Midnight Dark #002 - More Orders

So, after grinding through some calculations and playtesting on the ideas in my last blog, I've stripped the whole concept back quite a lot.

The main problem was that I was adding tests that consumed time, but also delivered some unhappy results. No one wants to see their entire turn lost to a string of bad rolls. So I brainstormed what was good about the idea (command matters!) and what wasn't, and I seem to have boiled it down to something more interesting.

Instead of a test, command elements have a command rating which shows how many orders (formerly known as "activations") they generate. However, your only "free" orders are the ones generated by you Command HQ (the top boss of your battlegroup). To get more, you have to spend an order on another command element - and then those orders can only be issued to elements in that command element's squadron.

I plan to include three levels of command in the rules, with battalion (Bn), squadron (Sqn) and troop (Tp) leaders. I'm still toying with exactly how many orders each gets to allocate, but it's likely to be ~10, about ~7 and ~4 respectively, with the Command HQ getting a bonus of ~+2 orders (so a Bn Command HQ would get 12, whilst a Sqn CHQ would get 9 etc). In case you're wondering, this would allow for big games with multiple Bn HQs, but only one of them would be the Command HQ in charge of the whole formation.

So at the start of a turn, with a Bn HQ, you'd get 12 orders to allocate which you can put anywhere in the battlegroup. So you have to decide whether to put them on the elements that most urgently need to act, or on the command elements to generate more orders or a mix of both (and what sort of mix). As is already the case, you can give elements a maximum of 2 orders in a turn and once an element has been given orders you can't give them any more (so if you only give an element one order, you don't get to give them another one later!).

But elements will be able to generate momentum (like Zero Dark bonus actions) which they can use to do other stuff, representing commanders on the ground making "on the move" decisions. Even elements without orders may be able to generate momentum under certain circumstances - so an element without any orders isn't necessarily just a sitting duck!

Oh, the other feature of orders at the beginning versus orders generated later is that orders generated at the start by the CHQ are allocated by all players on an alternating basis, starting with the player with initiative, so you get a chance to "read" your enemy and try to work out their battle plan from their allocation of orders. But when a subordinate commander is activated and generates their own orders, those are all then allocated immediately by the player without the opponent(s) having a change to react. This should hopefully introduce an element of bluff and encourage players to try to "sell a dummy" to their enemy by looking like they're focusing in one direction before switching to another.

There are some design downsides to this. Players will need to come up with a way to clearly identify which elements are in which squadron, so it will potentially be harder to just mix and match your collections. And there will be a need for an extra "activated" token to point out which elements have already been given and used their orders this turn.

But based on how I've seen people engaging with Horizon Wars up to now, I don't expect the first of these to be a huge impediment and should hopefully encourage people to put more thought into a semi-permanent Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark army/collection. And the latter is just one of those things.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

P.S. Also thinking about doing a new podcast/video soon, so watch this space. I want to do a bit of an "I'm back" thing first, and then publish a bunch of content I had recorded but never got around to sharing with you guys before I had my little moment.