Brick By Bloody Brick

Brick by Bloody Brick is my platoon/company level game. It uses blocks and a square grid and is designed for reasonably fast play with fire team manoeuvre units. It has been through a variety of iterations and is drawing on my experience with Cityfight2024, Vertical Urban Wargame, and the latter's source ruleset - Dropzone Commander. It is a wargame of modern urban combat at the platoon/company level. In many ways B3B is a companion to RUCKUS, and between them they should enable you to wargame modern peer-on-peer urban battles from about platoon level to just above Brigade level.

B3B uses a square grid rather than areas. Buidings are identified by roof type (flat or pitched), construction material and number of storeys. Doors and windows are located in a general sense.

The game is played with blocks, so you can see the IDs of your units, but you can only see where enemy units are, not what they are. Dummy blocks on both sides further confuses things and you need to use ISR assets and the Mark 1 eyeball in order to identify and target enemy units. You have UGVs and UAVs to deploy – but also counter-UAV and counter-UGV weapons.

Supporting assets are largely represented by Capability Cards. You have a budget to buy these at the start of the game, but they can only be tasked in a command turn - which happens every 5 turns, representing the fact that the battle on the ground is probably happening a lot faster than your C2 activity.

In B3B I’ve tried to put in the hooks for a number of other distinct elements of urban combat. As well as civilians, rubble, cultural property and TICs & TIMs there are also simple rules for breaching & mouseholing, subterranean tunnels, over-pressure from large calibre tank guns, and the fact that once fires any large projectile is likely to cause damage to something, even if it misses.

In order to provide maximum variety for games, the B3B playing surface is made up of a number of 16cm tiles, each having a 4x4 grid, and being arrangable in a wide variety of different ways.

B3B will be available as print-and-play and as a Tabletop Simulator module by end Oct 2026. Play time is intended to be 1-2 hours depending on the scenario for two teams of 1-3 people.

Here are some of the work in progress materials to give you an idea of the game:

B3B Flyer
B3B Rules - to follow
B3B Designer Notes - to follow
B3B Scenarios - to follow

Since this game is one of the key games for my PhD I am keen to collect formal feedback on play. If you'd like to participate then either just email me at david@burden.name, or read and complete the following forms (all online) to confirm your participation and to document your plays:

If you've got any questions or comments about B3B, or would like a demo game with me just email me at david@burden.name.

And here are some images of the game in play: