madd0ct0r wrote:
Design principle. People find it much easier to remember bonuses to their troops for some reason.
It's not really about memory. (In fact, I would argue it sometimes makes it harder to remember.)
It's about not penalizing the opponent for not knowing the enemy's army list and special rules in detail. If all the special rules are bonuses, then it's up to the player who owns the army to remember and claim their special rule bonus. It doesn't burden the opponent.
In theory.
In reality, it's just as easy to end up with default behavior that harms the opponent because the owning player forgets (or "forgets") to apply the special rule appropriately. For example, you only have 2 formations to which Factions apply and you put them at opposite ends of the field so everyone has effectively 1+ Initiative. Late in the game, the formations end up near each other, but both players forget it's not 1+ because they've run the last ~25 activations without ever needing to check.
So, basically, I don't think it works. I'd be fine with dumping it as a design concept and instead try to make everything easy to remember by keeping it as intuitive as possible.
