Turn Counter: Can this be done?

I’ll be honest, I haven’t put too much thought into it and I must admit to being a bit of a novice at module design, but I am stumped.

Is there a way to have have a turn counter which at a certain point, includes a count down?

Say, for example, the game involves movement to a location where a bomb is set. Then the game is a movement race to get clear of the bomb (within a certain number of turns).

Someone must have done something like this, but I haven’t seen it. I’m leaning towards a second counter, but it would be nice to synch the two.

Does the countdown always start at the exact same time in the game?

Because if it does, then you could just edit the turn values so the counter looks like it’s counting down when in fact it’s still progressing forwards.

So your turn values might be:

T1
T2
T3
T4
T5 (start countdown)
10 turns until the bomb goes off!
9 turns until the bomb goes off!
8 turns until the bomb goes off!
7 turns until the bomb goes off!

etc.

BUT, if the start of the countdown sequence is variable, yeah, I think you’d need to use two trackers.

(note that I am not a VASSAL expert, just a regular VASSAL module designer)

Does the countdown always start at the exact same time in the game?

Nope. Based on some event within the gaime. And just to complicate things, the main turn counter already has a sub-list for phases.

The more I think about it, a second counter is probably the way to go. It would be nice if the two could be synchronized…

Hopefully, I can spend some time with this over the weekend…