From what I've been reading in the previews so far, my guess is the combat system will work somewhat like this :

EDITED 25.11.09

- When the active player moves one or more of his units into an area that contains enemy units, a battle takes place.

- Each player that has one or more "Initiative 1" units in the battle draws 1 Fate Card per unit ( probably attacker drawing first ) and resolves the result(s).

Example : the attacker has 3 archers and draws 3 " 1-damage" result Fate Cards : this means his archers inflict 3 damage altogether.The defender has no "Initiative 1" unit(s) in the battle, so he doesn't draw a Fate Card.

- Then, each player that has one or more ( surviving and standing ) "Initiative 2" units left in the battle draws 1 Fate Card for each of those units and applies the result(s).

- Continue this way until you've gone through all 5 Initiative levels.

- After five rounds of battle like this, the battle is over and the remaining figures are counted on each side to see who lost the battle - the player with the least remaining figures has the "least strength" and thus loses the battle and must withdraw ( if possible )

( If he can't withdraw, my guess is his remainig troops are destroyed, ... so better keep an escape route open at all times.

If the battle is a draw, my guess is the attacker has to withdraw. )

- During each Initiative round during combat, Tactics Cards can be played to influence the outcome of the battle.

- After each battle the drawn Fate Cards go back into the Fate Deck and the deck is reshuffled.

This is just a guess, of course, but I like it so far.

I especially like the fact that battles will most likely not rage on until one side is completely destroyed as indicated by the "Strength count" mechanism.

This potentially allows the loser of a battle to recover faster and a lost battle doesn't necessarily means a lost war.

It also means relatively fast gameplay, no time consuming battles and possibly rather tactical battles.

This combat mechanic reminds me somewhat of the battles in the A Game of Thrones board game where losing a battle most often means losing just one or a couple of units and then withdrawing the rest of your army.... which makes the game much more tactical IMO.

Definitely, that's a good mechanism. Still not entirely sure about the fate card thing, but I'm eager to learn more.

Didn't it state in an earlier article that it didn't matter how many units of one type you had in a battle - if the fate card says they deal just 1 damage, then it's one damage for all those units as a group (not 1 each).

What you are referencing is this:

" When any number of Skeleton Archers attacks, the player controlling them draws a Fate Card from the appropriate deck. Fate Cards serve as a sort of all-purpose randomizer, and are used in battle, hero duels, diplomacy, and even setup! Take a look at the fate card to the right; if a Skeleton Archer were to draw this as his combat card, we would look at the quadrant of the card that shows a triangle (the upper left, since that is the shape associated with the unit in question). There, you can see an icon indicating that one point of damage has been inflicted."

As you can see, it goes from plural to singular, and the one damage example is for the singular. Things they said in the third article would not make sense if 3 archers did the same damage as one:

"The Knights may not get a chance to fight, however, if the quick and deadly Bowmen take out the enemy first. With their Concentrated Fire special ability, they can bring down large units with haste."

This insinuates that the archers can deal enough damage to take out an army (or at least one large unit) before the next initiative round. They couldn't do that if they only ever did one damage, especially to a unit with more than one health remaining (meaning one damage would not kill it).

Disregarding "When any number of Skeleton Archers attacks, the player controlling them draws a Fate Card ", I would say it makes infinitely more sense if you draw a card for each unit rather than unit type . This way not only would all 10 of your archers not miss on a single bad draw, but also Waiqar the Undying's Reanimate unit's ability would make much more sense:

"Deal [2 damage] if you have at least 2 standing Reanimates in the battle."

In this way you would deal that damage once for each orb icon you draw for the Reanimates as long as you have more than two in the battle, and not draw one orb, then deal 2 damage for each reanimate you have, as long as you have more than 2 of them.

broken said:

I think you are right. I think people are "misreading" this part for exactly the reasons you mentioned here.

broken said:

Correct again IMO.

I think it would be absolutely ridiculous to have a group of let's say 10 archers be able to deal only 1 measly damage.

A huge battle between tens of units on both sides would never see any serious damage and casualties if so few damage would be dished out.

broken said:

Again, I think you're correct.

When you go over all the possibilities, drawing 1 fate card per unit makes the most sense.

Drawing only 1 fate card per unit type makes it a very "luck based" game, especially with triangle based units which miss 40% of the time.

This makes it very much a hit or miss game - I wouldn't like that at all.

But ... when every unit in battle gives you a Fate Card, then the odds really start kicking in.

Those 10 Archers would draw 10 Fate Cards and would miss about 40%, and do something else for about 60% of the time ( Hit / Rout / Orb )

This would give you a real Strategy / Tactical game and not a luck driven game anymore.

Since the Fate deck contains 30 Fate Cards, you can easily have battles involving up to 30 units, which I assume is going to be a rare sight.

Shuffle the Fate deck after each battle.

I like that, I'm going to edit my opening post accordingly.

Thanks for the input.

Bleached Lizard said:

As mentioned above already, I really can't see this making any sense.

What would be the point of building an army if 1 unit can do as much damage as 100 of those units.

Moreover, giving all (100) units the same Fate Card result also doesn't look very appealing.

There you come with your 100 Archers and you Draw .... a miss - everybody fails his shot ??? - How does that sound for a game mechanism, pretty bad, doesn't it ?

broken said:

+1

DarkElf said:

After re-reading the article I see you're quite possibly right. However, the point of building an army would be to have more strength than your opponent to determine the winner of the battle. It seems that in this game, you only go through each initiative phase once; whoever has the most units standing at the end wins (presumably the loser has to retreat, possibly also losing all routed units). So extra units would be very useful.

In fact, with that thinking in mind, it's still possible that each group of units deals the damage shown on the fate card as a total rather than one per unit. A small number of units lost could then be the difference between winning and losing the battle, with further units destroyed as a penalty for losing. It would also make combat more deterministic rather than luck-based. But I agree it's probably not that way.

DarkElf said:

Got that right.

DarkElf said:

Got that right

DarkElf said:

DarkElf said:

Correct on both accounts.

DarkElf said:

Apparently you can only play Tactic cards at the start of the battle, not before every round ( as in WotR )

DarkElf said:

Got that one wrong, as the main reshuffling mechanic seems to be tied in with the Autumn Cards.

Not bad after all, I guess.