Webmasters Note: Mike asked me to remove this post, partly because the new Alman Null, Knights is NOT a level 3 spellcaster but a level 2 instead. Disregarding this particular point, I personal believe Mike makes a good argument. Certainly this should spark your interest in gaming with "Pure Armies." Enjoy...sorry Mike.
I present, here, an argument for playing pure armies. What does it mean to play a pure army? The way I see it, there are two basic schools of thought. First, one can play strictly by the rules, which is to construct armies that are at least 50% one tribe after subtracting spell points. The other 50% can be made up of any disk as long as alignments do not conflict. The second school of thought is what I will refer to as the Pure army construction rules. These rules actually represent a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum players have declared that spell points do count in total army points and count against the tribal affiliation points. On the other end of the spectrum players have ruled that an army must be 100% of a particular tribe affiliation plus non-affiliated creatures. I am arguing in favor of the pure Pure-Army ruling. The basis of my argument lies in the coming of a new disk in the 3rd printing of DiskWars scheduled to come out in October. This disk is Alman Null a level 3 (level 2, ed.) Knight spellcaster that can activate TWICE per segment. As you can imagine, this will be a very powerful new addition. But why add him? There are already 3 level 3 spellcasters in the good armies and only 1 in the evil armies. And why add him to the knights? They already have a level 3 spellcaster. I suggest that the designers are trying to make the Knights a worthwhile army to play. Recently, there have been many arguments about how worthless the Knights common troops are. And rightfully so; an infantry that has a toughness of 2 yet is as expensive as the other infantries that have toughnesses of 3. I would argue that the designers gave this new powerful mage to the Knights specifically to offset the several knight disadvantages. This I would call the Spirit of The Game. So, in keeping with this spirit, Alman Null should ONLY be played in a Knight army. Otherwise, Alman Null could go to any army that do not have inherent offsetting disadvantages (i.e. the Dwarves). Therefore, players can construct ultra-powerful armies and the Knights would not be worth playing again, contrary to the designers intent (IMHO, of course).
My arguments against the Official army construction rules are
obvious. Adding the most powerful basic troops of each army, while
maintaining the 50% tribal affiliation is relatively easy. Elven
archers and The Ghastly Bowmen become standard, while their counterpart
disks go by the wayside regardless of what army one is playing
with. With the addition of Alman Null, the other Good level 3
spellcasters, too, will be cast aside (assuming Alman is decently
priced). So, playing Pure armies promotes (demands) the use of
all the units of an army. Therefore, we dont have to feel that
our sunderland archers or men at arms are worthless.
This is my interpretation of what the game designers meant and
why they made the rules that they made. From some of the examples
above, it is clear that some army units are OBJECTIVELY better
than their counterparts in other armies. So where is the game
balance? Its in the gestalt of each army. Each army as a whole
is designed to be as good as the next. The Knights seemed to have
missed the boat on this one and are catching up with Alman Null.
If playing pure armies is what the designers intended, than why
did they not put it in the rules. My guess would be that they
wanted each box to be playable by itself. Since the purple flats
will, most definitely, contain creatures of a different affiliation
than the common units, a Pure army construction would make them
useless (on top of the already useless opposite alignment random
disks). Therefore they made the construction rules more liberal
to accommodate more of the random creatures in boxes.
I realize that many of my assumptions can be argued and I definitely did not intend this to sound like I think Im objectively right. Heck, some of the designers made read this and tell me Im full of shite. But, with all the recent arguments on the value of particular army units, I felt I should put my 2 cents in (OK, maybe $1.37).
Mike Bialecki
SaltLakeDiskWarriors