LoM Part 6 - Plans and Paintings

Howdy all,

Its been over a week since the last LoM post so I have plenty to share with you on the progress of the game.

Everything is going smoothly and LoM is looking good. Several games have been played and the basic mechanics have been ironed out. There is still a long way to go, but the ground work has been done. Its all a case of building on this now.

In this article I want to address the point and purpose of ordering your troops into battle, and ask the question - what is your plan? What do you hope to achieve?

I have played many games over the years, countless hours spent with a variety of rule sets, and one common theme throughout them is the feel of 'line up your troops, move them forward', with little more thought than that.

With LoM I want something different. I want a plan. I want to try an create a reasoning behind actions that will reward the player who thinks ahead, and offers little chance of victory to the player who simply marches forward.

To start with we must first understand the stats behind a unit in LoM.

Each unit has 4 basic stats - Weapons, Armour, Training, and Morale. Which range between 1-10, and combine to create a 'Combat Value' between 4-40.

The stats 'Training' and 'Morale' have further in-game effects, but for this example we will be looking simply at the 'Combat Value'.

Units also have a 'type' - Light, Medium, Heavy - which determines how they fare against other unit types. For this example we will use two 'Medium' infantry units, squaring up against each other.

Our Blue unit has combined stats that equal a Combat Value of 20, while our Red unit has a CV of 15.

Basic Combat in LoM (Combat that is not effected by players Commanders), is simple and straight forward. Units deal damage based on their CV and the unit type they are facing.

Here we can see that Blue will inflict 2 points of damage on Red, while Red will inflict 1 point of damage on Blue.

In essence what has happened here is that Red has sent a unit, with below par weaponry, low armour, low training and poor morale, against a foe with better weapons, better armour, more training, and greater willingness to fight.

The question has to be asked - what did Red expect? His unit is inferior on every level. While the men will still fight, and they will still inflict damage on the enemy, they will ultimately lose the engagement.

If it is a case of a straight up fight, then the burden of what to do lies with the Red player, assuming Blue is happy to just win the combat.

So, why would Red do this? LoM encourages the player to think, to plan, to aim to achieve an objective or an effect rather than simply engage units in front of them.

In this example perhaps Red needs to stall Blue, hold his unit in place. Maybe he is after attrition, reducing Blue in strength. There has to be a reason why Red would throw weaker troops at a superior enemy.

Its here that bring us back to the way LoM really works, the key to victory - Command Points and the players decision when and how to use these!


Thanks for reading. I hope this article helped to demonstrate a little more about LoM as we proceed through the play testing phase.

Chris


Oh... this article is called Plans AND Paintings...? Well.. you have seen the idea of plans, so maybe I should show you the first of the artwork for LoM, how about this one, what y'all think?