Them Bones

We played Marvel Heroes during the July 4th holiday last week, and it got me to thinking primarily about dice-based combat systems. Marvel Heroes is primarily a "throw the dice, see who gets more hits" type affair blended with a selection of abilities for each hero, and while it serves its job well it's obvious that the combat is only a smaller portion of the game as a whole.

Since a lot of the games I enjoy involve throwing dice and inflicting casualties based on the results, I began thinking about what I look for in a *good* dice-based combat system. Here are some things that are important to me:



1. Casualties should be able to be inflicted on both sides during a roll.

Really, this is my biggest problem with Risk. Each die rolled is a "zero sum" affair, highest takes it. I realize that you could (and often do) have situations where you split the higher dice and each take a casualty, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about.

I mean, we've all seen it...two defenders in Risk throwing INCREDIBLY, defying the odds. You throw twos, they throw threes. And NOTHING is more frustrating than a defender who rolls a pair of sixes a couple of times.

I like combat systems with "to hit" rolls for each side. Meaning that my casualties are essentially independent from yours, if that makes sense. Combat is a messy thing; there should be bodies all around when the action goes down.

Axis & Allies of course features this mechanic, where each side rolls looking for target numbers, and inflicts casualties on the other side accordingly. Twilight Imperium and War of the Ring also see battles where each side rolls fantastically and just demolishes each other in a bloodbath.


2. Differentiation of Units/Rolls

Let's face it--who wasn't disappointed to learn that the different looking units in Risk were actually no different from each other, except for counts? This especially holds true with the licensed versions of Risk, where you *want* those Nazgul figures to have some extra-lethal combat abilities.

Different units should battle differently. This is especially important because this typically means the game also features some sort of economy--it should be more expensive to build better fighters, and the game needs a way to reflect this cost.

Even if all units of a certain race fight the same way, you can make them different by the costing of the units. Then, when all players mesh in play, it creates diverse combat situations. Quest for the Dragonlords has this as part of its base game but didn't really exploit it well until its Crystal of Power expansion.

I realize that War of the Ring has different-looking unit types that essentially battle the same, but WotR actually creates differences in other ways. First is the location, which can cause each side to battle differently. Then there are leaders and companions, who provide re-rolls. The expansion provides Siege Engines, allowing you to affect the rolls at important Strongholds. Lastly, there is...


3. Card-based Combat and Die Manipulation

I really dislike games where all you can do is throw the bones and hope for the best. You literally have no control over your outcomes whatsoever. This is the biggest reason I can never go back to vanilla Risk; it's just a series of dashing my three guys against your two and keeping my fingers crossed.

The themed Risks really excel here because you can stockpile cards to use them for critical assaults. This allows you to try to skew the odds when it really counts, and deciding when to use those precious cards can be a game unto itself. Star Wars Risk: Clone Wars Edition even features a few cards that can help you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat; one card portrays Obi-Wan and Yoda's attempt at striking at Palpatine one last time and does so by allowing you to attack with two units to anywhere on the board.

This is where War of the Ring shines; the card-based interchange during combat ensures that combats play out differently. Nexus Ops is again a winner by having cards that can boost certain unit types, give you bonuses to your rolls when battling in certain areas, and more.


4. "Tiered" Combat

This goes hand-in-hand with having different units for an army; you can increase the worth of more expensive units by letting them fire first.

This can take the form of having each unit type fire in turn and removing casualties after each tier, or having a ranged and a close combat tier where the ranged attackers get to inflict their casualties first, all the way to having a very small subset of unit types fire in a sort of "pre-combat" mechanism.

Nexus Ops uses the "each unit type fires in turn", with casualties after each step. This is great because it often provides the painful choice of sacrificing cheaper units that haven't fired yet, or inflicting casualties on more expensive units who have already had their chance to fire. Samurai Swords/Shogun has a ranged/close combat breakdown where archers get to unload on the charging ground units before they can close the distance. Twilight Imperium has both PDS and anti-figher barrages that can change the nature of a battle before it's even begun, outside of the "normal" combat phases.


5. Specialized Dice

Let's face it, nothing does a better job of portraying the ferociousness of stronger units than allowing them to roll bigger dice. Understand when I say "specialized" that also includes stuff that most of us are used to but the public at large isn't--things like d4s, d8s, d12s, and so on.

This doesn't mean that's all I'm referring to; games like Memoir '44 and Battlelore essentially create their own odds by having dice with different faces that mean different things in certain circumstances. Even Lionheart uses this to a decent effect by having dice with three Axe faces, two arrow faces, and a Panic face; now with only one die you can give close combat fighters 50/50 hit rations, archers get a 1/3 hit ratio, and you can use the special Panic face for different effects. The most common is having your units Panic; this happens if you roll all Panics on your dice. This is a nice touch because you are more likely to have your morale break as your units are reduced; one lone guy with a sword is much more likely to Panic than he was when he had three of his buddies backing him up.

Having different dice to use in different situations really allows you to open up the possibilities for combat, making it richer. I'll go back to Quest for the Dragonlords, which I think is really effective at using different dice to make combat more interesting. Each unit in the game has two values: an attack value, and a defense value. The defense value tells you which die to roll when fighting against that unit, and the attack value is what number the unit has to roll to hit. So a "normal" fighter might have a Defense of 6; that means you roll a d6 when attacking it, but you use your Attack value to determine success. That means if I attack a guy with a Defense of 6 and I have an Attack of 3, I roll a d6 and try to get 3 or less.

Why this is great is that it allows monsters to have really ferocious scores; the dragon has a defense of TWELVE, meaning you have to roll a d12 when attacking it and for most fighters come up with a 3 or less. All the while the dragon is just MOWING down your dudes with his crazy attack value that almost guarantees a hit every turn.

Battleball may be the simplest yet most creative use of different dice that I've seen. The game features the full compliment of the most common "specialty" dice, from d6s to d20s. Each player is color-coded to show what dice they move when they roll. This allows guys like the wide receivers to roll the d20s and literally just tear down the field. But, in a nice twist, when tackles happen, it is the lower value that wins the combat, and rolling a "1" means you've just LEVELED the other guy, who's out for the game. This means your big burly tackles may only roll a d6 for movement and are extra slow, but their odds of tackling a speedy receiver are huge, and their chances of really flattening the other guy and breaking his cyborg bones is much, much higher.




So there you have it; things that really make dice-based combat work for me. What are some of your favorite dice-based combat mechanics, and games that feature them?