Optio's terrain pre-game

[Bolingar]

The terrain pre-game is the way of choosing a battlefield in a manner that does not involve invoking the dice gods and watching forests, hills and rivers fall out of the sky. It requires some operational level skill. Blog post on it here.

[Mikai]

That's an interesting systematic, thanks for the blog post explaining it!

[Bolingar]

The terrain maps are designed for Optio (e.g. customisable hills) but it should be easy enough to draw up maps for other rulesets that suit their terrain features.

[fred]

An interesting idea. I’ve been trying to play through how it would play in my head, but struggling a bit as I think it very much depends on what terrain each player wants to play on.

I get the idea of the Kudos tokens for going backwards, or staying put. But why do you need so many? And don’t you just get to a situation where each player goes ‘I’m staying here’ and just burns through their Kudos, then it is back to time to move?

[Bolingar]

OK, time for the rationale. I've spent some time refining the game to the point where I'm now satisfied it does its job. The point of the game is to jockey for a battlefield that benefits you or at least doesn't benefit your opponent.

The concealed icons on the blocks simulate fog of war - an army initially doesn't know the location of its opponent, just that the opponent is in the vicinity.

The scout represents a small reconnaissance party (usually mounted horsemen in real life). The donkeys represent local inhabitants - herdsmen with their animals, that kind of thing.

If you can discover the enemy scout and army, then you might be able to move your own army into getting an advantageous battlefield, usually letting the enemy army come to a square that suits you. More often though both armies are discovered and then the kudos come into play. They represent the reputation of the general with his men. Both armies know where the other is, there's no longer any need for concealment and the men are keen to fight. The general can rely on his reputation to avoid battle for a while until he finds a good enough battlefield but eventually he has to bow to the desire of his men for a fight and lead them to the enemy, regardless of the battlefield.

From the angle of playability, the kudos give the players a little more time to jockey for the terrain they want before finally closing for the battle. I think 6 are enough, at least for now.

What generally happens is that both players find a battlefield that doesn't decisively favour either, but has some good features for both - a hill for the one, some woods where the other can anchor a flank, and so on. Which is how it usually happened in real life.

[fred]

The rationale helps a lot, to explain the concept

I still think 6 kudos counters seems a lot, 3 or 4 would seem sufficient, to allow a small amount of holding, without it dragging out

[Bolingar]

Oh the game is fast in any case, usually between 5 and 10 minutes.

[jon_1066]

Nice to see you are still play testing this.  Do you feel you have cracked it (ie a diceless wargame?).  It looks like a really interesting system for ancient battles - will you release the rules?

[Bolingar]

The system seems to be working nicely now. A few minor rule tweaks from time to time but the main mechanisms have settled into place.

I'll be releasing the ruleset for the main game soon. A freely available but non-printable pdf (password protected). Anyone interested in a printed version is welcome to it at a modest fee - I will send the pdf to his local copy shop with a password. The player of course will need to pay for the printed booklet (A4, 42 pages).

Of course the savvy will be able to figure out how to crack the password on the non-printable version, but know this - after my passing my ghost will haunt them to the end of their days.

I'll be posting more details soon. You can see an overview of the system here.