I've got round the houses and landed back with a dice mechanic. Preliminary play-testing has benen very positive. There's nothing like rolling a handful of dice across a board.
However, going from a single configurable dice to multiple dice does mess with the difficulty curve. It's taken several attempts to get the right balance. More testing is required but I'm confident this alternative has legs.
The attack dice have two faces for Range damage and two faces for Melee. The Defense dice have three faces.
Other changes in version 13 include:
Re-design of the enemy cards, reducing the size to a standard. (Euro). This has meant that the damage scales have moved on to the main board.
Changing the direction of the scales so the damage now goes down instead of up.
Removing the Gym cards and introducing a discount on all skills instead.
Moving the Power/speed scale onto the Player mat and iconographising the skills. (Also, starting to use the warrior art as well.
So, although three back, I feel i'm backing progress. As always, more playtesting to follow...