Flash! Cheatsheet

Just a quick update and then some musings.  I worked on a quick cheatsheet for use in Flash! games that highlights some of the changes in the rules that I've proposed in a (hopefully) easy to read and understand format.  The sheet isn't an exhaustive tome unfortunately (there is no way of quickly listing every perk/flaw that was affected by cover/concealment and stat changes) but should be complete enough for an average starter game to try out the rules with some basic forces like the ones I created the datacards for.  Let me know if there is something important that I missed or if there is a mistake that I didn't catch.

As for the musing, I was involved in two recent conversations about my blog and the question of combat group size came up in one and the overriding purpose of all this came up in the other.  My goal with this blog somewhat involves both those questions in an interrelated way.  I wanted to make HG easier and quicker to play as stated in the intro to this blog.  Since I'm not doing an entire overhaul of the Blitz engine but rather pruning parts I find unnecessarily complex for a wargame, my results with that help the "easier" goal more than quicker.

The other main method is to make the combat groups smaller to allow for quicker games with the same feel.  I've noticed that most people seem to gravitate towards a large skirmish (10-15 models) size battle with Blitz that ends up being around 750-1000TV roughly.  I suspect that this is largely due to the time it takes to play Blitz games which don't unfortunately play as fast as the lightning German nomenclature would suggest.  Since adding another combat group likely increases the total playtime by 50%, I rarely see lists presented or games played that feature the less commonly used combat groups like recon squads or stealth units or paratroopers unless the entire army is built around that premise.  With smaller combat groups, you can fit that third recon fireteam in the the starter set strike and fire support ones without increasing the actual fig count or play time significantly.  It also encourages people to buy new figs to try out the more bite sized squads as a single blister and a left over fig from another squad gives you a taste of the full squad you'd play in Blitz without the added cost as well.  HG seems to work best in the above 10-15 model/750-1000TV range and I hope that the new combat groups allow you to put more variety into that apparent sweet spot of mecha gaming.