Over Complicating No Brain Wargame

     At work I was trying to think of ways to make No Brain Wargame  more challenging, without making it more complicated. Among different ideas was to add terrain, have the armies unequal, and add new combatants.

     To make the armies unequal, once both sides have their base armies (16 spearmen, 8 archers, one general), both sides roll one 6D. They then get to add that many points to their army (spearmen=1, archers=2). First practice roll one side got a 1. This meant that they would have one lone spearman on a square. I figured that this lone figure would be left behind, as I would not want to waste a move when there are larger units. My solution was to allow trading in one of the 16 spearmen in and draw another archer.

   As for terrain, I decided to start with hills. I came up with an overly complicated rule, which I won't even bother trying to explain. Using it for the first time, the side that would have to attack it chose instead to avoid the problem completely, as there was a strong force of archers on it and an attack would be suicide.

   My third idea, new combatants, was to add "warriors" to the game. On the additional troop dice roll, a warrior could be purchased for each 3 rolled.  One side rolled a 3, and added a warrior to their army. Once again, the rules involving warriors became complicated; what's more in the game the warrior turned out to be Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan, holding off 3 units that ended up battling this one figure. The warrior was finally dispatched, but it slowed the game down too much. I decided that the rules for the warrior didn't work.

 Besides complicated rules, I made the mistake of trying all three new rules in one game. As the game started, one side had a warrior which proved to be too powerful for the game,  as mentioned above. And as I said before, there was no attack on the hill.

   After the game I did play out an attack on the hill and decided the rules I came up with didn't work. Over the last couple of days I did come up with other rules regarding hills and warriors. I will try each rule in a separate game in which only one rule will be played. I did play a couple of games with the addition of figures based on rolls and have been happy with the results.

The Sudanese archers on the hill prevented the Arabs near the base of the hill from attacking. The lone Sudanese archer next to them shows where the Sudanese warrior was fighting from. The Arabs surrounding him all battled the warrior; it took at least three turns to kill him. I started taking pictures late in the game.

Once it became obvious that the hill wasn't going to be attacked, the Sudanese moved down onto the Arabs flank.

The Sudanese eventually drove the Arab general off the board, thereby winning the victory.