WotA Tutorial 1: Trading for Fun and Profit

This is the first in a series of posts designed to highlight the kingdom building game Wrath of the Autarch through examples of play. For a general overview of Wrath of the Autarch, see here: http://grue-fodder.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-is-wrath-of-autarch.html

The beta rules can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/frontiergamedesign505

Stronghold Upkeep

The first part of every session is dedicated to Stronghold Upkeep: applying ignored threats, gathering resources, trading with other factions, feeding the population, and building developments. Developments are sort of like stunts for the Stronghold. They may improve the Stronghold's ability to wage war or they might grant access to better resources for all of the heroes associated with the Stronghold. This tutorial focuses on the process of getting resources and using them to build developments.

Hope Springs Eternal

It is the Spring of Year 3. The Stronghold of Aben's Hollow plans an Alliance mission to visit the Gravewood, their ally, beseeching them for aid in the coming battle with the Empire. Luckily, there were no threats at the end of last season, so all their regions are available to them. Aben's Hollow controls the following regions:

• Obsidian Wood - 1 food, 2 timber, 2 mana
• Echo Lake - 2 ore, 1 luxury
• Tarrydale Farms - 2 food
• Green Vale - 1 food, 1 ore
• North Oaks - 1 timber
• Totals: 4 food, 3 timber, 3 ore, 2 mana, 1 luxury

A Fickle Harvest

The first step is to gather six sided dice for each available resource. It's easiest to use different colors of dice for each type of resource.

Gather resource dice: 4 Food, 3 Timber, 3 Ore, 2 Mana, 1 Luxury

After all the dice are gathered, they are rolled by the spotlight player to determine the specific amounts of each resource available. Rolling the dice represents all the fickle supply issues that can impact seasonal harvest and usage. Each session a different spotlight player is featured. (The spotlight player has additional importance besides managing resources for the session.)

Roll dice: Food: 5,3,3,2 Timber: 4,2,1 Ore: 2,2,2 Mana: 5,3 Luxury: 3

Tactical or Strategic Development Building

Each development has resources requirements and possibly other developments that must be built first. When building a development whole dice must be assigned to reach the resource total. The values on the rolled dice may not be split up.

It's best to look at what developments are desired, and then decide whether to get the one that is really desired (thinking strategically) or try to optimize the rolled dice to get as much as possible (thinking tactically).

For the current mission Aben's Hollow is on (Alliance), either Trade Relationships or Arts and Entertainment would be nice. They could also prove useful in the future as well. Another really nice development that Aben's Hollow wants is the Mana Forge given they have lots of spellcasters associated with the Stronghold.

Aben's Hollow doesn't have enough luxuries to get either of these

Unfortunately, Aben's Hollow only has 3 luxuries total, which is too low for either of these. They also only have 7 timber, which is too low for Arts and Entertainment.

Aben's Hollow could pick this one up

Mana Forge is available and useful. Most likely they could get this and something else.

Wheeling and Dealing

What to do if you want more resources? Trade! There are five minor factions in the game, and they each desire and give different resource dice. The particulars of the trade are based on the disposition with the faction. Disposition ranges from -6 to +6. The higher the disposition, the better allies they are and the better the trades are going to be. (High disposition also might allow access to military units and powerful artifacts from the faction.)

Aben's Hollow has the following dispositions with minor factions:

• Gravewood: 2
• 1 luxury die for 2 timber dice
• Sunriders: 3
• 2 mana dice for 3 food dice or
• 1 mana die for 1 food die
• Lily Manor: 1
• 2 food dice for 1 luxury die

The Stronghold may trade with each minor faction only once each season, by placing the number of required dice onto the faction trading chart, and taking the number of dice of the appropriate type. The dice given by the faction are rolled immediately and added to the pool of dice. There is a strategy in trading away the lower valued dice and using the resources the faction gives back to build developments that couldn't otherwise be built.

Aben's Hollow could get a luxury dice from Lily Manor that could be used to build the Trade Relationships development. They'll need a little luck, though, needing to roll a 4 on the dice they get to reach a total of 7. 

Before they do that, though, they could take their mana dice (either 1 or both) and trade them with the Sunriders to get more food dice. That would mean no Mana Forge, though, because they wouldn't have enough mana. But those food dice would give more options when trading with Lily Manor - wheels of commerce spin!

Give two mana dice to get three food dice

Instead of trading 2 mana for 3 food, Aben's Hollow could also trade 1 mana for 1 food. It's not as good of a rate, though, and it doesn't look like the single mana die will be useful for anything.

New food dice are rolled (5,2,1), mana dice are gone

The dice are rolled: 5,2,1. Not great. The 2 and 1 food die are traded to Lily Manor for 1 more luxury die. This is rolled and... 4! Trade Relationships is now possible to get!

Allocated resources for Trade Relationships

All that remains are food dice - 5,5,3,3,2.

The Power of a Luxury Based Economy

One other use for luxuries - they can be spent to re-roll any of one type of resource die. There aren't any left over after this, but this is a powerful use for luxuries. Luxuries are hard to come by!

Feeding the Masses

Finally, an amount of food equal to twice the number of regions must be spent to feed the people.

Aben's Hollow controls 5 regions, so they'll need to allocate 10 food or suffer stability loss. Luckily, they can put the two 5 dice and exactly meet the requirement, with the 3,3,2 food dice left over!

Leftover Resources for Spotlight Fate Points

Two resource dice may be spent to give the spotlight player an additional fate point to start the mission.

Aben's Hollow is left with three dice. Two of those could be used to give the Spotlight Player one additional fate point for this mission. Alternatively, an infantry unit could be mustered for 6 food. The Spotlight Player decides it would be better to muster an additional unit rather than get one fate point.