Lakoda said:

I like that you have an open mind to new systems!  I also felt the pace of the game slooowwwed down durring combat,  but I also enjoyed the drama that combat put most characters in.  It is a life and death situation almost every time.  After 5 group games and 6 solo games, my final opinon on combat is........  Enjoyable!

Good luck with your game group and finding a balance with the combat system that pleases everyone.  It's rough in my group when we try do makes changes so everyone is happy.  Most of the time someone will take one for the team, beacuse we will play games that they like when others would rather not play.  It seems you have group that does the same.

kingbobb said:

That's where the "counterattack" symbols come from.

Melee counters Ranged, Ranged Counters Magic, and Magic counters Melee.

BillStivers said:

Thank you! In another setting I would have really enjoyed the combat system. But when you are playing with a diverse group, large changes in game speed can be very difficult for the people who are playing out of their preferred style of game.

quote:

In the old version of the game, if you had a 4 strength, it pretty much meant you had to be more creative about getting through the dungeon because you knew that you couldn't open that porticullis except by a miracle. It meant you didn't waste time trying to screw around in the same room unless you were forced to. With Determination tokens you're instead telling the players "Don't worry, you just keep wasting time with that bridge or porticullis because if you're determined enough, then it'll just fall over eventually."

True but you lose time, and in this game time is a valuable ressource.

The only thing I don't like about combat is that your character stats does not influence the battle. There was some suggestions about giving each character an affinity to a type of combat card so that for example, they could win ties with that category or that they gain +1 to their combat card if they use card that matched their type.

Lakoda said:

Hopefully someone will come up with a mod set of rules - or something that would convert the current game over to the old style of combat. (Hell - I have the original - maybe I will take a stab at it when I have the new version.)

I wish the designers would have played a game of Agricola and then this one again as they were working through the details - I love that that game has many options for play style - easy "family style" play with WAY fewer cards OR mega complicated if you want it to be.

Maybe they will release a small "deck" expansion - that will make a "simple" combat system more similar to the original. I loved how easy the paper-rock-scissors style was when playing with non-gamer types - but for those of us who are more into complex and dynamic combat systems - I welcome the change.

Then again I haven't played the new system yet - hoping my LGS will have it for me on Tuesday. :)

SoylentGreen said:

So then why not just play RPS with others?  Why would you need to buy a set of cards for it?  Just say the rock is worth two damage if it works, and there you go, the old combat system.

I'm glad they made a more involved combat system, because there is no way I'm going to pay $40 to play rock-paper-scissors.

DoomTurtle said:

Oh - yeah - I agree with you that I wouldn't spend $40 for RPS. :) I was thinking of like a $10 optional deck you could buy. That would add cards similar to the original style of combat. Don't get me wrong - I am excited for the new version... I would just like the OPTION to play the simpler version - and I want it on real printed cards... I never like using home printed cards.

Like I said - Argicola has done a fun way to make the game simple or complicated based on the deck/s you use. Could just be fun to have the option.

I will probably take a look at it - and see a way to make some cards people could print out and use as an "easy" deck... along the lines of the original. We'll see how much I wanna work on it. :)

I purchased this game prior to reading any reviews. Whilst I was waiting for it to arrive via post, I read a fair few reviews on Boardgeek.com and got quite a fright, mostly concerning the Combat Rules.

After I received the rulebook and read through it. I thought - "The combat doesn't seem bad".

I then proceeded to play a single player game just to get into grips with the game (I have NOT played GW's version). Even then, the combat seemed okay.

I brought the game over to my brother's and his wife's place and started to play. It all went well for the first 3 minutes (few turns had already pasted by then!) when my brother encountered a skeleton.

Now my brother plays 40k and Flames of War and his experiences with board games are limited to my collection (and then the more basic ones such as Talisman). His wife doesn't play anything but the board game I bring.

Now trying to explain the combat system to them was so shocking that we stopped playing the game there and then. I probably did a pisspoor job to explain the system but really you need people with patience and even those who are not afraid to read the combat rules in the book.

As someone else said on this thread already, without combat a player's turn can last mere seconds but combat seems to drag on. Of course it would get quicker with experience but when I play the game maybe once a month, the people I want with want simplicity (especially in a game with more than 2 players).

I wish that FFG provided alternative BASIC/QUICK combat rules instead of the shocker they have included in the game. If I want to play such a game, I'll play  something like Star Craft (I like the way that works but it's a slow paced strategy game). However DQ was meant to be a quicker game.

I'm am near regretting buying the game and am looking around into what House Rules other people have made for combat.

I really don't find the combat system that difficult or that time consuming, I play combats with my young children without any issue and they don't slow the game down.

We don't play with the power cards, for added simplicity (except for escaping), so its kind of like the solo rules, but basically they know to try and play a high card in their hand or perhaps to play a low card if they have lots of other cards of that colour; they are your two basic tactical options.

If they have a couple of different cards they could play (so a high red and a high yellow) they know to check the damage stack to help them decide which one is probably the better card to play.

one thing I'm not sure of from the rules though is can you use a deathblow with a counter attack? The deathblow rules talk about playing a card (singular), but it doesn't explicitly say you can't use a counter attack as a death blow if possible? what are other people diong with this?

pumpkin said:

Whenever you win a round and there are cards in the combat stack that are the same color as your initial combat card (any counter-attack cards you play will also be the same color as your initial combat card, so whether or not you used a counter-attack to win the round is immaterial), you've dealt a deathblow.

Interestingly I actually found combat to be anything but convoluted. If anything, it's rather addictive, and it's rather satisfying to land a counterattack or particularly viscious deathblow on an opponent.

So original poster?

Have you checked out and tried the new combat variants? There are "traditional" rules - or something like that - just use the chart on the last page.

Hey all

I've played dozens of games now - solo or with groups. I've found the combat is easy to learn - fast and furious (we had it down half-way through the first game). 

There's a mild element of strategy in the cards (e.g. playing a 4 Str means you'll never get a shot to counter attack but could shut your opponent down early) and a bit more in guessing/judging what your opponent has and what he/she might play next (do I play a magic attacj knowing there are two magic cards in the combat deck or will my foe guess what I'm doing and set me up for a counter...etc).

AFA the names of the moves We call out the moves for flavor or sometimes RPG it a bit for fun (e.g. Tindel dances back and looses a fireball arrow from his quiver..etc). How much you want to get into it, is up to you and your peeps.

I've showed about ten people the game so fat in my experience no one finds it convoluted or difficult. 

Of course no one is comparing it to the old DQ or anything else- And that's where I think people are running into trouble.  Any time we start comparing diff things come into play - nostalgia, familiarity (let's face it, some people don't like change), etc.  

Bottom line, IMO, is It's a diff game, and if one likes V1, or V2 more, it's easy to sell off your new copy and stick to the older editions (as one poster suggested).

We all know GW (who made the 2nd version, I believe) has done MANY reduxes of their own games - improving, changing, trying new rules concepts It's part of the hobby.  And to that end there's always the option of fiddling about with some house rules (again a staple of the gaming world).

Just another POV.

The combat system seems not very intuitive at first but after 1-2 tries it really becomes a fast and simple mini card game. The only thing that can bog down game speed are the power cards (reading the one you drew and making up your mind what it really does and when to use it best). Playing combat without power cards really speeded up things for us. Its a good alternative if you dont mind the loss of a small amount of flavour and tactical choice. But then some of the power cards seemed a bit overcomplex for this beer & brezel type fun game so I its ok for me not to include them in combat.

After all this game is all about drawing tiles and cards - not reading combat cards :)

I don't know Descent at all, but I'll assume the new DQ combat system didn't come from that. It certainly didn't come from RB.  Likely it was cribbed from some other game entirely. It's just too bad that in an absorption into the Terrinoth world that the designers didn't opt for a combat system alternative closer to one of that world's other games. The cards used for combat already have terminology from those other games, though used in a manner that makes no sense to imagining the combat taking place or in a logical manner. Since when would one be able to use ranged combat to counter a melee (hand to hand) attack?

Be that as it may, I've already had too many players walk away from this game, preferring to go back to Runebound, Talisman, etc. The combat system alone even turned them off to being open to DQ's absorption into Terrinoth. Absorption in a redesign is a very tenuous approach, as when it happened with Talisman 3E it didn't go over very well with many old fans of 2E. It'll take more than a resurrected old combat system to get all of my players back to the table.  Maybe doing a legititmate absorption at the mechanics level (rather the just a skin job) might help.

And so, has anyone else considered the possibility, and method, to take another Terrinoth game's combat system (simplified down) into DQ?  Likely it wouldn't appeal to general players, but it's still a semi-interesting notion. The problem of course is that DQ's character stat.'s aren't usable for such, but we do have those matching Runebound characters in the box.  A like approach might be possible for those playing Descent, I suppose, but that's not within my reach.

The other difficulty is that cards in the game reference attributes not standard to those other games, so perhaps one would have to keep both a Runebound and DQ character card handy during play. Maybe that's too much for most players, but there it is. The game has few monster types, so a simple chart of monster stats developed based on Runebound challenges (or Descent monsters) might be enough. However, the stats should be re-rigged to use 2D6 in DQ vs the 2D10 in RB.  Any other thoughts?