Wargaming Tékumel, part 2

After a convoluted journey, I believe I have finally settled on a rules system for my Tékumel games.

There were several I had been looking into, and all have their good points. The three original publications for Tékumel battles - Missum, Qadardalikoi, and Legions of the Petal Throne, were really not considered, mostly since I did not have copies available! One can still find these games, and I intend to get a copy of each in the future, but I did want a system that was more readily available to the average gamer. I am also not too certain about the game systems in each of these rules; I have a feeling it is a bit more work than I am wanting (I could be very wrong about that). These rules are often available at Tita's House of Games, Noble Knight Games, and sometimes eBay.

There is a game called Warfare on Tékumel, which is a descendant of the aforementioned games (I think), and it is available for free on the TékumelMinis yahoogroup. This is not the one I am going to use, although the battle magic system is great and I might try to transplant it for future use. The melee system is just too complicated for my simple mind. It is, however, a comprehensive system for the nuances of Tékumeli battles. 25 years ago it would have been my game of choice but not today.

Another great system is Basic Impetus, which can be found at Dadi & Piombo. It is free, and a nice little game, but uses two different sets of markers (one set of casualties, and one for disruption) for the status of each unit. One marker is really my limit.

Two others I considered are Fantasy Rules! by Chipco, and Hordes of the Things by WRG. I have an old copy of Fantasy Rules! (now in its third edition), but it has not changed very much from what I can tell. The combat system would have needed to be re-arranged a bit to get FR! to work to my satisfaction but might have been a success. And I am not much of a HoTT/DBA player - I am finding that people either greatly like the system or disdain it... I don't mind but never caught the 'pip' fever (which is probably a bad move on my part since the Seattle area is becoming a great center of DBA-gaming, but they play 15mm... )

So, who is the big winner?

I'm going to dive into Command & Colors:Ancients by GMT Games. This is a board game, but works wonderfully for miniatures. Howard Fielding of The Tékumel Project has already done a lot of preliminary work to convert CC:A to Tékumel, and I have poked around a bit to make more army lists also. Howard's work is available on the TékumelMinis yahoogroup also. The game system is simple yet subtle, and is fun. I also intend to use it for historical battles once I get my fantasy version (I think I will call it CC:T - Command & Colors: Tékumel ) comfortably far along.


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