I'm planning on getting the game next week, but have spent some time in the meanwhile researching the product. After reading the rules, looking at the reference cards, and whatnot, I have one burning question:

Do the undead really need food to make it through the winter? Really?

I have always been enamored with the undead, often buying games merely because they contain this most hallowed of life-states, but the fact that a shambling husk of a skeleton would require adequate food, let alone shelter during the winter just seems odd to me. Unless the few necromancers and dark knights (some of whom may still be living) tend to gorge themselves on food through the winter, I can find little reason the other, less... "fleshy" members of the undead armies would ever require food.

Anyone know of any reason for this, or is there a rule I'm just not finding in my scaning of the rules?

Thanks!

The undead do require food. I think the main reason is game balance. You could come up with a reason for it, but they're really just another race with different abilities, and if they didn't have the soft unit limit they would be the most powerful race in the game.

I guess that makes sense, in terms of game balance.

Rather poor in terms of flavour, don't you think?

Hrmph.

I would rather they add a special ability to each race (I think Battlemist had something like that) to maybe make the game balanced. Undead, with weak units that can swarm the enemy, may be immune to the winter food limit (but not, say, the eight unit total limit) While each race would have some other sort of bonus. (like, I don't know, elves being able to dance in forests or whatever it is they do, or the barbarian-demon-things being able to open some sort of demonic gate to quickly transport units... not the best examples, I realize...)

Oh well... you win some, you loose some. I guess those skeletons need food too... without stomachs... or intestine... or brains... Maybe they bathe in milk… for the calcium…

I realize the actual reason is simply game ballance, but I like to think of the hexes that produce food as hexes where life flourishes.

Lots of animals to hunt, vegetation to eat, etc...

The necromancers sap the energy from these areas and use it to fuel the magics that keep their undead hordes animated. Converting "life" into "un-life" if you will.

A bit of a stretch, I know, but that's how I justify it to myself.

it could be a question of a workforce to keep the empire afloat. We don't know what it takes to keep those armies of undead going; if it were blood sacrifice (not even necessarily human) you would need plenty of things to kill for your rituals, those creatures are easier to get and more plentiful on the plains. It could be rare ingredients that need to be cultivated and harvested, so you need lots of peasants in fields. Your undead might feed of of life energy vampirically, hence the dead time winter would give them less of it, so the creatures you ve stockpiled and enslaved earlier in the year need to be used then.

I personally like the blood sacrifice fluff.

food should be treated as an abstraction for whatever energy or fuel is sustaining undead magic.

The Sorcerer King said:

Who says they need the food for eating? Maybe they just like to keep a pile of rotting meat around to ensure their homes are suitably stinky and creepy to fit undead "living standards." Maybe they like pillows made from dessicated corn husks. Maybe the particular foods the collect are material components for the arcane spells that keep them animate (and some nutritional stuff for the necromancers, etc, as you said.) If the undead hordes conquer a corn field, there's nothing saying they continue to grow corn there. Maybe they rip that stuff up and start farming fields of wolfsbane or something.

I agree that it would be cool if each race had its own unique mechanics so that the undead faction doesn't need stuff like food, but it would also be a nightmare to playtest and balance - not to mention you trying to introduce the game to casual gamers who don't necessarily want to learn a whole different ruleset for each race in the game. In this case it's clearly a case of mechanics that the undead use food. You can come up with whatever fluff excuses you want to help you sleep at night, but personally I wouldn't advise house rules for this particular situation.

Overheard in undead chow line: "I can haz brainz?"

I like these ideas, especially the life-draining and the wolfsbane (mmm... wolfsbane...). I can justify there being some sort of unlife-sustaining rituals that may involve certain components (animal, vegitable, magical...) and perhaps even requiring them around winter (after all, the darkest and deadest of days are during this time).

I suppose it's really not that important of an issue, I was just wondering if each race/army had their own special abilities besides their starting resources and unit specials.

In the end, I can just tell myself that conquering a fertile field means converting it to growing aconite and belladonna- and controling a game-rich hunting grounds means more animal brains for those "special" breed of brain-chomping zombies (mmm... brains...).

Thanks for all the input, looking forward to getting the game soon!