small world contest: stealthy!

It was quiet that night. Our scouts from the front lines reported no signs of activity from the enemy. After a day of traveling, we welcomed the cool wind that accompanied our warm dinners. It felt good to relax and actually enjoy each others' company. What didn't feel good was the Troll's club coming down on my head. The last thing I remember thinking was, "How did they get past our front line?"

Clearly these were no ordinary Trolls! No, these Trolls were something special. They were Stealthy Trolls!

Stealthy - Stealthy races can sneak past the enemy lines, using the element of surprise to gain an advantage on their opponent. You may attack any region that is adjacent to a region that is adjacent to a region occupied by your race. If the target region is not adjacent to your active race, you may conquer the region with one less token than normally required.

I need to check how some of the other abilities are worded to make sure that this make sense, but this basically allows your race to attack behind enemy lines for an attack bonus. I'm not sure if this is more or less powerful than Commando as it opens the number of regions you can attack, but does not give any bonus on normal attacks. I'd am playtesting this at 5, but might also try 4 to see what makes the most sense.

A couple of simulated games (i.e., I played against myself) seems to indicate that this is both a viable and interesting ability. I played one game with Amazons where I did not use the ability as much, but in the second game I used the ability quite often with Orcs. The condition that the attack bonus only comes when the target region is not adjacent to one of your regions caused me to abandon regions just to gain the advantage to maximize my point bonus from Orcs.

I feel that the rules for this ability are difficult to explain, as there are three regions involved: your region (A), a region adjacent to your region (B), and the target region (C). B must be adjacent to A and C, but in order to receive the combat bonus, C cannot be adjacent to any of your regions. Perhaps it would clearer to say:

Stealthy races can sneak through one region, using the element of surprise to gain an advantage on their opponent. You may conquer any region that is not adjacent to one of your regions if it is adjacent to a region that is adjacent to one of your regions. Such a conquest requires one less token.

The above also clarifies that the "middle" region does not need to be occupied by the same race that is being conquered, nor does it need to be occupied at all. Originally my thought was to make it so that the middle region did need to be occupied. However, it was difficult enough to position the Stealthy tokens so that they were not adjacent to the planned target region that I felt additional restrictions only dimished the value of the ability.

Although it's a bit silly to list it after only one ability/race, here's my current ranking for my ideas:

1. Stealthy

:)