59. Weather and daytime effects in Oathmark

Wargames basically want to simulate a real world with all its features, so we don’t need to jump to another dimension or time (and gather troops, supply them, kill a lot of living creatures, risking the life of a bunch of other ones, including ours) to test our tactical and strategical skills (and sometimes, maybe have a little fun). Of course this simulation is not perfect, but some very obvious, real world features are missing in a lot (I wouldn’t risk to say the most, however I think it would be true) of rulesets. Are in these other worlds or times no day and night? No seasons? No weather?

But they are important! Battles in day are not the same as by night, and in summer not the same as in winter… Oathmark has halfway something that simulates weather conditions: strange and catastrophic events. This is a feature which comes to life, if there are double (or quadruple) initiative rolls, and then makes various effects. The latest supplement, Bane of kings had for example a winter themed strange and catastrophic events table. To be honest, I never used these tables, but I think, it would be possible to make a weather themed selection from these tables, and use it so to simulate weather effects. It would be an easy way… But the probability of these events is pretty low (1/10 for double and 1/1000 for quadruple, assuming that my math skills are good enough), and their effect can be drastic (or lets say, cathastrophic). This is like there would be almost always a beautiful, sunny day, but if not, then its minimum a tornado.

Wanted some more permanent effects. And I wanted to have season too! Because a snowstorm is rarely followed by a heatwave… And not to forget about night and day! So wanted to make house-rules for all this. Is it possible to combine all this together? Definitely yes! Will it work on the table as it supposed to be, and wont it ruin the fun? I have absolutely no idea! But here are my rules, feel free to try them, or just gather some inspiration from them: (A hopefuly functioning link)

The document is meant to be self-explaining, but here is a short manual:

1. Roll a D10 to determine the season: 1-3 = winter, 4-6 = summer, 7-10 = spring/fall. Example: 8 -> spring/fall
2. Roll another D10 to determine the actual weather conditions from the table of the actual season. Example: 5 -> fog
3. Player A (who started to deploy the armies) chooses the starting hour. Example: 23h
4. Player B (the other one) rolls a D10, and may add or subtract the same or lower value from the starting hour. Example: 6, chooses to add, so the result is (23+6)-24=5h
5. Combine the effects of weather and daytime. Example: effects of fog (Limited sight 12" and limited Command radius of 2"), and daybreak (which coms from the hour table of the actual season; S-1).
6. The hour switches at beginning of every turn 1 hour forward. Example: secund turn will be 6h, so day with no effects.
7. If a double initiative roll occurs (as by strange and chatastrophic events), the weather may change with a new D10 roll (like in step 2.). Example: 2 -> rain, so new effects come in, instead of the ones from fog.
   

I hope that these house-rules are easy enough, to give them a try!

(I would name the artists, who made these beautiful artworks, but they are unfortunately without any name on the internet...)