Back to the drawing board on the Operational games

[mrweasely]

I find the operational games to be a dissappointment. For one thing, there's less replayability. The games always hinge on the same outcomes, e.g. "What becomes of Theodred's early army?".

Plus, things are fiddly for no reason, and the way the units react to eachother and the board just feels wrong.

But all the pieces of a fantastic wargame are there:

There's a pair of beautiful boards.

There's lots of plastic minis.


So here's the challenge: using the pieces available, make an Op-game that's more fun, has more variety, and more cinematic.

Some memes I'd like to see:

• Deus Ex Machina variety for the FP. Forget the linear track. Instead of it ALWAYS being: Imrahil, Rohan, Aragorn, mix it up: Rohan gets there early, Imrahil never shows, Aragorn gets his heart eaten out by Gondor's most senior citizens, but the Eagles are coming. Fate cards could be dealt to the Free player, who's trying to massage them into a "Bingo" or "Gin" formation, to unlock various special events. But by definition you won't have the unexpected return of Boromir, plus Aragorn, plus Eagles, plus Imrahil, plus Denethor unchained, plus Blades of Westernesse, plus Rohan all in the same game.
  
• Different unit types should be different. Real different. Rohan, Warg, and Southron cavalry formations trained to operate independantly. They should be the "GEVs" of the battlefield, sweeping in, striking lightly, and running away before the heavies can react.
  
• The war for Gondor occurred on the battlefield, but also equally in the mind of Denethor. Many of the worst setbacks for Gondor happened as a result of losing mental battles in their ruler's head. That Denethor was Sir Not Appearing in this Film was very disappointing, and I think should be rememdied.
  
• Do we need action dice? My impression was that the action dice mechanic was a bit shoe-horned into the op-games. Then there was the problem that it took too much energy for the Shadow to move all 4 of their armies, so then they picked the sword results out of the hat to make them super-actions. At some point the old wargame technique of "move all your pieces at one time" begins to look better again.
  
• 60-minute play times.
  
• Add your own below...or tell me these are carp....
  

[theimmortal]

I'm disappointed to hear that you think hte operational games are a write-off already. Can I ask how many games it's taken you to reach this point? So far, I have played both scenarios maybe 5 or 6 times each, and for the moment, I am still enjoying them.

Granted, there are several issues: they definitely lack the 'variety' replayability of the main game. And the balance is who-knows-where in both scenarios, but alway s*seems* slanted. And in the beginning, they feel a lot like puzzle-solving exercises, especially for the Shadow. But,

a) I like puzzle-solving exercises, and certainly don't feel that I've "solved" it yet,
b) I like seeming imbalance, because sometimes you can discover dramatic reversals of what you thought was 'imbalanced', plus I love anything that sparks a balance debate.

I can tell you one of those is "crap" though. ; > 60 minutes playtime? I've come to realize over the years that playtime is FAR more dependent on the players than on the game. With my one particular friend, the original game takes a minimum of 5 hours - the op games generally take at least 4. At the rate we play, 60 minutes is definitely a pipe-dream.

[mrweasely]

While I haven't "played them out", by any means, there comes a point where you throw up your hands and say "this system is a bad model for what its trying to represent". I'm at that point.

If some Riders of Rohan standing in the middle of Rohan plains doesn't want to fight some Mordor footsoldiers, how come they have to fight a round before retreating?

With the way combat dice are capped at 5, having Elephants in the army only starts to pay off after the rest of your army has been killed. I'm no historian, but I thought Elephant's main strength was in intimidation, which would presumably bite hardest on round 1.

Where's the day/night cycle? The bulk of the war in Rohan took place in a single day - from Theoden marching out from Edoras, to the Fords being overrun, to the siege of Helm's deep, to the help unlooked for, that "war" was all over in less than 24 hours. So where's the rules for day and night?

So many troops get slaughtered because they can't clump into 5-unit armies. "Sorry Anorien Bowman, you can't come to Edoras, there's not room here. Remember to scream if you get killed."

And the wonky, wonky ZOC mechanics, where if the defender puts an army in a region 2 away from an attacker, it can be attacked, but if they "defend" it with nothing, often the ZOC rules prevent that region from being attacked. The best defense is not being there. W.T.F.

[theimmortal]

Fair enough - it sounds like most of your problems with the Op games are thematic and model-driven, rather than balance and degenerate-game-play driven. I no longer worry about such things so much, so it hasn't really been bothering me - usually, I can come up with some amusing rationalization in my head that adds to the experience.

I agree, the capping of combat strength makes the Elephants a little disappointing. I think massaging their special ability could go a ways towards fixing that, however. Something like "Inflict one additional damage and then BOTH sides must resolve casualties." Thus the elephants don't mind removing their own casualties so much, because they roll so many dice anyway. I always liked the idea of them trampling their own orcs anyway.

The "defend by not being there" mechanic is definitely very wonky. I can see why the problem arises though, as I don't see an elegant way to fix it. As long as you want armies to be able to move once and attack in a single action, and you want to have some kind of ZOC (which I think is necessary), I don't see a way around it.

In support of your case, I saw another reviewer (Chris Farrell) who really doesn't like the action-dice mechanicsm for the Op games either (but then, he doesn't like them for the base game either). I'm not sure I agree with that, but you're not alone in that opinion.