Is there anybody out there who can tell me how I can prepare and run a combat effectively?

You could give up dice rolling, since if you control the fight you could make it more "epic" or something. But this tends to bore the players since they feel they got nothing to come with.

Let the players roll their own dice and simply roll the other parts (enemy) dice behind your GM-screen or something (totally ignoring the results, haha!) . This keeps the illusion of randomness into the game. A fight should be fast and brutal, it tends to be a little boring if you look at each rule every time. Besides, if you're running a campaign and have your players massacred by some low-level cannon fodder, it's not a very good ending for an epic campaign. Manipulate the fights to make them interesting, but keep the illusion that it's an open ended fight.

Hope this helps a bit... Ja mata ne!

JtB's right, give up the dice...I roll all dice behind the screen when I'm GM...but I don't really care 'bout them. If I want a character to get hit, he will, no matter what the dice are telling me. And I only roll if it's necessary... The game tends to run smoother that way.

To start with let me say that I agree with what the other replies have said so far. I found the combat system presented in Kult was too slow and cumbersome to keep up the pace of the action. I have switched to using the BTRC game system 'Corps' which runs much faster (in fact rolls are not even required half the time). My advice is 1) If you want to use the Kult combat system, then prior to running make out a sheet with all of the relevant bad guy statistics on it for quicker reference. You could also record a number of die rolls ahead of time and just go through them (check them off) when the action begins. 2) Find another, more fluid, combat system and convert everything over to it. It may be a pile of work to begin with, but the results may be worth it. 3) Do as the others have said and just make it up as you go, rolling behind a screen to give your players the illusion of randomness. 4) Use a mix of the methods. For example set up the sheets as in 1) but at critical times, for maximum effect, make up the results. Hope this helps.