Iron Protocol
A hex-grid tabletop wargame of mechanized combat, set in a hard science-fiction world
Current edition 2026-09-04 — printed on the rulebook cover and every sheet, so you can always tell how current your copy is.
Secure a sensor lock and the shot connects. There is no to-hit number anywhere in the rules, so no shot is ever wasted on a bad accuracy roll. What you are fighting over is not whether you hit — it is whether you can see.
Visual, Infrared and Radar — and every weapon needs one of them. Woods, buildings and elevation deny a band outright; chaff, smoke, jammers and an adaptive skin only contest it, on a single die roll that is the same number for every defensive system in the game. Blind a Frame on the band its gun is slaved to and it is carrying dead weight, however much energy it has left.
Spend almost nothing and infrared has nothing to find. Not a saving throw — a hard block, because there is no heat signature to contest. Stealth is a choice about how little you are willing to do with your turn, and an assault chassis is too big to make it.
Slow Frames move first and shoot last. They commit to a position blind, then watch the fast ones fire before they can answer. Scouts move last and shoot first. That single inversion is the spine of every decision on the board.
Walking costs it. Firing costs it. Hiding costs it every round. Bank charge in the capacitor across turns until a rail gun shot is affordable, or spend it sprinting for cover — but the same reserve pays for both, and it never stretches.