So, I was thinking about ways to mitigate some of the randomness of the game and provide additional decision points during a battle. (Based on my personal preferences, not any flaws real or perceived in the game.)

What do you think of the idea of drawing a hand of fate cards at the start of the battle, one for each unit you have in the fight. Then you choose from those cards and lay down enough for all the initiaitve 1 units and resolve as normal. Then you choose from the remaining for initiative 2 and so on. The idea is a bit more choices to make, a little more determination, but things can still happen like loosing a later initiative unit and having to rethink strategy.

I don't know. Any thoughts? Anyone think it could work?

Drawing all your cards up front will probably break the game.

I don't think your Necromancers or Knights would ever miss an Orb again, right ?

It would break the balance. Certain units are based on their ability or inability to easily draw certain things.

Orbs especially would be pretty crazy on some units, but so would routs in many cases. You'd easily be able to run a perfect round of combat every time and the guy with the better low initiative units would almost always win every battle.

Uthuk player brings 8 Flesh Rippers and 8 Berserkers. He draws half the deck at the start of combat and pretty much guarantees himself 3 health per flesh ripper as well as some hefty damage and routing in the first initiative round. There are only 9 rectangle misses, so, worst case scenario, he would have 1 Flesh Ripper miss. This could be mitigated by looking at the deck beforehand.

at first i though "sounds cool"

then I thought... no way. It would probably break everything that has got to do with balance to do.

It would break the system for sure. Everyone would be using all the orbs they can and doing high level dmg with the hex base units. Necromancers woudl be spawning reanimate left and right.

And the battles would actually take longer, as players carefully optimised which cards to use for which units.

well i would like to try this at least. have anyone tried this ?

I can say I have no interest in even trying it. As others have mention, it would completely change (and probably break) the combat system. Daqan Knights and Necromancers would be uber-powerful, Elven Archers would be insane, as would Warlocks. Fleshrippers would almost always take 3 hits. In critical battles, Seige Towers would always give +2 strength at the end to give the Lords the win... Too many changes, too drastic, and I don't have any desire to see the combat system mangled so badly.