Round of Fire is a skirmish game that simulates the dynamics of battle through a unique activation system. The game rules are tailored around the Wheel, a solution to break from the concept of turns and to consider the battle as a continuous flow of actions. Players must make decisions at every point in the fight to effectively coordinate and maneuver their troops.

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Scale and Setting

The Round of Fire system offers a solid base to handle the action in a small fight between a few dozen individuals, and the rules are not bound to a specific setting or scale. The distances are measured in Distance Units, that can vary depending on the miniatures scale used. Because of this, the very same game can be played on a 3′ x 3′ table with 28mm miniatures, on a 2′ x 2′  table with 15mm miniatures or even with larger or smaller scales. The “feel” of a particular setting is instead created with the use of specific figures profiles and weapons, which will encourage players to choose the right tactics for the fight. The Core Rules presents near-future profiles and some sample profiles for fantasy and renaissance soldiers, and more expansions will follow that will cover various other settings.

Mechanics and Dice

The Wheel is the center of the Round of Fire system. The time required for each action of the Units is tracked there, and the rest of the rules are built around that. Slower troops will activate less often, suppressed figures will delay their actions and coordinated movements become vital, as waiting itself is an important part of the battle.
The game is played exclusively using 6-sided dice (D6), and no counters or tokens are used to track statuses on the table. Instead, all is tracked on the Wheel side board, where tokens representing the units are positioned.

The boards and tokens are accessible as a free download from Wargame Vault.

The Core Manual

The 94 pages of the Core Rules cover all the mechanics needed for firefights and close combat encounters.
The manual also offers profiles for near-future battles, covering five factions representing tropes that span countless settings from highly trained elite troops to desperate scavengers, fictional militias to insurgents, or even swarms of mindless robots, with fourteen customizable types of troops presented and over thirty weapon types. There are nine playable scenarios in the manual as well, both symmetric and asymmetric, to provide competitive setups and more story-driven encounters. Example profiles for medieval and renaissance units and weapons are also proposed.

Additional Tools

Cards are also provided to keep track of units and weapons statistics during the game. These are not strictly required for the game, but greatly simplify the gameplay by condensing all the required statistics.

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