Anticipating how your opponents will move, creating defensive walls with warriors to block off access to weaker archers, and a host of other factors must be considered at any given moment when deciding how to move – it's arguably even more important than deciding how you’re going to swing your axe. The other absolutely crucial part of success (yes, there are lots of them!) in Factions is positioning and movement.
Yet despite its extreme usefulness, it never feels overpowered, because any unit who has a lot of Willpower traded something else to get it, creating a weakness you can potentially exploit. It often acts as the great equalizer in battle, as seemingly weak units can still pose a threat and screw up the best-laid plans. It’s a finite resource you can expend to move additional distances, make standard attacks more powerful, or use special moves. The options opened up by special abilities makes the Willpower stat particularly crucial. For instance, an ax-wielding Varl might be able to hit both an enemy and those adjacent to them with a special attack, but this will do less damage to both than it would if you hit a single target. Getting kills levels your characters up, and at level one they get to pick one of three Master Classes whose special abilities not only add further diversity to the core unit types, but present more opportunities for tactical decision-making that rewards smart play. Factions’ combat gets even deeper when you add in special abilities. It adds a level of strategy unlike anything I’ve experienced in a strategy game, and makes every attack much more intricate than a simple “hit guy to put him closer to death’s doorstep.” I like that, with the exception of when you’re attacking an opponent whose armor is higher than your strength, chance never plays a role in how you fare in combat. On the other hand, hurting their strength could leave them impotent to do anything other than damage your armor. Maybe lowering an opponent’s armor with your ax is more valuable than hurting his strength, because your archer will be able to do much more damage the next turn. Consequently, each time you choose to attack in Factions you’re forced to think not only about the immediate future, but consider how things are going to play out in the long run.
The kicker here is that your strength is also your health. Attacking their armor means they’ll take more damage in subsequent attacks, while attacking strength means they’ll dish out less damage.
Each time you attack you can opt to damage an enemy’s armor bar or attack their strength. Once you’ve selected your team, it’s time to wrap your head around Factions' complex combat system. It makes the relatively few units available a whole heck of alot more versatile. Thus, even if you’re facing an opponent with the same basic team composition you’ve seen before, you have to adapt your strategy to how they’ve opted to allocate their points. For instance, your warrior might have nine armor and a higher strength, while mine has 12 armor and is fairly weak. While you don’t have many basic unit types to select from, I found that reallocating stat points let me build a custom force to better suit my playstyle. Factions puts you in control of a six-person Viking warband, each with an armor value, a strength value, and its own set of special attacks.
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