This week my Little Brother (through the Big Brother program) saw my gaming table that I put together for Dust Warfare and he wants to play. This is great, except that he's not too fond of having a lot of rules to deal with (he found Dust Tactics too rules-heavy when we played it last summer)

I'd love to show him this game and have some fun with him, but any ideas on how to do introduce him to the game while getting rid of as many "non-core" rules as possible?

I'm thinking of having just a few units that I pick out, and ditching the special abilities. Any other thoughts on what I should change up to make for a simplified version of the game to introduce a kid to?

Dust Tactics would be a great place to start. It's a fun game, plays quickly, and you can read the whole rule set in about 5 minutes.

ShatterCake said:

keep it simple and small. run games with just the basic command section and 1st section or better yet a hero and 1st section. keep battles small scale until a real understand can come and where you can expand. im trying to come up with a demo game for the store that i play at so they can intro it to players or when im there i can help introduce it to players.

also with the help of some people im going to try to post a demo match on youtube and paste it on a thread thats already here on the forums.

Well you could photoshop the dust tactics unit cards and simplify things. Run a game that's more of a teaching game. Like give him a squad with just assault rifles and let him shoot at enemy squad. You want to break it down to show only certain aspects of the game each session. Say 1st lesson he should be just moving and shooting. Don't shoot back at him you should just make armor rolls and resolve damage with no cover bonus and no suppression. No reactions either. Next game give him a medium walker and let shoot at light walkers while moving around to collect tokens as points. Each new thing you'll need to set up a learning activity for. It's like the training missions for a video game or drills at sports practices. Simplify it to practice one or two concepts each time and the after he gets the basics down trying combining concepts until he can do it on his own. Then you can move on to thematic campaign games and let him be the hero. Make funny noises if he's very young like klapow and make the characters come to life just like you did as a child playing war outside with your friends. Death gurgles bad guy voices and all. And cheer for him when he succeeds and try not to let the bad guys win. These are things I do to get younger players to understand a game.

Use Tactics with a tape measure.

Multiply all ranges (movement and weapon ranges using the same multiplier) by 4-6", keep squads within 3" of their commander, and use the standard Tactics rules.

If you're shooting up a hill or other elevation, give the lower unit the range penalty equivalent of one space if they are 3" lower than the other unit.

You can use your one space equivalent range for close combat, or require the closest models in the two units to be within 3" (I'd keep it simple, and use the one space equivalent).

Vehicles have to stay 3" away from large obstacles to represent the orthagonal movement requirement from Tactics for moving around obstacles.

Measure ranges between the unit leaders, or the closest point on a vehicle. If you want more simplicity, simply measure from the closest models in the two units. If any model in the unit is in range, the entire unit is considered in range, so you avoid having to measure from each squad member (weapon ranges would be considered standard engagement ranges, so firing a little further would not be that big a deal.

That gives you rules light options for using your terrain without having to use the complexity Warfare adds.

Thanks guys for your thoughts.

I'm thinking for our first game, I'll have 1 hero, 1 squad, and 1 vehicle per side.

We'll roll for initiative like regular DW rules (dice is # of units), but just do unit phases with no suppression or reaction.

I'll ditch the special abilities, but keep the cover rules (he really doesn't need to remember them - just needs to know that more cover is better.) We'll also keep the damage vehicle rules (because they're cool, and again, he doesn't actually need to remember them himself.)

I think that will work all right, and if he likes it, we can expand out from there (maybe adding suppression and/or reaction rules.)

Gimp said:

So i played the game with my Little Brother tonight. I think it went over fairly well.

I *really* simplified the rules. We just went back and forth where each person activated all their units then the other person activated their units. Touching any terrain meant 1 cover die (no difference between soft and hard cover), no special abilities or special rules for weapons, no "difficult" terrain (infantry could go over terrain like rocks, but walkers had to go around them.) The only actions were move, attack, double move, sustained attack.

For the first game he still thought things were a little too complex and found the rules overwhelming - he most specifically found decyphering the weapons stats difficult, especially trying to add up the dice from the various weapons that could fire.

For units, he played Allies with Recon Boys, Gunners, and Blackhawk. I played Axis with Recon Grenadiers, Battle Grenadiers, and Hans.

For the first game, he was pretty much confused the whole time, but still enjoyed moving units around and rolling dice to blow things up. I was hoping to show him the fun of the vehicle damage table, but vehicles either always got one-shotted, or we rolled blanks on the vehicle damage table.

He at least enjoyed it enough to try it a second time. I decided to add special abilities into the mix, which let him do All-In-One with his blackhawk to take out my Hans, and other than that mainly just meant we had to reload UGLs and panzerfausts between uses, as our units didn't have a whole lot of special abilities.

By the end of the second game he was starting to figure out how the weapons stats lines worked. He said he enjoyed it and he'd be up for another game. Not sure what rules (if any) I will add next time, and even though it wasn't anything near "real" Dust Warfare, it was still fun to get the troops out on the table blowing each other away. My son is a year and a half old, and I'm already looking forward to teaching him how to play this game too! :-)

I cannot possibly applaud your efforts enough. I can't even explain why I am so filled with admiration; the reply space is too small. Although I don't think I have to.