"Same chaos" OHW variant: increasing fog-of-war and uncertainty without actually changing anything in the RAW's statistics

A lot of people reading or playing OHW for the first time are left with the impression that it’s a bit too deterministic and predictable. I don’t personally have a problem with that (it’s perfect for a specific style of solo play as I explained earlier) 

However, I understand it can generate a sense of detachment if one is used to systems with more ‘handles’ and/or bells & whistles. Here’s a perfect description of the phenomenon:

Battlefields and Warriors: Black Powder and One Hour Wargames (battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com)

"The OHW combat system can give a generic sense that one doesn't care about their units too much. You push them into action and as they rack up hits (towards the 15 that simply removes them from play), you start to feel 'can I get one more round of shooting out of them before the melt away'?"

The most widespread answer to this is to modify the rules introducing extra mechanisms which make the game more unpredictable. Many players also dislike rosters (again, I don’t have a problem with that, but I understand it might feel clumsy in play).  Here you’ll find some especially clever solutions for both problems:

A modification…or two…of 1 Hour Wargames. | John's Wargame Page (wordpress.com)

However, all rules mods I’ve tracked so far change at least somewhat OHW’s RAW result variance or even balance. Since I’ve found that most OHW scenarios are very finely tuned for balance, I’d prefer to find a way not to do that… And I think I’ve found a workaround.

OHW ‘Same Chaos’ variant

You’ll need four types of tokens, labelled “4”, “6”, “8” and “x2”. Every time you attack an unit, put a token corresponding to the maximum damage that attack could do. So an 1d6-2 attack on the flank would put a “4” token stacked with a “x2” token on the damaged unit, while an 1d6+2 attack from the front would inflict an “8” token, etc etc. The numbers on the token record the maximum amount of hits the unit could have received under RAW, so I call them ‘potential hits’.

Every time you acquire a new token, tally the total of potential hits so far. The above unit would have a total of (4x2)+8=16 potential hits on it. Only if and when the total potential hits reach or surpass 15, actually roll the dice corresponding to tokens. So in the example above, you would roll [(1d6-2)x2]+1d6+2. If those ‘actual’ rolled hits total 15 or more, the unit is destroyed. If you roll a lower number, the unit is still fine – but it still keeps all the tokens it acquired so far.

The effect of all this is that you won’t know exactly how close your units are to destruction when you activate them – you won’t have those 14-hits ‘dead unit walking’ situations in which you just want to squeeze one last suicidal attack from your little warriors. This also increases the fog-of-war in a sense, since you’ll never know how close to destruction the enemy’s units are – just the amount of pressure you’ve put on them. On the other hand, OHW’s RAW statistics and variance is fully preserved. In fact, the only difference is that you pack all the randomness in one big chunk when it actually matters, rather than parcelling it on a turn-by-turn basis and then being constantly updated with full information about an unit’s status.

It works for me!