Pretty simple concept -- hordes rules on a political map of Africa -- but it showcases the new dual-layer capacity quite well, it think.

Here it is. Enjoy!

Very Nice Board Kjeld, keep them coming.

So this board brings up a question on one of the features. This is the first board I really played that had a limit on attacks, and I'm not sure that it's currently setup to work as it should.

If you attack a territory and hit T, it doesn't matter how many rolls it takes, it only reduces your attacks used by 1. However if you use the 3 button to watch how you're doing as you go, you lose an attack for each one.

IMO, as limits are concerned an 'attack' is a series of consecutive rolls between territories. So if I rolled 3 times between territory A & B, attacked once from C to B, and then finished off B with the last 2 armies from A that would be 3 total attacks used.

The way that attacks are counted has an even bigger impact on the Spy vs Spy board. With only 2 attacks per turn on that board, knowing that using T only costs 1 attack can be a significant advantage in some situations.

If T continues to be counted as a single attack, I suggest that board descriptions be more explicit in pointing it out to the player when attacks are limited.

HOLY CRAP I HAD NO IDEA! This IS huge. That's something that needs to be addressed or if it's going to be considered a "feature" it needs to be made clear.

I never use T. There's no strategy in blindly committing ALL your forces to one location in a fog map unless you have a dominant lead and are just trying to quickly clear the board.

But the point is that you can use the T button to basically bring down the 'shields' around the defenseless 1 unit territories (iow the territories that are on the leading each, territories with active warfronts) then reinforce into newly acquired territory and repeat the whole process! That's completely different from what a player that is unaware of the T button would have to do which is spend one full turn (all 9 attacks) to weaken one 'shield' and continue to work on it over a few turns.

Holy crap I've been at a HUGE disadvantage all this time!

This isn't new for us from WF, but I can see how it may be confusing.
I like how it works currently and would probably be opposed to any changes to it. The board designers that have used limited attacks know (at least I'm very fairly certain they know) how it works currently and boards may be set up specifically because of how it works (therefore any changes may "break" the board).
I'll throw something in the Help around this.

I think this is important enough to warrant an addition to the player, the help files are fine but I don't feel sufficient.

I don't think I would care if it was switched, an inventory of the boards that used limited numbers of attacks would be relatively easy at this point, but then again maybe changing it would completely break those boards.

The main objection to the way it is now is that it is not the expected behavior. There is no difference in a normal game between the 3 button and T button so the expected result is that there is no difference in an attack limit game.

This is why I think it needs to be added to the player, preferably right on the attack window.

The other minor objection is that you are tying a specific game rule to specific interface elements. This means that if you ever wanted to add (for instance) an 'attack until enemy has X units)' dropdown/button combo, or an 'attack with all and leave X units behind' dropdown/button combo, you would then have to decide which game rules these new interface elements would follow. Not necessarily a bad thing just something to keep in mind.

P.S. I would love to have those two buttons =]

AntiScourge wrote: So this board brings up a question on one of the features. This is the first board I really played that had a limit on attacks, and I'm not sure that it's currently setup to work as it should.

If you attack a territory and hit T, it doesn't matter how many rolls it takes, it only reduces your attacks used by 1. However if you use the 3 button to watch how you're doing as you go, you lose an attack for each one.

IMO, as limits are concerned an 'attack' is a series of consecutive rolls between territories. So if I rolled 3 times between territory A & B, attacked once from C to B, and then finished off B with the last 2 armies from A that would be 3 total attacks used.

The reason a limited attacks board NEEDS to have T count as a single attack is that the game would never end - limited attacks is designed to slow expansion or prevent sweeping of the board, not a feature designed to limit army casualties.

Should you limit the attacks to 5 per turn, as soon as anyone has an income of 10-15 armies per turn you can no longer kill that person's armies as quickly as they produce them.  A border would quickly become unbeatable as it grows.  In a two player game you could both have 20 armies per turn, and all you could do is attack eachother at mutual borders but you wouldn't be able to kill armies as fast as they are produced.

It would be very frustrating to find this out during a game of course, but I hope you understand the reason for this feature being the way it is.  Of course help-files always help, and perhaps a reminder of the usefullness of an attack-all button should be mentioned in limited attack games.  I recall several wf matches that remind players to use it. 

I have tried many times to do a limited attack map where you can't attack with all and they have never worked. Some of the ideas were really good too but it just didn't end ever. I've tried it with attack modifiers and small bonuses and abandon and everything, it just doesn't work.
Ok, now that you know this I think games of Wargear: The Gathering and Episode I will be much more fun for you.
P.S. if you haven't played WG:TG yet you should.

There is a rule setting available which board designers can use to enable / disable multiple attacks (see http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Hordes%20of%20Africa/Rules for example).

By default this is on.

Andernut wrote:

AntiScourge wrote: So this board brings up a question on one of the features. This is the first board I really played that had a limit on attacks, and I'm not sure that it's currently setup to work as it should.

If you attack a territory and hit T, it doesn't matter how many rolls it takes, it only reduces your attacks used by 1. However if you use the 3 button to watch how you're doing as you go, you lose an attack for each one.

IMO, as limits are concerned an 'attack' is a series of consecutive rolls between territories. So if I rolled 3 times between territory A & B, attacked once from C to B, and then finished off B with the last 2 armies from A that would be 3 total attacks used.

The reason a limited attacks board NEEDS to have T count as a single attack is that the game would never end - limited attacks is designed to slow expansion or prevent sweeping of the board, not a feature designed to limit army casualties.

Should you limit the attacks to 5 per turn, as soon as anyone has an income of 10-15 armies per turn you can no longer kill that person's armies as quickly as they produce them.  A border would quickly become unbeatable as it grows.  In a two player game you could both have 20 armies per turn, and all you could do is attack eachother at mutual borders but you wouldn't be able to kill armies as fast as they are produced.

It would be very frustrating to find this out during a game of course, but I hope you understand the reason for this feature being the way it is.  Of course help-files always help, and perhaps a reminder of the usefullness of an attack-all button should be mentioned in limited attack games.  I recall several wf matches that remind players to use it. 

I was actually leaning towards the opposite, where using the T, or using the 3 a bunch of times would both count as 1 attack, until you closed that attack window and moved on to a different territory.

There's a one key difference between the 'T' and using the '3' a whole bunch of times -- with the latter, you have the chance to pull out of a failing attack, but with the former you're all in, for better or worse. When I add limited attacks to a map, I keep that distinction in mind. It's absolutely CRUCIAL to Spy v. Spy, for example, because deciding exactly when to take that 'T' gamble is 90% of the game.

I would add some info to the Help menu to make this more clear, but would strongly oppose any change the player.

IRoll11s wrote: The other minor objection is that you are tying a specific game rule to specific interface elements. This means that if you ever wanted to add (for instance) an 'attack until enemy has X units)' dropdown/button combo, or an 'attack with all and leave X units behind' dropdown/button combo, you would then have to decide which game rules these new interface elements would follow. Not necessarily a bad thing just something to keep in mind.

Both of those buttons would fall into the "all in" category with the 'T' button, and count as only one attack.

I'm going to ask for a different black color, it's too close to the neutral gray. See this game for why I'm swearing right about now:

http://www.wargear.net/games/player/12391

Took me 10 minutes to find the last black territory, that I failed to see and therefore didn't actually eliminate that player. Grrrrr!

Ouch. I usually find myself in that situation out of simple stupidity, but that's a tough one for you BT.

It's pure black, so any other 'black' would probably be even closer to gray. If it's that hard to see, I'll have to delete the color altogether.

EDIT: New version promoted with no color black.

Kjeld wrote:

EDIT: New version promoted with no color black.

Player Color changes need no Retire/Promotions, simply changing the color should fix it for all future games.

Probably not a big deal to Retire/Promote (although there have been bugs in the past), but probably saves some clicks.

Thanks, Yertle, didn't realize I could change the colors in a live board!

Thanks Kjeld! It's a fun map.

That lion is subtle and very very awesome.