handed Weapons that want to keep opponents at arms' length, or Squads with mixed melee and ranged units who want to keep their ranged units out of direct contact with the enemy. A Squad can rearrange its members before making a Skirmish attack to best position themselves. Once engaged in combat, they're stuck in their positions. If a Squad brings its Squad Plate into contact with the opponent, then it enters Full Engagement. The Squad and its opponents are considered to be all mixed up together in a grand melee, and all members of the Squad can participate in the Close Combat, regardless of their relative positions. Because the combatants are all mixed up together, any Ranged Attacks fired into a Fully Engaged Squad will also hit whatever opponents the Squad is Fully Engaged with. The involved players take turns distributing successful hits to their own units as if they were all part of one giant Squad, skipping players when necessary to maintain an even distribution (no player's unit can take a second hit until all players' units have taken their first hit). Any unit or Squad that's involved in a Full Engagement cannot use Actions to target or focus on anything outside of the Full Engagement, unless it first successfully Disengages. Units can still defend themselves normally if they're targeted by Skirmishing attacks from outside the Full Engagement. The Communal Angry Inch A Squad in Close Combat only takes its Angry Inch once per turn, at the beginning of its first combat maneuver. Rather than moving individual units, the entire Squad Plate takes the Angry Inch in formation. If there's a unit in the Squad that isn't capable of taking an Angry Inch, then the Squad can't take an Angry Inch. While a Squad and its opponents can easily use Angry Inches to move from Skirmishing range into a Full Engagement, the reverse is more difficult. Squads and other units can only use an Angry inch to exit a Full Engagement as part of an attempt to Disengage. Otherwise, some part of the Squad Plate must always remain in contact with the opponent or opponents. Squad Maneuvers Squad Close Combat follows a sequence similar to minifig Close Combat (5.2: Close Combat). The active Squad takes its sole Angry Inch for the turn, then declares what type of Close Combat maneuver it will be making. If it's an Engaging maneuver, then Defenders can Parry or Bail as hits are distributed, and the active Squad can repeat the same type of maneuver for as long as its members have unused hands or unused weapons. If the active Squad is Disengaging, then the defenders Counterstrike together. Rather than handle Squad members' maneuvers one at a time, Attack Rolls and Parrying Rolls are combined into big piles of Action dice as much as possible. As long as a group of units has the same Action die and weapon type, it doesn't matter which specific units hit or miss; only the number of successes matters. Action Rolls for Bailing are handled individually. If a unit in a Full Engagement fails to Bail far enough to land outside of the Squad Plate, then it's still in the middle of the Engagement, and still a fair target for Close Combat maneuvers. When members of a Squad make a Grab or a Shove, the defending player distributes them among the legal targets. Successfully Grabbed units, along with the units Grabbing them, are moved to the nearest edge of the Squad Plate between them. Successfully Shoved units are Knocked Back from wherever they're standing. It's also possible for a Squad to attempt a Combined Shove to push back an entire opposing Squad rather than its individual members. In this case, the Shoving unit or units total the sum of their Effective Sizes, the target Squad does the same, and the Shove is handled as though between two units of those respective Sizes (8.2: Basic Weapons). Remember that a smaller unit can't Shove a larger one, and a larger unit gets +2 to a Shove for every inch of Size advantage. If the Shove is successful, the target Squad is pushed back the appropriate distance. Otherwise, all the involved units are now Fully Engaged, even if they were only Skirmishing before.
Imperial Rome has no tolerance for hippies.
Elements shown: LEGO
The Officer An Officer lives to tell other minifigs how to do their jobs properly. No matter how much skill, talent, and experience a group of minifigs has, and how few distinguishing qualities the Officer is in comparison, the Officer is compelled to micromanage and critique his minifigs relentlessly in order to justify his slightly fancier uniform. Army sergeants, pirate first mates, corporate middle managers, and art directors are all examples of Officers. The Officer is lost without other minifigs to boss around, and his entire existence revolves around his Squad. When he's part of a Squad, his dumb ideas are mitigated by the smarter underlings carrying them out. Whenever an Officer isn't part of a Squad at the beginning of his turn, he's subject to Stupidity like other Incompetent units (10.1: Minds). Specialty: Coordination can spend an Action to improve the Action dice of his Squad mates by one die size, up to
The Officer's one advantage is his natural ability to foster Coordination among the members of his Squad, pushing them to all-new slightly-improved levels of performance. Once per turn, the Officer can spend an Action to give managerial feedback to the Squad, creating a momentary spirit of solidarity and unity among the Squad members as a direct effect of their shared irritation at his terrible ideas.Coordination increases the effectiveness of combined Squad Actions. As long as at least two Squad members are participating in an Action together, their Action dice are increased by one size for that Action, up to the Officer's Specialty die size of Coordination is not cumulative. No matter how many Officers are annoying the Squad, their Action dice aren't increased more than one size. If a Tek is Assisting the Officer, the increase isn't any larger, but the maximum die size is raised to a | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||