Keeping True to the Books - A Song of Ice and Fire: Tactics Design Diary
Ladies and Lords from across the Seven Kingdoms, welcome! Fabio Cury here, one of the designers on A Song of Ice and Fire: Tactics, and today’s design diary is to inaugurate our announcement that the game will be coming to Gamefound on February 8th, 3 pm EST. (Follow the project HERE!)
This game takes place in the setting we are all very familiar with and love. So, in this article, I will explain the thought process behind how our design team managed to keep the game’s characters true to their book counterparts and also how the rules represent the gritty world of A Song of Ice and Fire.
A Song of Ice and Fire: Tactics is a skirmish game that recreates iconic battles set in Westeros.
Each match pits two players against each other, with each battle defined by a specific scenario that dictates its scale and objectives. The size of the scenario determines the forces each player must muster, including heroes and regular troops, to form their warband.
In our first Skirmish Set, The Battle of the Trident, we will explore various battles in Robert's Rebellion (also known as the War of the Usurper depending on the side you’re taking!) as royalist (Targaryen) troops will cash against rebel (Baratheon) armies.
This means we will see several iconic characters represented, such as Robert Baratheon, a young Ned Stark, Jon Arryn, Rhaegar Targaryen, Lewyn Martell, and many more. When transferring characters from a book to a skirmish setting, they really have to shine and showcase what they are all about. The difficulty here is to not just mimic an event from the books into the character’s abilities, but to show their personality as a whole.
Let’s take a look at two good examples: Barristan Selmy and Eddard Stark.
At this point of the story, Barristan is notorious as one of the best fighters and duellists in Westeros and he can strike fear into his opponents with his kit of abilities.
Quick Slash and Meticulous Lunge provide Barristan with ways to prepare himself for oncoming attacks by making the defender shaken and/or routed.
Expert Riposte makes it so enemies can always be punished if they ever folly and decide to attack our powerful champion.
When you take a closer look Barristan’s attack dice values, you’ll notice that Barristan will hardly ever have to spend coin (a precious resource in the game) to take down enemy soldiers and targets with poor defence. Barristan actually shines in surviving prolonged engagements with other powerful models by weakening their performance with condition tokens. This really places him as a strong duellist and swordsman, at the hight of his youth.
The champion Ned Stark, on the other hand, is a reckless youth at this point of his life, and one who just lost his whole family. This is represented by his two attack types.
Winter Is Coming focuses on having Ned benefit from charging his opponents, as well as dishing out more wounds to surrounding enemies.
Stark Fury is a high-risk/high-reward attack that allows Ned to gain immense accuracy on his attacks at the cost of suffering a hit once the attack is done.
So, Bannermen, I hope you have enjoyed this first look into ASOIAF: Tactics and how we transpose characters and their themes from the amazing world of A Song of Ice and Fire into this unique new game.
Until next time!
A Song of Ice and Fire: Tactics is coming to Gamefound on February 8th, 3 pm EST! Follow the project HERE to get an exclusive dice tray with your pledge.
