Strategy Cards
I’ve adopted a strategy card mechanic often seen in GMT games, for example Sword of Rome, which is a favorite of mine. Each player has a hand of cards, each with a Mobilization rating and an event mechanic. Every turn one of these can be played for mobilization, determining how many army stacks you can move, while other cards can be played for their event. You burn through cards over the course of the year, until your hand refreshes in Spring.
Events can include things like temporary military advantages, surprise storms at sea, lending transport capacity to an ally, recruitment of mercenaries or rare units, mobilization of allied Minor Powers, surprise victory point objectives, etc. Since cards are often burned for mobilization, there is lots of scope for situational, scenario related, and offbeat cards.
The cards in a faction deck are customized based on Faction history, stats, abilities, and neighbors. Some factions will have more or less cards, others will be able to cycle through them faster. Volatile factions into raiding will often have victory point cards with random short term goals, while more stable factions will look more towards control of strategic locations.
I like the tradeoffs this entails between events that you’d like to play and mobilization you need, how it rewards forward planning, that it limits the common “move everything” micromanagement syndrome, and how it is a nice conduit for faction specific flavor and game mechanics.
Jasper Phillips