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Cult Of Games XLBS: Try This Minis Wargame Homage To Chess; What Would You Change?
February 7, 2021 by warzan
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Happy Sunday! Lloyd, lovely paint jobs but paint faster! Always keen to try a new mechanic in gaming. Diceless wargames though? I’ll try anything once The thing I don’t like about a game without dice is that it fails to show the randomness of battle. As I said last week dice in Wargames reflect the fickle hand of fate. For example at the battle of Pharsalus Caesar ordered an uphill charge by infantry against a numerically superior opponent. Without a random element like dice, Caesar’s victory would never happen in a tabletop battle. If that battle was based purely on… Read more »
I think it depends on how much of a factor the ‘random’ bit was in the attack.
if it is the only thing that makes it work it really should fail more often than it should work.
Maybe in a diceless game a ‘joker’ token can represent the ‘luck factor’ ?
Give each player a limited supply of those and you can still charge your infantry up hill to defeat a superior foe … but only if you haven’t exhausted your supply of ‘luck’.
Card-based “random” mechanics work really well in tabletop games. Far better than dice, I reckon.
Mathematically cards shouldn’t differ greatly from dice, depending on the types of dice. There’s 54 cards in a deck with jokers, so D50 (D100 halved) isn’t that significantly different, or if all suites are equal there are 14 results. D15 (D3+D12 gives a range of 2-15). In that case you might as well go D20 to make it easier by using 1 die.
Dice always have the same probability, unless you introduce modifiers through rules (= ‘+1’ or ‘-1’ to your roll)
With cards you sort of get that for free, unless you shuffle the deck after each and every draw. It is random (the chances of a shuffled deck ever being identical are astronomically small), but it is more controlled and less spikey.
Mathematically cards are massively different from dice because *they have memory*. When you talk about your “luck running out” it’s an abstract, almost spiritual concept – Lady Luck has taken her eye off you. With cards your luck literally runs out – if you’ve pulled all your tens and face cards out of the deck, you have no more “luck” left; you’ve only got “bad luck” to look forward to. This can give opponents hope to hang on in there against a “lucky” opponent. With dice, the chance of rolling a six after a run of four sixes in a… Read more »
It depends largely on how the cards are used. If a card is used and discarded into a discard pile then yes your likelihood of getting that card again until you go through the whole deck is zero. However if the card is drawn, used and returned to the deck at the bottom then your’luck’ simply repeats. If it is drawn, used and shuffled back into the deck then your. ‘Luck’ remains 1/54.
I kinda like the idea of cards as long as you have a hand. that way you have more input into the out come and is still somewhat random
This is another great use of cards in gaming – it adds an element of resource management into what would otherwise just be a random dice roll. In short – for me – cards add more fun and strategy to a game than “dumb” dice rolls.
I think it’s fair to say that a mechanic which requires you to draw a card, return it to the deck then shuffle it back in is pretty broken 😉 *Most* games require you to shuffle a discard pile once they’ve all been exhausted- but even if not, and your “luck repeats” it alters the mathematic probability of drawing a certain number after each draw – that’s still very different to a dice roll. The main point was: card-based “random” mechanics work really well in tabletop games. Far better than dice – and this is precisely *because* mathematically, drawing cards… Read more »
That broken mechanic is absolutely no different to rolling dice. It’s not broken, its just real random luck. The issue I have with cards is that if the cards aren’t shuffled, you know exactly when your luck will change. If that was a real life thing, no-one would ever lose. No general ever turned to their troops and said “stand firm lads, our luck gets better the card after this one!” The probability of getting a 6 on D6 is 1 in 6. As strange as it sounds your chances of rolling 6 every roll after that remains 1 in… Read more »
I feel like we’re dicussing two different things here. A mechanic to replicate the rolling of dice by using cards feels like a “broken card mechanic” (after all, why use cards and all the extra effort of shuffling after every draw, in order to replicate what could be more easily acheived rolling a dice?). Yes, you can simulate dice rolling by drawing cards, but to do so would be a failure of a card-drawing mechanic. The original claim “mathematically cards shouldn’t differ greatly from dice, depending on the types of dice” overlooks the way that drawing cards is used in… Read more »
2nd. good enough for now
Happy Birthday! Oops(Freudian slip) I mean… Happy Sunday! Inn the subject of dice not being realistic from last week., I found this in an interview with Gen Schwartzkopf, about the 1sr Iraq war… Q: What were you thinking in those final hours, putting aside the professional soldier now… what were you thinking to yourself? Schwarzkopf: More than anything else in those final hours I was asking myself “What did I forget? What have I missed? What more can I do?” And then the time finally comes when you realise there’s I described it as throwing the dice in the air… Read more »
Happy Sunday all!
On the bendy spear front, a chap on fb was 3d printing the spear head and using brass rod or even plastic rod as the shaft, looked very easy to do (if you have a 3d printer of course).
It’s the XLBS Show……..Happy Weekend CoGs!
Thanks for the free rules. I’ll give them a read and a play thru…..time permitting.
Well done to the button winners!
Happy Sunday! I actually quite like the chess rules. I think you’re right in that the next step needs to be playtesting. I also think that a lot of stuff Lloyd is talking about can be dealt with in the narrative side. The trebuchet can be a terrain piece. There’s nothing stopping you using any models as any of the designated units. So you can bring something exciting and/or surprising out of the bag and go “pow” to really spice up the story without breaking the game rules wise. Lloyd’s dog unit might fit his narrative better but it would… Read more »
Also, my wife isn’t a gamer but she does like the look of the Lord of the Rings models (being a fan of the movies). This could be a good way to get a game on with her (and give me an excuse to buy the models ?)
Happy Sunday All hope this finds you all safe warm and well. I’d give Warrens game a spin, more games the better and Lloyds pin shields look cracking. Great set of golden buttons again this week.
“Players Choose a side. If you cannot agree Oldest Player Plays White! – If your both Oldest, f*****g grow up you should know better! (I cannot believe we had to waste a rule on this!)”
LOL … best rule ever.
??? I’m seven seconds in and already traumatised!
Yay let the lunacy begin.
Warzans Chess?
Lloyd is as bad as my other half…packages get quarantined…packaged food from the supermarket is cleaned with wipes…if you’ve been to the supermarket you need to get a shower afterwards, don’t ask why I did mention that I’m not walking around the supermarket naked…
She’s a scrub nurse and is slightly obsessed with germs normally…
I’ve become use to it…it did use to drive me nuts a year ago…but now it’s become routine lol
We’re still putting deliveries in quarantine and rigorously washing hands after handling anything that’s been delivered to the house/brought in from elsewhere. I’ve not been to a supermarket in over a year! But showering after shopping….? Then again, it’s funny what you get used to! Most people think my wife is over-the-top with the quarantine and wiping thing, to me it just seems normal.
Lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TME0xubdHQc
@Warzan Just make the better troops foot knights and reduce the movement to 6… simple
Also add a shooting command and reduce the movement to 4 for archers.
And if he really wants dogs he can have a troop that has a movement of 8…but can be distracted by cats…
Happy Sunday everyone! Warren’s chess Wargame reminds me a bit of ‘Feudal’ a 1969 game by bookshelf games that was a chess Wargame. It had a hidden deployment mechanism that added to the variety.
Happy Sunday fellow Baboonatics! Some great advice for ‘Drilling your guys out’and keeping an eye out for ‘Crackage!’
They have mithril armour Lloyd ?
A good General can work with what they have not what they want?
NICE ONE Guy’s
I suggest you go straight to about 1hr 21 mins
Sunday! *falls back to sleep*
56:00 “A knight goes into a pawn in the rear” XD Naughty gameplay *g*
Happy Sunday! Love the idea of the chess based rules. For Lloyd’s sake there are options for the rules you have issue with I think, I agree that it’s not great to have both ranged and melee in the same troops. I’d prefer to pay a bit more to deploy the archers as an alternate troop without the damage buffs attacking flank and rear, but can attack 12″/18″ in the front. The knights are great IMO as cavalry was as much a scouting role as it was a heavy hitter as I understand, so it being the only one to… Read more »
I’m with the Big Man on chess-as-a-wargame – I love the idea of it. I also agreed with @warzan a while back on the reason for tabletop gaming – the aesthetics, the cinematic feel, the realistic terrain and the visuals are paramount (no littering up the table with dice and chits and counters for me – don’t spoil *how it looks* for any reason!). Likewise, I’m totally onboard with making an interesting game with cool looking minis as tokens – trying to add too much realism creates a simulator (nobody wants a tabletop simulator do they?) Games require abstraction –… Read more »
Happy Sunday, Warrens Chess Rules.
Quick question what is movement penalty for changing direction/ facing or are units only able to move in one direction per activation point. ( I may have answered my own question here)
Funnily enough game that came to mind was Ancient Navel warfare with Triremes etc.