My point is you never have to make that trade, because you can still get the bonus by ensuring your guy is on Close.
Yeah, and my thought is that you should. For example, it is currently child's play to get the best of both worlds by putting a unit on Close with a terrain objective between it and the enemy unit. If we include some rule where there is a downside to trying to delay a turn while on Close (by that shenanigan or by DCing), then we'll get more of a risk/reward element to delaying. But any reduction of the effectiveness of the Charge bonus makes the charge less valuable and thus makes being on Close less valuable.
I think rewarding people for being aggressive and engaging is good, especially since the game structure by itself rewards attempting to delay. Which is fine, I think. I just think lets not swing any further in that direction and if anything we should tack slightly away from that.
If units had (+0) +1/+0 bonus for holding,
Frankly it seems weird to get that bonus for holding. To me a unit on Hold should get Def: +1/+0, but that flies in the face of the desired goal.
However, I do think that the meta of the game would change DRASTICALLY if we were to make this change. In particular, there are a lot more Toughness 4 critters out there than DSkill 4 units (celestial guard, elven cav on the charge turn). Basically, I would take MM next tourney if we went this way.
Yeah that's my concern, that the meta would be changed too much. There are a lot of factions out there that lack a Pow 6 unit specifically because the designers factored in the Charge bonus.
I think we all recognize that this is an issue, but I think we've reached a point where we're going to start to mess the game up for constantly changing rules in pursuit of an illusionary goal of balance.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying here (especially on cavalry), but I do think that high toughness factions are still just the bottom of the heap. However, I think this is one of those rare cases where addressing the specific problem creates more issues than it solves and that in fact it might be better to holistically balance the units. I still think there's merit to the +1 Cge if a unit has a higher Toughness and think that would go a long way to making high Toughness units better. It would also make them play different: more grindy and less likely to be broken through.
I know I'm not on the design team anymore, but as a player in the community my opinion on changing the charge bonus is still an emphatic
no. That being said, Niko, if you really like the idea, post a couple of battle reports I guess.
