Liege Lords combat system finished

The combat system for Liege Lords is finished and will undergo thorough play testing as soon as the board design and mock-up are finished.

One frustration with some combat-driven board games is the fallibility of probablity--namely, those headachy, flaky dice. You can have a great army, but be undone by dumb luck. In some senses this can be exciting, but for Liege Lords I wanted to try something related but different. Here's a brief and incomplete summary:

While still using dice as the basis for determining victory, Liege Lords also incorporates Tactics Cards which, when used appropriately, offer a chance to sway probablility more to your favor. Each player will have an identical set of Tactics Cards of various colors. Players simultaneously choose, then reveal a card. Depending on what color of card your opponent plays against your color, you will each receive a bonus or penalty to your combat dice rolls. Functionally, it plays out like paper/rock/scissors but with many more options and no absolute guarantee of victory.

The two basic army units in Liege Lords are Knights and Footmen. Each has its own Tactics Card deck with its own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities. After a round of card selection and dice rolling, a losing army takes the difference between the two die rolls as damage. When an army can sustain no more damage, it is defeated and must retreat. If there is no open territory to retreat into, the army is destroyed. This will make more sense after the details about tile design and board layout get posted.

Not coincidentally, the next phase of development is to polish up the terrain tiles and rules for assembling the game board. Then, we begin the task of balancing the economic and political aspects of the game with the combat aspects. Look for updates here soon!