It is time to talk about legion combat, something that everyone is going to have to do eventually. In my third turn I was not only lucky enough to use my combat cards but I also have a perfect screenshot to talk about how combat works.
Every legion and PoP has 3 attributes for combat: Ranged, Melee, and Infernal. In combat each round plays normally in order of Ranged, Melee and Infernal. Meaning that having a high infernal stat is moot if you have 0 ranged and 0 melee. Both combatants stats are put next to each other and the one with the higher stat will do damage to the other. After all 3 stages of combat are done if no one is dead a 2nd round will play out. These stats can be boosted by having another legion in an adjacent hex or by attaching artifacts, praetors and combat cards, for my example I’m using the latter:
Let’s start looking at the left and right side of the screen, on the left is my forces and their respective stats and on the far right is the enemy. At the top middle of the screen is the battlefield advantage which was given to the enemy as an increase in their ranged stat. Going to the middle, the # closest to the round name is the base stat of that unit, to the right is the final value of that stat once all bonuses and minuses are added to the equation. Starting out I was worried that my low infernal stat was going to hurt my chances of winning which is why I created the combat card you see in the box near the top. With my war master perk I was able to create a 2 attribute card, one giving me an increase in range and the other affecting the infernal stat of the enemy. As you can see by my crudely drawn circle that D6 roll gave the enemy a -5 infernal stat lowering that powerful 7 rating to a 2.
Because of my combat card I was able to win with relative ease, I created that card as my first order for the turn and then sent my troops into battle. Combat cards stay on the legion they’re attached to until they finish a fight and then they are gone until you create more. The best part about them is that the enemy cannot see their effects on the field like artifacts and praetors unless they have a specific ritual in place meaning you’ll never know if that card is a simple +1 melee bonus or one of the rule changing effects.
With that said my next course of action is to start setting up borders, by then I should be able to push around some of the AI to show off vendettas, diplomacy and praetor single combat.
Josh.
