Hello!

I have a few games under my belt and was playing with my best friend. We have both tried a few different armies and was wondering what all of your thoughts were on certain aspects of the game.

One thing we both noticed is that for the most part when units pin each other there's a high chance both units will be removed from the game as casualties. Near the final round the board is a barren wasteland and it almost feels like neither side had a tactical advantage.

Ranged attacks while relying on luck from dice rolls are sometimes devastating to any army. I was playing as the Orcs against another buddy of mine who played the High Elves. Round 5 hit and all my units were destroyed where I had only taken two of his off the map. It was all ranged attacks and I could not get near him.

He also is not a fan of my Dwarf Runic Cannon which last game we played is the only reason I was able to win the game by 2 points. I can almost see the point where his rock lobber was not able to do much and my cannon was able to remove 2 disks per turn almost on a really good roll.

Are we doing anything wrong? I've read the rule book three times now and assume for the most part I'm playing the game correctly. I guess we thought being based off the Warhammer Fantasy game it would be possible that at times one player would have all his units out while the other would have a few stragglers left and not only due to ranged attacks.

Thanks for your time reading this, I love the game regardless and will definitely continue to play and cannot wait for more expansions. (Hope lizardmen/skaven are next!)

Okay, I have lots of thoughts, but I also have a new baby at home, so if I'm a little incoherent, that's why. :-)

I never got too deep into Warhammer Fantasy, but I did play a good bit of Warhammer 40k, and Diskwars definitely gives you a different feel from those games. It's going to be very rare in Diskwars that either of you have much left by turn 5. I think that design is on purpose to really keep the games moving fast. I've even seen games where a person is completely annihilated by turn 4 (okay, fine, I confess, my wife did that to me with the orcs).

With that in mind, I think Diskwars is largely about setting up favorable exchanges, so yes, it definitely does have a chess-like element to it. However, because of the variable unit powers and especially the command cards, an exchange that looks favorable can suddenly become very, very unfavorable. In my mind, that makes this game much more interesting than chess.

Now, as far as ranged units go, I don't know if you're playing anything wrong or if your opponent just had a series of really awesome rolls. I can say in my personal experience, ranged units are hit or miss (pun intended). If you do happen to roll that critical hit at just the right time, you can truly devastate your enemy, but other times you're left with a big turd sitting up on a hill. I'd say that's why ranged units are fairly pricey, you're paying for the potential to really win big, but you have the potential to really lose big too.

I would also note that as in Warhammer Fantasy, deployment is key. I've definitely had games that I lost before I even started because I placed my units and terrain poorly.

I would say that the high casualty rate is a direct result of the game design. Based on the previews and the published FFG information about the game, they intended Diskwars to feel fast and brutal, with frequent casualties and changes in the flow of the game from every engagement. There are very few tickle-fights in this game.

In sum, I think you are doing it right! If the heads are rolling in frequent combats, then you are indeed fulfilling the designers intent. As for the ranges attacks, it is those dice that provide the discrepancy. I have seen games where the ranged units slaughter everyone, and others where they scatter or miss and do more damage to their own troops than to the enemy. I don't think you have made any mistakes in that regard.

Awesome! Thanks for the responses, I feel a lot better now!

I think you can do a lot of choices that influence the outcome of a battle. Beside other things it is all the deployment, it is being good at estimating distances for moving disks, it is building your army and combining units, it is choosing the right card for the right situation at the right time, it is binding the right disks with pinning, it is chosing the order to activate your units.

Therefore, it is a lot of more than pure luck. You cannot just rely on this choices and decisions alone, though. This is because you have dice rolls in the game that can greatly influence the tide of battle, done by your and your enemy, and therefore it is not as strategic as chess. The game is slightly to chaotic to be influenced by your and your opponents decisions alone.

You can also influence the game in the sense how much you want to rely on your luck. If you feel quite lucky, you can include a good deal of luck-depending units and cards, like these unstable caster-related battle-cards or ranged units with non fixed damage output. This also forces the enemy to rely more and more on luck, because your good luck is his´ bad luck, and vice versa.

To be honest, as I am not really a Kongming in tactics, I mostly include some luck-depending parts in my army when I can. That is the reason I favoured Orcs & Goblins and Skavens when doing the tabletop (a long, long time ago) ...

For me, the game is a perfect blend of luck and decision-making. Not to much luck, but enough to force you to take risks sometimes. Taking risks makes a game much more interesting. Of course, this is my very own opinion.