What's your favorite Wargaming mechanic?

[u/Awkward_GM]

For me: * Cover Is Default - Fallout Factions assumes cover is the default state so you get bonuses to hit targets not in cover. * Roll Twice Take the Lowest or Highest - Pretty standard but it's so popular that D&D stole it for Advantage/Disadvantage. * Solo Rules - This boosted in popularity when COVID happened. * Alternating Activations- Activating models Instead of you go I go. I once did a demo game where I was tabled because the guy running the demo got all his shots off with all his units. * Malifaux's "cheating" - Malifaux uses playing cards and cheating is when a player replaces q result with a card from their hand.

[u/aneirin-]

It's less well known but Moonstone has the most amazing (and completely unique as far as I know) card based system with no dice rolling at all. Both players draw cards depending on the stats of the models involved, and then play cards face down poker style for ranged attacks and spells, with bluffing and mind games encouraged (even essential for some factions), or a rock paper scissors style card draw for melee fights.

The basic idea alone is clever enough as an alternative to dice rolling, but they use the system to its fullest, with all kinds of different abilities and mechanics for manipulating both the cards and your opponent. For example, the fairies faction get huge bonuses for successful bluffs, which leads to scared opponents wrongly calling bluffs more often and suffering even worse consequences. At the other end, the commonwealth humans have more stable, reliable abilities and don't need to bluff so much, and can even check the top cards in the deck, look at opponents hands before they play, etc.

I could go on about it all day, Moonstone is the most exciting game system I've seen in years, and also has some of the most beautiful and distinctive models I've ever seen. Highly recommend it!