A Song of Ice and Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game - Finding Balance in War
Picking the people you want to go into battle with is not a decision to make lightly. Choosing the person to lead you into the fray can be even tougher. With control of all of Westeros at stake, you need to be able to trust your army with your life. In the War of the Five Kings, you can be sure that the other Houses will not give up an inch. In A Song of Ice and Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game (ASOIF:TMG), you recruit your soldiers and choose someone to lead the charge into battle. The person you pick will have a great effect on the way you play, and whether you find glory or death on the battlefield.
We previously looked at Combat Unit (CU) Attachments, but there is one more aspect of them to explore.
Certain figures in the game are Commanders. When constructing your army, you will always choose one Army Commander; a renowned hero that will shape how your army plays and operates. More often than not, your Commander will also be a CU Attachment, taking to the battlefield to personally join in the fight. In that way, they act as a standard CU Attachment.
The big difference from other Attachments, however, is how they manipulate your Tactics Deck. Each faction has access to its own deck of cards, 14 in total (two copies of seven unique cards) that make up the unique strategies and methods of that faction. When you pick an Army Commander, they also add six of their own cards (usually three unique cards, two copies of each) to your Tactics Deck, giving you a total of 20 cards.
You start with three Tactics Cards and refill your hand back up to three at the start of each round. Each Tactic Card lists when it can be played, as well as its immediate effect. In addition to this, most Tactics Cards will grant additional bonuses depending on if you control various areas of the Tactics Board. In the above example, we have the House Stark Tactics Card Winter is Coming, which cripples enemy CUs by making them Panicked and Vulnerable, thus becoming easy prey for a Stark assault! Should you also control the Swords area of the Tactics Board, the enemy can’t resist the negatives instilled by the cards, such is House Stark’s military might!
As previously mentioned, your army Commander is going to add their own Tactics Cards to the deck (almost a full 1/3 of it). This, in turn, also manipulates the overall strategy you employ. For example, in the ASOIF:TMG Starter Set - Stark vs. Lannister you will have access to two Commanders on each side. For the Starks this means Greajon Umber: Lord of Last Hearth and Robb Stark: The Young Wolf. If you choose Greatjon as your Commander, his specific Tactics Cards are going to make your CUs become all the deadlier as they come closer to being wiped out- really embodying the “berserker” play style of House Umber as a whole.
Contrast this to an army led by Robb, whose cards focus on swift maneuverability and a focus on hitting the enemy in their weak-spots. Your army won’t have the raw hitting power that you had with Greatjon, but you’ll more than make up for that with speed and cunning.
It is in this way that, even if two players were commanding the exact same units, their overall tactics, strategy, and play style can be vastly different!
Combat is a tug-of-war, with each side looking for any advantage they can get. A wise leader will know when is the right time to make an assault on the enemy and when they should move themselves into a more tactically sound position.
In ASOIF:TMG you will have to make critical decisions with the life of your troops hanging in the balance. No one said war was easy, but make the right choices and take some well-timed risks and you might must find yourself ascending to the Iron Throne. Your leadership will be put to the test when ASOIF:TMG comes to Kickstarter on July 25 at 3 PM EST.
Read the Introduction to ASOIF:TMG here.
Read the ASOIF:TMG - The Beginning article here.
Read the ASOIF:TMG - Design and Development article here.
Read the ASOIF:TMG – Knowing Your Army article with updated Combat Unit Card images here.
Read the ASOIF:TMG – The Hidden Side of War article here.
Read the ASOIF:TMG – Leading the Troops into Battle article here.
