After reviewing the plethora of categories, this seemed the most logical placement of my "first speech" in this new forum.
Members and interested readers are invited to review my amateur efforts and thoughts about first impressions of TRIUMPH! at
https://nopaintingrequired.blogspot.com/
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Chris
Tinkering with TRIUMPH!
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HoaryCenturion
- Squire
- Posts: 95
- Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:27 am
Re: Tinkering with TRIUMPH!
Chris,
I did take time to read through your comments, thank you trying the game. I would encourage you to get into a live game at Little Wars. We definitely plan to be running Triumph there.
The lack of markers and casualties is something I have grown to really like even after being slightly taken aback by it the first time I experienced a game using that sort of mechanism. What really happens as you started to notice is the structural breakdown of your ability to command your army, you start out with the nice formed line advancing forward and then after a few rounds of combat find that it is very much chaos and command control limits doing everything you want or need to do.
When an "untouched unit" as you put it vanishes, it is not that every last man is killed, that rarely happened on the battlefield. It is that their unit dispersed as an effective fighting force, could have been induced by many factors, casualties, fatigue, fear, sudden push from the enemy, surprise, whatever it was it is the final straw and the unit disperses. Some units will hang on heroically against the odds (luck of the dice) and some will break like glass at first blooding. That is not the norm, but what happens when we throw in dice, and also did happen in historical battles as well. You will see that the heavier foot (i.e. Elite, Heavy, Pike etc...) tend to hang in longer because +3, +4, +5 added to the dice makes doubling harder, so it is rare that two lines of heavy foot hit and units evaporate on the first turn. It usually takes some pushing and shoving. Light troops tend to be much more deadly to each other in that the die roll is much more important when adding +1 or +2 so they tend to go away faster if engaged with other light troops.
Another thing you mentioned Alexander being a more effective commander, in GT we have a rule to give commanders a +1, to balance it out another command must take a -1. This is the tournament style rule, for scenarios feel free to use this to create different levels of command control. One of my friends runs a Mongol battle where he wanted the Mongols to have some additional command control he gave the overall commander some poker chips to hand out to his sub-commanders to use as bonus points at key points in the battle.
I hope we get a chance to play at little wars next year!
I did take time to read through your comments, thank you trying the game. I would encourage you to get into a live game at Little Wars. We definitely plan to be running Triumph there.
The lack of markers and casualties is something I have grown to really like even after being slightly taken aback by it the first time I experienced a game using that sort of mechanism. What really happens as you started to notice is the structural breakdown of your ability to command your army, you start out with the nice formed line advancing forward and then after a few rounds of combat find that it is very much chaos and command control limits doing everything you want or need to do.
When an "untouched unit" as you put it vanishes, it is not that every last man is killed, that rarely happened on the battlefield. It is that their unit dispersed as an effective fighting force, could have been induced by many factors, casualties, fatigue, fear, sudden push from the enemy, surprise, whatever it was it is the final straw and the unit disperses. Some units will hang on heroically against the odds (luck of the dice) and some will break like glass at first blooding. That is not the norm, but what happens when we throw in dice, and also did happen in historical battles as well. You will see that the heavier foot (i.e. Elite, Heavy, Pike etc...) tend to hang in longer because +3, +4, +5 added to the dice makes doubling harder, so it is rare that two lines of heavy foot hit and units evaporate on the first turn. It usually takes some pushing and shoving. Light troops tend to be much more deadly to each other in that the die roll is much more important when adding +1 or +2 so they tend to go away faster if engaged with other light troops.
Another thing you mentioned Alexander being a more effective commander, in GT we have a rule to give commanders a +1, to balance it out another command must take a -1. This is the tournament style rule, for scenarios feel free to use this to create different levels of command control. One of my friends runs a Mongol battle where he wanted the Mongols to have some additional command control he gave the overall commander some poker chips to hand out to his sub-commanders to use as bonus points at key points in the battle.
I hope we get a chance to play at little wars next year!
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HoaryCenturion
- Squire
- Posts: 95
- Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:27 am
Re: Tinkering with TRIUMPH!
Rod,
Thanks very much for wading through my "essay" and for offering additional remarks, explanations, and comments.
Interesting that we both seem to have had the same reaction to the lack of markers. With more time and experience, I imagine that I might grow into Triumph! Time constraints and other projects prevent this at the moment, however and unfortunately.
I think the instructional videos are terrific. I wish more sets of rules did this as a matter of course. Maybe they should offer them as a package with the purchase of a PDF or hardbound version of a set of rules?
I also like the wargame videos. I certainly hope some more of these are produced and offered to the interested audience.
Thanks again.
Stay safe and good gaming!
Chris
Thanks very much for wading through my "essay" and for offering additional remarks, explanations, and comments.
Interesting that we both seem to have had the same reaction to the lack of markers. With more time and experience, I imagine that I might grow into Triumph! Time constraints and other projects prevent this at the moment, however and unfortunately.
I think the instructional videos are terrific. I wish more sets of rules did this as a matter of course. Maybe they should offer them as a package with the purchase of a PDF or hardbound version of a set of rules?
I also like the wargame videos. I certainly hope some more of these are produced and offered to the interested audience.
Thanks again.
Stay safe and good gaming!
Chris