More Nerath Optional Rules

Since this is a D&D game, it seems odd that the hero units (fighters and mages) never improve as they clear out dungeons. The dungeon-delving portion of the game seems underdeveloped relative to the rules for land and naval battle, even though treasures are a major source of victory points. So adding a system for leveling up heroes seems like a natural candidate for some optional house rules.

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I. Level

Unlike other units in the game, heroes now have a "level" as an additional attribute. Heroes begin at 1st level, and can eventually rise as high as 4th level. Placing chips under heroes no longer indicates the number of units in a stack, but instead the levels gained by that particular hero; a fighter on top of three chips indicates a 4th level hero.

II. Gaining levels

Whenever a group of heroes defeats all monsters in a dungeon, they may go up in level. Take the total number of monsters in the dungeon, and add the amount of any bonus gold gained by killing monsters. If this total is greater than the current level of any surviving heroes of less than 4th level, those heroes each gain one level.

III. Additional hero types

In addition to the two existing heroes (fighters and wizards) there are two new types: rogues and priests. They function just like fighters (2 movement, can fight on ships, etc), except as indicated below. During the set-up at the start of the game, you can swap in rogues for fighters, or priests for wizards, on a 1-for-1 basis.

A rogue costs 2 gold like a fighter; if you don't have a unique miniature of your own, just put a "1 gold" marker under a fighter to indicate it's a rogue. A priest costs 3 gold like a wizard; again, if needed, place a "1 gold" marker under a wizard figure to indicate a priest.

Rogues and priests roll d8 instead of d10 for their attacks, and do not have the First Strike ability. However, they have additional abilities of their own (see below).

IV. Additional dungeon battle steps

At the very beginning of a dungeon battle, before the first round only, make a trap check. The number of traps is equal to the number of monsters in the dungeon. Roll a d8 for each trap, and apply hits before the first round begins. If you have a rogue in your party, you may Disarm Traps by rolling a number of d10 equal to the rogue's level, with any result of 6 or higher being a success. (Use only the highest level rogue.) Subtract the number of successfully disarmed traps from the total, and then apply any other hits from traps as damage.

At the very end of a victorious dungeon battle, you automatically gain one treasure. You make then make a Search & Open Locks check to see if you can find a second treasure. Roll a number of d6 equal to the level of your highest level rogue. If you get at least one 6, you have found a second treasure.

V. Benefits of gaining levels

As fighters gain levels, they gain the ability to absorb multiple points of damage up to their level, representing improved armor and health. This works like the Durable ability for dragons, but provides the ability to absorb up to 4 hits, instead of just 2. You can use red chips placed beside a fighter to represent wounds. After winning a battle, any wounds on a surviving fighter are automatically removed. IMPORTANT: This ability applies ONLY during dungeon or naval battles, not land battles (which are on a much larger scale!)

As wizards gain levels, they gain additional secondary attack dice to roll. For each level a wizard gains, they add another d6 to their attacks. A 4th level wizard would roll one d10 and three d6 attacks, all during the First Strike phase. Note that some monsters may require higher than a 6 to hit, in which case the extra dice have no chance to hit and can be skipped. (Wizards are good at clearing out lots of weak monsters, like the horde of orcs.) This applies during both land and naval battles as well.

As rogues gain levels, they improve their attack dice to reflect flanking and ambushing. At 1st level they roll a d8, at 2nd level a d10, at 3rd level a d12 and at 4th level a d20. (They're good at hitting a single difficult monster with high armor, in contrast to a wizard's area spells.) This applies during both land and naval battles as well.

As priests gain levels, they improve their ability to heal. Instead of rolling an attack in a given round, a priest may roll dice to attempt to heal any wounded fighters. Declare that the priest is attempting to heal during the First Strike phase, and then roll a number of d8 equal to the priest's level, along with the wizards First Strike attacks. Any "hit" for a healing attempt is immediately applied to remove wounds from one or more fighters. IMPORTANT: Like the fighter's extra health, healing can be used ONLY during dungeon or naval battles, not land battles.

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That's it. Having lots of unstacked heroes around makes the board crowded, so it's probably a good idea to keep them off-map and use a marker to indicate the location of an entire party. This also makes heroes very powerful, so it's recommended to limit them to only the provided figures in the game (so you can never have more than six fighters/rogues, or six wizards/clerics).

Fix This Game! : Conquest Of Nerath

This summer we've picked up a few new board games for the collection: an expansion for Firefly, a pocket copy of Ogre (for only $3!), and WotC's Conquest of Nerath (CoN). The latter is something I've been eyeing for a while, as it resembles a deliberate retro throwback to the 80s-era Milton Bradley games, but the price was out of my range. When it hit 40% off, I tossed it into a bulk order from Amazon to have a look.

The game was released in 2011 as part of a string of board game releases with tie-ins to the 4th edition RPG rules, and this board provided the fullest look at the default campaign setting map for 4e. (Perhaps permanently, now that the 4e setting is being unceremoniously orphaned.) It's a standard Risk/A&A map with around 100 map regions, partitioned between four starting kingdoms. Each of them is roughly but not exactly balanced, creating a different strategic situation than the historical setup in Axis and Allies. In particular, there are no "punching bag" players like the USSR, and every nation has equal ability to implement both land and naval strategies.

Before I say anything critical of the design itself, I should point out that the components are all high-quality, with many unique sculpts for each player realms' minis. The box comes with a well-designed plastic divider that makes set-up easy, and everything feels sturdy and durable (aside from some thin cardstock for the card decks). It looks suitably impressive to see all the little armies spread out across the map. And (apropos of something using a D&D license) the game features a set of multicolored polyhedral dice that can be satisfying thrown around in huge handfuls to resolve battles between massive army stacks. Finally, the basic idea of a game that balances dungeon delving and exploration is a nice twist on the classic Risk model of pushing armies around a board, creating a two-linked-games approach reminiscent of the (admittedly better playtested) War of the Rings game. It also keeps the game from dragging out longer than 5 or 6 rounds, since by that point at least one side has done enough dungeon-delving to win.

Unfortunately, the designer of the game (Richard Baker, best known for the TSR-era Birthright setting, and a primary designer for the A&A miniature games) was unexpectedly fired for unknown reasons shortly after CoN was released. This means that the game has mostly been abandoned, with little support from the publisher and virtually no prospect of an expansion or follow-up game. It would have been lovely to see a similar strategy game for a familiar setting like Greyhawk or Faerun. One of Baker's interviews mentioned some prospect of a Dragonlance version, but all that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

It also means that there's little chance of an official resolution to some of the observed balance problems in the game. The rules allow for both a free-for-all and an alliance version. The free-for-all version is somewhat self-balancing, in that everyone tends to gang up on the strongest player. Hidden event and item cards can make it a little difficult to identify exactly who is ahead, but you can't be on the verge of wiping another realm off the map without gaining a lot of attention! The alliance version, though, has produced a lot of objecctions, with some reviewers claiming it favors the evil side (which always gets to move first). Curiously enough, three solo playtests of the game produced exactly the opposite result for me, with the good side pulling ahead and winning cleanly.

What's happening is this: The game allows for both short and long victory conditions. The evil side gets a position advantage from the first move, which leads to a jump in initial victory points that puts them ahead. Then the good side gets a bunch of catch up mechanisms (better event cards, and more access to dungeon loot) to help them fight back into the game. This makes the game almost impossible to balance for all length options. Play a short game, and Evil has a natural edge. Play a long game, and Good can usually make up the difference plus a bit more; a long game usually is won on dungeon loot, given equally skilled players, and Good has better access to more dungeons unless they completely collapse. (Reviewers who failed to discover this probably didn't keep playing until the later turns, I think.) There's a "medium" game that is probably the only alliance-victory version that plays with reasonable balance, but the other two victory conditions each create an imbalance in one direction or another.

As a secondary problem, the game also features several units that feel underpowered relative to the others, and don't have clearly defined roles. It's pretty straightforward to do a statistical analysis of dice outcomes that proves that "fighters" (a basic hero unit) are uniformly superior at equal cost to either siege engines or monsters (the other two primary offensive land units). As a result, virtually no siege engines or monsters will be built by an experienced player, and armies become less diverse as play progresses. This problem only gets worse as the game progresses, as dungeon delving coughs up multiple cards that grand more abilities to heroes.

Richard Baker, on his personal blog, has already recommended reducing the power of dragons -- which are basically flying A&A battleships, for only 5 times the cost of basic infantry! -- by preventing them from ending the turn in the same region. This makes them powerful on the offense as they converge on a target, but forces them to spread out and become vulnerable again on the defense. It's a decent hack for its own sake, but it still doesn't address the main problem of siege engines and monsters feeling underpowered relative to heroes.

I've been contemplating some rules changes to help both of these units and make them viable choices again. On the BGG forums, I've seen some basic recommendations like "give siege engines an extra attack die", but they feel too pedestrian and not strongly flavored from a simulationist standpoint. I feel like in addition to balance, it's also beneficial to give the units specific roles. Here are my short recommendations for making these units useful again. As a side-note, these changes strengthen the advantage in initial armies provided to the evil side, which helps with long-game balance issues (while making short-game balance problems even worse -- but more on that in a bit!)

Conquest of Nerath House Rules
1. Richard Baker's semi-official dragon nerf: All dragons must end the turn in a unique region. If a dragon shares a region with any other dragon(s) at the end of a turn, all additional dragons must be removed until only one remains.

2. Hard counter limit: No additional figures or chips may be used beyond those in the box. Red chips placed under figures count as 3 grey chips, not as 5. (Note that in conjunction with the dragon nerf, this means no realm can ever have more than four dragons on map at once.) If a card provides free units that can't be built, it may be held until those units are available again, even if it says "play immediately".

3. Siege Engine siege-combat attack buff: Any time a siege engine is attacking or defending in the same region as a castle (friendly or enemy), it gains one extra attack die. This means that siege engines would then get 2 dice on the defense, and 3 on the attack.  (Note: This enhances the ability of the Evil side to capture at least one castle by the second turn, which I think is the only way they can get far enough ahead to win a long game.)

4. Infantry / cavalry / artillery synergy rule: For each matched triplet of footsoldier, monster, and siege engine units included in the "Roll Other Damage" step of any land battle (after removing any First Strike losses), you get a "re-roll" -- the opportunity to roll again any one die that initially didn't hit. So if you have 5 footsoldiers, 4 siege engines, and 3 monsters in a battle round, you can re-roll up to 3 of that round's (non-First Strike) attack dice that would otherwise have missed. You only get one chance to re-roll each die, even if you have more re-rolls than misses. (This works like the similar mechanic in War of the Ring.)

5. Warship / elemental synergy rule: As above, but for matched pairs of warships and elementals in a naval battle.

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The counter limit makes it a bit harder to turtle with ridiculous stacks of two dozen footsoldiers, like the Soviets usually do in Axis and Allies. The siege engine rule makes it easier to attack castles, which also shifts the military side of the game toward an offensive bias.

I especially like the last rule, since it reflects the idea that each set of dice rolls is representing some complicated set of tactics on the micro level: siege engines softening up defensive embankments, monsters crashing through the lines to pocket them, and footmen finishing off the encircled pockets. Units work better in cooperation than they do alone, so you want to bring a well-balanced force. I thought about creating a similar fighter/wizard rule, but they seem strong enough as it is!

What about the final situation, when using the short victory conditions that favor the evil realms? I thought of two possible rules. First, you could reverse the order of the 3rd and 4th player. That means that Evil would go 1st and 4th, and Good would go 2nd and 3rd in each turn. As a side benefit, that would allow players on the same time to do their turns simultaneously, reducing downtime.

Alternatively, you could introduce a defender retreat rule, which allows defenders to limit combat to a single round, and then retreat to any friendly adjacent region at the end of the round. Only the attacker would get to roll, and any defender units that are destroyed during retreat would instead by "shattered" and be available to immediately come on as reinforcements for 1 gp each (just like the "Rod of Resurrection" item in the game). This would mitigate the effect of trying to defend against a superior opponent, as happens frequently to Good in the first couple turns.