Picture the scene.
You have just bought A Game Of Armored Combat but you have no-one to play against. There's MegaMek, but organising an online game is almost as tricky, you have to convince other people to use a piece of Java software for a new wargame, finding the instructions for a single-player session of MegaMek is... not simple and it's not quite the same as using your new figures and mat and physical dice.
Playing solo is an option if you have the discipline to keep your characters separate and pretend you don't know what's coming next, because you're both sides.
For everyone else (i.e. me) you need a bit of structure. A bit of randomness. A way to roleplay that the opponent is in fact an opposing Mechwarrior.
I propose: cards. Specifically, three decks of actions, and one for selecting your opponent, with you supplying the brains:
Defensive - a list of typical defensive actions ("Fall back", "Get behind cover", "Shoot from long range"...)
Neutral - a list of neutral, tactical positioning actions to create an advantage ("Circle round", "Spot for missiles", "Shoot from high ground"...)
Aggressive - aggressive actions that press the attack ("Move into short range", "Jump behind largest BattleMech", "Take out closest"...)
Commander - this is where you draw your opponent. I imagine it could be 5 from each faction, each card showing a picture of the commander, a short MRB blurb and a morale number. Then a list of behaviours, chosen by a D6 roll e.g. one particular Kuritan commander draws from Neutral on a 2 or 4 roll, and draws from Aggressive on a 1, 3, 5 or 6. Another Davion commander would have two Defensive, one Neutral and three Aggressive. Lots of potential for customisation.
Better yet, you could make it so that this or that particular commander changed as the game went on: destroying one of their forces would flip one of their Tactics slots over to be more aggressive, or they become more Defensive after a certain number of turns, or they become more aggressive when one of your forces are destroyed. Maybe make it a special ability.
The commander's Morale would be the total morale of the forces, with the death of the commander adding, say, a -3 to it, and every force destroyed dropping it by 1. When it reaches zero, the units flee.
Another thing (I just thought of) is that this enables 'no-player' i.e. pitting the paper commanders against each other.
It would take some finagling to create decks that enabled coherent behaviour, and this isn't complex enough to game out grand strategy, just small raids and skirmishes, but it doesn't need to be.
What do people think?
