It doesn't seem like any of the upcoming units include any new Command cards, but I was thinking about on BGG and thought I'd repost it here. Given that maintaining the balance between the standard formation Command cards and more specific special Command cards is important, I was thinking that hybrid Command cards might add some diversity to them without tipping that too much - things like:

"order sections 1/0/1 and 1 Cavalry unit"

"order sections 2/2/2 and you cannot play a Lore card until your next turn"

or Commands that are more viable for different situations:

"order 1 unit and 3 units that are Stunned, Poisoned, or Bleeding, reducing the Lore cost to remove that status by 1"

"order 1 Legend unit and 3 weak units"

"order all units in 1 section, but deal 1 damage to all of them before the Move step"

Anybody else have any ideas? In my imagined Command card deck expansion, it also includes more two more 5 pt Victory tokens - we end up with ties past 16 points that take a few turns to break often enough that it would be useful.

I think some of the Command Cards should have originally been created with more universal roles in mind. For instance, Darken the Skies is Archer-specific, but it's not said that every army has archer units (and this theoretically can happen even with the core set only in play); same for Cavalry Charge, and a few others. This problem becomes bigger with an expanded pool of units where it's not said that you will field any Cvalry or Archer unit at all, and you have other units, such as Caster units, that don't have specific Command Cards boosting their strength.

Even f it's true that you can simply use a Command Card to move any one unit across the board, it's still a pity that the main function of certain command cards won't be used and that specific units do not have a specific effect. For instance, if Darken the Skies was to affect three Ranged units, you'll have covered at the same time both the Archers and the Casters, making the card tremendously more interesting.

Just my two cents, anyway

Yeah, I'll be curious to see how that goes with the new units - it's already been an occassional issue with the Lore cards, I find - getting the Chaos Lord cards when I didn't field it is pretty lame. I assume it's supposed to be an incentive to keep your army diversified across unit types to maximize the liklihood of the card being useful, but it's an interesting problem. I'm loather to houserule anything, but I can imagine you could have each player choose one to remove from the deck before starting, or something similar?

I'm pretty confident the problem with Lore cards will be addressed with the coming expansion. Just consider that we know from the announcements that all the reinforcement packs and the two Daqan / Uthuk expansions will come with Lore cards. Hence, there are two possible cases:

a) the Lore decks become endlessly bloated, resulting completely out of control and making the game lame or

b) they've thought about some way to trim the decks down to a certain number of Lore cards

So, let's hope it's b) and that b) provides a way to choose what to keep in the deck.

No idea of the Command Cards tho. I imagine it's more difficult because you have one command deck for both factions, hence, removing a Darken the Skies could be convenient for one player but not for the other one

For instance, if Darken the Skies was to affect three Ranged units, you'll have covered at the same time both the Archers and the Casters, making the card tremendously more interesting.

I know you just used this as an example, but just using "Ranged" would probably have unintended consequences, too.

For example, if Darken the Skies said "Ranged" units, it could mean the Siege Golem would be able to fire twice in one turn - and that would probably be a bit stronger than it should be.

I guess somebody better tell FFG to make some more archer units, then! Crossbowmen with less range but more attack dice, Irregular units that counted as both Archers and Infantry, etc.

I know you just used this as an example, but just using "Ranged" would probably have unintended consequences, too.

For example, if Darken the Skies said "Ranged" units, it could mean the Siege Golem would be able to fire twice in one turn - and that would probably be a bit stronger than it should be.

Yes, I used Darken the Skies as an example of card that could have been worded differently to address different units and not only Archers. The Siege Golem was developed after the core set was released, so, if Darken the Skies had been differently worded, I'm pretty sure the Siege Golem would have been designed considering the different version of DtS.

The point for me is that the some elements of the core game were designed without thinking too much about what could have come in the future; and if the problem with Lore cards can easily be addressed by introducing some sort of deck building, there will always be a problem with the Command Cards, that in some way limit also what could come in the future (different unit types and so on; there are no command cards boosting Casters, for instance; it'd be nice to have something specific for larger units - Dragons, Giants, and so on), and this is somehow a pity

That seems like a solvable problem, though - like I was saying above, something like hybrid cards that order a few in a section and then a specific unit type - that makes it no worse than a Patrol card, but potentially better depending on the diversity of your army build - would address that to some extent. I'm sure keeping the ratio of standard movement orders options to special movement orders is important to the game design (3:2), but that could be done by making a new Command deck that replaces the original deck entirely, or just new cards that replace the special Command cards, or simply adds on to the deck (making the archer-specific Command far less likely to come up) by maintaing the 3:2 ratio with hybrid cards or other standard order cards (2/1/1 and 1/1/2, 2/0/1 and 1/0/2, 1/0/1, 2/2/0 and 0/2/2, etc.). You could also make Command cards that order 3 units just on your half or just their half of the board, or 3 units that are still in one of your scenario's deployment hexes. There's so much that could be done with the Command deck!

A deck of new Command cards and more lore and victory tokens would be great, throw in a couple of new terrain hexes (I'd love to see alternate building art for the Uthuk side, with maybe skeletal trees for an alternate forest art on the flip side?) and you've got a solid $20-$25 box.

Thinking on the Darken the Skies card in specific - if it ever happens that there's an Elf army, surely that would be archer-heavy, thematically? It would be interesting to see how that card plays out if one army has more archer units available than the others.

I guess somebody better tell FFG to make some more archer units, then! Crossbowmen with less range but more attack dice, Irregular units that counted as both Archers and Infantry, etc.

Well, for what it's worth, both the Viper Legion and Yeoman Archers are already Archers and Infantry But I can see your point about some kind of keywords being added. (I'm not sure Archers and Melee would make sense, as Melee and Ranged seem to be somewhat mutually exclusive keywords in practice, and non-Ranged Archers wouldn't make much sense).

I know you just used this as an example, but just using "Ranged" would probably have unintended consequences, too.

For example, if Darken the Skies said "Ranged" units, it could mean the Siege Golem would be able to fire twice in one turn - and that would probably be a bit stronger than it should be.

Yes, I used Darken the Skies as an example of card that could have been worded differently to address different units and not only Archers. The Siege Golem was developed after the core set was released, so, if Darken the Skies had been differently worded, I'm pretty sure the Siege Golem would have been designed considering the different version of DtS.

The point for me is that the some elements of the core game were designed without thinking too much about what could have come in the future; and if the problem with Lore cards can easily be addressed by introducing some sort of deck building, there will always be a problem with the Command Cards, that in some way limit also what could come in the future (different unit types and so on; there are no command cards boosting Casters, for instance; it'd be nice to have something specific for larger units - Dragons, Giants, and so on), and this is somehow a pity

Fair enough, although in the case of Darken the Skies, I think it was related to Archers deliberately and specifically since the concept is "so many arrows the sky is blotted out". While mechanically the concept could theoretically work with other ranged-type units, I think "Archer" implies a type of range that arcs in the sky in some way, as opposed to a direct attack.

That said, I agree with your point that it could be nice to have some more Command Cards. I don't even think you need a deck-building mechanic, as long as you introduce some amount of sectional cards as well as special cards (either more of what we have, or some others with section combos we don't currently have). As long as you can order units effectively in various sections, the actual number of cards in the deck probably doesn't matter as much

Oh, right, Melee and Ranged is what I meant!