Game Components:

Here is a list of all of the components needed (some supplied by us and some that you will have to find) to play this game:

  -counter sheets (characters, weapons 1, weapons 2, defensive and miscellaneous, team markers)*
  -card sheets (3 of them)*
  -forest map (6 parts to join together)
  -city map (6 parts to join together)
  -team tray (3 of them: light blue, yellow and pink)
  -terrain effect chart
  -turn chart

  Note: components listed above wich are marked with an asterisk (*)  need to be glued on cardboard.
 

Characters

Here is an explanation of the character counters supplied to play Pwinch Wars. Character names were inspired by some of our friend's and their ability may or may not represent their true skills! Anyway, once you will know about the skills shown on each character counter, you will be able to design your own. If you don't want to, just take the ones supplied with this game: those characters are well balanced (some good, some not) and have been playtested.

On the counters are several numbers and symbols representing skills (fire, moral and sneak) and abilities (movement points and special abilities). All those numbers are never below 1 and never higher than 9. Skill numbers (ex:fire) represent the number to obtain on a 10-sided dice to succesfully perform an action (ex: firing at an enemy). In this game, a result of 1 on the dice is always a success (no matter what modifiers are applied) and a result of 10 is always a failure.

-Fire Skill: this represent the ability to aim and fire or aim and throw any objects towards a selected target. The objects in question in this games are various weapons (like a sling shot armed with beans, rotten fruits, water balls, etc.) used by pwinchers to wage war on an opposing team. Each time a character wants to fire on an enemy, he just play this skill to know if he hits his target.

-Moral Skill: this represent the ability for a given character to actually resist the tempation to abandon the game after being hit or after suffering a special event through event cards. This is a very important skill as it is the main goal of the game for a team to force the enemy's team mate out of the game. Moral is handled the following way: a blue character succeeding his moral check stays blue and continues to play. If he fails, he becomes red (counter flipped). A red character succeeding his moral check continues to play. If he fails, he is removed from the game.

-Sneak Skill: this represent  the ability to sneak or hide in a given place. If a character is hidden, he cannot be seen by other pwinchers so he cannot be fired upon too.

-Movements Points: this is the total number of movement points a character has for the whole turn. He can spend them moving (each type of terrain cost a different number of points: see terrain chart) or doing special actions (see terrain chart). Any remaining points at the end of a turn are lost and cannot be saved for another turn.

-Special Ability: some characters have special abilities that they can use or will be obtligated to use at different moments of the game. Here is a list of those abilities.
    -B (bedtime worried): when the game last until those turns marked with the word "bed" on the turn chart,       bedtime worried characters must make a moral check for each turn (at the beginning of a turn) to know if they continue the game. A blue bedtime worried character failing his moral check becomes red. A red one leaves the game and go to bed. A character eliminated in this manner does not count in victory points calculation at the end of the game.
   -S (sniper): those characters really know how to throw things or handle a sling shot. If a sniper character has not moved in his turn, he gain an additionnal +1 to fire (this is in addition to any other modifiers). In fact, a non-sniper character already has a +1 fire if he has not moved so it means that a sniper will get +2. Add or substract terrain effect, add or substract special bonuses or penalties as listed on terrain chart.
   -F (frustration): those character always seems to be frustrated by the game, whatever they are winning or losing. So they will always have that additionnal dose of "dark energy" in their muscles when the time comes to throw something at an enemy. An enemy receiving a successful shot by a frustrated character must make his moral check with a -1 penalty. Other penalties due to equipment, etc. also apply.
   -X (fighting): fighting character will always find an excuse to start a squirmish. So when two fighting characters of opposing teams are within 2 hexes of each other, they will start a fight and will not be able to do anything more (exept moving) on that turn or any other turn until they move away from each other. Each fighting character must make a moral check for each turn of engagement. A red character failing his moral is eliminated and will not count in victory points calculation at the end of the game.
   -T (taunt): those characters always have a joke or a funny gesture to deconcentrate enemies. When fired upon, taunting characters give a -1 fire penalty to their enemy.

-Counter color: each character counter has two sided, one blue and one red. Each character starts on the blue side, meaning that their moral is at its highest. When a character receive a hit and fail his moral check, the counter is flipped to red. If he failed again on another hit, he is eliminated from the game. Some event cards may also force a character to make a moral check. The same rule apply.
 

Equipment

  At Pwinch Wars, the characters can be equiped with different items to help them get through different kind of situations. There are weapons to attack enemy and support/protective gear to give some characters more chance to stay in the game. Here is a list of all the items a character can own. It is important to remember that any given character cannot carry more than one item (counter) of each type (ex.: 1 shield, 1 heavy sling, 1 helmet, etc.)
Normal sling shot: you wont find any counters in the game for this item because it is included in the basic equipment of a character. So a character, even if he has no equipment counters, still possess his normal sling. A normal sling has a range of 4 and has no other bonus or penalty. It is usually made of a metal coat hanger bent in a "Y" shape with some rubber bands. Pwinchers usually use beans as ammo.
Heavy sling shot: this is a weapon of choice. Bought in hardware store where they sell hunting stuff, those slings are feared by enemies. This weapon has a range of 5. It gives its user a +1 to his fire skill and the target, if hit, suffer a -1 penalty to his moral due to the great velocity of ammos thrown with this sling.
Fruits: anything that nature can produce will be used by Pwinchers as weapons: pine cones, rotten apples, cherries, etc. Fruits can be thrown to a distance of 3 hexes with a penaly of -1 to fire skill. An enemy hit by a fruit make his moral check with a -2 penalty. A character owning a fruit counter can use it 3 times. (the little numbers in blue squares represent the amount of uses left for any weapon with limited uses). Just place the counter in your equipment rack with the 3 in blue square face up. If one shot is used, then turn the counter so the 2 will face up and so on. When the 3 shots are used, remove the counter from the equipment rack. A character on a fruit tree hex (a fruit logo on the map) can pick some fruits if he has not any left in his equipment. He must spend  2 movement points to do so.
Water balls: a funny weapon to use. Water balls have a short range of 2 hexes, give a -2 penalty to fire skill of user but the target must make a moral check with -3 penalty. A character having a water ball counter in his equipment can use it 2 times (see fruits just above). If he has none in his equipment or used all he had, he can fill some at any water outlet (city map) or river hex (forest map, city map). It takes 2 movement points to do so.
Fireworks: this may be the equal to a shoulder rocket launcher in modern warfare but for Pwinchers. This is a dreaded weapon. Character using it suffers a -1 to his fire skill (due to the time required to light the thing) but a target hit suffers a penalty of -4 to his moral check. It has a range of 8 so it can really mess an enemy before he has time to fire back. Fireworks can be used 2 times (see fruits) and cannot be replaced by any means.
Hose: to use the hose, a character must first place it on a water outlet ("w" sign on city map). It requires 2 movement points to do so. Once screwed on the outlet, the hose becomes a terrifying weapon with a range of 3 hexes. It give a +1 bonus to the fire skill of the user and -3 penalty to moral of any target hit. The only negative point is that the user may not get farther than 1 hex from the water outlet (this represent the lenght of the hose).

Helmet: football or hockey helmet. Not a very efficient protective item in the Pwinch Wars context but still, it gives a +1 bonus to any moral check for a character wearing one.
Shield: a good old trash can cover makes a perfect protection. Characters equiped with a shield have a +1 bonus to their moral checks and enemy firing on them will have a -1 penalty to their firing skill.
Camo: any dark or green colored clothes will do the trick. Characters wearing camouflage will have a +1 bonus to their sneak check.
Walkie Talkie: a special piece of equipment that can be very useful to Pwinchers. On a team, when at least 2 characters own a Walkie Talkie, those two can perform a crossfire. This is a special task that requires coordination but it is very deadly. When a character owning a Walkie attack an enemy, nothing happens. But when a second character owning a Walkie attack the same target on the same turn, he gets a +1 to his fire skill and the target, if hit, will make its moral check with a penalty of -2 in addition of course with any weapon modifiers. This reprensent the fact that teammates are talking to each other to locate an enemy and can position themselves adequatly to perform a deadly fire. The negative side of this is that any character carrying a Walkie Talkie suffers a -1 penalty to sneak due to squelching sounds.
 

Cards

  In the Pwinch Wars game, event cards are involved and can play an important role depending on the situation. Each player starts the game with 3 cards. A player cannot have more than 3 cards in his hands. At the end of each turn, all players get the opportunity to pick a new card if he spent some during a turn. If a player has three card in his hand and still want to pick one, he must discard one he already own before doing so.
  Some cards have a heading with blue letters and some with red letters. Blue cards are bonus that you can use for you own characters. Red cards are penalties to give to an enemy. Any number of cards can be played at any moment. They can even be played when its not your turn. For example, an enemy annouce that he wants to fire on you. You may play a card on that attacking enemy character to give him a -1 fire penalty or a card to give a +1 moral bonus to your character. The only rigid rule concerning cards is that you cannot play more than one card that give a bonus or penalty to a specific ability at the same time. In other words, you cannot combine cards to have more that one bonus or penalty but you can make combinations that give bonuses or penalties to different abilities. Ex: a player has in its hand a card that give his character +1 to fire, another one with +1 fire and the last one with +1 sneak. He may not play at the same time his two +1 fire cards but can play a +1 fire with a +1 sneak. The other +1 fire will be kept for another situation.
  Some cards have an eye symbol on them. This symbol means that when an enemy character receive this card, he is revealed automatically if hidden. Other cards have a big grey dot on them. Those cards are only used when playing on the city map and can be removed from deck if you intend to use the forest map.
 

Maps

  There are two maps supplied with this game. Feel free to design your own if you are not satisfied with these or if you want to try something new. The first map sets the action in a park, the Duberger Park in Quebec city. This is a wooded area with some clearings so the characters playing on this map will find it more easy to sneak on preys. There is an "apple" sign on this map: it is a fruit tree that can be used to resupply your characters in fruits and is used in some scenarios as an objective to capture and protect.
  The other map is a "city map" or "suburb map" if you want. This one represent Pepin Street where most of the pwinchers presented in this game live. If you play on this map, prepare yourself for tough combat situations as there are not much good places to hide and many clear line of sight. There is again a fruit tree on this map and there are grey rectangles representing houses and appartment buildings. These building and houses hexes can be entered by pwinchers but it does not mean that the character actually enters the building. It just mean that he walks near the walls, outside of it. Actually, a character must enter one of these building hex, marked with a "w" sign, if he wants to install a water hose (takes 2 movement points). The city map also has a big boulevard, the Pere-Lelievre Boulevard with much circulation. A character can of course step on a Boulevard hex but must not stop his movement on it. On the south side of the map is the St-Charles River. A character can enter the river, as it is not very deep, but must make a river moral check. Hexes filled more than half with water are considered river hexes. Hex filled less than half are forest or grass hexes, according to the other color in the hex. A group of hexes, in the middle of the map, is surrounded by a red line. This is a restricted property. Any pwincher entering those hexes must make a moral check. This is property of an old grumpy woman who does not tolerate anybody.
 

Setuping the game

First, the players decide what kind of scenario they want to play. Some scenario are for 2 players, some for 3, some on the forest map and some other on the city map. Choose one or just design one from scratch. It does not really matter as long as all players agree on map choice, equipment and victory condition. When the scenario is chosen, each player select a team color with respective team components (team tray and team markers numbered from 1 to 10, plus HQ and flag counters that can be useful depending on the scenario).
Choosing characters: there are three ways of doing this. Sometimes, a given scenario will specify wich characters are in wich team. If not, you may choose at random: place all character counters in a bowl and allow each player (let the dice decide who begins) to pick one, then another one, until the specified number of character in the scenario is reached. The third way is to align all characters on the map and let the players (let the dice decide who begins) pick them one after the other, depending on their strenght and weaknesses.
Preparing a team: use your team tray to prepare your team for combat. There are 10 numbered boxes on a tray. Place your character counters on any box. The number you choose for any character is the number he will have for the rest of the game. The numbered hidden marker (?) corresponding to the number you have chosen for a character will be used in the game to represent that character when he is hiding. Depending on the number of characters in each team, some boxes will not be used. The hidden markers corresponding to those boxes can be used as dummies (scenario will specify if dummies are present) to lure the enemy.
Once this has been done, take all the equipment your team has (depending on the scenario) and dispatch those items to your pwinchers. Just place the item counter in the box of a character to show he owns it. A character cannot own more than 1 item of each kind (ex: just 1 heavy sling and not 2). This step is really a question of what strategy you intend to adopt in the game: are you using the equipment to protect characters that are not very good or to boost good characters to transform them into killing machines. That is up to you.
Place counters on the map: on the first turn, all counters on the map are hidden markers (?): the one representing characters and maybe some dummies. As the game evolve, there will be some hidden markers on the map and some character counters. When a character is revealed, stack his hidden marker under him just to remember what was his number. If a character is hidden, only place the hidden marker on the map and place the character counter back on its box on the team tray.
  As a last step before beginning play, all players pick 3 cards that he can use later in the game.

Now, you are ready to play!
 

Turn Sequence

The following paragraphs will describe how to play a typical turn of Pwinch Wars. Each sequences must be made in the order listed below.

Steps:
1-Check moral of bedtime worried characters
2-Determine initiative
3-Player that won initiative plays a character
    a-character moves or use movement points for special actions
    b-character fires
    c-character makes a sneak check
    d-counter turned 90 degrees to know it has been played
4-Second player plays a character
5-Third player (if scenario permits a third player) plays a character
6-Repeat step 3-4-5 until all characters on the map have played
7-Turn back counters in their original position
8-All player may discard one event card and take a new one
9-Turn marker moved one slot
 

1-Check moral of bedtime worried characters: this step has already been explained in the "bedtime worried" section of the Character counter explanations. Remove failing bedtime worried characters from game.

2-Determine initiative: each player rolls a 10-sided dice to know who will play first. The player that obtain the higher score plays first. Then the second highest score plays and finally, the lowest score plays. If a player has eliminated a character by firing upon him on the previous turn, he will have a bonus of +1 to his initiative rolls. This represent momentum obtained in combat.

3-Player that won initiative plays a character: in each character impulse, there are 4 steps to follow. Those steps must be played in order for the game to work properly.
  a-character moves or use movement points for special actions: a character check his movement points on his counter and move and/or use points for special actions. Of course, he must never spend more points than he has. Remaining points at the end of a turn are lost and cannot be saved for another turn. Moves are made according to terrain type listed on the Terrain Effect Chart. Some hexes cost 1 pt but other hexes will cost 2 pts or just  a 1/2 pt. If a character has not enough movement points to do all he wants to do in a single turn, he must wait another turn to make a task. A character cannot begin a task on one turn and continue it on the other. Ex: a character with 2 mov. pts move on a grass hex (1 pt spent) and wants to place a hose on a water outlet (costing 2 pts). As he has already spent 1 of his 2 pts (1 remaining), he has not enough points to place the hose so he must wait another turn to do it. If the same things had been made by a character with 3 movements points, it would have worked (movement of 1 hex plus placing hose on outlet). Note that if a character moves or use any of its movement points, he cannot get the +1 fire bonus listed on the Terrain Effect Chart or cannot use his special sniper ability.
  A character can also do some scouting during this phase. It costs 2 mov pts. If he can move adjacent or his already adjacent to a hidden character, scouting can be made. This represent that the character will spend some time searching around for a hidden enemy. The hidden character is forced to make a sneak check with a -4 penalty. If it fails, the hidden character is revealed automatically and can be fired upon. As the scouting player may have been surprised by this discovery, he will get a -2 penalty to fire for this round.
  b-character fires: if a the playing character is within range (depending on his choice of weapon) of a revealed  enemy character, he can fires on him. Count the hex between firing character and his target, including the target  hex. If it is within range, fire occurs. The target must also be revealed (not in a hidding (?) state). A firing character, if hidden, is automatically revealed and will have to play his sneak skill to hide again at the end of is impulse. The target must also be in the line of sight of the firing character. To determine this, take a ruler, align the center of the firing character's hex and the center of the target's hex. If this line intercept a forest hex or a hex containing a building, the line of sight is cut and firing cannot take place. If the line is clear, you may fire. To fire upon an enemy character target, take the firing skill of the firing character, calculate all possible positive or negative modifiers. Target player must annouce if he has some equipment that would give penalties to firing character (ex: shield gives -1 to enemy fire). Then, when the modified fire skill is known, 1d10 is rolled and if the result is equal or lower, the target is hit, keeping in mind that a 1 on the dice is always a success and a 10 always a miss (not matter what modifiers are applied). Ex.: Jack wants to fire on Bud. Jack's  firing skill is 6 and he has a heavy sling (+1 fire). Jack has not moved this turn (+1 fire). Target Bud is adjacent (gives +1 fire to Jack) and in a forest hex (gives -1  fire to Jack). Bud also has a shield in his equipment (gives -1 fire to Jack). Every pluses and minuses are calculated for a result of +1. Jack's firing skill of 6 becomes 7. Jack rolls 5 on the dice. Bud is hit!
  A hit on an enemy means that this particular enemy will have to make a moral check to know if he stays in the game. Take the moral skill of the targeted player, add all positive modifiers due to equipment, substract all negative modifiers due to weapon used or special ability. Roll 1d10 to know if moral fails. If not, nothing happens. If it fails, a blue character becomes red and a red character is eliminated from the game. His elimination then count has victory points (depending on scenario) for the attacking player. Any eliminated character places all the items he owned on the hex on wich he was eliminated. Other character will have the opportunity to pick some items on impulses to come. Ex: Bud was hit by Jack! Bud has a moral of 3 when on the blue side. Jack was using a heavy sling (-1 to target's moral). Bud has a shield (+1 moral) and a helmet (+1 moral). So his moral skill is now 4 (3-1+1+1=4). Bud rolls 5 so he fails. Bud's counter is then flipped on the red side. Another hit combined with a failed moral would eliminate him from play.
  c-character makes a sneak check: After a character has done all he has to do, he can make a sneak check to hide back (if first revealed) or remain hidden. A character that is not in any line of sight does not have to make a sneak check and just place his hidden (?) marker on the map where is character was. If he his in 1 or more line of sight (if enemies can see him), he must make his check. Take the sneak skill of the character, add or subtract bonuses or penalties due to actions taken that round, to terrain type or to equipment carried. Roll 1d10. If the result is equal or lower than the modified sneak skill, character remain hidden or return to a hidden state. If he fails, he remains revealed and can be fired upon when enemy plays his characters. Ex.: Jack has fired on Bud and want to hide back. Jack's sneak skill is 6. He has camo (+1 sneak) in his equipment. He his on a grass hex (-1 sneak). He has not moved this turn (-3 sneak). So his skill is now 4 (6+1-3=4). He rolls 3 so he can hide. Just place is hidden marker (?) on the hex he his.
  d-counter turned 90 degrees to know it has been played: turn it left or right, it does not matter. It is just a way to remember that this particular character has played in this turn and will only play again in the following turn if he his not eliminated till then.

4-Second player plays a character: repeat steps a, b, c, d.

5-Third player (if scenario permits a third player) plays a character: repeat steps a, b, c, d.

6-Repeat step 3-4-5 until all characters on the map have played: All characters on the map must be played in some way. A player may decide, in an impulse, to do nothing (no moves or fire) with a specific character (or dummy). He just announce it, check for line of sight to know if he his seen and turn the counter 90 degrees. Then its the next player's turn.

7-Turn back counters in their original position: When all characters (or dummies) are played, the counters are turned 90 degrees back to their original position. This is to ready the game for the next turn.

8-All player may discard one event card and take a new one: This step is done at the end of the turn. A player may never have more than 3 cards in his hand. He cannot pick more than1 card at each turn. If a player choose not to discard, then he may not pick a new card.

9-Turn marker moved one slot: This is the last step of the turn. A new turn can bring some new events so check it. For example, bedtime worried character may have to play their moral at the beginning of the next turn. Or if it becomes dark (night turn), then all characters get +1 to their sneak skill but -1 to their fire skill.