Eternal Projects - Homebrew Rules

I recently dusted off a hard drive from 2015 and had fun digging through my old wargames folders. I had many hundreds of rule sets (I think there is 150 or so reviewed on this blog alone in that period) and I found it interesting to compare my dozens of ongoing projects compared to my relatively small array of projects nowdays (post-children).

However it was interesting to see how my rules had progressed. Some had gone through many iterations and changed radically. Others share the same core. Others have interesting ideas I abandoned but might be quite interesting to use in another context.  I can even tell the games I was playing at the time I was working on them - an Aeronef game had "command points" suspiciously like Robotech tactics mixed with orders borrowed from Battlefleet Gothic mixed with SoBH.

Many projects continue to be worked on. Others I really need to revive as they have interesting ideas.

Here are the homebrew rules I continue to play with and tinker with. Generally I have a few out on my bench at any given time.

I like Brigade's Aeronef but no rules have ever captured the feel I am looking for... the flavour of 1990s GW with more clean rules....

Supercav
Supercavitating fighter submarines. A mix of sneaking on electric engines mixed with high speed dogfights using solid fuel rockets, it is a mix of helicopter gunships, sub warfare, and 1950s Sabres vs MiGs style dogfights at 400kph under the sea.  I every few months I come back to work with it because it interests me and is a relatively unique setting.

Intercept Vector
A spin-off of my first game, Delta Vector, it continues with the "vector movement" trope with PT-boats-in-space. Think the Rocinante from The Expanse TV show meets Descent and the dropship from Aliens. The focus is close-combat around atmosphere and asteroids and I have expanded to include ground support with simple tank and infantry rules.

 Middlehiem was designed for my collection of Confrontation minis, but my Perry 100YW models have somehow taken over, evolving their own gritty setting (low, psychic-powered magic and mercenaries).

Middleheim
This is due to my dissatisfaction with modern skirmish games to replace Mordhiem.  It's been radically stripped back and simplified, with characters able to take very limited actions and minimal tokens and recording. I use it to fight with 100-Years-War psychic knights mounted on dinosaurs but I aim to make it open to any melee-focussed setting.

Supercavitating sub fighters patrol the mineral refineries of Europa moon.

Jet Vector (currently working on)
This is again due to not enjoying any current air combat rules (they are all painfully gluggy). Currently I have abstracted it to "high energy" "normal" and "low energy" with special maneuvers forcing pilot checks and changes of energy state.

I use Iron Winds Battletech power armour as my mechs (as they stand about as tall as a 15mm mini and compare well to 6mm sci fi tanks).
Mecha (currently working on)
I want my mecha to feel like mecha (aka sense of scale, jump jets, heat management and limbs being blown off) rather than just infantry game with different models. I also do not enjoy record keeping or table clutter.  I tend to get bogged designing weapons that work simply without too many modifiers, ranges or special rules, yet feel different i.e. railgun vs laser vs low velocity howitzer.

Tankettes scout ahead of their mothership/carrier.

Aeronef (currently working on)
I want to evoke the old feel of GW games like Man O War, BFG, Titanicus with a more streamlined modern game with little to no recording of damage or height or speed (at most, a token under the model's base).  I've tried a few rules but none (even my own!) have ever captured the feel I am aiming for.

I enjoy Tumbling Dice's cheap 1:600 jets - they are fun to paint and are great playing pieces. Pity all air wargames suck so much...

Modern Pulp
Basically, a simplified Infinity with d10s meets the activation of SoBH. Aimed for a minimum of special rules, and restricting models from acting too many times, this is focussed on shooting-centric games (like a modern X-COM style aliens vs soldiers game).

 Middlehiem troops clash in a playtest which removed reactions in an attempt to simplify the game.

Landships & Tanks
This was originally a game for 15mm FoW style Tigers and Shermans but has evolved into a 1:300 warband campaign game with those quirky 1930s tanks, where you have a giant landship mobile base and field a team of ~12 tanks.

These are the games I have on my current hard drive, but there are a few I'd like to revive. Both have strong resource management aspects.

 

I've always wanted to use my 15mm for something that isn't ripped from  Vietnam-in-Space or Star Wars.

Alpha Projects
These are very early alpha sets of rules that never make it to the proper playtesting stage.

In one, the player is a "demon" who can possess (and buff and boost) models by placing possession tokens on them. However, when a possessed (buffed) model is killed the points are lost. So a player only "dies" when he loses his possession points.  I.e. a real risk vs reward - do you buff a fighter to be mega powerful, but lose too many possession points when he dies?

The other is a sci fi game (for my dusty-from-disuse 15mm sci fi) where there is a strong scissors-paper-rock between humans (squishy but reliably immune to hacking/EW/EMP) and robots (tougher but vulnerable to cyber attack), chipped or cybernetically augmented troops (a bit of both). AI processing relays provide AoE boosts to cybernetic troops in range, and nanite swarms add a "magic" element.  Basically, hard sci fi which strays so far from "Vietnam in space" to stray towards the feel of space fantasy.