Well, I think I'll just wait and see if it's working - if I manage to get the money, that is :)

Just recently, me and my fellow gamers played A Game of Thrones for the first time. It was somewhat strange in the beginning (we're all used to rolling), but as the game progressed I was surprised by how much you could plan ahead - by determining your opponent's strength and choosing exactly which card is safe to play (strong enough, but not too much because you'd be wasting resources) and which you could save for some advantage later in the game (plus, there's that bidding element, which would IMHO suck really bad if it was dice-driven).

And then, there's Arkham Horror, for example. Yes, you can try to stick to the gate closing plan and all, but very often you get totally screwed by poor rolling, even though you clearly had advantage over enemy.
Not that AH is bad game (it's my favourite, actually, and exactly because of that unpredictabillity), and AGoT and HH maybe aren't even remotely similar (I don't know, I haven't played old version of Horus Heresy) - I'm just saying that if there's strategy/tactics involved dice maybe aren't the best option because you could have the best plan in the world but simple roll badly that very day.

Yes, in real life much could happen that isn't accounted for, but we're talking about strategic board game here - isolated space, practically strategic theory exercise, where you both know strength and weaknesses of your armies, and where shouldn't be even a chance of losing carefully planned battle if you have obvious advantage (which you got by your opponents mistakes, not by luck), and just because of few poor dice rolls.
it's simple: you don't think - you lose.
anyway, that's just my opinion, and maybe it's completely wrong, but we'll see. I'm used to dice and love them, but just as well I like to try new things.

by the way, is estimated date of release mentioned anywhere? 

flervk said:

I think I saw March 2010 floating around as a potential release date.

I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to get this one.  Not because I'm upset about any of the mechanics, mostly just because I feel like I'm reaching a critical mass of board games these days =).  I won't rule out the possibility of buying it either, but I doubt it will be within the first week.

I think it heavily, HEAVILY depends on the game.

Take a quick comparison between Starcraft and, say, Nexus Ops.

Starcraft:  Card driven combat.  Each unit has a range of powers, and thus a range of effectiveness.  Adding more or less cards with a unit type's picture also varies how often you can make effective use of that unit.  This makes bigger units more powerful, but not invincible if caught off guard.

Nexus Ops: Each unit rolls a d6 and "hits" on a certain number or higher.  Low units almost never hit, but get lucky occasionally, and are cheaper so there's more of them.  Stronger units are more powerful, but not invincible if unproperly defended.

In the end, both systems come out to about a similar sort of experience as to the effectiveness of units in the long run.    This, of course, ignores the strategy behind buying upgrades in starcraft (certain upgrades would add extra cards for other units, making them even more powerful and able to attack more often).

In the end, though, house rules are more powerful than written rules.   People would argue "why buy an expensive game to not follow the rules?!" but in the end, it's just the most important to play in a way that's fun.     From the VERY limited knowledge I have about this game, I feel that the card system will fit better than it did in Starcraft.

Also, don't forget that Warrior Knights is one of the best card driven combat games out there.   I have faith in these people. :)

I like the way Starcraft did the card combat. But as I buy more and more FFG games I realize that this is so they can get you to buy the FFG card sleeves for their games. Its a smart marketing strategy if you ask me. Some may not like it, but if you can afford to sleeve all of the card heavy FFG games, then the systems work like a charm. 

FFG is taking a risk and I like it. 

Can't say that I really care.

Sure there's always room for BAD implementations, but in the end, both dice and cards are mostly just two different forms of random generators. The difference is that you can put more text and pictures and meanings on cards than you can on dice.

But, like I said, there's always the possibility that a company does a bad implementation, regardless of which random generator they use for their game. But I can't really say that I have a particular preference for any particular random generator, only good implementations of either of the two.

P.S I remember this old boardgame that had a pretty nifty random generator. I think it was a naval battle strategy game (think battleship but more advanced). The game came packaged with an electronic device with buttons and glowing lights which you pressed and adjusted to different configurations to get game relevant results from the "computer".

While I do believe that the game mechanics probably could have been centred either around dice or cards or a hybrid of both, these nifty technologcal solutions that attempt to achieve an "in-game" feel really provides a nice touch, despite their gimmicky nature.

Also, it wasn't a kids game or anything like that. It was intended for ages 13 and up if im not mistaken.

why not consolidate the two: make dices by pasting together 6 cards 

Dice please.  Cards are okay, but starcraft combat just failed terribly with my gaming group.

For me, dice AND cards work really well  FFG did this with Tide of Iron and Academy Games does it with Conflict of Heroes.

I find it funny that so many people fault Starcraft's card combat. For my group it was the game of the year. The expansion further enhanced it. I also believe that the Starcraft Board Game won game of the year as Origins. Just because you guys may not like the combat with cards system, doesn't mean the system can't work.

My opinion is that cards suffer from wear and tear, but if FFG goes with the higher grade cards like WoW The Adventure Game and Starcraft uses, it will be fine. If not, they still have all of those brand new card sleeves for all of their games to sell me now. So no worries here.

Johncraven said:

...too late.

For boardgames i am all for cards, Dices are too random for games like these.

Now that I have read the rules for Runewars, I hope they use similar mechanics in Horus Heresy. Much better than what they used in StarCraft.

As much as I enjoy StarCraft, it's combat system is its weakest factor IMO.  The best card only combat system is Middle Earth Quest.  I absolutely love the combat system that game uses.  I also like combat systems that mix dice and cards like War of the Ring and Age of Conan.