Hi there,
So one of the things I have changed the most in Inferno, is how players interact. Most games, when scaled up, don’t allow for interactions and people don’t enjoy that very much. “Oh, how many models did I lose, I was taking a nap?” isn’t in any rule books or marketing materials as a selling point, is it?
I’m going to give a run down of some of the more popular games system of Orders, Initiative, and the you-go/I-go systems in place, and then I’ll go over Inferno in a 2nd post to discuss what I’ve done to try and fix this.
X-Wing: It’s you go, I go. With a twist: You resolve movement and gun actions from highest pilot initiative to lowest. So it’s not really you go, I go. It’s, who has initiative moves first and shoots first.
Why’s it bad? Well, the no-name (spammable) units in the game often cost only a few points less, but don’t let you take specific upgrades (aka, the talent-less). They also don’t come with any nifty abilities (aka, they come with flavor text and no pilot defining ability). So the fastest pilots (aces, uniques you can’t spam) go first (positioning) and shoot first (can’t shoot if you are dead or I’m outside of your firing arc)l and they also can take all upgrades and get a pilot ability. This makes it more likely you’ll take only a handful of ships, so you aren’t reacting all the time to the enemy but can go at least as fast as everyone else is going (see, if everyone has aces, the game has 90% of the game unplayable, which makes the game not sell well–oh. That’s where X-Wing is right now.)
Warlord Games. So Gates of Antares, Bolt Action, Konflict 47, etc. Generally speaking, you have a unit and get an order token. Which then goes into a bag, along with your opponents. You then draw an order token, and whoever gets the token gets to go. Rinse and repeat.
Why’s it bad? Well, you might only have 6 tokens and your opponent might have 12. While not a usual occurrence, it does happen and more on why that is later. It’s also possible you can luckily draw your own order tokens 3, 4, 5 times in a row. So those games where you have a few elite units, and your opponent has a bunch of crap units, can that happen often? Well, with GoA yes it certainly can. With the Bolt Action series (BA, K47), not as much because it’s basically Flames of War Lite in it’s army design. You get only a specific set of units you can buy, and they are pretty much the same with very little variation between the armies and their subtypes. i.e. You get 0-1 of 10 choices, and then have 3-5 required choices. So it’s quite hard to spam cheap units and end up with more orders, but it is possible. Given how powerful some units can be in Warlords’ games, they are almost always the first unit activated. So much like X-Wing, if the game encourages you to buy only the best because orders are identical in their weight, then why not? Oh, games not selling as well as it could be? Hmmm.
Infinity: Almost the reverse of most of these games, and coming from a 40k-centric background boy was I resistant to it, mostly because I didn’t realize it was really the same thing as 40k but with more interaction. More on that later. So how does Infinity work? Well, you take models and with some exceptions, you get an order for each one. The exceptions are, some orders aren’t under your control and you have to follow specific rules. Basically it’s pure you-go, I-go. The key difference is you can fire/react at enemies as they move/fire/take actions/etc. So you aren’t just limited to simple interactions like taking saves/dodges/damage tallying. You do, however, get to run all of your orders before the opponent gets his turn. Going first is potentially strong, as you can identify weak lanes the opponent hasn’t covered strongly enough to deter you from moving towards your goal. However, going second means you go last, and the game is quite limited in it’s duration so you might very well execute game-winning moves at the end of the game.
Why’s it bad? Well, you can easily make 10, 20, or 30 order forces. Most are somewhere between 10 and 17, because above that it becomes quite oppressive to play while your opponent moves a unit you can’t quite deal with because of firepower, line of sight, or the generic Infinity shenanigans that often occurs (and is fine, it’s part of the game) and 25 orders later, you have 4 guys left. The difference is in Infinity, you can activate the same unit over and over again. Note: While 40k style games don’t use orders per se, you can’t activate the same unit over and over again.
Malifaux: Here you have a you-go, I-go activation phase. Something I’m aiming at with Inferno, but done quite a bit differently. Malifaux doesn’t have order tokens or initiative really. You get your turn, you can activate any unit that hasn’t been activated. Good for player choice. It’d be ok as is, not exciting or anything, but ok as the game itself doesn’t really offer you any other interactions but usually a single activation doesn’t take 20 minutes.
Why’s it bad? Where we run into problems are chain activations, and activation denials. Some armies are better at this than others, and the more you go down the road of ‘I win because you can’t play’, ‘In two activations I ran most of my army activations’, or worst–both at the same time, the less fun the game becomes, and the only interaction you have is ‘I can’t go’ and ‘I take how much damage’…well, that makes the game kind of blah. In the end, the game doesn’t have poor interactions, the deck mechanic is quite good. The rest of the game, however, falls flat.
Games Workshop. 40k, AOS, etc. You have a simple you-go, I-go system. Interactions are relatively rare. If you don’t get assaulted, there’s very little for you to do except take saves and remove wound markers.
Why’s it bad? Within GW’s games, and their business model (new new new!), you end up with armies skewed entirely towards first strike (damage output, because the other player can’t do anything) and towards survivability (for when you get first striked, because you can’t do anything). Can’t figure out why basic troops don’t sell well? Well, they don’t fit into either set of capabilties so why would you bring them?
Side rant: Know why I have a single infantry squad planned for NOVA? Not because I want them. I’m required to have them, for some reason, or I lose points. Other tournaments also gaslight their players with similar weird rulings. Guys and gals, if you say the game system sucks and this is the fix–GW will have to listen. I don’t mean an INAT FAQ. That was just hubris play-game-designer-but-suck-at-it (cough Zycanthus is crap cough cough). Don’t so stupid shit like, at the tournament GW doesn’t pay for, if you want to play on the top streamed table, you HAVE to have only GW models. Don’t run scenarios that don’t require interaction and are totally RNG fests. Enforce interactions. Don’t nitpick all of the bad rules writing everyone does, put some effort in and make it possible for people who spend $3,000 dollars to go to your event, can actually interact and impact the game instead of getting shot to pieces for an hour. Who knows, maybe you can have 500 players instead of 250. I’ve been waiting a decade, haven’t seen this change in any meaningful way.
Almost of these games are oriented towards: Buy the best! Buy the newest! Newest is always best! Something I don’t think is necessary. Are your models crap or something? Why won’t they sell? Long term, if you can’t get young kids in to play and buy, you have no future.
150$ for 1/8 to 1/4 of an army? Well, time hasn’t changed how some companies operate, and I can’t imagine why board games and skirmish games are doing so well.