Reply To: A Question For Current Players

[Sekata]

That’s a fair observation. Sometimes the player will get screwed. What I said was that the player is rewarded for carefully stacking the odds in his or her favor. There is randomness involved in the game design, and it can lead to losses. However, that randomness is secondary to careful planning on part of the player, and that planning is meant to shuffle the deck to favor the player with better equipment, choice of engagement terrain, etc.

I’m not saying randomness doesn’t exist as an important factor. I am saying that I don’t believe that randomness is the only thing that matters in battle brothers, and random events can be future proofed by careful consideration. A group of bandits with many marksmen can be engaged at night to diminish the effectiveness of crossbow units, and the same with goblin archers. The player can train units to have indomitable as a clear level goal to avoid being pushed around by orc warriors. The player can trade between shields to better account for ranged vs melee oriented enemies. There’s a lot the player can do to influence the dice roll. That’s the reason I say battle brothers is about risk management, as opposed to being a gambling simulator where virtually everything is completely out of the player’s control.

Full disclosure, I am not a 1337 player. I save scum, I do it shamelessly, and will until the full release hits. Here’s the thing though. In just about every instance where I take serious losses, and look back honestly, there was something I could have done to avoid the worst of the losses.

Fighting 22 skeletons with nobody on my side using cleavers and a necromancer far in the back lines. I might have lost a few brothers, but the losses are much worse when I don’t have an item to permanently put down an enemy.

Fighting a group of goblin ambushers in daylight with no wardogs. So much bad here, I don’t even know where to start.

Forgetting to replace the shield or helmet for a unit that lost one or the other in the previous battle. He’s dead jim.

Going up against raiders and not equipping the flails or handaxes to remove their advantages and press my own.

Letting my heavy get surrounded on all sides, when it was obvious that I was placing him within easy movement range of several units.

Certainly, the game can be unforgiving and some losses are unavoidable. If I had to throw a(n) (arbitrary) number on it, i’d say 30% of losses during my gameplay experience have been things I couldn’t have prepared for. That remaining 70% is absolutely my fault.