Huh? Are you forgeting that the reason the Free positions you used as
examples have a very good reason for not having characters in their capitals?
They have many more armies than the DS, and are posted out in their lands to
defend them.
You, as the player, can move characters back to your capital on turn 1.
And you can disband armies if you want more to move back home. The DS have
fewer pop centers and fewer armies at start than the Free, in most cases.
Where else would the DS characters start, in camps?
Hate to point this out, but GSI did playtest this game before they put it
out. And most of their programming was done with a reason, it is called game
balance. Not to say that in some areas they missed the boat, but there was a
method to their madness. And it wasn't just copying ICE.
An adding a ninth character, come on. Your main reason seems to be you
can't do everything you want to do on turn 1. If there is another reason
that doesn't boil down to the above, please correct my understanding of your
argument. So make some choices, take some chances, roll the dice, and hope
you guess right. The DS can counter most of what the Free can do on turn
one, and vice versa. This is where your skill as a player come into play.
Let's not make every nation an automatic move on turn one.
Mark Ferris
Message: 13
···
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 02:17:47 -0000
From: lucasc68@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Changes I suggested
I had addressed these problems in a completely different thread last
month. A huge advantage the DS have over the FP is characters starting
in there capitals. The one weakest (in terms of numbers of characters)
is the Dark Lieut. He has 4 characters. The two non mordor nations
have 3. The best the FP has is SG with 4. How many good nations start
with only 1 character in capital on turn 1. Answer 5, Eothraim, Sinda,
Noldo, NG,and Cardolan. 2 others have 2, Dwarves and Northmen. This
is a huge advantage for the DS. Also most DS's are confined to at most
3 armies.Only WK and QA have 4. The Woodmen and Noldo have 3 the rest
of the good have at least 4 and some 6. The initial character
placement is huge in getting a game started. A simple solution would
be to have all non starting army co's be in the capital. At least the
good would get a few new starting characters out of the gate. Most of
the initial placements were from MERP products. The problem as to why
the badies have an advantage was that most of the badies resided in
the few fortresses that they have.
Another solution would be to add a 9th starting character. In every
case it would be a capital person.
Also, from MERP, there is cleary a way to accomdate the the minimum
SNA character requirement.