DoaM - Favorite battle resolution systems?

Hey all!

I'm working on a multiplayer Dudes-on-a-map game, and am curious about what you like and dislike in battle resolution systems. For example - quick or drawn out? Lots of dice? Cards? Laden with chrome or elegant?

What are some of your favorite systems that are out there?

I understand that this depends highly on the context, and I'm giving you none, but would love to hear what you have to say.

Geoff

I like ECLIPSE. Missiles fire first, then different kits of ships fire in waves based on initiative. Upgrades need to be paid for and aren't universally available. Upgrades include easier-to-hit, more damage-per-hit, and armor to increase the amount of damage needed to destroy a ship. Still dice-rolling, but the dice-rolling is nuanced in all kinds of ways.

Dice-rolling is preferable to more rigid methods (for me) due to push-your-luck and miracle save effects. Serpents roll EIGHTEEN dice in Titan, but they still need to roll 6s to hit one of those tough bastards.

DO NOT combine complex card play with dice. It sucks and it only adds an illusion of depth.

It's hard to beat the Dune concept- bid what you are willing to lose, you pay/lose that amount whether you win or not.

The "miracle win" is ESSENTIAL no matter what. The one dude holding a territory turn after turn in Risk, for example, or the lasgun/shield thing in Dune.

Roll dice, modify dice, take casualties. Defender can opt to flee. If not, another round of battle.

AT-43

Great combat resolution. Interleaved turn structure was a breath of fresh air from ugoigo. Card activated predetermined sequence. Wounding recorded on the cards, similar to warmachine. No nonsense ranges. This and battlefleet Gothic made me respect the metric system.

I miss that game a lot.
R.I.P. Rackham.

It just barely beats out second ed warzone.

Michael Barnes wrote: DO NOT combine complex card play with dice. It sucks and it only adds an illusion of ddepth

Only if you're FFG.
Otherwise, it can work sometimes. Arena of the Planeswalkers is a good example of it functioning on the Heroscape engine. Some might even argue that they like arena better because of it.

My favorites always use dice, sometimes few, sometimes many: Risk (original), History of the World, Napoleonic Wars family.

My favorite DoaM combat resolution system is FFG's Thunder's Edge ( boardgamegeek.com/filepage/49327/thunders-edge-rules ), which I think captures offensive vs defensive units in a neat way, but it's not that far from a simple to-hit system.

Thunders Edge was rad.

I really don't like the multiple rounds thing that many DOAMs implement (eg Risk or Eclipse). I just want to add up modifiers, cards, roll dice, etc, and then be done in a minute or so. I think the only rounds type of combat that is tolerable is in Nexus Ops where each unit takes its turn, but still only rolls once. Combat should be relatively brief, but I do like having the outside chance that one lone guy survives to hold the line.

I like custom die the best, but nothing too complex. For example, once the die are rolled, you should know the result in seconds. Surge-spending Descent style is a bit too long drawn for me.

If you need to do any "modifying" it should be before the dice roll.. i.e. you may play things/bring certain units to change the type of die rolled. You should roll once only, at most thrice.

No multiple rounds combat. Once done, there should be a way to calculate victory even if both sides still have units.

If you could figure out a way to combine DOAM with the cube tower from Wallenstein/Shogun, that'd be fantastic. Good amount of random, can include unexpected results, quick, and dumping a handful of cubes into that thing is SO SATISFYING. Maybe each unit's attack/defense value is how many cubes you dump in? Add up relevant values, dump, opposing pairs cancel out, remaining cubes to damage to the opposing side? Shit, I dunno, CUBE TOWER!

I tend to like dice and cannot +++ the suggestion of not combining lots of card play with dice enough.

For myself, I tend to like different kinds of die with different distributions of powers and hits, where the unit throws dice that reflect the unit's characteristics in terms of combat. One niche characteristic I tend to like is combat systems where units have special synergies with each other---but only when they aren't no brainer synergies such that you'd ALWAYS pair this unit with that unit.

If it's dice, then I love the exploding die concept. It's so satisfying to roll the highest score and then get to roll again.

Another vote for dice. I love Nexus Ops' concise, no-nonsense approach. I'm also a big fan of exploding dice.

I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but Small World. If you have a larger army then you move it in and take the territory. Quick, simple and effective. I could see maybe adding a miracle defense die to something like that whereas Small World has sort of the miracle attack die where you can try and artificially inflate your army size for one last attack.