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While it's a skirmish game (so combats are usually 1v1 model), Moonstone has a really interesting way of dealing with melee combat. Every model has a Melee stat, which is a number of cards they get to draw from a shared deck (attacker generally draws first). These cards are essentially a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock kind of thing, with various moves on them such as Thrust, Low Swing, Medium Guard, etc. Both players select their cards and play them face down, then compare them to see what the results are. Both sides can conceivably take damage.

Not sure how something like that could be thematic for unit-based games, but you might be able to come up with something that could provide a modifier to any dice rolls based on the differences in postures if you didn't want to have full resolution up to just the cards.

 kain20k wrote:
I love the idea of cards to influence melee combat. Maybe have some sort of combination of standard actions with special maneuvers or counters that can be played in addition to the action. It could have a cool feel of the players being more involved in the melee combat, instead of just throwing dice back and forth.

This would probably only work with lower model skirmish style games, but could have some neat interactions. Especially if the model had unique cards that they could play based on their class or skills.

To avoid creating a game-with-a-game I would come up with a set of generic tactics/formations, each with strengths and weaknesses and perhaps optimized for certain weapons. It doesn't have to be complete rock/paper/scissor because that's just another form of dice rolling, but it should reflect ways to maximize the weapon loadouts/equipment of the various troops.

Where the rock/paper/scissor thing would come into play is deciding that a certain tactic is so obvious that the opponent will use a counter and then taking the counter to that counter.

 Valander wrote:

Not sure how something like that could be thematic for unit-based games, but you might be able to come up with something that could provide a modifier to any dice rolls based on the differences in postures if you didn't want to have full resolution up to just the cards.

I think that Sam Mustafa and Warwick Kinrade have tried to tackle this in their games. I am not 100% sure, as I have not put them "on table", but only read some reviews/reports.

Take a look at the following:

- Longstreet- Mustafa
- Maurice- Mustafa
- Soldiers of God/Rome- Kinrade

 kain20k wrote:
I love the idea of cards to influence melee combat. Maybe have some sort of combination of standard actions with special maneuvers or counters that can be played in addition to the action. It could have a cool feel of the players being more involved in the melee combat, instead of just throwing dice back and forth.

This would probably only work with lower model skirmish style games, but could have some neat interactions. Especially if the model had unique cards that they could play based on their class or skills.

That's how quite a lot of skirmish board games work, actually. Check, for example, Super Fantasy Brawl or Skytear. Or even Unmatched My favourite Gloomhaven also works around this idea, although this one is cooperative.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
In many genres, Melee is the great "decider" and is the crucial mechanics for the period or genre. That weight of decision for the game should come from Melee.

This is the mistake here, your premise that melee is the decider misses the difference between decision trees and number of dice rolled. Melee is where the most dice are rolled and the most damage is done but movement is what decides the game. Melee is simply a resolution phase for the decisions made earlier in the game. Making melee work better should be about streamlining mechanics and making the resolution faster, not adding complexity and getting bogged down in irrelevant details.

Whilst this is always true to some extent, I think you are over-emphasising the Napoleonic-style decisive bayonet charge of melee combat (that is probably still the paradigm for increasingly-rare melee into current times).

We know that earlier melees in the ancient to medieval era often played out for hours after the units in question had finished manouevring into position, and the ability of certain units to hold in melee is what bought sufficient time for manouvre elements elsewhere in the army to get into decisive positions to end the battle, or for hard-fighting troops to break through tough opposition and take the centre. Now, anyone with any experience of strenuous physical activity can work out that fighting continuously for your life for hours is obviously not sustainable, so clearly troops had ways of resting and easing off combat during a prolonged melee. The mechanisms for this are not well understood because any backing off in combat seems suicidal, but we do have accounts of Roman legionaries rotating from the front to rest, and of battlelines breaking apart to recuperate before re-engaging without breaking and running.

I think there is scope for a game that has mechanics for the long melee, where commanders can make simple decisions, about the focus of their unit's combat power and how it will intend to damage the enemy (something like hold- a defensive stance, push- a more damaging but more tiring stance, break-off- to recover energy, and some more specialised actions like targeting the enemy unit's commander or a commander attempting to rally a unit on the verge of breaking). This could be paired with a combat fatigue mechanic, that would have some effect on the efficacy of actions until your unit is able to replenish in some way. Some of the tactical gameplay could be around trying to hold enough reserve to force an attack as the enemy reaches a point their fatigue requires them to break off, in an attempt to rout them. I think unit commanders would be key, and losing these should massively degrade the cohesion and combat power of the unit. Manouvre would give advantages to units in good positions that would help throughout the combat, a good positional advantage potentially being decisive from the charge.

You could argue that ultimately this is merely manouvre within the melee, but it is intimately connected to it and how many, many battles have been fought historically.

As I started this I wondered if someone would mention cards. Freebooter's Fate, which is a skirmish game and therefore involves 1v1 or otherwise small combats uses cards to determine damage, a sort of bluff mechanic where different parts of the body have different impact and armour, so there's a bit of a "I know that they know that I know etc" to secretly declaring where you defend and attack, once the winner has been found by a simple roll off with modifiers for ability and weapons.

Another mechanic similar to something that has been mentioned is one that GW used in it's old 40k board games of adding up skill and modifiers, then a single roll against a table to determine the outcome.

Mantic use a mechanic similar to Risk in their dungeon crawler games, except each dice needs to beat both the opposing dice and the opposing model's armour value at the same time.

It depends on both the type of game and the level of abstraction players will accept (eg not requiring 1 dice per model per attack in a ranked regiment game).

 Haighus wrote:


Whilst this is always true to some extent, I think you are over-emphasising the Napoleonic-style decisive bayonet charge of melee combat (that is probably still the paradigm for increasingly-rare melee into current times).

We know that earlier melees in the ancient to medieval era often played out for hours after the units in question had finished manouevring into position, and the ability of certain units to hold in melee is what bought sufficient time for manouvre elements elsewhere in the army to get into decisive positions to end the battle, or for hard-fighting troops to break through tough opposition and take the centre.

I would argue the opposite - most pre-gunpowder battles were decided on first impact and the reason we know more about battles that lasted for hours is that they were so unique. For example, the Second Battle of Cremona is remarkably well documented in part because it was such a rarity - a night battle (!) and it was between two Roman armies in Italy, so lots of witnesses were able to talk about it afterwards.

A close reading of ancient warfare indicates that much of the time, one side doesn't even engage. Greek Hoplites rarely got into a shoving match because one side would either run away at the charge, or break soon after the impact. Yes, leaving a melee is very dangerous, so you'd better be the first one out of there. It's the old D&D joke - I don't have to outrun the enemy, just most of the guys on my own side.

Thing brings us back to the top of the thread, which is what type of combat is being adjudicated. If you have only a dozen models involved, fighting it out as (modified) opposed rolls between individual figures is feasible and probably the most realistic. You can give bonuses for gang-ups and also room for champions to do their thing.

It is when the formations get larger that you need to aggregate things and have to decide what is important in your game. Is it skill? Morale? Specific weapon types?

In Conqueror: Fields of Victory I do the fist fulls of dice thing because it's kind of fun and goes pretty quickly because both sides rolls simultaneously for hits, then conduct their own saves and the loser (or force being charged) tests morale. If one wanted less die rolling then using a matrix chart would work, but the question would then be whether it takes more time to do the calculations and find the right column on the table than to determine who hits on 4+ vs 3+.

The other issue remains movement, specifically facing and/or encirclement. Physical position matters a lot, and that why turning a flank or breaching the center is so important. If you are doing skirmish rules, that's harder to reflect because the troops tend to just be shapeless mobs. I supposed you could have a template to reflect units' flanks or say that if hit on front and rear they have penalties, but without the movement restrictions imposed on formed units, this would be difficult to implement or adjudicate.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Haighus wrote:


Whilst this is always true to some extent, I think you are over-emphasising the Napoleonic-style decisive bayonet charge of melee combat (that is probably still the paradigm for increasingly-rare melee into current times).

We know that earlier melees in the ancient to medieval era often played out for hours after the units in question had finished manouevring into position, and the ability of certain units to hold in melee is what bought sufficient time for manouvre elements elsewhere in the army to get into decisive positions to end the battle, or for hard-fighting troops to break through tough opposition and take the centre.

I would argue the opposite - most pre-gunpowder battles were decided on first impact and the reason we know more about battles that lasted for hours is that they were so unique. For example, the Second Battle of Cremona is remarkably well documented in part because it was such a rarity - a night battle (!) and it was between two Roman armies in Italy, so lots of witnesses were able to talk about it afterwards.

A close reading of ancient warfare indicates that much of the time, one side doesn't even engage. Greek Hoplites rarely got into a shoving match because one side would either run away at the charge, or break soon after the impact. Yes, leaving a melee is very dangerous, so you'd better be the first one out of there. It's the old D&D joke - I don't have to outrun the enemy, just most of the guys on my own side.

.

Well, yes, but we tend to not want to play the battles where no one engaged or a small militia got trounced by a far-superior raiding party.

Large pitched field battles in general were very rare, and as such a lot of them were documented. Many of them were very hard fought because the armies had already been motivated in some way to engage. If not broken on first contact, it appears melees were frequently long, brutal affairs. It would be fair to say that this is only likely to occur when both sides have good infantry, which was not the case in a lot of historical battles. Certainly in the late medieval period, drawn out fights are definitely a thing.

I don't think pre-gunpowder is a great metric- I think the shift away from prolonged melees happened during the pike and shot era several centuries after gunpowder entered the battlefield.

One thing that most games don't simulate is how much of "combat" is really just standing around waiting for something to happen. The smart commanders would arrange for shade and close access to water for their troops, which isn't something usually featured in games.

In any event, my point is that the rules used to simulate a large bar fight must necessarily differ from that of cohorts or great companies coming into contact.

There's also the use of missile fire, which historically was used to disorder or harass rather than outright kill enemy units. The idea was to weaken morale, leaving them vulnerable to a charge.

In Conqueror, missile fire is half as effective as melee (hits are reduced by half), but any unit that takes missile fire must make a morale test. Even militia will typically pass, but they will likely be disordered, which is the real goal. If they are advancing in the open against lots of archers, they may well break under the constant fire.

Here again, the scale of the fight is paramount. If the fight is 10 on 10, then archery is now a lethal rather than harassing form of attack and instead of firing at a formation, the shooters are picking out a specific individual. Again, this is why I feel at that scale, combat really becomes a set of fights between individuals.

Yesterday I played one of my favourite games of all time - Forbidden Stars. I recommend checking this game's excellent (albeit time consuming...) combat which includes dice rolling, dice manipulation, cards, morale and a lot of interesting, meaningful choices even once combat has started.

Cyel wrote:
Yesterday I played one of my favourite games of all time - Forbidden Stars. I recommend checking this game's excellent (albeit time consuming...) combat which includes dice rolling, dice manipulation, cards, morale and a lot of interesting, meaningful choices even once combat has started.

That goes back to the question of what the focus of the game is - the movement to engagement or the engagement itself?

The answer to that in turn depends on the scope and scale of the game.

Prolonged exposure has taught us the "GW way of war" - rolling fistfulls of dice to adjudicate the actions of many combatants at once. However, other systems aggregate the numbers of combatants and resolve the combat using a single die roll on a table.

In both cases, the movement to engagement is the focus. Victory will typically go to the side that has turned a flank, or brings multiple units to bear on a single foe.

The reason for the Yahtzee feel is that GW's combat system is very inefficient at generating losses. It's not just that you roll one or more attacks per model, you must roll them in multiple stages (hit, wound, save). When I developed my own Fantasy system (Conqueror: Fields of Victory), I reduced the mechanic to two rolls - hit and save, and I made them proceed simultaneously, greatly reducing the amount of dice-rolling. At that the same time, I made combat more "lethal", which is not only satisfying, it also forces a decision since even low-skill units can inflict punishing losses on each other.

However, as the model count falls, the geometry of the combat changes, and individual weapons and skill becomes more prominent. At the farthest end of the spectrum we have RPGs, which each action can be subdivided. At that point, models may take multiple actions and we can feasibly track them.

This returns us to the question of what the focus of the game truly is. Are you maneuvering to engage or trying to optimize dueling actions? What should players be studying - formation rules or weapon/skill combinations?

One of the great perils of game design is including the wrong mechanics for a given scale. In military board games, this will often be where a player takes the role of a commander who has to make decisions that would in real life be left to subordinates. Many of these games don't really teach strategy but procedural management. That's a useful skill, but may have nothing to do with the campaign under consideration.

This is why I both like and loathe cards. Properly used, they can create a nice fog of war element and greatly speed up play since rather than having to remember one's options, what you have in your hand is what you get.

However, many designers get lost in the notion of a "game within a game," increasing complexity without any real gain in enjoyment (or realism).

Ultimately, every wargame is designed to simulate a particular problem, be it individual combat or theater-wide logistics. The essence of good game design is to understand what it is you are trying to do and then ensure that every mechanic is in alignment with that goal.

Ok, here is something I came up with.

We have a deck of cards with some combat results. Casualties, increasing panic until the enemy gets to a breaking point (panic treshold), pushing back etc in different combinations. This deck doesn't have to be big and cards can come in more than one copy for more predictable strategizing (for example 2 copies of 8 cards for a deck of 16 cards)

When your unit attacks you draw cards and choose one to apply.

The interesting thing is you draw more cards, depending on the situation the unit is in - so positioning, terrain, flanking, proximity of a commander (like in Warmaster) etc increase your chance of drawing what you really need.

The unpredictability is retained and a doomed unit still has a chance to perform heroically by luckily drawing the exact card which it really needs for the situation. But good maneuvering, use of terrain, maintaining the net of commanders vastly improves the chance of such performance. The choice of the desired effect is limited, but firmly in the player's hands.

For example - we have a unit of regulars so we draw one card, but we attack the enemy in the flank, and we are charging so we draw two more and the commander spent a Commander Focus token on this unit, so another card is drawn.

Of course you can build up on this basis, for example allowing cards to be conditionally chained, so that drawing more cards not only gives you better chances of finding what you want, but leads to a more decisive resolution (and cool combos!). For example

"Inflict 2 casualties and put 2 Panic tokens on the enemy.
If this unit now outnumbers the enemy unit you can play an additional card"
or
"Inflict 3 casualties and push the enemy back 3".
If this unit is a cavalry unit and it is performing a charge attack put 2 Panic tokens on the enemy and you can play an additional card."

Then we can have different cards for different factions, or commanders who provide their own, unique cards when they are chosen to lead in the battle, changing the deck according to their personal style...there can be a lot more creativity with these results than with dice dealing hits and misses.

Of course the downside is that the cards need to be supplied with the game or available for downloading and printing. More hassle than just getting a bunch of d6.

Cyel wrote:


Then we can have different cards for different factions, or commanders who provide their own, unique cards when they are chosen to lead in the battle, changing the deck according to their personal style...there can be a lot more creativity with these results than with dice dealing hits and misses.

Of course the downside is that the cards need to be supplied with the game or available for downloading and printing. More hassle than just getting a bunch of d6.

It is possible to simply use ordinary playing cards for this sort of thing. For years I've been doing this for a series of speculative modern wargames in variable intensity conflicts (Syria/Iraq, Libya, Northwest Africa).

When you do that, the cards become the decisive element in the game, not the pieces, which are simply "card delivery vehicles."

That's not a bad thing (indeed, that's why I went with this method), it's just important to know what you are doing.

Indeed, at that point you may as well go with a card for each unit or model, which lists modifiers on various attacks in the cards.

Position would be important insofar as you can do gangups, or (with sufficient distance) charge/overrun someone.

Alternatively, you could have the models represent larger units, which would permit additional tactics for flanking with advantage of keeping the model count low.

To prevent players from "counting cards" I went with lots and lots of cards and there are no unique cards, though some are more rare than others. I also use a minimum of four decks kept in a baccarat shoe and periodically reshuffle them in.

All of which is to say, yes, this could work and it would have a very different feel that heaving dice all over the place.

Cyel wrote:
When your unit attacks you draw cards and choose one to apply.

I feel like this is a case of trying to out-clever yourself with a "cool" mechanic and pushes things in the direction of one of 40k's biggest problems, where the CCG matters more than the on-table events. What exactly are you simulating when you allow the attacker to choose the effects of their attacks? How does a commander choose that hitting the enemy with swords results in moving the enemy unit backwards vs. causing additional casualties? That should be a choice by the defender, to withdraw in the face of overwhelming force or stand their ground and die to hold the position. And it makes even less sense to be able to choose the cards for your deck. How does a commander choose to make their enemies more prone to panic? It's awkward and unrealistic in the best case scenario, and at worst the CCG element becomes the focus and setting up a well-executed flanking maneuver matters less than picking the right cards for the meta and topdecking your killer combo.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
When you do that, the cards become the decisive element in the game, not the pieces, which are simply "card delivery vehicles."

That's not a bad thing (indeed, that's why I went with this method), it's just important to know what you are doing.

Hard disagree. The whole point of playing a miniatures game is the miniatures. You're pushing models around the battlefield and simulating a real battle. If you're going to turn the miniatures into a mere sideshow for the card game why have the expense (for both players and the manufacturer) and complexity of miniatures at all? Why not just make a war-themed card game that, free from the constraints of including miniatures, can focus on being the best possible card game?

All of which is to say, yes, this could work and it would have a very different feel that heaving dice all over the place.

This really sounds like a case of trying to out-clever yourself by asking "how can I use cards" instead of "what is the best resolution mechanic" and forcing an awkward mechanical fit for the sake of making cards happen. The resolution system in a wargame should be a largely transparent part of the game, existing only because we can't have automatic RNG resolution in a physical game. It should never be the focus of the game.

You present your personal preference and opinion as fact. It doesn't work like that.

There are different ratios between gameplay abstraction and simulation and different designers may have different philisophies or goals. Every wargame abstracts something for the sake of better gameplay and there's no universal answer where the perfect threshold is.

For example one of the most popular and most praised wargames of the recent years is the Undaunted series which has innovative deck building and card management as its core concepts, accompanying traditional map for movement and dice rolling for attacks.

Aecus Decimus wrote:


Hard disagree. The whole point of playing a miniatures game is the miniatures. You're pushing models around the battlefield and simulating a real battle. If you're going to turn the miniatures into a mere sideshow for the card game why have the expense (for both players and the manufacturer) and complexity of miniatures at all? Why not just make a war-themed card game that, free from the constraints of including miniatures, can focus on being the best possible card game?

The same argument could be made about using dice. The miniatures are there to represent units and position on the field and cards are just as viable as a design engine as any other system.

Since this thread is about finding ways to avoid throwing buckets of dice, cards are a viable alternative.

GW's problem was that they implemented cards as an add-on that often dominated battlefield events. It was very poor game design.

My point about the pieces being less functional was regarding using cards for maneuvers rather than using rulers and straight edges. For example, an "outflank" maneuver card could allow a model (or models) to achieve a flank position.

Indeed, using cards would also open up some tactical possibilities beyond a mere rock/scissors/paper type guessing game.

I've seen some card games where the card draw dictates the order of play as well as the cards come off a common deck. This randomizes turn selection, creating an interesting dynamic.

Of course another aspect of cards is that you can also constrain results. The uncertainty of combat isn't because of random chance, but imperfect information. As I get older, I find myself preferring systems that focus on this aspect of warfare.

Cyel wrote:
There are different ratios between gameplay abstraction and simulation and different designers may have different philisophies or goals. Every wargame abstracts something for the sake of better gameplay and there's no universal answer where the perfect threshold is.

This isn't abstraction, it's a conceptual failure. Abstraction is something like treating both full plate and half plate as 15 defense under the assumption that they are both "heavy armor" and the differences are too small to be worth representing at the scale of a particular game. Allowing the attacker to choose how the enemy reacts to a successful attack is giving the decision to the wrong player and creating situations that are absurd, not merely simplified.

For example one of the most popular and most praised wargames of the recent years is the Undaunted series which has innovative deck building and card management as its core concepts, accompanying traditional map for movement and dice rolling for attacks.

That sounds like a card game with some tacked-on miniatures elements that could probably be eliminated, not a wargame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
The same argument could be made about using dice. The miniatures are there to represent units and position on the field and cards are just as viable as a design engine as any other system.

No it can't. There's a difference between "cards/dice as a resolution mechanic" and "on-table units as a delivery system for the card/dice mechanic". You're doing the card equivalent of 40k, where the on-table miniatures and actions are of secondary importance at best compared to optimizing your dice math and your use of stratagem cards.

Since this thread is about finding ways to avoid throwing buckets of dice, cards are a viable alternative.

This is exactly what I mean about trying to out-clever yourself. You've got the idea that cards would be cool and now you're trying to figure out ways to force a game to use cards as a resolution mechanic instead of asking yourself which mechanic is best suited to the game's goals. If you want to avoid throwing buckets of dice the answer is to stop using stupid GW-style dice mechanics that require vast numbers of low-probability die rolls because "rolling lots of dice is fun". You don't need a deck building card game tacked on to your wargame when something as simple as using a single D10 instead of a dozen D6s will get the job done.

My point about the pieces being less functional was regarding using cards for maneuvers rather than using rulers and straight edges. For example, an "outflank" maneuver card could allow a model (or models) to achieve a flank position.

That's exactly what I mean about making miniatures an expensive and redundant add-on to a card game. The whole reason to use miniatures at all is to represent their actual positions and movements on the battlefield. If you want to outflank you have to figure out a way to set up and move a unit to get into a flanking position. If all you have to do is play the "outflank" card the miniatures-on-the-battlefield part of the game is redundant, just play a card game where "outflank" works like "flying" in MTG: an abstract keyword that gives bonuses to the card interactions.

The uncertainty of combat isn't because of random chance, but imperfect information.

A WWII fighter pilot gets into a firing position against an enemy fighter. Does he successfully shoot down the enemy or not? This is not a question of information, the enemy fighter is right there in his gun sight. It's a question of skill and luck, represented in game terms by some kind of RNG resolution. And the most straightforward way to resolve the attack is by dice. Cards either complicate the resolution without adding any real benefit or create inappropriate realism-breaking outcomes like having the attacker decide which of his three attacking planes gets to use the killer combo where the best cards stack up into massive damage.

Aecus Decimus wrote:


This is exactly what I mean about trying to out-clever yourself. You've got the idea that cards would be cool and now you're trying to figure out ways to force a game to use cards as a resolution mechanic instead of asking yourself which mechanic is best suited to the game's goals. If you want to avoid throwing buckets of dice the answer is to stop using stupid GW-style dice mechanics that require vast numbers of low-probability die rolls because "rolling lots of dice is fun". You don't need a deck building card game tacked on to your wargame when something as simple as using a single D10 instead of a dozen D6s will get the job done.

Right, you hate cards. I get it.

Now, do you have anything constructive to add to the stated purpose of the thread, or are you just here to criticize people?






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now, as to cards...one of the advantages of using them is that they provide a great way to create the "fog of war." Yes, you can have a character or some wargear hidden in a larger unit, but most of the time you have close to perfect knowledge of what you are facing.

With cards, you can add some ambiguity because while the position and approximate size of a unit can be known, you can have some fun by having cards represent actual fighting power. Are those veteran spearmen or militia? In a skirmish scale, is that a mere man-at-arms or a master swordsman?

I think there is a lot of possibility here and the real issue is how you want the combat to work in terms of scale. Are there formed units or a collection of individuals? Do the cards serve as an action/resolution system or are they part of a pre-built deck?

Building an army list is just deck-building by another means, so one could do miniatures selection in tandem with building out the deck.

Action/resolution systems that are shared skip that element, and because the deck is known to both sides, there is a new level of uncertainty over who has what. Bluffing becomes a viable tactic, something almost entirely unknown in the GW universe.

I like both and as always, the key is knowing what you're trying to do and how you want to place the decision points for the players.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Right, you hate cards. I get it.

I don't hate cards. I dislike it when game designers get tunnel vision on trying to force a "clever" idea for a mechanic into a game rather than asking what mechanic fits best, even if the answer is to use a standard concept that doesn't show off how clever the designer is.

And constructive criticism of ideas is absolutely adding to the conversation.

Now, as to cards...one of the advantages of using them is that they provide a great way to create the "fog of war."

This is true. Using unit cards vs. single-page army lists may be useful design space and may be worth the bookkeeping and trust issues it creates. But it's completely off topic for this thread, which is about resolution systems for combat.

(This is what I mean about tunnel vision though, you're so focused on the idea of putting card-sized pieces of paper into a game in some form that you've completely abandoned the original topic and even the concept of cards as a resolution mechanic.)

Building an army list is just deck-building by another means, so one could do miniatures selection in tandem with building out the deck.

It's not at all the same thing. Making an army list, whether it's written on a single sheet or on several card-size pieces of paper, is a purely deterministic thing. You put certain units into your army, the list is just bookkeeping. Deck building involves selecting the contents of a RNG pool and attempting to bias the RNG in a favorable direction.

Action/resolution systems that are shared skip that element, and because the deck is known to both sides, there is a new level of uncertainty over who has what. Bluffing becomes a viable tactic, something almost entirely unknown in the GW universe.

It becomes a tactic, but should it be a tactic? Consider X-Wing and its damage deck. A skill element in X-Wing is being able to count cards and make informed decisions based on what cards remain in the damage deck. But that's a complete breach of realism and drags the game away from "what would the 'real' pilot do" into "how do I game the system to exploit the limitations of a physical card deck as an RNG element". The 'real' pilot isn't saying "I need 3 damage but I know based on the damage that has happened so far I only have a 10% chance of drawing the required 'direct hit' card from the damage deck so it's not worth spending my one-use ability to get a crit to go through" so the player shouldn't be doing that either.

It may shock you, but many people prefer good gameplay at the cost of 'what would the pilot do" because they get their kick from making decisions within the abstracted environment of the game and being rewarded for it with the feeling of being smart not with the feeling of "I'm almost feeling as cold as US Troops in Bastogne right now!".

Counting cards is cool because it's smarter than just passively watching totally random results turn up.

For example I LOVE how the designers of Aeon's End came up with the genius idea that you don't shuffle your deck, you flip it so that you don't pray to topdeck a combo - you set it up in your previous moves!

Cyel wrote:
It may shock you, but many people prefer good gameplay at the cost of 'what would the pilot do" because they get their kick from making decisions within the abstracted environment of the game and being rewarded for it with the feeling of being smart not with the feeling of "I'm almost feeling as cold as US Troops in Bastogne right now!".

Good gameplay: "it's cold in Bastogne so I need to make sure my troops have sufficient cold weather gear and I should expect air support to be unreliable."

Bad gameplay: "there are only three 'suffer damage if you don't have cold weather gear' cards in the deck and they've all been drawn already so weather doesn't matter anymore".

Very bad gameplay: "it's cold in Bastogne but I took all of the weather effect cards out of my deck so I can spend points on more guns instead of cold weather gear".

Rules should intuitively follow the decisions you would expect the real forces to make, and you should be able to play the game and win by asking "what would the real unit do". When the optimal play diverges from the realistic play you have a design problem, and when the game is focused around gaming the system and exploiting the mechanics you have a really bad design problem.

Counting cards is cool because it's smarter than just passively watching totally random results turn up.

No. In practice it was a frustrating and stupid mechanic that punished you for not obsessively paying attention to something that should not have been possible to game. It added absolutely nothing of value to the game and X-Wing would have been a better game if it had used a much larger damage deck where card counting wasn't possible. It's supposed to be a game of out-maneuvering your enemy in a dogfight, not a game of card counting and predicting the random damage effects.

You don't play many DIFFERENT games, do you? Because your perspective of what is possibile is as limited as it is dogmatic.

I recently tried an old wargame (kind of) made by Steve Jackson, Melee (and Wizard.) Both players can have four dudes, or as few as one dude per side. If I have one guy use a pole weapon, two in armor with shields and swords, and a wizard, here's a fun strategy. Have two guys engage a person between them, have a spear guy one hex back and between them, and jab them to death, while your wizard summons another guy to flank. Charge a guy with a spear to get an extra die of damage, flank them for a +4 to hit. Use the wizard to cast Aid or make walls/shadows so the enemy bowmen can't shoot them.

Of course, you still have to deal with damage being random, and rolls to hit, but it lets you stack the odds pretty drastically.

Cyel wrote:
You don't play many DIFFERENT games, do you? Because your perspective of what is possibile is as limited as it is dogmatic.

Alternatively, the things you propose are fundamentally bad design. What's next, accusing me of being narrow-minded because I don't accept the "skill" involved in float testing your dice to pick out the ones that are biased in your favor and appreciate how this mechanic can be implemented into a game?


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 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
I recently tried an old wargame (kind of) made by Steve Jackson, Melee (and Wizard.) Both players can have four dudes, or as few as one dude per side. If I have one guy use a pole weapon, two in armor with shields and swords, and a wizard, here's a fun strategy. Have two guys engage a person between them, have a spear guy one hex back and between them, and jab them to death, while your wizard summons another guy to flank. Charge a guy with a spear to get an extra die of damage, flank them for a +4 to hit. Use the wizard to cast Aid or make walls/shadows so the enemy bowmen can't shoot them.

Of course, you still have to deal with damage being random, and rolls to hit, but it lets you stack the odds pretty drastically.

Something like this can work in a very small-scale skirmish game and will certainly add a lot of depth but it's not going to scale up to the typical wargame. And TBH the "melee yahtzee" problem OP is describing is mostly a thing in army-scale games, in those games with only a handful of models on the table you tend to already have more interesting melee options.

Aecus Decimus wrote:


I don't hate cards. I dislike it when game designers get tunnel vision on trying to force a "clever" idea for a mechanic into a game rather than asking what mechanic fits best, even if the answer is to use a standard concept that doesn't show off how clever the designer is.

And constructive criticism of ideas is absolutely adding to the conversation.

You have categorically ruled out cards. You don't even want to explore it. I'm not "forcing" anything, I'm exploring it and most of your commentary is "nope, won't work."

Using unit cards vs. single-page army lists may be useful design space and may be worth the bookkeeping and trust issues it creates. But it's completely off topic for this thread, which is about resolution systems for combat.

No, it's absolutely on topic because fog of war can have a huge influence on when and what is engaged. If you know with absolute certainty the size, composition, skill level and even point value (!) of a given unit, you have more knowledge than most commanders in human history.

Cards can recreate that uncertainty. How many times in history have units been misidentified in the heat of battle? Are those scruffy looking fellows raw militia or seasoned irregulars?

It's not at all the same thing. Making an army list, whether it's written on a single sheet or on several card-size pieces of paper, is a purely deterministic thing. You put certain units into your army, the list is just bookkeeping. Deck building involves selecting the contents of a RNG pool and attempting to bias the RNG in a favorable direction.

An army list is a collection of capabilities. So is a built deck. You put things into it you plan on using and if done well, they amplify strengths and mitigate weaknesses. You seem to have a very narrow understanding of game design in this respect.

Consider X-Wing and its damage deck.

Speaking of appropriate mechanics, why do your arguments about cards in melee combat draw so many of its examples from a space fantasy game of fighter duels? Could you find something less relevant?

I will say that while I take a dim view of card counting per se, it can be used to reflect real-world limitations, particularly logistics or unit exhaustion. If a unit is banging away turn after turn (or whipping around the backfield) at some point the cards allowing those moves will run out.

Another thing they can do is create an irregular battle rhythm so that the player no longer has absolute and total control over all troops. Instead - just as actual commanders - players must overcome command friction to coordinate movements. The Brigade Series is great in this respect as units cannot move without orders and there is always a lag in giving them, requiring careful planning and yes, a little luck. I recall a game of 2nd Bull Run where I successfully breached the rebel center, but Porter's V Corps obstinately refused to move through the hole - until it closed! Very realistic but an impossible outcome in the omnipotent command and control universe of GW.

I will also note for the record that the scale of the battle on this thread has never been articulated. Model count will make a large difference in how one approaches this. Fewer models give more space for card use. Larger armies (with formations) and the cards can recede into an action/operations mechanic.

In both cases the built vs standard shared draw deck question has some interesting options. If a built deck also includes operations, the type of cards included would also help individualize the armies. For example, an army built around maneuver would have more of these cards, while a blunt-force shock army would use combat enhancers to overthrow the center.

And there is also a hybrid option, where some cards are built as enhancers and the draw deck is purely for unit activation/movement.

Thus not just arms and equipment but also doctrine would come into play. It would be interesting to see what using cards in my game (Conqueror: Fields of Victory) would do. It does use fist fulls of dice, but I actually enjoy it. I hadn't thought about cards until now.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Cyel wrote:
You don't play many DIFFERENT games, do you? Because your perspective of what is possibile is as limited as it is dogmatic.

Alternatively, the things you propose are fundamentally bad design. What's next, accusing me of being narrow-minded because I don't accept the "skill" involved in float testing your dice to pick out the ones that are biased in your favor and appreciate how this mechanic can be implemented into a game?

Well, I sounded rude, sorry about that. I am genuinely interested in what your experience with different games is, though, I even have a thread for this : https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/807987.page

As for your dogmatic stance, excuse me for not taking you seriously when you call "bad design" ideas that are used in many successful and acclaimed games, just because thay don't fit your dogma at the same time espousing the mechanisms like having 3/4ths of the game time spent on generating random numbers and consulting random tables becuause "a commander realistically is not going to have control over these things". I think that while it may still be enjoyed by a niche within a niche, a handful of ultra-conservative (gaming-wise ) grognards, who reject and treat with disdain anything invented after 1980, for a vast majority of players (me included) it would be an unplayable non-game.

At the same time you dismiss my example of Undaunted (surprised you've never heard of it, if you're a wargamer). Is it really bad design when it enjoys a 7.8 rating on BGG and many accolades, including BGG's "Best Wargame of 2019", a slew of "best game" nominations and rave reviews from so many content creators? People who know hundreds of games across a multitude of genres and their points of reference of what is good and what is bad design go into hundreds?
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/268864/undaunted-normandy
https://youtu.be/TssB-ZTtlys
https://youtu.be/f2CuxxPq6ls

Cards are cool. Choosing cards is a more interesting action than rolling dice. Cards offer a variety of choices while retaining any level of randomness you want in your game. They are a puzzle, they are tactile components, they may be very attractive visually.

Cyel wrote:
As for your dogmatic stance, excuse me for not taking you seriously when you call "bad design" ideas that are used in many successful and acclaimed games, just because thay don't fit your dogma at the same time espousing the mechanisms like having 3/4ths of the game time spent on generating random numbers and consulting random tables becuause "a commander realistically is not going to have control over these things". I think that while it may still be enjoyed by a niche within a niche, a handful of ultra-conservative (gaming-wise ) grognards, who reject and treat with disdain anything invented after 1980, for a vast majority of players (me included) it would be an unplayable non-game.

That's a false dilemma. Avoiding realism-breaking stuff like "it's cold in Bastogne so I'm going to remove all of the weather penalty cards from my deck" does not mean you have to go into some absurd extreme of rules bloat with a million tables to roll on for deciding exactly what the weather is each day. There's a wide range of options that avoid both of those flaws, like not considering weather effects at all because you assume both sides have appropriate gear unless a special scenario says otherwise.

Is it really bad design when it enjoys a 7.8 rating on BGG

To put that into context 9th edition 40k currently has a 7.6 rating on BGG and it's a raging dumpster fire of bad game design that is best suited as a cautionary tale for newbie designers.

Cards are cool. Choosing cards is a more interesting action than rolling dice. Cards offer a variety of choices while retaining any level of randomness you want in your game. They are a puzzle, they are tactile components, they may be very attractive visually.

Style over substance is a bad way to design a game for lasting replay value.


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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
You have categorically ruled out cards.

I've done no such thing. I've ruled out specific implementations of cards that have been proposed but I do not rule out the possibility that someone could come up with a good card-based system. I think it's unlikely that this will happen, at least for a card-based system that is not just a die roll in paper rectangle form, but it could happen.

No, it's absolutely on topic because fog of war can have a huge influence on when and what is engaged. If you know with absolute certainty the size, composition, skill level and even point value (!) of a given unit, you have more knowledge than most commanders in human history.

Cards can recreate that uncertainty. How many times in history have units been misidentified in the heat of battle? Are those scruffy looking fellows raw militia or seasoned irregulars?

It's completely off-topic. OP was specifically asking for resolution systems, to deal with the issue of "my block of troops smashes into your block of troops and now we spend 15 minutes mindlessly rolling dice to see who wins". Fog of war effects have nothing to do with the resolution of combat once units engage. That's all stuff that happens before combat begins and OP has already rejected the answer of "make the stuff that happens before melee begins more interesting".

An army list is a collection of capabilities. So is a built deck. You put things into it you plan on using and if done well, they amplify strengths and mitigate weaknesses. You seem to have a very narrow understanding of game design in this respect.

You're again ignoring the key difference: a deck is a RNG pool, a conventional army list is simply a bookkeeping tool. With a conventional army list you choose your forces (or have forces given to you by the scenario) and then you play the game with that army. With a deck building game you choose a large pool of cards, some of which will be randomly given to you at various points in the game. There's an immense difference between "I choose a unit of veteran spearmen to protect my infantry from cavalry charges" and "I attack you, now let me draw a random card to see if the attack is cavalry or siege engines" or "I put a lot of morale penalty cards in my deck so it's more likely that my opponent's troops suffer from morale problems".

Speaking of appropriate mechanics, why do your arguments about cards in melee combat draw so many of its examples from a space fantasy game of fighter duels? Could you find something less relevant?

It's 100% relevant because the mechanic in question functions exactly the same and is problematic for the same reasons: because it makes a skill element out of gaming the system and exploiting the limitations of a physical deck of cards at the expense of making decisions based on what the units on the battlefield would do. It doesn't matter whether the setting is fantasy or scifi or real life, the attacker does not get to make decisions based on knowing that X copies of damage card Y have already been drawn and so that damage effect is unlikely to happen again.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Cyel wrote:

Is it really bad design when it enjoys a 7.8 rating on BGG

To put that into context 9th edition 40k currently has a 7.6 rating on BGG and it's a raging dumpster fire of bad game design that is best suited as a cautionary tale for newbie designers.

That's why I added the fact that it has received enthusiastic reviews from all reviewers I know of and that included explanation of its merits. (because I know ratings can be just popularity contests)

Aecus Decimus wrote:


It's 100% relevant because the mechanic in question functions exactly the same and is problematic for the same reasons: because it makes a skill element out of gaming the system and exploiting the limitations of a physical deck of cards at the expense of making decisions based on what the units on the battlefield would do.

Right, but you already said that "fog of war" considerations are inadmissible, so appeals to realism and "what units on the battlefield would do," is now out of bounds.

You're also very pointedly ignoring the fact that dice also have physical limitations. A baccarat deck has a heck of a lot of more options when you draw from it than a six-sided die.

I get it, you don't like cards. You even attacked Cyel for pointing out that they have tactile advantages because apparently players shouldn't enjoy the physical experience of gaming or something.

It's also clear that you're not looking at this conceptually. A built deck is very much like an army list - they are both a set of capabilities and contain within them their own probabilities. Depending on how the game functions, a built deck can also control a set of probabilities, but so do miniatures through their stat lines. It's not like the outcomes of shooting are completely divorced from army composition and wargear. You seem to think that because the dice aren't physically included in the list, they are somehow independent, but they aren't. The list dictates the dice, just as a built deck dictates its draw and both are subject to hard, knowable limits in terms of probability.

As a sidebar, I have never played and never wanted to play MTG, so any arguments pertaining to its virtues and flaws are lost on me. My card game experience has tended to be almost entirely on the military side of things, games like Dixie, Eagles, the West End tank commander games and so on. Some games use both cards and dice.

They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Right, but you already said that "fog of war" considerations are inadmissible, so appeals to realism and "what units on the battlefield would do," is now out of bounds.

Um, what? Fog of war considerations are inadmissible because they have nothing to do with resolution mechanics. Fog of war happens earlier in the sequence of events and is very relevant for movement, scouting, etc. But once units have engaged in melee and are making attacks you no longer have to wonder about what the enemy has or where they are, they're right in front of you with a sword/pointy stick/whatever. Realism issues, on the other hand, are very relevant in resolution mechanics because you still have to ask what the realistic outcome of an event would be and/or what decisions could be made by the real units and officers.

You're also very pointedly ignoring the fact that dice also have physical limitations. A baccarat deck has a heck of a lot of more options when you draw from it than a six-sided die.

That's why dice with a larger number of sides exist. And TBH once you exceed 5-10 possible results in your deck it's a red flag that you're heading straight into rules bloat.

You even attacked Cyel for pointing out that they have tactile advantages because apparently players shouldn't enjoy the physical experience of gaming or something.

Yes, style over substance. If you're making bad mechanics because they "feel" better you're creating a game with limited replay value once the shiny new factor wears off. It's like insisting on a D20 system for your game because a D20 "feels better" because of how round it is vs. those icky square D6s, even though your mechanics would work much better with a D6.

It's also clear that you're not looking at this conceptually. A built deck is very much like an army list - they are both a set of capabilities and contain within them their own probabilities. Depending on how the game functions, a built deck can also control a set of probabilities, but so do miniatures through their stat lines. It's not like the outcomes of shooting are completely divorced from army composition and wargear. You seem to think that because the dice aren't physically included in the list, they are somehow independent, but they aren't. The list dictates the dice, just as a built deck dictates its draw and both are subject to hard, knowable limits in terms of probability.

There is an immense difference between RNG in outcomes (list building a fully deterministic choice of units that have RNG to resolve the success or failure of their actions) and RNG in basic things like "what do I have available this turn" or "what are the possible outcomes for this event". Do you really think that a unit of archers having a 25% hit chance for each of its 10 dice is equivalent to building your melee deck to include more "enemy unit panics and can't attack but does not flee" cards because they interact well with your "a unit that panics takes extra damage" cards and metagame analysis shows that this is more effective than taking direct "the enemy unit takes casualties" cards?