Illeria's core gameplay loop, and does combat need to be more interesting?

Weekly updates:

This was a busy week for personal reasons, though I did get 3 playtests in.  I'm also rethinking removing animated creatures.

Today's post is more thinking out-loud than usual.

Last week I said:
"Honestly, part of [wanting to keep summoned creatures] is that the rules are just so interesting, and I worry that a game with just melee combat, archery, and magic would be too boring (which, as I write this makes me worry that the game might not be interesting enough)."
This stuck for me.  I wondered if Illeria could be an interesting enough game if there were just melee fighters and archery, or if that would be too dull; if it was the later, I wondered if Illeria was a bad game.  Right then I watched a video explaining the concept of a core gameplay loop, which helped spur on my thinking.  

A core gameplay loop is the basic thing a player does repeatedly.  In board games, I think it is basically the turn.  For example, in Slay the Spire, you draw cards, and then decide how to allocate your energy to playing those cards (balancing hurting monsters, defending yourself, and empowering yourself for future turns).  For The Resistance, you send teammates on missions, and use the results of those missions to figure out who the spies are.

What is the core gameplay loop of Illeria?  You pick a character, move it around a board, and perform an action (typically roll dice to attack enemies, though perhaps pick up loot or use a power).  This is the same as D&D, Frostrgrave, and most wargames (except that in most wargames, you move and attack with several creatures at once).  

What worried me is that the "perform an action" part of the gameplay loop might not be interesting enough on its own.  I personally find that rolling dice to attack enemies is usually the least interesting part of any wargame.  For example, I sometimes watch Let's Play videos of Warhammer Fantasy, and I often skip through large fights, because they are just so tedious ("I have 10 characters fighting, so I roll 21 dice to hit, and I reroll my misses, then I roll 16 to wound, then you make 10 armor saves; next, my character goes... then my other character... now my horses...").  And I find games that are little more than rolling dice to be really boring.  For example, Guerrilla Miniature Games does Let's Play videos on lesser known games (e.g. Dracula's America, or Wild in the Streets), and many seem like they are just rolling dice (which is sad, since the theme of the games is often fascinating).

I've tried to make the melee and archery in Illeria fast and simple, rather than interesting, because I don't want them to be what Illeria is about.  I use a pretty standard system, like in Hero's Quest - the attacker rolls dice to determine how many times they hit, then the defender rolls dice to block hits, and unblocked hits deal damage.  

Some games do have really interesting "do action" parts.  I like opposed rolls in Infinity, where attacking an opponent often triggers a counterattack.  I like how in Blood Bowl your turn ends once you fail a roll, which forces you to prioritize the order you do things.  Spellcasting in Warhammer Fantasy is interesting, because both players have a limited number of dice, and using them often carries risk, so there is strategizing about every roll.

And I did try to have interesting subsystems in my game.  I think my spellcasting system is innovative: to cast a spell you need to roll above a certain number, and if you fail, the spell blow ups in your face.  But, each time you cast a spell, future spells are harder to cast.  This creates an interesting dynamic where spells are a limited resource, but in a softer way than most: in most games, you have a discrete amount of magic resource (e.g. spell slots in D&D, MP in Final Fantasy) which you can use freely until it is gone; in Illeria, you never really use it all, but you also don't know if casting a spell will prevent you from casting your next spell.  Controlling summoned creatures is also meant to be interesting.  Creatures begin with a certain number of control points, and every turn they lose some (randomly determined); once they are gone, your creatures are lost.  So, there are important decisions for how many resources you spend preserving your control points.

Then again, many games have boring combat systems, but succeed because the most important part of the game is not about rolling dice.  X-Wing is perhaps the best example of this - the combat system is plain, but the fascinating point of the game is about moving ships.  And I could say something similar about Kings of War and Necromunda.  I guess I just like games about movement.  

I wonder if adding too many interesting subsystems could ruin a game?  Like, King of War's magic system is pretty plain (basically just another form of archery); I wonder if it would be better or worse if it had Warhammer's magic system.  I think maybe worse, because it would add to the complexity, and adding that might make the core fun part of the game less prominent.  

This is one where I'm still at a loss.  I guess that deep down, I think I should aim to have Illeria be interesting enough to be fun with melee fighters.  But, I do like flavor that comes from interesting subsystems, and I think they add, rather than take away from Illeria.  This is something I'll need to ponder more...