Who hasn’t been to the toy store or the dollar store and seen the plastic army men and said “There has to be a game there”? Well I asked myself that often and finally took the plunge and wrote one. Originally the game was only army men but I couldn’t resist the idea of using cowboys, Indians, and for some odd reason, firemen. After all we are already playing with plastic dudes, we can include them all!

The basic idea here is to go to the Dollar store, spend less than $10 and have a fun miniatures game for two people. This doesn't include terrain of course. I recommend playing at the FLGS! (buy something when you are there)

All the units are put into a bag and mixed up. The first player pulls a guy out of the bag and decides if he wants to keep him or reject him. Rejected units form a pile (not returned to the bag). If you keep certain units you get a bonus draw (if you keep an Indian you can draw a bonus guy from the bag or from the reject pile). The next player than can pick a unit from the bag OR the reject pile, if they pick from the reject pile they also get a second unit from the reject pile on top of any bonuses the first unit gives. So if I took an Indian from the reject pile I’d get to take another unit from the pile AND a unit from the bag or pile, the bonus units do not give extra units however)

Terrain is placed, units are placed near the edge of the table and it’s time to play. Basically it goes like this. Both guys flip cards from a deck, face cards are set aside, when the total you flipped equals 10 or more they stop. The total is the number of 6 sided dice they get for the turn. These are assigned to the individual units. Army men can have a maximum of 3 dice for example.

Now players take turns. On your turn you activate one unit. That unit then spends at least one die. The dice are used to move, shoot or perform special actions. Moving units are subject to opportunity fire, units performing opportunity fire are subject to covering fire. Of course these actions cost dice, and that limits what else they can do. Dice are indeed a precious commodity!

Remember those removed face cards? They are used to activate special powers and leadership powers. Your special power is determined by what the majority of your units are. Mainly army men? You get the artillery strike! Mainly Cowboys? You get the high noon duel! Leadership powers include healing, damage reduction and group fire. Another tough decision is how to spend those face cards!

The round ends when all the dice are spent. First check to see if any unit has died (taken enough wounds). Yes you don’t realize you are dead until the end of the round. Well you can be killed outright during the round but you get to spend all your dice on a retaliatory strike! No dice are wasted! (except for all those ones I rolled) Next you check victory, if you roll a singe d6 and its higher then the total number of guys you have left your army runs away! It’s possible that both armies run away on the same turn. Then no one wins, or both people do, fight about it.

Plastic Hell

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