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[deputyfife]

Just an observation here from a beginning player(working his way slowly through the DCM), but it seems the bulk of the outcome's determination came in the initial maneuvering roll(and resulting terrain die roll.) There were other obvious strategic choices afterward, such as not counterattacking the ettercaps, but it seems from your descriptions both battles were decidedly won by opposing sides.

This is something that struck me recently from playing games--that the initial maneuver roll seems to have an overwhelming correspondence to the winner(not unlike real-life warfare, where initiative is all-important.) In games with my brother-in-law, I've noticed that if the terrain dice come out low numbers initially(say 4 and below), I tend to win, as my strategies tend to favor pummeling my opponent into nothingness. But if we initially roll high numbers on the terrains, he wins, as his strategies tend to center on winning the eighth faces.

I'm wondering if this is the product of inexperienced players who don't have a huge repertoire of dice, or if this experience is common to all? How could we change this so that the initial roll isn't hugely determinant of the winner? This question is directed at the overall game, not just Darthmacho's mini-campaigns; though the recap of his games were what got me thinking about this in the first place.

[Darth Macho]

To deputyfife: I was intrigued also by the outcomes of the games, only I got a slightly different impression. I think what matters more than the initial maneuver roll (which is important indeed) is the numbers that come up on the initial terrain rolls. I was amazed by the HUGE difference it made fighting Ettercaps when coming up with a six for melee as opposed to a five, which was missles. As you observed, that slight difference created a 180 degree turn in the slaughter department.

As for the standard three terrain game, I can't tell you how many times I've had heavy infantry bogged down in magic range, and all of my magicians getting slaughtered in melee right off the bat in a game. It seems to happen almost all the time to me, causing me to shuffle endlessly. It must be just bad luck on my part.

I did find that the Coral Elves performed much better at the Coastlands, where their maneuvers counted as saves. Of course, this had everything to do with the initial roll!

I'm about to report the tiebreaker game in another post. The results were pretty interesting...

[deputyfife]

Whew! I thought maybe I had been playing dragons wrong, and was going to re-read the section on dragons.
I don't find Dragons all that powerful, not for the cost. I guess, though, that I've never had a magic result that would give me 2 or even 3 dragons at once, though. But then at that much cost in magic, it still seems like something better could be done in terms of spells.
I don't want anybody to take this the wrong way, because I enjoy Dragon Dice. But there's no such thing as the perfect game. It still seems to me that those initial rolls for maneuvers, and terrain rolls, have too large an impact on the overall game. Again, though, I'm asking for the opinions or insights of experienced players who can explain why I'm incorrect here. If it is the case that initial maneuver and terrain rolls have too much determination on the game's outcome, it doesn't seem all that hard to correct for it. (As a counter example, consider Monopoly, a popular but hopelessly broken game: the initial rolls that take you around the board the first time or two inherently determine the outcome of the game. Land on the better {relative to opponents} combination of properties, and you will win, short of horribly overwhelming bad luck. Dragon Dice doesn't have anywhere near the problem Monopoly has, I'm just using Monopoly here as an example of a game that is determined by luck during the beginning phase, and that really can't be fixed short of creating a new game. And again, I don't know if Dragon Dice needs to be fixed, because I haven't played it very much yet, and don't have all the options of the game(i.e. dice) available to me.)
I also don't want to hijack Darthmacho's Mini-Campaigns thread, this just happens to be the one that I finally decided to broach this subject on.

[chuckpint]

I decided that these needed to be moved to the rules discussion.

As for the initial maneuver roll determing the outcome of the game, there are several ways to make that not happen. Don't put all your mages at your home terrain. Your opponent(s) are going to put their horde army at your home. Put instead just a single die, preferably a common. Remember, the rules say you have to have three armies at the start, it doesn't say three equal size armies, just no more than half at any one army. A variation if you have a setup without much maneuver is to put your non-mages at your home. If it's a bunch of heavies, they can take most anything a cavalry army can dish out, and hit them back for much more.

[deputyfife]

I'll give those a try (I have put just one common by itself as an "army", but never at my home), but my suspicion is still that there is a lot riding on those initial rolls of the game; while a player can control their horde roll by having up to half their dice, and their most maneuverable ones in the horde, there still seems to be almost nothing a player can do to account for the large possible swings in luck that can occur from rolling terrains to faces that favor a player's units. (Not only in the first turn; let's say I'm fond of having half my units in magic dice, but the terrains all roll 4's and 5's; those magic-users are going to be useless for too long for me to maneuver to either an 8 or a 1, and reserve magic only goes so far, and requires a large number of dice moving away from the terrains to yield tangible results.)

Again, I'm deferring to the more experienced and knowledgeable players here, but I remain suspicious. (I'm from Missouri, after all.)

[deputyfife]

By the way, I forgot to thank Chuck for moving this over here. Aside from routing, this is my biggest question/hang-up on the rules.

[cliffwiggs]

[Darth Macho]

The only thing I question about leaving only one die at the home terrain would be that the home terrain is the most likely place to take advantage of the id magic doubling and the racial abilities, so why wouldn't you place the one die in a campaign army, where your enemy would have the advantage?

I almost always, as anyone might imagine, place the magicians at home for the doubling. I imagine that is a common practice?

As for dragons, I always felt that their effectiveness depended on the size of the army they were facing. An army that could generate a lot of melee could easily kill a dragon, even after taking damage, but a small army would either have to use all of its points to protect itself, or else likely be killed.

My main gripe, and this might just be my bad luck, is that my dragons always seem to take wing, go belly up, or drop treasure, and only rarely if ever roll their breath weapon or their crushing jaws, unless I'm going to be their victim!

[deputyfife]

I get the same problem with rolling bellies and wings on dragons, but still, it doesn't seem a good choice of magic points unless an army is in the 8-12 hp range, and then it still seems like more of a nuisance to the army. There are easier ways to destroy an army of less than 8 hp.

By the way, if a dragon is at a terrain, and all armies move away, does the dragon stay?

As far as the one die at home, if I'm reading Chuck's(Mr. Pint's?) suggestion correctly, leaving one common at home who will likely be slaughtered isn't a big deal on that first turn, and prevents the early loss of some magicians stuck in the middle of melee territory; once the terrains are turned up, and the horde army has served its roll of giving the best shot possible of winning the maneuver roll, then forces can be moved back to the reserve, and appropriately to the home die(depending on what forces would best go there; a terrain at 4 or 5 probably shouldn't get a lot of magic, while one starting at 6 & moving to 7 on opponents's turn, shouldn't have many missile sent to it.) A player would still get the benefits of their home terrain, just delayed for up to 2 turns, at the sacrifice of one common unit.

Am I reading that strategy correctly?

By the way, has anyone ever experimented with using the margin of the initial maneuver roll to allow the winner to move one die from its initial roll to a different number? This would have a "real-world" sense to it, in that an army grossly outmaneuvering another army for position could set up exactly where they want in a flat land that serves its archers well, in high ground that its forces excel at, muddy swamps that its goblins like, etc... (I'm sure everyone can think of an army that was able to maneuver to a superior position that essentially won the battle, such as the Spartans at Thermypolae, Washington at the hill across the bridge in southern NJ, the real Wallace and Mornay at Stirling Bridge forcing the English across a very narrow bridge, essentially single-file.)
Meanwhile, it allows for someone to at least avoid one third of a horrible initial set-up, if they won the first maneuver roll. Limiting the maneuvering to the 1-6 faces, would 3 points of margin to one face of movement(this would apply to the FIRST maneuver roll, only) work?

[cliffwiggs]

[deputyfife]

[cliffwiggs]

[deputyfife]

[slcobbs]

[deputyfife]

[chuckpint]

The only time it's a problem is when one player is at two terrains that are at 6, and goes first. That may not sound like a common problem, but in fact it is. Remember, that if a terrain rolls 1-6, that's its position. If it rolls an 8 it's rerolled. But if it rolls a 7, it’s turned down to a 6. So 6 has a higher probability than 1-5. Compounding the problem is that a player to move to another terrain, has to take two turns. So if you're going second, and the player going first has a terrain at 6 virtually unopposed, here's what happens:

first turn, player one, turns terrain to 7.
first turn, player two, retreats to reserves.
second turn, player one, turns terrain to 8.
second turn, player two, moves to terrain already at 8.

Now if only one terrain is at 6, this really isn't that big a problem. Not good, but at least not game over. If player one has two terrains at 6, and one is unopposed, then it's really tough. Player one gets an eighth with the unopposed army, and then can cast magic to try and help the other army also get an eighth, game over. Meanwhile, the player two can't do much of anything about it.

[deputyfife]

Should the rules be tweaked, then, that no more than one terrain die can start at six, with the player who won maneuvers rolling first their home, then the frontier, then their opponent(s) rolling home terrains in order of maneuver rolls?
I know this is the kind of tedious rule that is best ignored for beginners.

[anset]

[deputyfife]

[ddicerc]

Dragon Dice is a dice game. As such, there is an element of randomness in it. Being a dice game, that randomness may be greater than in other kinds of games. Going into the game, I know that terrains are likely to vary wildly from game to game. If I want to play a particular kind of army, I need to construct it AND choose my own terrains to maximize my opportunities to get a face of my choice. If I want magic, I should steer away from Flatlands and Coastlands, and toward Highlands. Melee armies like Swamps and Flats. Missiles prefer Coasts, and steer away from Swamps and Highs. But even after doing this, the dice may roll away from me.

More frustrating than a set of terrains that all start high is a set that all roll low. If you get two or three stuck on magic, the mages have ways of holding onto them using magical help, and you end up with magic zapfests where the first player getting a monster roll gains a huge advantage. When all the terrains start low, the games tend to drag on longer, since there isn't much incentive for magic-heavy armies to ever try to move a terrain up.

Minor terrains can also be used to help change what can happen on a terrain.

The element of randomness is what makes the game intriguing to me. Besides, it's also you're built-in excuse when you lose. ("Yeah, I had the better army, but the dice just went against me...")
_________________
Steve "DDice" Braun
The Diceman's Gaming Pages: http://ddicerc.weebly.com
2014-2015 U.S. National Champion
(Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...)