I'm new to wargaming in general but I've played a few games of MeG and I feel safe to say I'm hooked!
I am just curious as to why this game uses dice for combat and shooting? The card system for orders is wonderful and therefore there is already a deck of cards in play, and rolls are made by file so nobody has to throw handfuls of dice at once - so I'm interested in why the decision was made to add dice rather than use the card deck to resolve anything requiring a random result? Is it down to wanting certain fixed probabilities for certain results? Or would it just not have the right wargaming feel without some dice? Or were there other factors too?
Cheers,
Kieran.
The earliest testing involved dice (originally white, green, yellow and red; black was added later). I think the question might be - why were the deck of cards added.
I think the basic answer is simplicity.
Richard
Oh, interesting! I find the card system to be my favourite part of the game! What did you do for commands before the card deck was added?
From memory, the card deck was added pretty much at the start, probably in the 2nd game I took part in.
Richard
I think tradition as it's a 'game' and Simon designed it with 'historical fun' in mind. Also, many battles tended to sway back and forth somewhat until a catastrophy happened . Dice also give me a chance to justify my rubbish generalship.!
The dice do make it easy to know what a result is immediately on producing it and that is a really strong point in their favour. Each player having a card deck they used for both commands and combat would have an advantage in evening out luck (since you are bound to get good cards eventually) and could allow generals to substitute cards in combat for UGs in their command (even using their phase upgrade for their own UG). On the other hand there are fewer possible outcomes with the cards (5 vs 6) and there are different percentages of each result than those allowed by the dice (which have been determined for balance) so using a card system would certainly have as many downsides as upsides. I was just interested to see if I was on the same page as the developers with my thinking!
Quote from: ksym77 on April 21, 2023, 01:08:53 PM
The dice do make it easy to know what a result is immediately on producing it and that is a really strong point in their favour. Each player having a card deck they used for both commands and combat would have an advantage in evening out luck (since you are bound to get good cards eventually) and could allow generals to substitute cards in combat for UGs in their command (even using their phase upgrade for their own UG). On the other hand there are fewer possible outcomes with the cards (5 vs 6) and there are different percentages of each result than those allowed by the dice (which have been determined for balance) so using a card system would certainly have as many downsides as upsides. I was just interested to see if I was on the same page as the developers with my thinking!
I must admit I am not sure I understand how you would use the card deck for combat.
Richard
When you would roll a death die you would flip the top card of your deck.
Every card already has a number (0 for Black up to 4 to Red) so all that would be needed is a range of numbers and their equivalent results, plus modifiers to the revealed card's value based on being 'up a dice'.
My calculation put a Skull on a total of 4.5, a Wound on a 3+ and an S on a 2+ (the 4.5 for a skull is to make it impossible on a 'white dice' and no easier on a 'yellow dice').
The modifiers would be:
-0.5 for a 'Black Die' situation
+0 for a 'White Die' situation
+0.5 for a 'Green Die' situation
+1 for a 'Yellow Die' situation
+1.5 for a 'Red Die' situation
So if you are in a situation where you would roll a green die, you would flip a card and a red card would be a kill (4+0.5), a yellow card would be a wound (3+0.5) and a green card would be an S (2+0.5). White (1+0.5) and Black (0+0.5) would do nothing as they do not meet the value of the lowest threshold (2+).
To be honest, much easier to roll a dice.
Also, the combat results would be impacted by the cards already in play (retained by generals) - unless you were suggesting a second pack.
The system also wouldn't give the desired results as the colour dice system specifically gives advantages making GREEN vs GREEN specifically more chancy and the advantage of YELLOW vs WHITE only marginal compared to GREEN vs WHITE.
GREEN vs WHITE would be for GREEN: RED (6/50) =Skull; YELLOW (10/50) = Wound; GREEN (14/50) = S, (20/50) = Blank to WHITE (16/50) = Wound; (14/50) = S and BLANK = (20/50). This 1) leads to far too many S results and 2) only a marginal advantage for GREEN vs WHITE. The GREEN vs WHITE advantage with dice is double the number of wound equivalents for GREEN and this is intentional.
I hope my reply doesn't come across as too negative as I like creativity in designing game mechanisms.
Richard
A good example of using cards for random numbers is Avalon Hill's Up Front.
Cards have an "action" use in the centre, a number in the corner 0-6 IIRC which can be either red or black with red meaning negative in some situations and a row of numbers along the bottom in which the nth number is a random number between 1 and n and I think they can be either red or black too.
There are a lot of cards, probably around 100 and you only have 5 or 6 cards in hand each.
So you could have printed on the MEG cards little coloured squares with symbols on, so if you are on a green dice you draw a card and look at the symbol on the green square, for example.
Or you could just print on the card the combat differential needed for each result. E.g. (+3=skull, +1=wound, 0=S on one card, 0=skull, -1=wound, -2=S on another). No need to translate the combat factors into a dice colour in that case. A bit like the Kingmaker cards that tell you the odds threshold for victory.
With only 50 cards and about 20 out in people's hands, this could have a big impact on probability, but that could be part of the game.
Hence you could dispense with the dice and have it all on the cards, and maintain the lethality of the various combat factor differentials, if that was designed into the cards.
I am not arguing that you couldn't use cards. It just seems to me that the dice are a much simpler way of getting the outcomes we desired.
Richard
I don't think you're being too negative - it is nice to have the discussion and see different opinions!
In my theory-crafting each player would have their own deck that they would use for both command and combat and which would only be reshuffled either when it ran out or when a certain condition was met to do so (commander uses a red card to do it/no generals in the army have any cards at the end of the turn/something else). In that way the card luck would average out over the course of the game as a player drawing good cards early would result in fewer good cards for them later and vice-versa. Cards being held by generals would be a feature rather than a bug as they would be allowed to play their cards as combat results which would link the combat element of the game to the command element.
To change the percentages it would be relatively easy I think to do something similar to Lawrence suggests and instead of using numbers with modifiers just have up to two results on each card - a base result and a result if you have a certain claim value. So a green card would normally just be a wound but there would be some that would be an S at base but go up to a wound if your claim were +2 or greater. It could even work out to be simpler than using dice as there is no need to convert your claim to a die colour - you would just pick one card and assign either the single result shown on it or one of the two results based on your claim.
I would agree with Richard : dice make it simple and quicker . So I would stick with the dice :)
I do not say the other proposal is not good but perhaps a bit too much time consuming
Rolling a die is simpler (although not by a huge amount since the revised card system would only involve checking your claim against at most three icons in the centre of the card), but I would certainly argue it isn't quicker :D. Turning over a card from a deck is much faster than locating, shaking and rolling a die (although we are talking seconds for each really). Also there are no issues with dice landing in awkward positions or falling off the table and having to be re-rolled. Plus no arguing over whether a die is cocked!
Your arguments but I honestly think we should stick with the dice as it's the system since 2016