What's it like playing a diceless wargame?

I've got another battle report coming up, but for now a quickie on how it feels to play Optio. Is a diceless wargame pretty much the same as a dicey (😉) one?

Not much. Dice continue to dominate miniatures wargaming. I'm slowly coming to suspect that that is because they add to the drama of the movie production being created on the tabletop. Will my bow stop the MC before the MC reach them? [throws a die]....yes! MC destroyed! Well done chaps! It's less clinical than chanceless combat. You don't see chess players going "Woo! hoo!" when they capture the queen.

Optio on the other hand is a lot calmer than a chance-driven game but it nevertheless has an intensity of its own. Once you realise you are entirely in control and everything that happens depends on you and your opponent's decisions then you really focus on gameplay. You get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of your army and paper, scissors, stone becomes important. Details matter since any advantage translates into a permanent gain - you don't lose it with a couple of unlucky 1's.

There's also the race for victory. You win by routing a percentage of your opponent's stands. I've played several games where both sides were one stand from defeat and victory depended on finding the right combination to take out that final unit. Incidentally, you can't calculate several moves ahead like in chess - there are far too many variables. You move your army following general tactical principles and look for combinations that sometimes become clear only in the turn itself. Lots of surprises. Bit like throwing dice, no?

There's also the question of granularity. Modern wargames are full of granularity. Even something purportedly as simple as Memoir '44 with originally just 3 troop types could not help but spawn dozens of other troop types each with their own characteristics. Advice to rules writers: wargames have to get more complex, not less (complex in granularity, not rules mechanisms).

One thing that is missing from modern wargaming however are high-granularity diceless games. There are a few diceless wargames around but they, like chess, tend to be fairly simple and abstract. I'm trying to fill this gap with Optio. I would suggest that Optio has more detail than comparable wargames. Each unit has variable morale intervals, various formations, tracked shooting hits, states of disorder, different thickness of lines with effects on combat, columns that work entirely differently from lines, and so on. Even ammunition as an optional rule (which players probably won't bother with). 

This granularity combined with lack of randomness in movement and combat outcomes obliges you to really get to know your troop types. It also means you are constantly looking for new deployments and tactics to pull a fast one on your opponent. A different kind of fun.

The Carthaginians reach their breakpoint.