The Katophranes' Breath - A simple custom rule to rebalance strings of bad luck in casual games

[WathLab]

 

 

Hi everyone! This week, let's challenge the dice gods!

 

When we don't play competitive, there's a kind of games that we really dislike in our small casual group...

 

Whatever the side we belong - though it's especially true when you try to make an underdog warband work - it's those where a player has all the good luck and the other one all the bad.

 

So recently, I tried to do something about this issue. As it seems to work quite well, I thought that some people could be interested by it.

The very simple custom rule shown on the image above has been made to help balance the few games where one player is strongly advantaged by the dice gods, and to make the experience of losing dice rolls again and again a bit less painful and negative for the unlucky player, without slowing down the game pace too much.

 

The rule itself is very simple :

• At the start of the game, place the Katophranes’ Breath board between the two players.
• Place the Katophranes’ Breath token (use a Wound token to represent it) on the ‘0’ hex.
• During the game, each time a player loses an Action Phase roll-of or makes an Attack action that fails, move the Katophranes’ Breath token one hex towards this player‘s side.
• When the Katophranes’ Breath token reaches one of the ‘3!’ hexes, the player whose side is concerned gains one glory point. Move the Katophranes’ Breath token back on the ‘0’ hex and repeat the same sequence again and again until the end of the game.

 

(Edit August 26th : 3 Player mode)

Thanks to someone on Reddit, I was also able to add a 3 player version of the ladder :

• Each player has his own Katophranes’ Breath board which is 5 hexes long.
• During the game, each time a player loses an Action Phase roll-of or makes an Attack action that fails, move the Katophranes’ Breath token one hex per opponent on his own Board (e.g. 2 hexes in a three-player game), and each opponent moves down one hex on his own Board.
• When a Katophranes’ Breath token reaches one of the ‘5!’ hexes, the concerned player gains one glory point. Move his Katophranes’ Breath token back on the ‘0’ hex and repeat the same sequence again and again until the end of the game.

 

So here is the printable file : https://we.tl/t-zXWaRiu1Mu

To use it, you'll simply need a printer and a sheet of paper.

 

Also note that you can adjust / change the reward and replace the 1 glory boost by 1 spent glory, or a re-roll if you prefer, or only consider failed Attacks if it feels more fair...

 

In any case, as always, by Grimnir, have a nice week in Beastgrave !

Edited October 5, 2020 by WathLab