Advantage by Positioning

Strategy
1

Community,
I had an idea for a new “mechanic” that actually already exists in Doomtown but thought we could give a name to.

Coming over from Classic, one of the things that impressed me early on in the cleaning up of the game’s lexicon was the adoption of the word Resolution. Think about it: all Resolutions are really just Reacts that share the same timing window, nothing more. But what I liked about it was that the timing window they all share is important enough to the game that it got it’s own name, and in turn drove the creation of cards that interact with Resolutions specifically (ex. Slight Modifications).

What I’ve been thinking about lately can best be demonstrated by the text on Michael “The Badger” Dodge. His ability reads: “Shootout, Boot: Boot an opposing dude. The Badger gets -3 bullets if the opposing posse has more unbooted dudes than your posse. Pull. If the pull is not a club, the dude you booted gets -3 bullets.”

When I first saw The Badger, it took me a couple of read throughs to really understand how to use his ability. Essentially, your posse must be “more unbooted” than their posse to get maximum use out of his ability.

Another instance of what I have been thinking about lately can be shown by analyzing how to best play the card Jael’s Guile, which reads: “Cheatin’ Resolution, Boot: If your hand is illegal, you must boot this dude to use this ability. Your opponent boots or discards a dude in their posse, then boots or discards a dude in their posse. Non-wanted dudes cannot be chosen if there are wanted dudes that can be chosen.”

To best use this card in a tight game, it is a good idea to “arrive first” at a location and call out the first opposing dude who meets you there, thus forcing all back-up posse members to hurry up and boot over to join the shootout. The “more booted” the opposing posse, the more leverage Guile gives you in the fight.

So on to my suggestion. I’d like to give a name to “bootedness” which can be used to both qualitatively and quantitatively describe the relative state potential of aligned dudes both with respect to eachother and to the board.

I’d like to offer forth the word “Advantage” to be a descriptor that one posse has over another by virtue of having more unbooted dudes than the other. To show what this could look like, I will rewrite The Badger’s ability to do exactly the same thing, as well as offer an errata to Unprepared that tones it down a little by factoring in movement and position as represented by my proposed language change.

…

Michael “The Badger” Dodge:
“Shootout, Boot: Boot an opposing dude. The Badger gets -3 bullets if the opposing posse has advantage. Pull. If the pull is not a club, the dude you booted gets -3 bullets.”

Unprepared (proposed errata)
“Choose a dude. Boot that dude, who get’s -1 bullets and cannot use their abilities. For each advantage you have, you may boot one attached card, which loses all traits, abilities, and bullet bonuses.”

…

In short, while I hear that the future of Doomtown in the hands of Pinebox is cooking up new uses for Influence (can’t wait to see this!), I’d also like to see new uses for Positioning, which I think has lots of unexplored design space yet.

Cheers!

1 Like
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Interesting article, thanks! :slight_smile:

Can see the appeal of this, although there’s some downside in complicating the game further so I’m inclined to be cautious about this kind of idea. As you note, having unbooted dudes and booting your opponents is often an advantage in and of itself.

Contrary argument is that this concept sometimes comes up already, so perhaps this would in fact reduce complexity and formalise an existing concept.

There is however a fiddly but important difference between Reacts and Resolutions. In a shootout, Reacts can come from anywhere, Resolutions have to come from a shootout participant. You can Ace in the Hole with your Huckster hidden across town, safely at home. To Point Blank you need to be in the shootout.

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Thanks for the suggestion which I believe makes very real sense. I will bring it up with Rules team as a possibility going forward :slight_smile:

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A little more musing on the concept.

It could stop at “Advantage” being defined as simply “controlling more unbooted dudes than your opponent at a location” and further “each Advantage” defined as “for each unbooted dude you control more than your opponent at a location” - or it could go a step further!

If the above relations were defined at “Position Advantage” then other Language Inequalities could similarly be set:

Attire Advantage
Bullet Advantage
Government Advantage
Grifter Advantage
Sidekick Advantage

And a hundred other ideas too. Dunno if this helps, just wanted to share additional thoughts I had while the proposal was on the table.
Cheers!

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We have this in our long list of things to work through with the game, even something as what could be considered to be minor, can cause a significant amount of work on our small team, however we are loving the idea’s we are being given and want to hear many more, just be aware they can take a long time to implement.

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Totally. And I think that’s really cool you guys seek community input. And to be clear, my intentions are aligned. I’m not here to demand changes on a timeline - contrary, I recognize that an incredible amount of work goes into even small changes (an errata, a new card idea, a rules change or clarification) because any new element will potentially interact with every single element that came before it, meaning the slow and cautious route is the best way to move forward.

I’m just here to throw some spaghetti western at the wall.

Cheers!

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