randomness in dreamblade

[Zxqueb]

I've been thinking a lot lately about minimizing randomness in warbands. In my first several games, I felt like luck was a HUGE factor in the game, but as I've been thinking more about warband building, I've been looking for ways to minimize luck throughout a band in the same way that you might minimize luck in MW with IT or formations. I've come up with a couple ways to do it.

#1 More dice. Go figure, adding more dice works well. In this case it is possible to add more dice through re-rolls (fortune), high attack, low defense/life figures (passion) or by adding an extra side to the dice (crit effects). Crit effects give you more consistent damage in a combat without having to rely completely on a given blade effect like you would need in a movement or warpstrike oriented band.

#2 Spawn phase abilties. They work all the time and they pretty much rock. These mostly are movement effects, it seems like (either around the board or from your graveyard to your reserves).

#3 abilities that are always in effect. These are the meat of luck- negating warbands. Locations like skull hill reduce the # needed to displace an opposing piece, which is nice. More than that, are abilities like genteel husk's ability to claim space while contesting. Other abilities which give you effects on the board for "free" are nullify and bodyguard.

Any thoughts on negating luck in dreamblade? Any other abilities that seem powerful to you (especailly in category #3)?

Z

[warlord1985]

Negating luck, in a dice game?

You could just play Chessmaster, since it has some of the best pieces in the game.

Fortunes cool, but its on 1 piece. Movement abilities rock, alot!

For me, its Reinforce, bypass spawn row and movement, just place a figure where you want it.

[vladdswrath]

This game absolutely drips with randomness. Just like Heroscape achieves balance by simply making everything broken, Dreamblade accomodates randomness by saturating the game with it. Not only are the combat results determined randomly, but so are a player's resources from turn to turn. Even the special abilities on the game pieces often trigger randomly.

This does not mean the lucky player wins, however. Like poker, I'm sure at least 30 percent (if not more) of games between similiar army builds will go to the player who makes the better strategic decisions.

As for limiting the luck, I am not sure you really can, at least at this stage. A better thing to be aware of as you practice, is the effect your board position has on the game (ie. When to be aggressive, when to set-up defensively, when it is better to disrupt than destroy). The hardest adjustment I had to make starting out was allowing my opponents to win early rounds, So I could set up for a late game win.

New players love those 3-4-5 cells, when often they are not worth moving in to!

-Vladd