Tactical Angband

Angband without the grind

Date of birth2022 first commit 4 May 2022; this is 0.9beta2 on Angband 4.2.6

CreatorTom Morton (tomm)

LanguageC ~192,000 lines

PlatformmacOS, Windows, Linux Angband 4.2 frontends

Lineage

Angband 4.2 → Tactical Angband. A direct fork of Vanilla: same monsters, items and classes, but the game is cut in half and the escape buttons removed. See the family tree.

Played here: 0.9beta2 from tomm/tactical-angband.

Credits

Tom Morton	Design and code
Nick McConnell, Eric Branlund, Andi Sidwell and the Angband team	Angband 4.2, the base (most commits in the history)

Trivia

The first Tactical commit: “Rename Angband to TacticalAngband. Here we go”. (git history, 4 May 2022)
Levels are numbered 2, 4, 6 … 100, so monster and item depths still match Vanilla. (README.md)
The Black Market always stocks Acquirement scrolls. (README.md)
Monster spells and breaths do half damage, except Morgoth’s and Sauron’s. (README.md)
The Paladin’s Healing spell heals 300 HP, not 2000. (README.md)

What's unique

50 small levels, each a quarter the size of Vanilla’s; sight limited to 10 squares.
One blow times “might” instead of many blows per round, for players and monsters.
No teleport: Teleport Self, Other and Level are gone. Instead: potions and boots of running, wands of wind and swap places, the scroll of locking.
No banishment; weaker summons; short, non-stacking blindness, confusion and paralysis.

Code dive

C, about 192,000 lines in 165 files: Angband 4.2’s modern code base. Almost all game data is text in lib/gamedata.
Docs are Sphinx/reStructuredText (docs/), inherited from 4.2.
This port: WebAssembly with a canvas frontend, tiles, sound and music.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Races	11	Human to Kobold, as in 4.2
Classes	9	Warrior, Mage, Druid, Priest, Necromancer, Paladin, Rogue, Ranger, Blackguard
Spells	163	New: Locking, Swap Places, Imprisonment, Holy Terror, Mass Terror
Monsters	624	Up to Sauron and Morgoth
Object kinds	386	plus 108 ego types and 138 artifacts
Vaults and rooms	162
Levels	50	Numbered 2–100

Manual

The Angband 4.2 manual applies (the Tactical changes are in the README): in-game help, Angband manual, list of changes.

Getting started

Open the game. A Dwarf or Half-Troll Warrior or Blackguard is simplest.
Buy Cure Light Wounds potions and Phase Door (rarer now) in town.
Dive. There are only 50 levels; Sauron and Morgoth wait at the bottom.

Help

No walkthrough for this variant. The Angband 4.2 guides mostly apply. Tips:

You can’t teleport away: plan your exits, carry running potions.
Scrolls of locking close doors behind you.
Acquirement is always in the Black Market — save gold for it.

Cheats

Angband 4.2’s debug commands: Ctrl+A, confirm; the character is marked in the score list. (not tried here)