Star Tale: Ground Wars is the name given to the strategy game parts of the overall Star Tale project.
Part 1:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/532024-star-tale-ground-wars
Part 2:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/536367-star-tale-ground-wars-part-2
Army Cards
Armies are organised into chunks of 10,000 points. Each chunk of 10,000 points worth of army units is called a Card. (different Factions might refer to them as Battalions, Regiments, Legions, Divisions etc but the generic term for all Factions is Cards).
During a battle, each player fights with 60,000 points worth of army units (or in other words 6 Cards).
However, before the battle, each player is actually allowed to design 12 different Cards, but you wont get to use them all in any one battle.
When you meet on the day of war, each player selects 4 Cards and reveals them to their opponent.
After reviewing your enemy's army choices, you then select a further 2 more Cards.
This phase means that you have a chance to tailor your force to better react to the enemy. If they are bringing full infantry or full armour etc, hopefully you have designed some Cards to deal with those threats and so now you are able to select them.
Unit = A single soldier or vehicle
Squad = A group of soldiers on a single stand
Detachment = A group of squads and/or vehicles. You issue Orders to Detachments, they move around together etc.
Card = A group of detachments up to the value of 10,000 points.
How to Win
Each player is trying to score Victory Points.
There are 9 "Nodes" out on the board to capture.
Additionally each player has 6 Colonels.
You score a Victory Point for each "Node" that you control.
You score a Victory Point for each friendly Colonel that you save.
You score a Victory Point for each enemy Colonel that you destroy.
Here is a very rough sketch of the basic layout of the Game Board:
*not to scale
The Blue Circles are Nodes that you attempt to capture.
The Black Rectangles are Colonels that you attempt to protect/destroy.
The Green Line marks the boundary of your deployment zone, 1 for each player. (The deployment zone is 12 tiles along the entire width of the 144 x 96 tile game board).
Colonels are in large vehicles.
By the way, you the player are called the Commander.
Clocks
In a tournament setting Clocks (chess clocks) are used.
So thats some more information about Star Tale: Ground Wars. As always, everything is public domain. You are free to use anything however you wish. See you next month on the 12th.