
Scenario: Aces of Tarot

Creator:  Dirk Pellett  ( dirk@gorn.iuma.com as of 27 Feb 1995 )

Summary:  The King of Swords and King of Wands are making war, and the
          Kings of Pentacles and Cups defend their lands (one to preserve
          peace and beauty, the other to preserve wealth and prosperity).

This scenario is based on the classical Tarot deck of cards.  Every card is
represented, either as an army type, an item, a monster, a ruin, or at least
a signpost.  Most cards appear twice or more times, in various ways.

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                          Notes about Tarot Decks

To really get into this scenario, you probably should have a Tarot deck
handy.  Either borrow one or buy one -- "alternative" bookstores and some
game stores usually carry them.  My all-time favorites are the Robin Wood
deck with astoundingly beautiful painted images on every card, and the
Hanson-Roberts deck, with exquisite colored-pencil sketches.  Both of these
decks have complete images on the minor arcana, such as the thief who can
only carry five of the seven swords away from the enemy encampment.  Two
other decks deserve mention, though they aren't quite as good in my humble
opinion: the Morgan-Greer, and the Universal Waite deck with drawings by
Pamela Colman Smith.

Don't bother with a deck where the minor arcana cards are repetitions of
the same image, like two swords on a plain background on the two of swords,
three swords on the three of swords, and blah blah blah and so on.  Waste
of money.  Waste of good paper, if you ask me.  Don't judge a deck by the
named cards (the major arcana) until you've seen the numbered cards!

I have collected Tarot decks for years, only because I enjoy the artwork.
I certainly don't *believe* in them.  The creation of this scenario for
Warlords II is not in any way an endorsement of superstition.  (But if you
feel differently, go right ahead, believe what you wish.)

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                               Scenario Notes

Some decks, especially Robin Wood's work, associate the suits with the four
elements:  Fire - Wands, Earth - Pentacles, Water - Cups, Air - Swords.
(The horses of the knights, the robes of the royalty, are awesome.)  I've
kept these associations in creating this scenario.  Most decks associate
the four suits with four aspects of human life:  Power - Wands, Wealth -
Pentacles, Happiness - Cups, War - Swords.  I've kept these associations
in the scenario wherever it didn't conflict with anything else.  The tarot
deck evolved into the four more familiar suits: swords became spades, cups
became hearts, pentacles became diamonds, and wands (also known as rods in
some tarot decks) became clubs.  I put those into the army set so you can
use the army set in random games, but I left them out of this scenario.

I chose the Spectra city set created by SSG because it looks excellent and
fits the scenario fairly well.  It would be a *lot* of work to design a city
set better suited to this scenario (such as actual swords, cups, wands, and
pentacles on the cities).  I didn't think the minor improvement would be
worth that much work, nor the extra size in the SZP file.

I chose the Element shield set since it fits the theme matching the four
suits of the Tarot deck to the four classical elements.  Besides that, it
looks great.  (If you don't have the Scenario Builder, you may have to
create a SHIELD directory before installing this scenario.)

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                          Notes about the Army set

I tried to fix a few things that I didn't like in the default army set,
which some people may disagree with and think I broke.  For starters, if
a hero gets blessed twice and makes two levels, all battle items become
utterly useless to him, because all blessings, levels, and battle items
are jammed together into the small gap between strength 5 and 9.  (Some
scenarios I've seen set hero strength to 6, making it worse.)  Another
problem, as I see it, is a single person without experience or powerful
weapons being able to defeat a military unit single-handedly.  To solve
both of these problems at once, I have given starting heroes strength of
TWO, not five.  You must make three levels and get blessed four times before
your battle items are worthless.  Or you can pick up and use up to seven
points worth of battle items.  A starting hero with a strength of two has
NO leadership bonus, by the way.  With no experience and nothing of value
in his hands, no army cares whether he's along or not; why should they?
When he's proven himself in battle, been endorsed by the gods, or wields
a mystical artifact, then they'll follow him.

The next big problem is caused by flying units, especially by units which
fly so fast that they capture and sack enemy capitals in the first four
turns.  Some scenarios I've seen are nearly worthless to play because they
have such fast flying units.  In my army set, I've only put in a few units
that fly, none of them fly faster than 20, and they all take at least 3
turns to produce (2 if you're lucky, but you can't buy those), and none
of them come cheap.

Another big problem with the default army set is that woods and hills are
for display only; they have no effect on movement because of the 1-turn
super-cheap fast-moving scouts.  In this army set, forest and foothills
actually slow down the advance of armies somewhat -- unless you have a
Magician to create a path for them, or an elephant (Tens unit) to stomp
a wide swath for others to follow.  And they take four or five turns to
produce -- three if you're lucky.  Hermits can get you through woods only,
and are produced in 3 turns, but they're only strength 3.

I think these changes make for more strategy-conscious play, and I hope
others agree.  Unfortunately, the computer AI is totally lacking in "I"
when playing with this army set in a hidden map game, whether quick-start
or not.  (For example, in one game with no hinderance from other players,
it took the Wands *76* turns to own *4* cities -- and guess why there was
NO hinderance from other players for 76 turns!)  Therefore, do NOT play
this scenario with a hidden map if there are any computer players.  The
army set was designed with human players in mind, and if you play with the
computer players, set Hidden Map Off, Quick Start On.  The map was designed
carefully to make Quick Start generate a very fair division of cities.

As far as pictures of armies go, I used the standard pictures for the most
part, assigning them to units so that they would roughly indicate strength
of the unit -- light infantry are Deuces, minotaurs are Sixes, elephants are
Tens, and so on.  I changed a few pictures where wings were inaccurate or
some other image was desperately needed.  I'm not a great artist with pixels
so they may look a bit crude; if so, I apologize.  Aces are like dragons,
except they're +3 special.  There are no cities producing them -- you have
to get them with new heroes, ruins, or quests.

The Scenario Builder allows a different picture for each side for each army
type.  They don't even have to look similar.  I could have tried to copy,
for example, the four of swords to the Fours army unit picture for the
Swords side.  Doing so would 1) be a LOT of work, 2) look crude because I'm
not that great of an artist, and 3) be a nearly unplayable game since you
couldn't tell the type of an army by sight without great familiarity with
the cards.  I edited the royalty for the four suits of the Tarot, and added
the four suits of a cheap deck so the army set could be used in a random
game also.  Unfortunatly it only allows one "greyed-out" image, so I made it
an "A" for Ace.  Also, unfortunately and beyond my control, in a random game
Warlords never generates cities producing the second army type -- Bat in the
default set, but Deuces in this set.

The Hermit army unit has the fortify bonus, meaning the stack it's with is
+1 when attacked even when not encamped.  It adds nothing when attacking or
when defending a city.

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                           Notes about the Items

The items you can find represent the following cards (obvious ones like
Wheel of Fortune are omitted here):

Double Sword      = Two of Swords      Cup of Promise    = Two of Cups
Heartpiercer      = Three of Swords    Cup of Friendship = Three of Cups
Sword of Victory  = Five of Swords     Cup of Thought    = Four of Cups
Sword of Stealth  = Seven of Swords    Cup of Flowers    = Six of Cups
Sword of Bondage  = Eight of Swords    Cup of Fates      = Seven of Cups
Nightmare Sword   = Nine of Swords     Cup of Joy        = Ten of Cups
Sword of Revenge  = Ten of Swords      Cup of Surprise   = Page of Cups
Sword of Defiance = Page of Swords     Cup of Duty       = Knight of Cups
Sword of Storms   = Knight of Swords   Cup of Honor      = Queen of Cups
Sword of Destiny  = King of Swords     Cup of Destiny    = King of Cups

Wand of Wealth    = Two of Wands       Juggler's Books   = Two of Pentacles
Wand of Travel    = Three of Wands     Miser's Hoard     = Four of Pentacles
Wand of Mirth     = Four of Wands      Beggar's Purse    = Five of Pentacles
Wand of Conflict  = Five of Wands      Hand of Charity   = Six of Pentacles
Wand of Triumph   = Six of Wands       Coin of Destiny   = King of Pentacles
Wand of Quickness = Seven of Wands
Wand of Flight    = Eight of Wands
Wand of Winds     = Page of Wands
Wand of Destiny   = King of Wands

I had to hand-edit the scenario files because the Scenario Builder doesn't
allow some capabilities that I needed for the items.  Fortunately the items
file is a simple ascii text file.

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                      Notes about the Cities and Ruins

Every ruin represents one particular card in the deck.  See if you can
figure out which card for each ruin.  I had to change some stories around
to fit the "ruins" theme even though the cards show perfectly vital and
happy scenes.  Some of the matches may depend on which tarot deck you are
looking at.

The cities names, descriptions, and productions may or may not represent
anything in the deck.  My priority in placing the cities and setting the
production capabilities was to create a balanced scenario for strategy,
and after doing so, it was more difficult to fit descriptions to cards or
production.  I attempted to represent some cards whenever it wasn't too big
of a stretch.

Probably no one would notice unless I point it out, but there are 10 cities
near each capital, for 40 cities total:  within each set of 10 cities, the
number of unit types produced is 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4.  (That is,
two cities produce only one type of unit, two produce four types, etc.)
Within each set of 10 cities you will find one each producing King, Queen,
Knight, Ten, Nine, Six, and Trey.  Two cities in each set produce Page,
Eight, Seven, Five, Four, Fool.  Three cities produce Deuces, and three
others produce a special unit type named for a major arcana card.  There
are no cities producing Aces.  I wanted this to be a balanced, playable
scenario, not just a Tarot deck.

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                     Notes about copying this scenario

This scenario is copyrighted by myself, but may be distributed in any
UNMODIFIED form as long as NO CHARGE is made for distribution (such
as a per-minute charge for online time) and it is not included in any
copyrighted "compilation" (such as claimed by certain online services
I will not name).

In case that's not clear, I'll spell it out: I don't want this scenario
distributed by any person, company, or organization that CHARGES MONEY
to the person who downloads, reads, or access it.  There are plenty of
ways to get it for FREE via Internet, and companies such as these won't
pay me a dime for my creative work that they profit from.

Feel free to make changes to your OWN copy of the scenario, but please
respect my copyright and do not distribute "derivative works" or modified
versions of it.  Thanks!

Intelligent feedback is appreciated, either praise or criticism, and I may
incorporate suggestions into an update (or other scenarios).

Dirk Pellett
dirk@gorn.iuma.com ( as of 27 Feb 1995 anyway )

