Actions

Actions are usually, but not always, used to make attacks. An action involves a unit using one of its weapons, equipment items, or special abilities to produce an effect or hit a target.

Attacks follow this sequence of steps:

• Check visibility: Can the attacker see the target and hit it?
• Check range: Is the target in range of the weapon?
• Check difficulty: Does the result of the unit's skill roll meet or beat the difficulty of the weapon?
• Check damage: Does the damage of the weapon meet or beat the defense of the target?

Checking visibility

Units must be able to see a target in order to attack it. If players can reasonably draw a straight, uninterrupted line from the eyes or sensors of the attacking unit to the target, the unit has line of sight and can continue making an attack.

Cover and concealment

Cover

Cover is anything that can completely stop the weapon from getting through. This depends on the weapon - a concrete wall is good cover from a rifle round, but may not stop a tank round. Cover will block line of sight and prevent units from making attacks against the covered target.

Cover example

Bob's infantry are moving to assault Carl's machine gun position. The position is well-entrenched, with substantial overhead cover. However, it's exposed from the sides.

The machine gun nest has cover from any overhead attacks - mortars, air strikes, grenade launcher attacks, etc.

However, Bob's infantry are free to fire at the machine gunners inside the position due to the lack of cover for direct fire.

Note that the mortarmen may still be able to target a point in front of or behind the machine gun position, and still produce effects on it due to the area of effect of their weapon.

Concealment

Concealment is anything that obscures the sight of a target, even if it can't physically stop the weapon. There are two types:

• Total concealment completely obscures the target. This blocks line of sight, and an attack cannot be made through total concealment. This includes pitch-black, total darkness - most often this only occurs beneath dense foliage or indoors.
• Partial concealment obscures enough of the target to make an attack, but not enough to make the target impossible to hit. Attacks can be made against a target that's partially concealed, but the attacker gets a disadvantage to their Skill for the attempt. This includes partial darkness, typically outdoors at night.

Use common sense for concealment, in the context of the scenario. A soldier hiding behind a bush in a forest may have total concealment; enemies will find it difficult to locate him. A soldier hiding behind a single bush in the middle of the desert will not be concealed - there's only one place he can be and enemies can simply target the bush, knowing they'll hit the soldier in doing so.

Use common sense for which types of sensors may ignore concealment created by darkness. For example, standard image intensification night vision may ignore partial concealment from darkness, but not total concealment. Thermal sensors may allow units to ignore even total concealment from darkness, but "stop" at the first object in their way - units behind windows, even if they would be visible in daytime, cannot be detected easily by thermal optics.

Concealment example

Dave's fireteam conceals themselves from overhead observation using camouflage netting and local vegetation.

Ellie's helicopter overhead will be unable to fire at them directly, but if they are spotted, the netting will do nothing to provide them cover.

The team leader pops a smoke grenade to avoid observation by an enemy machine gun team, creating a cloud of smoke that billows out. The team can cross the gap in partial concealment, giving the machine gun team off to the right a disadvantage to hit them.

It's not total concealment, as the enemy can reasonably guess that the smoke is intended to cover an advance and that troops will be crossing somewhere in the billowing smoke.

It's theoretically possible to have cover that provides no concealment - bulletproof glass, theoretical force fields, etc. Use common sense in adjudicating this. If concealment is so small or sparse that it doesn't meaningfully offer any sort of obscuration, treat it as not having any effect. A soldier hiding behind a bush in a forest, for example, likely benefits from its concealment; a soldier hiding behind an identical bush that's the only one of its kind in a desert is still able to be targeted if enemies saw him run behind it.

Checking range

The attacker measures the range from the attacking unit to the target, using the range of the weapon. Measure from the muzzle or tip of the weapon to the closest point of the target. If the target is out of range, the attack can't be made.

For weapons with an explosive radius, an attack can be made even if the center of the blast can't reach the target, as long as the range plus the blast radius will include any part of the target.

Rolling for skill

If the target is visible and in range, the attacker then rolls their Skill rating, applying any advantage or disadvantage.

This Skill roll must equal or beat the Difficulty of the weapon, which is a static value indicates in the weapon's statistics.

This determines whether the weapon physically hits the target. Some factors can give the attacker an advantage or disadvantage, depending on the situation.

Attack advantages

• The target is stationary, having not moved on its most recent turn.
• The attacker is ambushing an unaware target.

Attack disadvantages

• The attacker is not trained on the weapon it's using to make the attack.
• The attacker can't see well due to poor illumination.

Attacks example

Henry's rifleman takes aim at an enemy soldier in the open. His rifle has a Difficulty of 3, and he has a Skill of . Rolling his , he gets a 5. This meets or beats the Difficulty, and the shot lands.

On his next turn, Henry's rifleman picks up an anti-tank missile the enemy infantryman dropped, attempting to use it to destroy an enemy tank.

The enemy tank is partially concealed by vegetation, and Henry's rifleman isn't entirely sure how to use the missile.

These factors both give him disadvantages, so he'll have to roll his Skill twice and take the lower result.

The missile launcher has a Difficulty of 6. Henry rolls his twice, for a 2 and a 6 - unfortunately, he has to take the 2, and the shot misses.

Crew-served weapons

Some weapons are just too difficult to reliably use alone. To counteract this, units can give up their Action to assist another unit. Both the assisting and the assisted unit must Focus to do this, remaining still for the turn and taking no other action. For each unit assisting the primary gunner, the primary gunner gets a static +1 to the attack.

The number of assisting units is limited to the number of additional troops that can reasonably help operate the weapon - a mortar team might have one primary gunner with two other crew assisting, but a rifleman won't benefit from assistance at all.

Rolling for damage

If the attack hits, the next step is to roll for Damage against the target's Defense. This is determined entirely by the weapon used.

The attacker rolls the appropriate Damage dice; if the target has a Defense value that has dice, they roll those as well. If the Damage result is equal to or higher than the Defense result, the attack succeeds in killing or destroying the target.

Weapons vs. armor

Some targets are simply too heavily armored to affect with some weapons.

This is reflected by the type of dice used for Defense and Damage:

• If the Defense of a unit is a static number, any weapon can damage it.
• If the Defense of a unit has dice, only weapons whose Damage have the same or greater number of sides can damage it. The number of dice doesn't matter.

For example, if one has a truck with a defense of :

• A rifle with a Damage of can't damage the truck at all.
• A directed energy weapon with a Damage of can't damage the truck at all.
• A machine gun with a Damage of can damage the truck.
• A missile with a Damage of can damage the truck.

Combat example

In a desparate action, Inigo charges the man who killed his father with a bayonet. With a Skill result of 5 from his , and a bayonet Difficulty of 2, Inigo hits.

The bayonet has a damage of , and the man has a Defense of 5. Inigo rolls a 6, and the attack succeeds in killing the man, who was not prepared to die.

Nearby, Rick the machine gunner sets in his gun and begins laying down fire, without an assistant gunner. The gun has a Difficulty of 6, and Rick has a Skill of , so he's not going to land many shots.

The next turn, Inigo moves to assist Rick in mowing down their enemies. Because he's moved, he can't Focus to assist Rick this turn.

The next turn, however, Inigo is able to assist him so long as both Focus, and Rick will roll + 1 for Skill to his attacks.

The sound of combat alerts an enemy unmanned ground vehicle, however, which arrives on the next turn. Facing it with his sniper rifle, Inigo is able to focus and successfully hits with a roll of 5 against the rifle's Difficulty of 5. The rifle has a Damage of , and the UGV has a Defense of . Inigo rolls a 4 for Damage, and the UGV rolls a 6 for its Defense. The shot may have hit, but it bounces harmlessly off the UGV's armor plating, leaving Inigo's fate uncertain.

Suppression

Players may wish to keep enemy units suppressed, instead of aiming carefully with an intent to kill. In order to suppress a unit, the attacking unit must meet the following criteria:

• The attacking unit need not be able to see the suppressed unit, but must be able to aim within 6" of it.
• The attacking unit's weapon must be able to damage the suppressed unit; one can't suppress a tank with a pistol, but a tank gun can suppress a pistol-wielding soldier easily enough.
• The target must be within the attack radius of the weapon, or within a 45-degree cone extending from the business end of the weapon out to the weapon's maximum distance.
• If the weapon has a fan, only up to this many units can be suppressed.

If these are met, a unit can forego its attack to instead suppress the target. The unit must still roll its skill as normal, but doesn't need to roll damage - if the attacking unit meets or beats the difficulty of its weapon, the unit is suppressed. Mark this with a token. The suppressed unit will now be at a disadvantage until the start of the suppressing unit's next turn. This applies even if the suppressed unit moves out of the fan on its own turn.

Non-attack actions

Not all actions are attacks. In any case where an action could plausibly be difficult to accomplish, or where success or failure in it could affect the outcome of the game, players should use the Skill of the attempting unit against a static Difficulty value. Use the difficulty table below as a guideline for appropriate Difficulty values.

Difficulty	Description	Examples
-	Trivial; no roll is required	Talking, breathing
2	Can easily be done untrained	Driving a car in peacetime, activating pre-placed explosives
3	Can be done untrained	Unaimed fire, operating an already set-up radio
4	Difficult, usually requires training	Aimed rifle fire, applying a tourniquet under stress, vehicle maintenance
5	Complex, requires training	Mortar gunnery, setting up secure communications, aircraft maintenance
6	Highly complex	Basic surgery, long-range precision fires
8	Requires complex and highly specialized skills	Open-heart surgery, cyberwarfare, getting a travel claim approved
10	Extremely difficult	Landing a plane with no functioning engines, self-surgery, convincing guards you're allowed into the nuclear facility

Example difficulty ratings