As with Armageddon Empires, the armies in a battle are only, ahem, half the battle. Things get a little crazy in Solium Infernum once you start giving your legions artifacts, appointing praetors to command them, and using hell's precious resources to craft unique one-off combat cards. Many of these things don't just add bonuses. They can also change the rules of the game.

After the jump, I'll trick out my armies with that thing up there in the picture.

A battle in Solium Infernum consists of three types of combat. First ranged combat happens. Then melee combat. Then infernal combat, which is basically the part where demons fling fire and brimstone at each other. A battle progresses through each of these types of combat in turn. Even when these values are modified by artifacts and praetors, the numbers are always visible to everyone. Since there's not much randomness involved, you can look at these numbers and tell exactly how well a unit is going to fare in battle.

But then there are the combat cards. Your archfiend can spend resources to craft face-down combat cards that change the numerical values. The power of these cards is based on the archfiend's wrath, a stat that governs his military ability. A low wrath means your card can only tweak one value a few points. But a high wrath means a single card can dramatically change up to three values in a battle. Beware the unpredictable nature of a wrathful archfiend!

But my fat lazy greedy charismatic archfiend doesn't have a high wrath. In fact, he has no wrath at all. It would take up too much energy. So instead of slaving away in the wrath kitchen to whip up some combat cards, he's going shopping.

My units would be slaughtered if they mounted an assault on the nearby Palace of Gluttony. Even if they teamed up, with one unit in a support role and therefore offering half it's ranged, melee, and infernal combat to his partner, they wouldn't be able to do it. So I'm off to the Infernal Bazaar, which offers players a handful of legions (armies), praetors (any legion can have a single praetor attached as a leader), artifacts (items that attach to legions to give them a bonus), relics (items that attach to places to give you a global bonus), and manuscripts (powerful items you have to assemble page by page). These are all on sale to the highest bidder.

Here's an example of a typical artifact: a +2 sword that adds two to your legion's melee value. Or a +4 bow that adds four to your legion's ranged value. But this is Hell. There are no typical artifacts in Hell. The +2 sword is instead a Rod of Pain. It adds two to your legion's melee value, but it also has a chance to randomly reduce all three of the target's combat values by one to six points for the duration of the battle. Ouch. The +4 bow is instead a Hellfire Ballista. It adds four to your legion's ranged value, but it also inflicts a sulpherous burn that doubles the damage inflicted when you score a hit in ranged combat. Almost everything you buy down here is going to do something funky to change the rules. Things in Hell get complicated quickly.

The first thing I buy are wyrrmm mounts. These are like sandworms from Dune, but with a big metal helmet/bridle thing clapped onto their noggins so they can be ridden. With them, my unit's hit points are added to their melee damage to represent the worms trampling their enemies. Damage is normally determined by simply comparing the melee value of two units. If I have a five and you have a four, you take one point of damage. But with my wyrrmms, if I have a five and you have a four, and I furthermore have ten hit points, you take eleven points of damage. Now you're probably dead.

Of course, wyrrmms move faster than people on foot, so the unit can go one space farther every turn, which is a huge advantage in Hell, where almost everyone moves two spaces per turn. Going three spaces per turn is blindingly fast. If you're standing around in Hell and you blink, you might not even see my Defilers riding their wyrrmm mounts when they race past your house.

Tomorrow: when war gets personal

(Click here for the previous Solium Infernum game diary.)