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Post by mrweasely on Sept 20, 2006 21:29:23 GMT 1
National Action Tokens a base-game variant version 1.0 ~ updated 9-24 Add to the game five National Action Tokens: Elves, Dwarves, North, Rohan, and Gondor. Immediately upon activiation of a Free nation, and at the start of every turn thereafter, the Free player obtains the National Action Token for that nation. A National Action Token can be spent much like a FP action die, except only when the number of SA dice is greater than the number of FP dice. (This prevents the FP from having way more actions than the SA). Like the action tokens in the op-games, National Action Tokens are not as strong as action dice. National Action Tokens may be spent to take the following types of actions: - Politics - Roll a die: on a 4,5, or 6, move the nation one step down the political track.
- Move - Move an army with units or leaders of that nation.
- Muster - Muster a regular or leader of that nation.
- Counter Attack - Attack a region or stronghold within the borders of the nation.
- Event - Play an event card 'concerning' that nation (how to tell if a card 'concerns' a nation? Check the FAQ, and if its playable only by one nation in the 4-player game, then it 'concerns' that nation: home.rixtele.com/%7Echarmtroll/wotr/faq.htm#multi. The only semi-suprising one is: Boromir's House of the Stewards doesn't concern Gondor)
All these actions must obey the usual rules about politics. So no mustering before being at war, and so on. National Action Tokens are not action dice, therefore they may not be the target of an elven ring, and may not utilize companion special abilities requiring dice (e.g. Prince of Mirkwood, Strider's guide ability). ________________________________________________ Physical ThingsIts best to use the political track counters as action tokens. Unless one has access to two sets, that leaves the political track rather barren, but I use regulars from the muster bag. Online, I use elites from the muster bag, and just put them in the FP action die box. You have to rememer that those guys are also musterable elites, so at some point in the game you have to do some jujitsu to swap them out... but this is rarely a problem in practice. A bigger problem is "Killing all in the current action" sends them to the discards, where they're not reclaimed by "reclaim dice". I carefully put them in a spare sea area instead. _________________________________________ Continuity note: earlier versions of this allowed action tokens to be spent even when dice counts were SA <= FP. Alert readers quickly zeroed in on this problem, so take their postings below in that context...
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Post by Goodgulf the Grey on Sept 21, 2006 2:43:23 GMT 1
Interesting idea.
Have you played any games with this rule?
If all the nations are active it gives the Free People 5 extra actions for purposes of exchanging actions with the SP. If the SP has their minions and FP doesn't yet then it would be 9 vs 9 but the SP will have at least one Eye in the hunt so this definitiely benefits the Free since it could help them avoid turn stalls since they will have the last action -- 11 actions with GtW and Aragorn!
It might prove too powerful but it certainly will make the SP hesitate before bringing in the Black Captain.
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Post by mrweasely on Sept 21, 2006 2:51:29 GMT 1
I'm thinking the primary effect of this would be to make it really good to seperate companions early.
One approach would be to MIRV the companions all over the map, ala MG's "Companion Butter" approach. In the base game, of course, that would disqualify any chance of a Fellowship win, but give a pretty good chance (5%?) of FP Military victory.
Another approach would be to dance around the map with one or two companions, visiting FP nations in turn and activating them. I'd imagine Strider+Pippin in the south, and Gandalf in the north. That would be slower.
Wisdom of Elrond would be a very good card early.
Meriadoc and Peregrin might see more play.
The Witch King on turn one would give the SA 1 die, but give the FP ~2 dice, so would be a clear loser. He should be held back until one or two other FP nations are active.
Sauron would have a big incentive to utterly scrub FP nations from the map. As an evil overlord, this SHOULD be on his list of goals.
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Post by mrweasely on Sept 22, 2006 1:26:07 GMT 1
Have you played any games with this rule? Zero games. One lon gAss game!~ Good point! In the test game, this actually grew a bit annoying, as once the Witch King came out the FP had millions of different types of actions to choose from. Analysis paralisis was a problem there for a while, as deciding whether to muster the North with their National Action Token or with half a muster took some getting used to. It did indeed prove too much for the poor SP. I've playtested a lot of loonie ideas in my time, but I've never seen the SA get buried under a landslide of dice like this: Dol Guldur fell to Cirdan's Grey Havens army One really borken tactic is: get a combined Elf-Dwarf-North army, which then can move at least 3 regions per turn by playing the Elf-Dwarf-North action tokens successively. That's what allowed Cirdan to burn a swath of destruction across the map, breaking the siege of Rivendell, cowing the Moria army into siege, then sprinting for Dol Guldur. Because rolling the die and maybe moving down the political track is an obvious early use of the tokens, bringing out the WK too early means fighting everyone all at once starting about five turns later. So early WK = BAD. I split Pippin on turn 2 to activate the north. The bree town guard eventually walked him all the way to Ered Luin, where he gave the dwarves the Book of Mazarbul. That meant the SA only 2 VP in DEW, despite sending Dol Guldur and DEW North there. That also got all the northern powers pumped up for Cirdan's brilliant campaign. I'd say this variant is more than a bit unbalanced towards free. FPMV is too easy with 6 dice and 5 tokens. At the very least, the action tokens should only be playable when the FP would be able to pass, just like in the op games.
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Post by jimchris on Sept 22, 2006 4:59:44 GMT 1
It seems to me that the amount of VPs required for FPMV should definitely be higher than 4... maybe 6, or 7?
Also, needing the option to pass seems to balance the idea a bit.
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Post by mrweasely on Sept 22, 2006 18:52:27 GMT 1
Okay, I tried the game out with NATs only expendable when the SA had strictly more dice than the FP.
Not only was the game really fun, but it also tempered some of the ... undesirable ... properties of the base game.
If Sauron has way more dice than the FP, say 8-4 or 9-5, or 10-6 placing two eyes in the hunt pool is pretty good. That's because the Free loses the use of a NAT.
Also, never rolling a Will of the West isn't terrible. You'd love to have Aragorn and Gandalf the White, and WoWs should go to promotions, but failing that, one can always activate a bunch of nations and try to do something defensively.
DEW is more interesing, by a lot. In all games so far (all DEW north), activating the North has been a high priority for the Free. Grimbeorn the Old is becoming the Help Unlooked For foil he should be.
The FP still has to worry about overflowing cards on turn 4&5, but the effect is not so bad as it was before.
Companions are more fun to seperate, at least until WK comes out.
If the FP seperates companions, then the WK comes out to fight them. If the FSP holds together, is it better for WK to card cycle, or to do NAT denial by not being in play? Donno.
All in all, the Free can have a decent 4-die economy with some NATs thrown in.
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Post by Goodgulf the Grey on Sept 23, 2006 19:50:53 GMT 1
Even though I haven't played this variant yet, I think that this is one of the best variants I have seen for the base game. One huge issue with the base game was that "Active" nations had very little meaning in game terms (other than they could eventually be Mustered to War). This meant that bringing in the Witch King had virtually no drawback. This actually addresses the issue by giving Active Nations limited power (action tokens), but it does more than just that. It helps balance out dice disparity and allows the FP to "catch up" if things aren't going well -- ie send companions to Nations and activate them. Also, if the FP has many Action dice then the tokens are not as critical. Also, as MrWeasely points out, the SP can actually place more Eyes in certain situations and limit the FP action token options. Great Job MrWeasely! Now, let's see if you can fix the Hunting WK and make him more fun to play in the Expansion....
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Post by mrweasely on Sept 24, 2006 6:57:08 GMT 1
;D .... I tried a game tonight where the FP spent the endgame with four dice. They were two swords shy of dunking, so I guess the lack of "real" dice killed them. DEW was quite sticky for Sauron ... Woodland Realm was the first stronghold to go under siege, and the last to fall. Gandalf the White ran into Erebor waving the Book... Sauron was able to lock him up there in siege, but then Iron Hills got all uppity. DEW-North arrived and smacked around Iron Hills, who retreated into the wilderness, but then they came back at an inconvenient time for the Shadow, and began to muster more! In all this time, drawing Help Unlooked For would have saved Gandalf in the Lonely Mountain, but it stayed hidden, and the WK pounded him into the ground. He then persued the Iron Hills army all over the map, but largely due to multiple Scoutings, the dwarves and northmen stuck together, and even met some beornings on Old Forest Road. There they tried to break the siege of Woodland Realm. The combat was even (3/2/2 versus 3/2/2), but the Shadow prevailed, barely. Corsairs had swept into Dol Amroth then Pelargir, and Lorien had fallen to Wargs. The rest of the fellowship had stayed intact, until they got killed by corruption. Frodo lost the game on step 4. www.osaurus.us/~dm/wotr/logs/nat-4dice.logI wouldn't say its a competitive game .... In retrospect both sides made bad plays, but at least I learned that shutting event die #5 in a lightly-garrisoned stronghold in the midgame is still not a good idea, no matter how many action tokens one has.
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Post by Goodgulf the Grey on Sept 26, 2006 15:25:11 GMT 1
I was thinking that the SP should also be allowed National Action Tokens. They would almost never be used since the SP usually has an Action Die advantage, and is rarely in a position to pass. However, in some situations (roll lots of Eyes..) it would be valuable. This would also make FP Military Victory more difficult, but the FP Action Tokens already make FP Military much stronger. Finally, adding Eyes would be less of a risk to the SP.
Also, the SP would lose the corresponding National Action Token if the FP takes any VP's from that Nation.
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Post by mrweasely on Sept 27, 2006 17:58:08 GMT 1
So you're saying you don't like FPMVs from the SA rolling eye eye eye eye eye event event event? I kinda like those, because the FP has to get sooooo lucky: with 6 dice, minus palantirs and musters, move and capture two strongholds, without getting screwed by SA muster cards. It seems d**n improbable. Its even more improbable if Sauron leaves an orc behind. I think its fun forcing Sauron to think about leaving that orc behind....
Do you think the FPMV is too cheesey?
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Post by Goodgulf the Grey on Sept 28, 2006 16:06:01 GMT 1
I don't mind FPMVs at all. I think they need to be there to keep the SP from emptying their strongholds (leaving an Orc behind like you state).
My concern is that with the National Action Tokens the FP is going to have about 2-3 extra actions per turn that they didn't have previously. Yes, these are limited to about 1/2 an action die in capability but they also are more flexible and reliable since you know you will be able to move an Elven Army (for example) in addition to the usual actions.
These tokens also allow the FP to get reinforcements before going to War which will slow down the SP military machine. It makes calculations more difficult and allows the FP to counter-attack more effectively.
I think in general that the FPMV will be a more viable option with the National Action Token variant.
Now if you add to the mix those turns where the SP rolls some Eyes and a bunch of Character/Palantir dice into the game then I think the FPMV will be more likely because they will already have a stronger military buildup.
Ultimately I would like to see the SP have a viable strategy where placing more than 1 die in the Hunt box is not foolish. Giving them National Tokens allows the SP to place 3 Eye dice in a turn and not be worried about rolling 2 more since he would still have several "defensive" actions to allow him to focus on the hunt. This option might be more viable in the Expansion since it would allow the Hunting WK to be more attractive (also not activating the FP nations).
Finally, I think that the SP should have the same options as the FP so that the rule is "consistent" for both players -- even if it is more of a tangible benefit for the FP...
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Post by mrweasely on Sept 28, 2006 19:33:59 GMT 1
My concern is that with the National Action Tokens the FP is going to have about 2-3 extra actions per turn that they didn't have previously. Yes, these are limited to about 1/2 an action die in capability but they also are more flexible and reliable since you know you will be able to move an Elven Army (for example) in addition to the usual actions. I thought that too, but when I played and actually relied on being able to move the elven army, the Shadow rolled Eye Eye Eye Eye _ _ _ _ _, and I rolled Event Event Muster Muster Muster, and got screwed! Stuff like this happens much more often than I expected. That's not the way I've been reading it... I've been playing that you can only try to advance on the political track, or move an army outside the borders of another nation, or play a card until you get to war. Good point. Hm...
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Post by Goodgulf the Grey on Sept 29, 2006 14:54:38 GMT 1
Okay. That makes sense. This still makes them useful but not quite so over-powering as I was thinking they might be. I'm still anxious to try the variant out but I haven't had the time to get a game in recently.
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Post by mrweasely on Oct 24, 2006 3:00:53 GMT 1
I've played under these rules a few times now. I like them, a lot. In fact, I prefer them to Twilight of the Third Age!
The version I've been playing doesn't have National Action Tokens for the bad guys, since the Free should occassionally get a double-move in - maybe one turn in 10, but there are so few ways to break the turn stall in basic, that this one is important.
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SevenSpirits
Nazgûl
PlayTester
Sauron meant no harm. He only wanted to draw the extra cards...
Posts: 283
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Post by SevenSpirits on Apr 5, 2007 6:56:55 GMT 1
MrWeasely, I've made an attempt at a custom setup for national action tokens. The action tokens should behave roughly like dice and should be initially in the FP reinforcements at the bottom. To anyone who tries it: let me know if it works/doesn't work. students.washington.edu/scmm/national_action_tokens.zip(It uses the same customization system as here, but improved a bit. You run wotr_custom.jar instead of your old one. I gave it a separate name so it would be easier to switch back to playing normal games.) Edit: In case anyone got it before this edit, download it again; I fixed an obvious problem.
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