The first encounter of Road to Broadhurst does take place in a mostly open field, although the cart you have with you is quite amenable to pushing people into. More than that though the victory condition involves taking out the leader of the group of radenwrights (ratmen) before minions can steal 3 crates of medicine off the cart. Playing keep away is quite useful because minions individually have worse action economy.
Players need to divert attention between keeping minions off the cart and doing the maestro in.
Another thing to watch for is that radenwrights have a malice feature that creates rat walls. I'm likely going to lean into that when I run.
This is a very movement intensive fight. I think it's useful to remember you can trade your main action for a maneuver or a move action - the Director should probably remind players.
The other important element to remember is that these are minions and there is damage carryover so one chunky attack will take out 3-4 minions sometimes.
Suffice it to say I have not seen it at the table yet, but as written it's very important that Directors utilize the victory conditions and noted tactics for each fight and not just fight it out in the middle.
Side tangent: One of things you can do with knockback specifically that is not immediately intuitive is use it to send your allies where they need to be. Knockback targets creatures, not enemies and you can always stop forced movement short if need be.
I was telling the group tonight as we were talking through games to try how impressed I was that DS! very quickly shows that there’s win conditions other then “kill em all.” You very quickly get things like "use a maneuver to determine the magic thing is causing the problem, and you can deal with it instead" or even "once outnumbered 2:1 they flee (encounter ends)," or "focus the obvious leader and the rest surrender/flee" or "escort NPCs off the map."
Yep. Part of my lack of enthusiasm is due to my past 4e experience. I don't have a group motivated to learn tactical play. Honestly, I don't know if I even have the mental focus to do it.
I have to say that the presentation of 4e's rules seemed better and more streamlined than Draw Steel.
So, Its hard to say exactly where this misconception comes from; but from my experience - being a tactical game doesn't mean that you need to be 'good' at tactics to play it. I would say instead that the nature of the games design helps players who otherwise NOT good thinking in those terms FEEL like they are tactical - just by simply using the abilities.
You can certainly go many steps ahead if you're a super gamer - but the game works well in helping people who simply attempt to play it do cool things and FEEL like they are being tactical with not a lot of effort.
As someone who doesn’t love lots of ‘war room’ conversations during battle, this is worrying to me. And I’ve heard it said now several times from various sources that there’s plenty of strategizing with the rest of the players about best course of action during a fight.
The question there in is "Do you not like those discussions because a) you don't have a good relationship with your players b) there are too many options to consider (decision paralysis) or c) the options don't feel exciting to discuss?
The question there in is "Do you not like those discussions because a) you don't have a good relationship with your players b) there are too many options to consider (decision paralysis) or c) the options don't feel exciting to discuss?
I am not Elvish Lore, but I like to limit "war room" conversations as well. The reason is that it brings attemtion away from the cinematic action at the moment, and into a more meta analytical state. A bit as if you were watching an action movie at home, and your friends pushed pause every 5 second during the action sequences discussing in detail the choreography.
This kind of movie night might be great fun for some, but certanly not for all, no matter how interesting the choreography might be. That said I think draw steel with its very streamlined core mechanics lends itself well to the no-war room style of play. And the complexity seem to work well for war room debates as well.
I guess it boils down to the players needing to agree if they want to play long-form chess or blitz. Same game, very different experiences.
