At first blush, the math seems to work out in favor of doing static bonuses, limited to +2 (one for each adjacent shieldmate) to armor. Basic minifig in the middle boosts armor to 6, minifig on outside boosts armor to 5. Attacking the middle is riskier, requiring exploding dice for normal weapon attacks, but screws the whole line. Attacking the sides would be common, wittling the line down more slowly. This is how I've seen it done, allowing small variation for rules idiosyncrasies, in other games. However, didn't I read that you wanted to scrap static bonuses? Also, this seems even less inspiring than the armoured solution and might well fall outside balance when shield walling with non-basic minifigs (being that they have a static 4 armour value). Doesn't feel like the right solution for *this* game.stubby wrote:I do plan on having Heavy Infantry with a shield wall ability, but I was hoping to think of some little bit of extra flavor somehow because the shield wall ability (automatic Armored for any shieldsman with more shieldsmen on both sides) isn't all that exciting by itself.
...now that I've talked about something that I don't think will work and have no solutions to offer instead...
I'm a helper. I can give it some more thought as well. I'm interested in seeing what you come up with.