Here's an idea I had awhile ago and is the reason I made the double dice tower
You can see my Dice Tower Here!

This Idea came about when I was originally thinking how to play the game as a solo version, basically playing against a deck that was run on auto-pilot and using dice.

Anyway this idea for battling using dice would work in the standard version, so here it is, and i'll go into over the top detail so I hope everybody understands how the idea would work.

The idea is using dice in resolving conflicts.
The dice battle phase is part of the conflict resolution straight after you compare skills,



lets start with a basic conflict,
Here we have the crane player declaring a military conflict against the Lion using Kakita Yoshi and the Lion Defends using Akodo Toturi.


We compare military skill values and its 2 for the Crane and 6 for the Lion. Both players pass


Now let the dice battle commence.
First each player is given the number of dice equal to their skill value, So the Crane gets 2 dice and the Lion gets 6


Both player roll all the dice and line them up from highest to lowest to the lowest.


Dice are compared one dice to one dice.
The Cranes highest Dice is an 8 and the Lions Highest Dice is a 7, So the Crane wins and the Lions losing dice is removed from the battle.
The Cranes next highest Dice is a 6 and the Lions next Highest Dice is a 5, So the Crane wins again and the Lions losing dice is removed from the battle.


The remaining dice are rolled again and are lined up in order from highest to lowest.


This time The Cranes highest dice is a 10, beating the Lions highest dice of 7
But the Cranes next highest dice of 5 loses to the Lions next highest dice of 6


Both players remove their losing dice out of the battle.


Both players roll the remaining dice


The Cranes has only one dice left and rolls an 8 beating the highest dice of 7 rolled by the Lion


The Lion removes the losing dice from the battle and both players re-roll all the remaining dice.
Both players have rolled a 5 as their highest dice. This is considered a standoff and no dice are lost.


So both players re-roll the dice again


This time the Crane rolls a 4, losing his last dice to the Lions dice of 6.


The crane removes his last dice from the battle
The Lion wins the battle by a score of 2. (all dice that are remaining are counted up to make up this score)




**********************************

Lets look at another example.
This time the crane player declares a political conflict using Kakita Yoshi again and again the Lion player defends with Akodo Toturi


Yoshi has a political skill of 6 and Toturi has a Political skill of 3


Both Characters are honoured so both add their glory to their total.


Both players pass and we start the dice battle.
9 Dice for the Crane v 6 Dice for the Lion


Both player roll all the dice and line them up from highest to lowest (note that the last 3 dice from the Crane has no dice to compare to)


Comparing the dice we have in highest order
10 Crane v 10 Lion - Stand off, nobody wins
10 Crane v 9 Lion - Crane wins - Lion loses the dice
8 Crane v 9 Lion - Lion wins - Crane loses the dice
6 Crane v 7 Lion - Lion wins - Crane loses the dice
6 Crane v 6 Lion - Stand off, nobody wins
5 Crane v 5 Lion - Stand off, nobody wins
Not a bad round for the Lion.


Both player remove the losing dice from the battle


The player roll the remaining dice and line the dice up ready to do battle.


8 Crane v 8 Lion - Stand off, nobody wins
8 Crane v 7 Lion - Crane wins - Lion loses the dice
8 Crane v 5 Lion - Crane wins - Lion loses the dice
5 Crane v 5 Lion - Stand off, nobody wins
4 Crane v 5 Lion - Lion wins - Crane loses the dice

Both player remove the losing dice from the battle.


Both Players roll the remaining dice and compare highest to highest
10 Crane v 9 Lion - Crane wins - Lion loses the dice
9 Crane v 9 Lion - Stand off, nobody wins
8 Crane v 4 Lion - Crane wins - Lion loses the dice


The Lion player removes the 2 losing dice out of the battle and both players re-roll all the remaining dice


Bad news for the Lion.
The Cranes Highest dice is a 9 and the Lions last dice is a 2


The lion removes his last dice and the Crane player wins the conflict


The Crane Player counts his remaining dice and has 6 so has a winning score of 6
The province breaks at 5, so the province is broken.
Its the number of dice remaining after the dice battle is resolved that is used to determine if the province breaks



I hope everything is clear.
Each conflict will always have a clear winner. Both players might go into battle with an equal skill value but using dice to resolve the battle means someone is going to be the winner.

What do you think?
I just love the idea of a lone Samurai having the battle of his life and beating an invading army.
The player going into battle with more dice has a higher probability of winning but with dice everything can happen at some time or other.

While its a nice idea for a solo play variant in regular play would slow the game down way to much as you are adding steps to an already long conflict phase. Just consider that it is very possible to see a Skill total in the mid 20's on key conflicts and how long it would take to roll that out. This system also makes it far harder to solo break as even a small speed bump character with a few lucky dice could in effect end up as having 2 or 3 times their printed force.

I think this a great idea.............. for when FFG acquires the license for the Warlord CCG and decides to revive it.

That would make a game that already is hard to finish in an hour go to two hours.

It's a neat idea though.

I suggest people grab 2 sets of D10s.

Now just select some of each set

Maybe 6 to 4

Maybe 3 to 7

10 v 10

Just play around.

From my doing this a lot i find the winner has a higher score to end the game.

For example 4 v 2 is only a win by a difference of 2 but many times after rolling this out the player with 4 dice beats the 2 dice without losing any dice. So ends with a score of 4 and this is enough to break many provinces.

I want to play this in a game but would love to hear feedback of what happened if anybody tries it

48 minutes ago, Maffster said:

I suggest people grab 2 sets of D10s.

Now just select some of each set

Maybe 6 to 4

Maybe 3 to 7

10 v 10

Just play around.

From my doing this a lot i find the winner has a higher score to end the game.

For example 4 v 2 is only a win by a difference of 2 but many times after rolling this out the player with 4 dice beats the 2 dice without losing any dice. So ends with a score of 4 and this is enough to break many provinces.

I want to play this in a game but would love to hear feedback of what happened if anybody tries it

The question is not will the player with the higher total win (which on average yes they will) its how much more likely does it make that they will win but not end up having enough force to break the province in question. This system is likely going to result in the winning side losing about 1 force per 3 contested meaning that you are essentially inflating the strength of every province by about 1/3rd. Even from your examples the Lion started the first conflict up 4 (breaking most provinces) and after the dice off were only winning by 2 (no longer breaking most provinces) and your Crane example the only reason the Lion didn't cost a few more Crane points is that while their dice rolled a little above average the Crane were rolling hot as well and were rolling some extreme highs and lows.