X-Factor and Fusing Game Designs Together

Recently I purchased the "universe" (expansion) book Saga: Age of Alexander as I like the new version of the Saga rules (version 2) – when converted to play on a square grid, of course – but also because I have a number of excess Greek and Thracian 15mm figures painted up. Also, I was curious how Ancients might play out using this game system. (I myself used it for Mesoamerican battles.)

As I started reviewing notes from my own blog on my Saga games I started to remember some of the aspects that I did not enjoy so much. Saga is pretty crunchy. I broke out the rules and reviewed the melee combat process and you can see how crunchy it is. The attacker's dice total is not fixed and can be modified up and down during a melee. The number needed to roll on those dice is also not fixed and can be modified up and down. Some melee's also include re-rolls. When the final roll is made and the hits are counted the opponent is then allowed to roll their defense dice, cancelling out hits. The number of dice rolled is also not fixed, nor is the number to be rolled. (I am unsure whether there are any factions that have a special rule to inflict automatic casualties as opposed to automatic hits, which are savable. If so, that is another area that is variable.) Bottom line, there are a number of calculations to make, albeit pretty quick ones once you get a hang of the rules.

Compare that to something like One-Hour Wargames (OHW), in which almost everything is fixed. The die you roll, plus modifier is fixed to the unit type. Damage is modified (doubled or halved) based upon circumstance, but that is it. That is the other end of crunchiness. (Mushiness?)

So, to reacquaint myself with the Saga rules I recently played a game with gaming buddy Don. He said we should try it again, seeing as I was talking about it. I thought that strange because I had always thought he wasn't very keen on it, despite having bought painted figures for it. (Don is more of a collector than anything, so buying figures for a game is not indicative of him liking the rules, but more about his true hobby.) We set up the scenario and I stumbled through the rules. Hilariously Don kept saying "are you sure this is what we played before?" as he said that all of the elements were not as he remembered. In the end he really did not like the game, so we are unlikely to play it, as is, again.

But that little side trip caused me to ponder about the rules. What exactly do I like about them versus, say, One-Hour Wargames or Tin Soldiers in Action? Ironically, Tabletop Minions had a video today on the subject, "Why you hate a particular game". His assessment is that there is an X-factor, an element that you value so strongly that when something, in this case a set of rules, doesn't contain it you tend to dislike it. So what was it for me?

So, let's take the idea of fusing Saga and One-Hour Wargames together. That is not such a stretch for me as I spent a good part of a week writing three versions of "Saga Lite" and then play testing it. I admit I abandoned it because of a fatal flaw in the game design. (We will get to that.)

First, what do I like about OHW? Simplicity. Ease of conversion to a grid. Quick playing. A long time ago I also said "decisiveness" because the player's decisions have an impact on the outcome. What I mean by that is when you have a game where, every turn, the player can move all units and fight with all units, the decision of whether to move or not has less impact because there is no (or little) impact to the decision of whether or not to fire; there is no tradeoff. Even more so with the decision to fire; there is no negative consequence to firing, so the decision to do so is not very impactful. With OHW it is move or fire. When you are in the threat zone moving comes at the consequence of receiving hits while not being able to inflict any of your own. Because OHW is an attritional combat system, falling behind in the 'race to 15' cannot be taken lightly.

So, what do I like about Saga? For me it is that you have to plan out your turn, and your reaction to your opponent's next turn, as you go along. That plan is heavily influenced by the dice roll, so there is no God-level control of your troops. Not all units will be able to act every turn. On some turns you might not really be able to do anything except recover. But your decisions will have a huge impact; what you do with the options you are given will very much decide whether you stand a chance of winning.

Breaking Down the Game Mechanics

A while back I bought a copy of the book Building Blocked of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Game Mechanisms by Geoffrey Englestein and Isaac Shalev. It was advertised to me on Facebook and I decided to buy it and give it a try. The book is what it says, an encyclopedia of tabletop game mechanics. Using their definitions it helps me understand how a game mechanic differs, how to identify it, and which I prefer.

The classic example is 'IGO-UGO', which they call Fixed Turn Order Activation. A game like Bolt Action – where each unit on a side is given a die that is placed in a bag, and when that side's die is drawn a unit that has not activated may then takes its activation – is called Random Turn Order Activation. But note that the player gets to pick the unit to activate, whereas Tin Soldiers in Action as uses a random order (cards), but the activation token specifies the unit, not the player.

Now, when I consider which X-factors I like I know that I am indifferent to Fixed Turn Order Activation verging towards suspicious of it as this mechanic most often leads to the dreaded 'Alpha Strike' that I dislike so much. OHW has Fixed Turn Order Activation but softens the Alpha Strike by disallowing a unit to move and shoot in a single turn. You can still move and perform close combat though, so it is still present as OHW has the strange mechanic of only the active playing fighting in close combat. If I do pick rules with Fixed Turn Order Activation I prefer that the activations alternate by unit rather than by player, i.e. I activate one unit, then you activate one, and so on until all units have had a chance to activate.

Saga also has Fixed Turn Order Activation. Worse, a player can move and shoot or move and close combat all in the same turn. Saga does blunt this tendency towards the 'Alpha Strike' by penalizing a unit that moves and takes another action (like shooting or close combat), plus it allows numerous options for the player to interrupt the active player's turn or degrade their attacks, so it is not so bad as something like Warhammer 40,000 (the epitome of rules that allow the Alpha Strike).

As I indicated earlier, I attempted to write a Saga Lite ruleset which fused Saga and OHW. The idea was to use a multiple figure, single base as your basic unit, use strength points to track how many 'hit points' a unit can sustain, but have the different unit qualities and equipment of Saga. Most importantly, use the Saga dice and battle boards to challenge the player to plan his turn based on the die roll. I spent a lot of time on the rules, nearly a week writing up three versions and several separate documents. When I tested the game it was naturally very clunky at first, but I got the hang of it. The basic premise was that the modifiers to combat that the battle board provided, plus the quality and equipment, would all translate to attack and defense bonuses. In close combat both sides would roll a D6 in hits against their opponent, modified by your attack bonus and your opponent's defense penalty.

But what hit me as I was playing the test game is that there was no reason not to choose a Hearthguard unit – the highest quality troop in Saga – over a lesser quality unit. In OHW, unit selection is by die roll, and not all units are created equally. (As evidenced by the groans one hears when someone rolls two Skirmishers for their Dark Ages army!) In Saga there is a delicate balancing act between quality and equipment in a unit. The basic rule is one point buys you 4 Hearthguard or 8 Warrior, or 12 Levy. However, the Hearthguard hits harder and stays in combat longer. But if you are so unlucky as to lose a figure, your offensive combat power goes down quickly. The Levy are the opposite. Their offensive combat power per figure is low, so casualties tend to lower it much more slowly. But they are easier to hit.

My Saga Lite had none of that. It had the characteristic of OHW in that combat power did not change as hits were taken, and damage against a Levy was not more or less devastating as the loss to the Hearthguard. So all of the good aspects of the Levy were removed and all of those of the Hearthguard were amplified. Hence there was no reason to take the Levy. Ever.

This got me to thinking: how can I modify the rules so that the hit taken by Hearthguard has wilder swings (higher highs and lower lows) than those taken by the Levy? Also, it wasn't as simple as saying it was +2 hits against Hearthguard and -2 against Levy as the former had heavier armor, so it was harder to hit. But if it was hit, it took a bigger chunk out of the unit.

Think in terms of figures. If the unit has 16 hits and Hearthguard have 4 figures, each Hearthguard figure has 4 hits. Levy have 12 figures for their 16 hits, so each figure has 1 1/3rd hits. A Hearthguard figure is harder to hit, but if it is, it loses 4 hits, etc.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was already a game out there, that I owned (and had for a year or so) but never played, that seemed to handle something like this. It is called Age of Penda for the Dark Ages version and Scottorum Malleus (now Arrowstorm) for the Medieval version. I will be reviewing those rules and presenting a test battle report next post.