Was going through some old notes and came up with a couple of ideas.
Someone had mentioned Flyers should be able to avoid combat. How about letting flyers "fly high" to avoid the effects of most units? They would burn up X of their MF to attain altitude. Once they were flying high, they would ignore all ZOCs and earthly units -- they could neither attack nor be attacked. To return to normal altitude, they would have to burn up the same number of MF again.
While flying high, a flyer would "ignore" all terrain types (as they generally do anyway) EXCEPT what I call Impassible Mountains, which they would have to traverse as if they were normal mountains. (Impassible Mountains are the high ranges of peaks like the Rockwoods; they can't be crossed by normal units, and even units like dwarves and flyers that can cross them must spend 3 MF to do so.) Flying high should not allow flyers to enter true Sea hexes, but it should let them fly over Lakes and stuff.
I think there should be an exception to the No Attack rule, and that is that Spirit Magic and Exotic Magic should be able to affect them, but the RF of the magician ought to be halved to take into account the extra distance their height gives them. I can't decide whether any magician ought to be able to attack them, or if they should be vulnerable only to magicians stacked in a temple or something like that.
Superheroes
In one early draft of Masters of Luck and Death, each player played "Me",
that is, their basic counter was not a particular hero or unit, but them
as an individual, participating in the contest. If the "Me" counter was
killed, the player could "cheat death" by sacrificing some of their luck.
Which reminded me of the issue over heroes and superheroes being hard to kill permanently. Instead of Heroic Escapes, the player can choose to cheat death. The hero or superhero is returned to the board in the exact same way as normal. The player then rolls the die (the first time this occurs, 1 time for superheroes, 3 times for heroes; after that, 3 times for each). Each number rolled is lost to the player -- if he rolls that number any time for the rest of the game, it is ignored -- causing either a No Result (i.e., no alliance, no spirit draw, etc.) OR he must reroll to get a number that works (for combat, frex).
Each time the hero or superhero is killed, the player must roll the die 3 times, and those numbers are dead to him as well. (If you happen to roll the same number more than one time in this process, the Lady of Luck is favoring you; duplicates have no effect, but are NOT rerolled.) When you have used up all your numbers (i.e., all the numbers 1 to 6 have become dead), you are out of the game -- you've lost.
Not sure how well this would apply -- you might just make that number dead only when the hero or superhero is involved in the roll, and once all 6 numbers have been lost then the hero or superhero doesn't come back that turn. Or you could make it only the superhero, and make him or her the "general" or "leader" of the army, thus justifying your total defeat when he or she is gone forever.
Still, it seemed a cool idea. Requires bookkeeping, I know, but I don't mind that.
Cheers,
Steve
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