No more Dice? Cards!

[Aeston]

Hey folks,

So, while this is not an opinion that I personally share, a consistent criticism of HeroScape is that the dice introduce so much randomness to play that the elements of strategy are greatly reduced. A “solution” to that problem presented itself to me as I played a different game.

I’m sure many of you have played Settlers of Catan, a board game where you compete for resources to build the largest settlement on an island. The mechanic of the game involves rolling two normal six-sided dice, the resulting number corresponding to which tile produces resources.

Competitive, tournament level players of that game also complained about the randomness that the dice would introduce, as a number like 8 was statistically supposed to be a much more likely roll than, for example, 3. However in the course of a single game, the die rolls didn’t always work out according to the statistics.

One of Mayflower’s solutions was to create the Catan Event Cards. A deck of cards that you would use instead of the dice. The die results on this deck of cards corresponded to the ratio of theoretical die rolls during a “perfect” game.

Some of the Catan Cards

I theorized that those who have a problem with the randomness of Heroscape die results might use a similar solution. You math guys should feel free to tell me that I’m nuts, but the way I understand it, if you play through a deck of cards that replicate the ratio of symbols on the dice, as you progress through the deck the “rolls” that you get will work themselves out to be closer to the "normal" results of attack and defense. I guess I'm assuming that means the numbers will be statitically close to
what we see on LongHeroscaper's dyce_chart.

(Yeah, I really would like some backup from a math guru here. Ollie?)

Anyway, I thought I would take a shot at producing one of these decks. Here is a picture of the “beta” set, 36 cards which have a ratio of 2 shields to 3 skulls to 1 Jandar symbol. I’ll try producing a few more and will attempt to play some games with everyone using these cards. I’m not sure there will be an appreciable difference, but I sort of feel as if it will abate some of the randomness of die-rolling and allow strategy to be a bit of a stronger element.

My beta Cards.

If I decide to make a final set they will look better

As an additional use, these cards can be substituted in situations where rolling dice is inconvenient.

Thoughts?

[InfinityMax]

Very interesting idea. I would love to read a playtest report.

[Elstree]

Originally Posted by Aeston

(Yeah, I really would like some backup from a math guru here. Ollie?)

They are two different methods of sampling:

Rolling the dice is effectively "sampling with replacement". Any result chosen (by rolling the dice) is "replaced" in the pool of possible values and can be drawn again. For example, by this method it's entirely possible to roll a 2 twice in a row.

Drawing from the deck is "sampling without replacement". Any result drawn is removed from the pool and cannot be drawn again (at least until the deck is exhausted and reshuffled). Assuming 36 cards in the deck (one for each of the 36 possible outcomes on 2d6) once the "2" card is drawn it can't be drawn again.

This forces the outcomes of the deck to reproduce the results of the die rolls in direct proportion to their probabilities. For example, using the Catan deck you're guaranteed that the 7 is going to be drawn six times between shuffles, the 8 five times, the 9 four times, and so on. However, if you were actually to roll a pair of dice 36 times in a row, the odds of getting this exact distribution of outcomes would be very, very low.

I'm not sure how well a card system would work for Heroscape. With 2d6 there are 36 possible outcomes. With heroscape dice, you'd have far fewer cards in each deck and might need multiple decks to represent different numbers of dice as well!

[Kepler]

This would definitely change the way the game is played. I assume each person would have their own deck. In a deck of 36 there would be 18 skulls, 12 shields, and 6 Valkyrie symbols.

The problem I see is that the probability of any result changes as the game goes on. Let assume that whan you are half way through the deck and you have already pulled 12 skulls, 4 shileds, and 2 Valkyrie symbols. On the next card pull you only have a 33% chance of a skull (when it is normally 50%) and 44% chance of a shield (when it is normally 33%).

It is an interesting idea and if you are okay with the shifting probabilities then go for it. I prefer the dice through.

[Draconious]

Maybe if there were enough cards so there is always a good hand full left each round, and you shuffled it and passed it to the next player each round it might work...

If it does work... you could even draft more skulls, or more shields or "double skull cards" or "double shield" cards...

Maybe if there was 20, or more like 40 cards in each players deck, each one could have a 1-20 number for initiative, and D 20 rolls... dump dice all together .

Although I dont want to see scape turn into Clix... with all the cards in clix.

[Malechi]

I am not sure how to go about it, but a Dungeon Twister type mechanic would be nice. No luck whatsoever.

• You have a deck with 15 Shield cards and a second deck with 15 Skull cards, each numbered 0 through 12 (with two 1's and two 2's).
• A player cannot choose a card that is greater than the figure's corresponding Attack/Defense being used. If the only cards remaining in the player's hand are greater than the figure's corresponding Attack/Defense the card counts as a "0".
• Each player chooses their card in secret (not random) and then reveal them to each other at the same time. Once the player's specific Skull/Shield deck is used (and must be used up completely, all 15 cards), the player starts fresh with all 15 cards to choose from once again.

[King's Knight]

That idea sounds interesting, but I'd probably change this part...

Originally Posted by Malechi

• A player cannot choose a card that is greater than the figure's corresponding Attack/Defense being used. If the only cards remaining in the player's hand are greater than the figure's corresponding Attack/Defense the card counts as a "0".

... to instead of not being able to use a greater card then the figure has, the cards value is reduced the maximum value of the figure. Otherwise most of the deck would be useless to low cost squad figures and would instead favor figures with high stats (Jotun, DW9k and everyone's favorite Major)

[Eckels]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding a fundamental here.

The theory behind this, is that there's a card for each side of the die, correct? Each die would require a set of 6 cards to be equivalent.

So instead of rolling 5 dice, you have to use five sets of the 6 cards?

Then, instead of rolling 3 dice (for defense, for instance) you would have to seperate out 3 sets of 6 cards?

I think in practice, it would be a lot more cumbersome than it's worth, not to mention the odds difference, which Elstree summed up well.

I do think it would be nice to have a set of cards though - for things like leaving engagement attacks. It'd be neat to do a "pick a card, any card" instead of rolling the single die.

[LarryKruger]

I love HeroScape because of the randomness. The lowliest of creatures, can defeat the most powerful armies with the right combination of dice rolls.

While the mechanic you introduce would likely create a fun and interesting game, I fear it would devolve into a chess match resulting in the win going to the more experienced player.

[loborocket]

Maybe I did not understand completly but it seems this would introduce an entire other level of strategy. Couldn't you "count" cards in order to make a reasonable guess at the potential outcome? This would play into the way someone makes decisions about who/when to attack.

The randomness of the game makes it more exciting to me. Everyone who plays no matter what their skill level could win based on the "luck of the dice" I personally like this.

If you don't like the randomness of dice that gives you more reason to play more games. The more games you play/number of dice rolled, the closer you get to the statistical average.

[Nooblar]

This could easily devolve the game into card counting if the deck is not re-shuffled after each roll.

Plus, if you are using the flag bearers (Gilbert, anyway) you would have to use a ratio that would allow up to 12 Valkyrie symbols for Gilbert's special.

edit: That sounded harsher than I meant it (good outside-the-box thinking!).

[Elstree]

Originally Posted by Eckels

The theory behind this, is that there's a card for each side of the die, correct? Each die would require a set of 6 cards to be equivalent.

So instead of rolling 5 dice, you have to use five sets of the 6 cards?

The Catan method is even more complicated than that. The deck mechanic works by assigning a card to each possible outcome not each die face. This ends up working ok for a game like Catan when the same number and type of dice are rolled every turn.

However, in Heroscape you've got multiple numbers of dice being rolled each turn. To apply this method to HeroScape you'd need a separate deck for each number of dice to be rolled (a 1 die deck, a 2 die deck, etc, all the way up to, what, a 9 die deck?). The cards would each display one of the possible outcomes of rolling that many dice, and the number of each type of card would be in proportion to the possible outcomes.

Just as a simple example, imagine the 2-die HeroScape deck. It would contain 36 cards, among them:

1 card with a blank/blank outcome (or valkyrie symbols if you want)
4 cards with a shield/blank outcome
4 cards with a shield/shield outcome
6 cards with a skull/blank outcome
9 cards with a double skull outcome
12 cards with a skull/shield outcome

In general, a deck replicating the outcomes from rolling n dice would need 6^n cards in the deck. For example, a deck replicating all possible outcomes from 3 dice would need 216 cards!

One solution might be to make a 36-card two-die deck and just draw from it for each pair of dice you need to roll and add them up. I.e. for four dice, you'd draw twice and add the results. If you need to roll an odd number just roll one actual die.

However, I think Aeston's solution is probably the best proposed so far: just make one large deck with skull-shield-symbol cards in the proportions of 3-2-1. A poor-man's version with 24 cards could be made from a regular deck of playing cards: Remove the 4-10 from the deck. Aces are Valkyrie symbols/blanks, face cards are skulls, and the 2's and 3's are shields. (Suits are ignored.) If you put together two identical decks you'd have a pretty good deck of 48 cards.

If anyone wants to give this a test I'd love to hear the results.