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Wow. Now that you've spelled it out for me, I feel like an idiot as it is perfectly clear in the ruleset. I don't know why I thought all units lost a point of ELAN per turn.

If you want to make it clearer, maybe just add the word free to that first activation description. As in:

"Each Unit may take a single free action when activated.

A unit may roll against their own Elan to take an additional action, so long as their Elan is above 1."

Also I dont know why I spelled it ELAM. Apologies. And its origins make it very cool, I would never have known.

It's not easy to pull off. And if yer mate does eat your ship, just punch 'em in the kisser... yarr!

Very cool, simple fun. Love the theme!

A coin flick game!! So cool, and very unique.

One issue I have is that I've not got ready access to American currency. Although I'm sure I can find something similar. Maybe some templates for us foreigners haha!

Great game, the more I read it the better it gets.

This would suit 6mm really well, thematically speaking. And I think, if developed further, integrating the unit types to the special abilities for units, could create a basis for army lists and would bring a stronger setting for players to grasp. At the moment it's very agnostic and although that isn't a bad thing, I think it would really benefit from reining that in a bit. A dark fantasy/steampunk mix would be cool. That's what I pictured when I was reading over the rules. Something like SLUDGE, if you've read or played that game.
It's good to allow for some imagination, but I think telling people what they are playing with helps them get to grips with the game.

I would change it so that the ELAM reduction only occurs for each action performed after the first and the unit doesn't recover a point at the end of their activation. At the moment, a unit loses a point of ELAM, then regains it immediately after. Semantics, but would flow rules wise a little better. Could add a Rest action, that allows a Unit to regain a point of ELAM at the cost of moving or attacking.

The Wizard's ability only having a single use is a little disappointing. I get why, its a big boom, but I'd want my Wizard to be doing more. What if it was changed to costing more ELAM to use? Maybe 2 points? That way a Wizard is expensive ELAM wise due to the inherent costs of using its ability, and also restricted with the number of times it can cast.

Awesome stuff, with lots of further development potential. Good work!

Yeah go nuts with the house rules. Could even make terrain spin the ship instead of damaging it too. Would lower the amount of incoming damage while still hindering the player.

I wanted it to be more like a dog fight between planes rather than a traditional ship battle. Where the ships cross paths at speed and have to out smart each other. So basing the mechanics on x-wing or gaslands made loads of sense to me. Heavily influenced by those games for sure.

Really appreciate the comments, thanks mate.

Love the orky flavour!

Do all skirmish vehicles activate together during their turn? Or is it just one?

It feels like a chaotic and violent game, of which I'm a big fan of. 

There is a bit much going on though, and so I feel it doesn't adhere to the jam theme very well.

But great ideas. Think it'd work downscaled to matchbox cars and using centimetres?

Thanks! :)

It really needs a step by step diagram guide doesn't it? But if you get a chance to play it I'm sure you'll pick it up quick. 

Any part that I can help with?

Wow man, they look so awesome!! The tavern especially, fits perfectly with setting. And that skeleton with the sign is just epic! Haha!

Glad you liked my idea, it definitely needs some extensive playtesting to balance out, but it was made with just fun and chaos in mind.

Got another OPR jam next weekend, so expect another nut job idea to come from it.

All the best man, get well soon and keep rolling them dice.

Thanks!! Means a lot. Tried harder this jam to get a clear ruleset down as last jam that's where I failed. 

I'm all about the zombie shuffle, so adding a necro option had to be done.

This is so cool... or hot... err

Love the idea of this as a party game with a group of mates, proper pretzels and beer style. It's simple, easy to get your head around, your choices matter and there's ultimately chaos as your mech burns to death.

Love it.

The setting of this game is so awesome! Using this as a base game, it has so much potential to become something more unique and interesting than what is out there IP wise. I honestly think you should pursue this beyond the 1 page limit.

I feel the adherence to the theme is a little bit weak, but mechanically it works, is fast paced which you want for jam games, and is just a cool idea. Loving it!

Keep it up!

This is a great idea. Keep at it! A little more info on where the ball ends up after a tackle needs to be added, but it's coming along nicely.

Can I ask where you're getting 6.25% from? My calcs is 18.75% failure to cast in one action. Feel like I'm missing something.

If the game was just about killing critters, then sure, might have to make it harder. Critters are dangerous in numbers and Conjurers can make more of them. Striking in combat let's you take a couple out each turn without worrying about AI.

But saying all this, what critters are good for is killing enemy minions. Not surrounding the Wizard. Critters are there to get your big minions down the board. 

Tbh I think Death Wizards are over tuned as they can raise more zombies from the bodies of the tavern clientele.

I made this game in about 20 hours. So tuning and testing is still needed. I think I've done pretty well considering. 😁

These seems like great fun! I'm going to have to build some scrap mechs now. :D

Really great job for such a short amount of time spent on it!

Bit of feedback: I like the unique combat mechanics, but it is a little bit heavy on the maths. Such as calculating the percentage of damage taken so you know where on the durability chart your weapon/system is at.

Love it tho, really!

True, but then you need to balance between striking the Wizard and killing off minions.

There's more nuance due to such a small, what we could call, Kill Zone. Wearing a Wizard down to get them to the Kill Zone is important, but so is managing the minions, both the enemy's and your own.

I tried to balance between, feeling like you can achieve stuff and do damage, while still keeping the game longer than a couple of turns each. I feel like i'm close, but I agree there could be a little more danger in making the wrong move. But I was also keeping the theme in mind.

I'm loving this chat btw, thankyou for this discussion!

Yes you're right, not guaranteed damage, but you don't have to first cast melee to cause damage.

I think your maths on that might be a bit off, as the minimum Aether level is 5, so it would be 2 successes with 5 dice, followed by a STR 2 hit. So striking a Critter at DEF 1 with that spell would result in a critter death 60.75% of the time.

Pretty good odds

There's definitely something in your idea. But melee will always hit and do damage while a spell has a chance to fail. You could do 2 guaranteed hits per turn with melee but the spell may miscast and result in taking 2 actions for 1 hit. 

The Wizard melee is for killing off the little minions. If they get surrounded.

I wanted the players to have options for different tactics. So a Wizard could move and hit a critter, freeing a space for their hound to charge the enemy Wizard. That sort of thing.

Thanks mate! Any feedback is appreciated. Is there a point in the loop that troubles you more than the rest?

Love the feedback thankyou. Having fresh eyes to do the little work helps a lot.

I was toying with 6s counting as 2 successes but as I was limited with time I decided to keep the system quite basic and just get a game completed. I've found that during play you won't see much difference. By using high number of dice players will have a greater number of passes and successes which will add to the wildness of the game. Which is what i was going for. Making the dice fail a lot at the beginning would be too dull I think and having the current system where power is unpredictable is what I wanted.

I'm not sure what you mean by the last hp is all that matters. All your health is important.

 Being able to move is important but ultimately standing still and casting spells is exactly what a Wizard would do. You need to find the right position and stay there. Up to you how meta you wanna be with that. I wanted an early detriment that wasn't really that bad, hence the low movement. Which still allows you to flee a horde of critters for instance.

I do get that the Aether Influebce could be worse, I didn't want to take away too much from the fun, while still sticking to the theme.

I love the idea of Aether adding a bonus to your cast rolls so if I rewrite the rules I'll use that in some fashion.

Thanks loads for the detailed feedback there's a lot to think about here.

Oh and editing in - I don't want Range to be a thing. If it was a battlefield sure, but it's in a pub so everyone is in Range.

"Redesigning Failure" is a fantastic theme where we can look at weak mechanics in other games and make them more fun. For me, spell casting in miniature games was always so black and white. You either did all the damage, or you did none. Personally this feels lacking. Would a trained Wizard really struggle with turning an ork cultist into a cloud of atomised blood dust?? No, I don't think so.

So here is my silly version of what that could look like mechanically. Spell casters that will continue to draw from magical energy until they successfully cast the spell they're manifesting. Of course, doing so has it's drawbacks, including demonic possession. But it's all part of the fun!

Printable PDF available with really rushed (google screenshots, woo!) art so you can give it a try straight away.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on my game, please leave any feedback below!

Yo man! Thx for reading! Yes you're correct, the combo points can only be scored by successfully hitting an opponent/popo! :)

I think actually using playing cards is a great idea. Use 3 packs of the same brand. Seperate Ace(1) to 6 of each suit from the packs and shuffle the black suits in one pile (negative), and the red suits in the other (positive). Both players draw from the same decks (3 from each) to keep things a bit random and boom! Also, 36 cards in each deck means there's 6 of each result which keeps things similar to the d6 system. 

Keeps the big reveal idea and would prevent chumps like myself being tempted to cheat. Haha.

So after some further stewing. I believe that this game would work better as a grid based game.

This would make turning, obstacles and even combat rules easier and the game would flow much faster. Which was the initial intention.

 I plan on iterating further post jam results so I'll keep you posted on the discord if you're interested.

Love the mod system on science and arts! Having negative and positive effects to make the options so diverse gives the game quite a lot of tactical depth. Plus having little steam punk robots play capture the flag would be so fun to watch. 

The only real issue I have is that the dice pools are hidden, and could be easy to... errr... "manipulate" in your favour. Do you think it would still work if the dice pools were visible to the players?

Great game overall I really like it!!