Let’s keep this constructive, please.
When you tried Command dice, what did you think?
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I think it would be useful to note what army you played when forming these opinions, because (spoiler) I find experiences differ depending on what end of the power curve you’re on. Here’s my takeaways:
Free Dwarfs (10ish games)
- From a list building perspective, I instantly removed my conjuring staff and took an extra red, as I could (at the time) just reroll my spells using accuracy.
- Almost every turn of every game, I would use accuracy to reroll a spell and endurance to heal Craggoth or another big rock (assuming I got 3+ swords, which was virtually every turn). The healing was cool and the reroll would have been covered by the conjuring staff, so shrug. I often tossed out the wound reroll as well but forgot it 50% of the time.
- First turn I did give Craggoth +1 die of fireball a couple times, purely on the chance he rolled 11 hits. No full house but I had the swords to burn
- I used the Free Dwarf regen order once (on some Stormclaws) and the strider order a couple times (on a Beast Lord) and in neither case did it affect the game, thanks to dice and relatively small pools of damage / attaks. These orders were clearly made for Shieldbreaker hordes, not a bunch of rocks.
- When I faced armies with similarly mediocre faction orders, we both just dolled out some rerolls (that were often forgotten) and healed somebody.
- When I faced armies with great faction orders (Nightstalkers, Halflings), I did the above nothing orders while they trivially removed De 6+ units that normally they would have struggled against. Halflings were particularly unpleasant, with a strider aura that works for everybody combined with +1 TC that works for everybody allowing them to punch far above their weight (which is a Halfling thing but the command portion feels very unearned). Nightstalkers were the only faction I faced that made use of the movement orders as well, further buffing up Soulflayers on top of the ferocious charge order.
Trident Realm (2-3 games)
- Much more enjoyable Command phase thanks to cheaper faction orders that actually do something. Barkskin for 2 swords was a constant, often on a Kraken to be extra annoying, and the pathfinder order for 3, which I thought would be meaningless, was really helpful on my poor Placoderms. With these two orders, I was suddenly engaged in what was happening, rather than just forced marching through the same orders.
- While Command hasn’t affected my TR list building, I am far more likely to take my crabs to a tournament using Command Dice than my rocks.
Conclusions
- Balance Bad: Without playing a game, it felt like faction orders would be a ‘haves and have-nots’ balance situation, where some factions won out and others didn’t, largely by chance. This has also been my experience on the table, and I haven’t faced the marching Air Elementals or Undead Wyrm yet, which seem like the other boogeymen. Even ignoring the faction orders, the many movement orders clearly benefit nimble fast movers more than anybody else.
- Simulation Bad: Several opponents were genuinely surprised to learn they could still use orders without heroes being in range of their targets or with no heroes left. I’ve seen other people comment about the detachment of command from characters being a system issue (compared to other Mantic games with Command Dice, which I believe are connected to heroes), but this really feels like a simulation / expectation failure. Many of us still think of our armies as forces with commanders on the field, not pawns of a particularly invested god or simply abstracted game pieces.
- System Mid: The Command phase didn’t waste as much time as I thought it would, even if about half my opponents needed to be reminded to roll their dice and allocate some rerolls and heal. And players with fortunate factions already knew what they wanted to do with their cool orders. I also thought we’d have more debate about when orders happen, since the rules aren’t written the tightest, but Kings is so chill that we always just tossed them out at the top of movement and used them when the time came. The game clearly wasn’t designed for Commands, however.
On the whole, I continue to have the strongest feelings about the faction orders and their distribution. If they want us to have access to sporadic spikes in kill power, they should give all factions access to the same cool offensive orders, with or without various unit size limits. (I like the comp-affecting limits on the ferocious charge order, for example, but if murder is the goal, might as well de-limit it, like with the Halfling TC one). If that’s not the goal, then I say ditch all the faction orders. They aren’t balanced and are (for me at least) a negative play experience in a game with surprisingly few NPEs.
I haven’t played with Command Dice post-errata, but I like the reduction in free dice. It now feels like lucky factions with great orders need to pay something for them (or just roll hot 
) if they want to use them, while those of us with bad orders have essentially the same reroll / heal experience.
Gun to my head? I don’t need or really want Command Dice in my games of KOW 3E. I’m not viciously against them but the rollout is uneven and the mechanic is unnecessary.
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It is unfortunate how being good (or bad) for a particular army or the combo’s/ play options people can think of get conflated with whether something is good for the game/an improvement in the play experience.
- Like people liking withdraw because it lets then get flank charges.
That said, I’ll add that I have only tried Command Dice while playing Undead .
As with your staff, I’m inclined to get dice for Unholy Puppets instead of taking drain life as a spell.
My overall impression is that Command Orders are more steps to get pretty much the same experience.
They had an effect on the outcome of the game in the same way as things in the game already do. They might swing a game the same way as a flank charge, a double one or having a artefact/spell/special rule make the difference in a combat.
They gave more things to take into account, by what I was accounting for was the same. More movement options to block or possible regen making the odds on a combat less likely, etc.
I don’t find KoW so boring that I need more to it, so why bother?
It’s more steps, more complexity and an extra barrier to entry (which should not be discounted) for pretty much the same experience (IMO, of course).
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We’ve played approximately 10 games with command dice.
Factions played: Ogres, Forces of the Abyss, Empire of Dust, Twilight Kin. I could give specific comments about the faction-specific orders for the above, but really I think some are better or worse than others, but nothing game-breaking.
General thoughts…
COMPLEXITY: We’re complete casuals, and grasped the rules within a game or two. Find it hard to identify with those concerned about added cognitive load. Potentially any rule change adding something can be said to put an additional demand on your consideration of the gaming table… But let’s not overstate it. While I come from a background in more elaborate systems (40K 2nd edition, and original WH fantasy battle) the lads don’t, and they manage fine.
SPEED: Our first couple of games, remembering to do the dice, selecting orders and playing them out took some time, but now we are very fast. Once you know your orders, then you’ll probably have a good sense every turn what you’re doing with a high or a low roll. If it’s a low roll, you’ll dish out your low point generic orders, if it’s a high roll then you’ve probably got “go to” faction specific orders that you’re consistently trying to use.
IMPACT: Overall impact on the games we played, in terms of win/lose, has been relatively moderate. Of course there were times they were important (A good “abyssal mutation” roll by an Abyssal unit might keep a very damaged unit in play an extra turn, for example, saving the day), but I think within acceptable parameters. None of the armies we are playing with demonstrated any massive swinging advantage based on their faction orders. I can accept that there may be room for rebalancing faction orders. I have only thought about “Run them down” and its potentially impact in the abstract, but it does seem overly powerful.
THE FUTURE: I think those who consider current command dice rules as “beta testing” for a future evolution / the next edition are correct.
Overall, I like them. I enjoy rolling for command points, and feel like issuing orders from a pool can be more of a “fun” way to game than simply sticking an item on a unit, but I’m well aware others would take the completely opposite view, wanting a more mechanistic experience.
There will be a need to decide how command dice, items and potentially even special rules might be rationalised and rebalanced. For those who like simpler rules, there’s scope to streamline here.
It’s important to actually play with the command dice and generate feedback for Mantic. “Opting out”, particularly by tournament organisers, MIGHT have a strong effect on Mantic, but it’s quite high stakes. If it is just perceived as people who don’t want to see the game evolve, then Mantic might decide to simply ignore that segment of the fanbase, on the basis that they might be opposed to pretty much any development of the rules in the next edition. Even people who don’t like the command dice should at least play with them, and their feedback will have some added weight.
And, indeed, this is actually a sentiment you do read from people: They just want the game, and the rules, more or less left unchanged, because they’re not bored and they like it as it is.
There’s a certain logic to this, and some great games do remain frozen in amber, never changing.
But equally, I suspect most of us find it interesting when there is reasonable development of a game, edition to edition, and I personally do not want to see KOW become an ossified game system.
It would always be open to any person, or any group, to play current 3.5 edition rules in the future, no one would stop them, as I’ve said before – Kings of War’s equivalent of Oldhammer.
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