Just looking at the numbers for a minute, activating factions seems like a costly diversion from getting your enemy’s disposition down. I suppose it can beef up your own disposition if you’re on death’s door, but it takes at least two maneuvers to do and functions a bit like an Take Action that’s capped by the faction’s rating.
I mean, obviously there are cool narrative reasons to do it! Or if elevating your faction to government is your phase objective. But am I overlooking something mechanical?
Do you normally interpret having “access to the factions assets” as providing a mechanical advantage? (e.g. resources helping dice, free or easier access to tech)?
Each faction after the first that you activate is more valuable. You’re right, Assess/Activate is costly. But Assess/Activate/Activate is much less costly – and it gives you a LOT of narrative control.
Wait, are you saying that you can assess ‘factions in general’, and then activate as many as you like on successive maneuvers? I had been thinking you had to assess each faction before you targeted it.
I think the confusion was that you don’t have to assess multiple times on a take action against the enemy dispo because you’re targetting the same thing. You could make the assumption that each faction was a separate target and as such needed a separate assess as opposed to just needing to assess “the factions” as a whole.
Once one side decides to Assess and then TA the factions, that pretty much REQUIRES the other side to do so. If they don’t, they handed over a 10-point dispo swing as well as a ton of narrative control. That’s huge.
Tactical applications of narrative control in BE probably deserves its own thread.
In our current Invasion game, each side’s FFON has a Belief aimed straight at their favorite faction, which helps draw them into that fight nicely.