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zeromaeus wrote:
It is possible, but incredibly unlikely, for the scouts player to win.

Ok good enough.

Thanks spiralingcadaver and panic for your reviews, they're well-detailed and merited. Very baffling how the rules changed, it makes me wonder if all of the Specialist Games releases will have rules adjusted by the idiosyncrasies of the new designers (as the intentionally brutal difficulty of this version shows).

 BrookM wrote:
I had the sniper rules somewhere, but lost them, they're done by the author of the original version, who also did a nice write-up / retrospective on Lost Patrol and what he'd change if he got o re-do it again when he heard it was being re-released.

I've seen the sniper rules, but would be interested in the retrospective if you happen to be able to find that.


tneva, think about 50-60 d6 rolls, which under the best likely circumstances need to be 4+ (which you can't necessarily force); at worst need to be 7+, and most often need to be 6+, and each time you fail, you lose a scout or the opportunity to advance. It's definitely possible, but has very little to do with skill. Probably 80% of the scouts' strategy is figuring out the least-vulnerable formation in your first game or two; 20% is figuring out where to move (maybe that takes another game or two past that), and the rest is rolling a bunch of single dice and dying. I think the first edition was in the 2:1 sorts of odds and it was pretty enjoyable, wouldn't be surprised if this one were in the 10:1 range. I'm a pretty experienced gamer (if I do say so myself), having played a lot of systems, crunched a lot of numbers, broken a few mechanics, and developed a couple light but fairly well-received game expansions. The odds in my opinion are all shot to hell.

The game's fast because you usually aren't making decisions, but so's candy land.

I've got nothing against fast games, but they either need to be extremely fast or have an interesting enough bluffing and/or decision-making element that they're not on autopilot.



edit: Accolade, glad I could help

I'm curious too, since Silver Tower (my next big target) seems mostly intact, but with one mechanic replaced (different leveling system), one added (more control over dice) and one removed (inter-dungeon adventuring). So, I'm curious to see how much the edition's "improvements" are that, or just that some designer wanted to leave their mark and not just reprint the game with updated aesthetics.

It seems, with the new AOS setting, that the one I was most familiar with (mordheim) is probably never going to see a new edition, but I'd certainly want to try their update to that if it's ever tackled.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
I think the first edition was in the 2:1 sorts of odds and it was pretty enjoyable, wouldn't be surprised if this one were in the 10:1 range. I'm a pretty experienced gamer (if I do say so myself), having played a lot of systems, crunched a lot of numbers, broken a few mechanics, and developed a couple light but fairly well-received game expansions. The odds in my opinion are all shot to hell.

10 to 1 is ridiculously good compared to some games I have played

Well, then you might like it. I find games predetermined by odds without any real strategic choices (unless you count "do the obviously stupid thing or do the obviously smart thing" as choice) to be incredibly boring, even when they're not heavily skewed- might as well just roll a single d10 and say you win on a 10, or whatever.

 BrookM wrote:
I had the sniper rules somewhere, but lost them, they're done by the author of the original version, who also did a nice write-up / retrospective on Lost Patrol and what he'd change if he got o re-do it again when he heard it was being re-released.

https://quirkworthy.com/2013/01/27/lost-patrol-new-rules-scout-snipers/