Concerned about shallowness of game

[Greg]

Let me start by saying I want to love this game. I enjoy the historical setting and think the figures are pretty good, yes even the annoying plastics!

Having said that after recently playing through all the scenarios from the main rule book I am a bit concerned that this is mainly a game of rolling dice and hoping for good dice rolls or luck of the draw. The tactical depth is very shallow in my opinion.

For example in the last scenario (#6) my samurai hero died on turn two. My second samurai died the following turn. I wasn’t strung out, had counters to dodge with and I wasn’t picked off by archers. My opponent got a hit with a samurai, I failed a dodge and then failed the test of honor to stay in injured… 10 dice rolls total of three successes. Needless to say given some other issues, a group of three spearmen were prone due to fumbled dodge (luckily my opponent glanced the damage roll!) and another group was prone due to the same “bad luck”, we thought of calling the game right there. But we plowed through only to watch him roll incredible dice (he was playing a bandit and brigand force) and I had only successful test of honor to keep from breaking.

Again this may be a outlier but the similar things happened in scenario #5. So I am not ready to abandon the game but I can see my interest and my opponent’s interest fading pretty quickly if the game mainly relies on dice luck to succeed.

Again there are tactics… I could have jammed in my spearmen to have may opponent beat on them for several turns, but again luck of the draw had me pull samurai for my first four draws. I can only spread the things so much and still have something for defense.

Sorry for the long post but I am trying to see if there is any further depth to be added to this game or just relegate this game to a just getting new players hooked on plastic crack and then move them to a game with more depth.

[Zac]

I don’t know if it is a deep game but it is a lot of fun.

There is a lot of randomness in the game and I think that you need to take this into account when you are playing and make the most of your activations when you get them.

Your troops are there to screen your Samurai and also to take activations from your opponent to make their samurai easier to take down. If your opponent can get to your samurai that quickly then I think you need to provide him with more cover and bog your opponent down with your troops.

I think with the random activation system that the tactics in the game and drown out initially.

In any case, I like it a lot and haven’t been too bothered with any perceived lack of depth

[william]

Hum.. I have only played a few games and the depth is absolutely fine. Keep in mind the game is still fairly new and so there is more development to be done im sure.

I am however concerned about the balance of certain units as I think that the points are limiting the design space too much.

Ronin for example are absolutely TERRIBLE. Worse than basic ashigaru spearmen and if you take dishonour their 2 dice goes down to 1 dice, meaning an automatic fail on test of honour.

[Gao Qiu]

The game isn’t shallow. There is no more or less luck than in most other miniature games, though you can get wrecked by bad luck as you could in any dice-based game.

However Test of Honor’s mechanics make it badly suited to play for attrition, so you should always play for a scenario, unless you want the endgame to turn into a supremely unfun slugfest.

Unfortunately, the official scenarios tend to be rather simple and / or lack balance, so you should simply steal and adapt scenarios from other games, or even make your own.

As William said, there are also some balance problems when it comes to army building (imho mainly cavalry and muskets being on the low end, and bows, spears and naginata on the high end), but that’s not a problem since the game has no competitive scene. You should just play what you want or houserule the main offenders.

[Greg]

I appreciate the responses! Shallow is probably the wrong word but Gao Qiu summed up my feelings. Dice really make the game swing alot or drag out.

Gao your right the book scenarios in the starter do lend themselves to some slugfest situations.

I will admit that being new to the rules I forgot that one can go over the walls with a movement penalty. I thought that since they block line of sight you couldn’t move over them.

Of course that would not have helped much in the previous scenario but maybe I just need to start working up my own scenarios and see how that goes.

Thanks for all the input and hopefully I can get things painted… at least I have everything assembled!

[Wesley Myers]

Play the game as it is meant to be and enjoy it as much as you can.

There are other rulesets you can use with the miniatures.

There is also no law that can stop you from changing some things in the rules, as you see fit, to make the game more exciting, deep, etc for you.

You can also add to the miniatures with those from other makers, as well. You can turn this from a skirmish game to a mass battle game (or have a campaign you devise that includes both elements).

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