WOTR: Experiments in Initiative

 

Over the King's Birthday long weekend we observe in Australia, Lord Grant and Lord Dave came over to mine for a series of three Hail Caesar WOTR games. We used the original (first edition) rules as my Hail Caesar second edition had yet to arrive in the post. We also used the rules supplement of Martin Brook (Seventh Son and affiliate of the Plastic Crack Podcast).

All three games were limited-turn games with a base run of six turns when fighting across the table (4 feet) or eight turns when entering along the length (6 feet) with 50% options for additional turns until failure.

Victory conditions were broken or shaken units inflicted on the enemy - two and one point respectively.
 

FIRST GAME

We more or less played the initiative rule we always play for the first game. For every turn (after each player has taken their go) we dice or flip to see who wins the initiative. This enabled instances where a player who goes last can win the initiative for the following turn and move twice in a row. We find this increases the unpredictability significantly whilst still enabling an even handed involvement which IGOUGO mechanics champion. Taken together with the need to pass command rolls to direct your forces we feel this gives us as much 'friction' as we will ever want.

 

SECOND GAME - Initiative is All

For the second game we introduced the idea that only the player who won the initiative got a full turn. In this experiment, the losing player is denied command rolls and can only move compulsory moves or initiative moves. The player without the initiative could still shoot and of course melee when required but command rolls for loading the cannon, rallying and of course movement were denied.

This idea may require another trial and it did impede contact to a degree as only one side or the other got to move provided they passed their command rolls. In the end, we are not at all certain it adds much to the game.

THIRD GAME - Keeping Initiative
 
This time we applied a greater chance for the player who previous won initiative to keep winning it. The idea was that when an historical general seizes the initiative and imposes his will on the battlefield, it is hard to take control back. We tried to apply an advantage without excluding the chance for the losing player of taking back control. We did this by allowing the previous winner two d6 when rolling against only a d6 for the loser. The winner with two dice got to take the higher of the two dice rolled as his score.

In the end, we found ourselves perfectly capable of rolling two dice just as badly as we can roll one. The two dice in fact rarely conveyed an advantage if you just can't roll high when it counts.

I'm not giving up entirely on the idea. Perhaps in future we could say that the previous winner must be beaten in the dice rolling - a draw means the previous winner retains initiative.

In conclusion we arrived at no conclusive results. None of us felt it made a great deal of difference to the outcome either way. Fun was still had.