Little Plastic Army Men: the game
An almost exciting, not quite
strategy game by
CrAzE.
Overview:
Ever since I've been little little plastic army men have been one of my favortive play things. Always having a couple hundred of them fortifying possitions around the house, anyone that came over knew my love for the little plastic army men. Along with army men, I have also always loved
board games like
Risk,
Settlers of Catan, etc. One day while looking at all these little green, grey, and tan
soldiers laying around, I decided they need to acually fight each other... so I came up with a game so that they could!
I created a
strategy game based off the different types of plastic army men and anything they come with (
tanks,
flags,
jeeps,
sandbags, etc). Using only some
dice and rulers, the game began to take form as another mediocre game. So, to the game itself.
Items needed for gameplay:
- 100 one centimeter tall little plastic army men for each player
- 1 flag for each player
- 5 vehicles for each player
- 3 feet of string marked off every inch with a marker
- 6 six-sided dice
- 1 or more rooms
Objective:
The
game is rather simple; wage war on other army men until one
general is left standing. Players can either forfit or be taken over. Other games objectives can be played as well. I've played a
king of the hill round where players try to hold an objective for the most amount of turns, but we never got the rules concrete enough to play a good game. From what I've found, it's best just to fight it out, but if you find a good game you are welcome to share it with me.
Setup:
The battlefield - The battlefield is the area the game will take place in. A good sized room, a long hallway, or a few rooms combined should be selected as the world your troops can move in. I recomend the room to have interesting features such as shelves, counters, tables, whatever. This gives your war zone more playable depth. In many cases a dirtier room can make for a more interesting game than a
clean, flat room. Items such as
coffee mugs can easily be put on their side to make bunkers, or
resuply stations. A used towel on the ground can make for a great hill. Use your
imagination.
Bases - Each player is to place a flag. Everything within a one foot
radius of the flag is considered part of or in side of that flag's owner's base. The one foot measurement is not a solid figure. If all players accept, bases can be places of importance. While India has
Kasmir. your army might find importance in the weapons of mass destruction from the
microwave oven or gold rich mountains of the second shelf of the
hall closet. Just make sure your base can be reached some how. Don't be a dick when choosing a base. It's just not cool.
Troops - Each player is to have 100 little plastic army men of a uniform color.
Separate 50 of your
army men as soldiers. All soldiers start within a reasonable range of your base. In general, the one foot radius is not enough, but try to keep it within 3 feet. Consult with other players if your base needs a special exception to this rule.
Separate another 10 units to be
officers. These troops are to be marked by coloring their
helmets black with a sharpie. Place 8 of these officers in your base. The other two can be placed anywhere on the
field except within another player's base. The 2 field officers are to have black colored stands.
Separate 20 more plastic men to be field troops. These troops are to have black colored bases like the field officers'. These troops are to be placed near one of the
field officers. Try to keep these troops in a some what hiden possition. Don't know how to do that? Read
this!
Separate 5 troops holding
rifles. These troops are to act as
snipers. They can be placed anywhere in the playable area that is outside of an
enemy fortification. They are to have their guns colored with black marker. It is a good idea to have
offensive and
defensive snipers. The best places for snipers are in high, hard to reach, hard to see areas such as on
window frames and above
doorways.
Separate another 5 troops. Place these troops out of the game. They are to be
vehicle opperators. They are to only come into play when a vehicle is
disabled and not destroyed. I mean, you could have the troop
bail out of his
vehicle at any time, but if he's lost, then you can't use that vehicle.
Separate 7 little figures to be
medics. Mark them with with a black
torso. 5 of these are to stay in the base. The other 2 are to be placed with the field troops. Each field officer is to have 1 medic. The filed medics are to be marked with black bases. Medics have a lower weapon
accuracy, so it may be a good idea to give them
smaller guns.
Separate the final 3 troops. These are to be combat
engineers. They have black
boots. They can be placed anywhere on the field, even in the enemy base. I have no clue what you would need one in the enemy base for, but figured that if anyone could figure out why they start out in the enemy base it would be an engineer. Then again, I am an amazing idiot.
Base additions - Any sandbags,
barbed wire,
landmines, etc that your troops have can be place within your base. If a player thinks that you are being unfair with a certain addition, have a
staring contest. Why? Because he's being a dick and wasting time, so why not waste some more while you're both at it.
Special Terrain - Before you set up bases all players can transfor the room how they see fit with special
terrain. The players can decide that a sink is to act as water an can not be based without a
boat, that the
range is too hot to pass, that the dresser is a
mountain that takes 3 turns to climb, whatever. Be creative. You can make
teleporters, cold areas, low accuracy areas, hills,
strip malls, it doesn't matter as long as everyone thinks it will help game play.
Game play:
The game really isn't that hard to play. There are a few rules and numbers to learn, but aside from that it's played a lot like an
RPG (it's rather open ended). You could write down a quick reference
card to look up stats and such to make the game go faster if you'd like. If any complications come up in the rules, either resolve them yourself or try something different.
Troop movements:
Each troop is allowed to move in once per turn. Troops do not have to move. Troops can
climb at their normal movement rate, but vertically rather than horizontally. Certain areas may be designated to change movement speeds. I find it's easy to move several troops at one time by placing them on
playing cards, but they end up falling over a lot (although troops don't stand too well on carpet as is).
- Soldiers w/ rifles: 1 inch per turn
- Running soldiers: 2 inches per turn
- Other Soldiers: 1 inch per turn
- Field troops: 1 inch per turn
- Officers: same rate as near-by troops
- Snipers: 2 inches per turn
- Pilots: 1 inch per turn
- Medics: 2 inches per turn
- engineers: 2 inches per turn
- Jeeps: 5 inches per turn
- Tanks: 4 inches per turn
- Planes: 18 inches per turn
- Helicopters: 7 inches per turn
- Artillery: Moves with jeep
- Boats/Subs: 4 inches per turn
If something
obstructs a player's movement, you can bend the string to to conform to the troops' paths. That's why you use string to measure in this game. When changing ground type (from running to climbing or full to half speed or what ever the change may be) the player must end those troops' movements. The logic here is that the troops would need prep time; this also keeps everything somewhat more unifrom.
Fighting:
This system uses straight-line distances. The system is fairly luck based and works much like the game
Risk or
War; the higher number wins the battle (unless decided differently acording to rules). To shoot, strat by measuring the distance from the shooting troop's gun to the
target. Round this number up. Each player rolls 3 dice, consult the attacking troop and defending troop charts with respect to player. If the attacking player's number is higher, the target is
damaged. If the defending player's number is higher, the target is not damaged. If the roll is a tie, the target is undamaged and may roll to
return fire. Return fire is calculated in the same manner as any attack. No attack is effective beyond 3 feet.
- *ATTACKER'S CHART*
- Soldier w/ rifle:
- Accuracy: 4 inches (subtract 1 from roll for each inch beyond)
- Damage: 2 unit of damage
- Speed: 1 shot every 1 turn
- Soldier w/ pistol:
- Accuracy: 4 inches (subtract 1 from roll for each inch beyond)
- Damage: 3 units of damage
- Speed: 1 shot every 2 turns
- Soldier w/ explosive:
- Accuracy: 5 inches (subtract 4 from roll for each inch beyond)
- Damage: 5 units of damage to anything within an inch
- Speed: 1 shot every 5 turns
- Officer:
- Accuracy: 5 inches (subtract 1 from roll for each inch beyond)
- Damage: 3 units of damage
- Speed: 1 shot every 1 turn
- Sniper:
- Accuracy: 18 inches (subtract 1 from roll for each inch beyond)
- Damage: 5 units of damage
- Speed: 1 shot every 5 turns
- Pilots / Medics / Engineers:
- Accuracy: 4 inches (only effective within 4 inches)
- Damage: 2 units of damage
- Speed: 1 shot every 1 turn
- Vehicle weapons:
- Accuracy: 10 inches (subtract 5 from roll for each inch beyond)
- Damage: 10 units of damage to target and 3 to surrounding inch
- Speed: 1 shot every 2 turns (limit of 5 shots total)
- *DEFENDER'S CHART*
- Soldier:
- Hit points: 5
- Defense: None
- Crouching Soldier:
- Hit points: 5
- Defense: add inch to attacker's distance
- Officer:
- Hit points: 6
- Defense: always returns fire
- Sniper:
- Hit points: 2
- Defense: extra distance isn't good enough for you?
- Pilots / Medics / Engineers:
- Hit points: 3
- Defense: medics can heal any troop within in inch 1 hit point per turn
- Defense: engineers can fix vehicles for 1 hit point every 3 turns
- Vehicles:
- Hit points: 10
- Defense: engineers
Other rules:
If you have any
problems in game play, you can resolve it with your friends or /msg me. If it feels like I left something out, /msg me; it's a lot to remember and it is likely I may have forgot something since
middle school. We always played with lots of
improv on the rules and I can't think of a time we finished a game. To be honest, most the fun came from setting up everything.
Good luck in playing this game. If anyone ever plays this, tell me how it goes. I'd be interested if it worked like I remember it or if you came across anything worth mentioning. Perhaps you just want to /msg me and say I'm an idiot for thinking of this. Oh well. Enjoy!