OK folks, here are 4 sets of stat cards. They cover all the models in the starter sets, plus a few more here and there.
The Rebels and Marauders also have a battle deck with them. For the other two just use the original ones from the Beta rules for now.
Apart from finalised stats, what’s new are the points costs. These are in red after the name. You’ll notice that they also have a letter after them (A, B or C). Worry about that later. For the moment, just build a standard game force with up to 70 points.
I’m sure there are loads of details I haven’t told you yet, but you’ll have to muddle along for the moment. I’m going to see if I can get more Mission stuff finished before my opponent arrives for a test…
Quirkworthy 
How exciting! Thanks very much! 😀
O_O lovely!!!!!
lots of things to test!!!! yeah!!!
couple of skills that we dont know what they do… strategist, tactician, really tough, mutant…
Yup. Really tough is what tough does twice. Hence the really bit. Like Armour 2 that you can’t AP away.
Mutant allows you to play certain cards on the model. Don’t worry about it for now.
Strat and tact will have to wait till tomorrow. They’re not types up coherently yet. Broadly they are level1 and 2 of the same skill. They allow you to do special Command actions which in turn let you manipulate the battle cards a bit and/or change activations.
tactician and strategist seem to be what we suposed (lovely idea)
what i´ve notices is that plague no longer begin enraged… or is part of the mutant skill?
Plague can start the game Enraged or Alert as they choose on a per model basis. Everyone else starts Alert.
deliberate, engineer, deployable, sentry, energy shield, glide
oh! and thanks for giving grogans, marauder warlord and teraton tough! they really deserved it, now they will be real contenders for my plague XD
first time scouting the cards seen nothing out of place, I was really curious about the cost of goblin sniper, being this one of the trickiest units as it can be amazing or die poorly… 7 seems just perfect… awesome work!! tomorrow i´ll try to give useful feedback after testing, just would appreciate if some (or all) of those skills could be explained so we can fully test those units…
thanks jake!!!!
I’ve posted up a list of more abilities. That should cover most bases.
Now I really need to go and set up my own testing 😉
have fun!! be sure we will!!!
The enforcer captain is the only model in the list which doesn’t have a jump pack listed…is that intentional?
Yes. He’s wearing Peacekeeper armour which is a completely different design.
The rebel human has “any action” listed for overwatch, is it really *any* action, including some long actions like sprint ? Or is it supposed to be read as “any action among the one available for overwatch : move/shot/blaze away”.
I used to thing it was the second one, but I have since read some unit with special overwach action like “throw grenade” or “sprint”, so i wanted to be sure that the “any action” was intented and not just a leftover from an early version when overwatch was simpler.
Hmmm. “Any short Action” would probably be better for the human Reb, but leave it as any action for the commander. She’s good 😉
I’ll amend it to that for v3.
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So when are we gonna see more about how forces and individuals progress? That’s really why I supported the kick starter since that seemed to be one of the big game points, but I keep seeing things like vehicles, point systems, and “hard stats” which are all items that (for most games) are exactly what you put in when you DON’T have progression for your force.
I’m just mainly looking for some reassurance that “evolving” forces are very much a part of the game beyond just buying a few more troops.
Look no further than the interview Jake did for Pins of Interest. He talks directly about the campaigns and character levels. http://pinsofwar.com/deadzone-interview/#link-same-page-5
Doh.. I meant Pins of War.
Well if you don’t have stats, points systems, etc then you don’t have a starting point for a campaign, so these all have to be done first. I can’t learn to do handbrake turns before I’ve added the wheels 😉
As Chris points out, this has been discussed before and nothing has changed there. There will be two campaign systems. The narrative one will be in the supplement. The broader one will be in the core rulebook. All this is as mentioned in the KS.
Most of this has already been worked through, but not written up in a final form yet. Don’t worry about it being in. It’s definitely included. I’ll be talking about it once I’m happy the core is done.
here i am as promised with the feedback…. this is going to be long 🙂
all this was collected after a whole night of games (12 were played) by 7 players… i´ll try to arrange our brainstorming the best i can… must say first couple games where just “fun” games to see how factions and mechanics worked… last ones where “heavy competitive” trying to look out for combos and other ways to force the rules so that extremely competitive players do not find something weird once the game is released
1- game mechanics:
a couple of players asked for being able to “crawl” that is, move while pined. this is because we found that when a HMG supreses a tile from afar, most of the time if you have no other unit in position to help it will keep supressing that tile every round with the troops in there unable to do anything, sure, this is very realistic, but can be a bit boring for a player to have 3-4 HMG in front supressing nearly his whole army unable to do anything until a lucky roll
one thing we found about the “actions only once per turn” rule is that if you can only get mean! once per turn, supresed units are losing one and a half turns… hence the ability to crawl
we found that as sprint isnt allowing to go up a level and climb forces you to go levels up only sometimes happens that you cant use either because you need to move forward one tile then go up another wich any of those actions allow. This aint an issue as this way terrains seems working better at hindering a bit mobility and giving some more tactical depth… i think it was unintended but is really working well. we still got some problems with terrains but that will be fixed once a couple of diagrams explain how it works more in depth.
2- missions:
missions are really fun and interesting, sadly being there only 4 (i know there will be more) meant that everyone was hiding their commander in case the oponent had “assasinate”. also recon and assasinate seem to be the hardests to achieve, assasinate due to the low mission count, recon because seems really difficult to achieve before the oponent achieves his mission… not that nobody achieved it, just that seems a bit more complicated. The A-B-C mechanic seems fair with the Vps, still trying to find some exploit to this mechanic, But we think there should be some more limit to the units a player can field, being able to spam nearly any unit can make some odd combinations… this could hapen specially in competitve enviroments such as tournaments, where you can find some extreme lists that are very difficult to beat depending on your own list. more on this later
3-factions and units
3a- plague:
plague seems to be the melee faction, and working really well as a faction. MVP of the faction is without a doubt 2nd gens. plague seems to be right now one of the most competitive factions, 2nd gens seem underpriced, 10 points is the same cost as an enforcer, too few points for probably the best melee unit in the game. 6 2nd gens and a 3rd gen “general” seems a very hard army to beat (most of the players going for 3-4 and a couple of 3gen support)
3rd gen “general” used to have command 3/1 and now has 2/2… we liked the 3/1 idea as it was a way of differentiating how factions work… now every faction has its 2/2 commander (more on this when speaking of enforncers. 1st gen was working well with its point cost (really beastly but slow and damn hard to kill) until a player appeared with 3 of these beasts…. they arent too slow due to plague having maaaany move cards and its not usual to have many weapons that can kill this beast… and being only 3 its quite easy to hide them while they advance… (spamming units seem to be the main issue we´ve found, as they can work well in low numbers but be really annoying in big numbers) the other unit we´ve found spammeable was the boomer, having a grenade launcher for only 6 points allowed for some really horrible first turns where despite de troops scattering there was a rain of grenades wich would kill/pin lots of troops as grenades are really really powerful (5 boomer, general and 3 2ng gen seemed another hard competitive army)
finally plague hounds seem not being able to do anything useful… not worth even their ridiculous 3point cost. cheap mele units seem to not work in deadzone, cheap shooting/blazing units instead seem to work very well. normal 3gens having fast is really key to making them an interesting pick, that was brilliant, also hmg works very well due to not having firestorm but neither having deliberate
3b -enforcers:
enforcers are the shooty faction, also quite mobile due to their jetpacks. speaking of, enforcers should be allowed to go up a level when sprinting and to jump from third floor to a third floor 2 tiles away using jetpack. being supossed to be one of the most tactical factions (along with maruders wich are tactical in a different way) they have the worst deck of the 4 factions, they find less solutions in their cards than other factions, also the do not have better drawing capabilities as sergeant is 2/2 as each other faction and captain is damn expensive.
MVP is for sniper, with 2/1 command and being able to get into position faster than other snipers due to jetpack and also being able to soak some damage makes this guy really powerful, i think its fine with a cost higher than the missile launcher as those 2 extra dice allow him to kill nearly anything (even a stuntbot and teraton were shot down) with tough skill around many times those 2 extra dice seem better than 2 extra ap. the other mvp is for burst laser… a five dice BA enforcer with range 6 wich can move and shoot for only 11 points? not having delibarate is key for this guy to be a real supressing machine, maybe it should cost a bit more. no spamming issues found with enforcers, and in general seem to be working as intended. Captain may be a bit overcosted… yes, its a real hard nut, very difficult to kill (we saw him die though) but he is quite bad in fights and not too good at shooting (range 5 ap1pistol is fine, grenade launcher with range 3 and deliberate is just too slow… maybe when rules to shoot beyond range are writen this will change). the mechanic of sentry guns seems a bit slow, maybe that we have to test it more, but ingeneer seemed not to be a fan favourite… same with asault enforcer, not good enough to stop other factions melee specialists, not fast enough to press shooting enemies (again the deck not helping much here) in general enforcer players prefered to spend 1 more point in a regular enforcer… also due to their high cost is quite difficult to go exactly for 70 points… but that is what happens with high cost factions in every game. (sergeant, sniper, missile launcher, and 3 regular enforcers was the most played army, with 2 burst laser being played instead missile and regular enforcer in some games)
every enforcer specialist having a pistol just in case is damn awesome!
3c- marauders
i didnt test marauders myself (played against them once) but havent heard too much from marauder players, so I sall think that they are working fine. They´ve got the best card deck with captain being 3/2… they are the “all or nothing” faction. They tend to sucidal strategies that can go either way. really fun to play with and against with so many boom and burns and volatiles around (we even saw a player with a commando captain and 8 mawbeasts bombers)
marauders have more than 1 MVP… mawbeasts (regular and bomber) are fan favourites, really good in fights, fast and boom makes them really interesting for their cost, also regular commando seem to be a bit undercosted… not bad as this makes them an interesting pick, but for only 1 point more than a human they are far far better. rippers have shown us how good spotter is, a bunch of commandos supported by rippers can blaze away nearly any enemy, will watch this in case there can be any spamming abuse, the same happens with goblin spamming, we did not tried it, but it can be quite disturbing to see 10 of these in front of you…. shooty ripper is a shooting beast… sometimes blowing his own men XD. finally still weird that comando sergeant beats warlord in fights (did it in a game twice)
3d- rebels
poor rebels seem to be the faction that needs more love… they have a couple of interesting units but seem to need something more… their lack of punch makes them suffer a bit against heavy armor, they usually break it by insisting in shooting until a lucky roll allows them to beat it. MVP is for humans, teraton and commander. Humans are really interesting for only 4 points, but its quite unfair when you compare them with marauder commandos. commander and teraton are the only interesting heavy hitters, being both really good at what they do, Rebel players are usually using 1 commander and 2 teraton or 2 commander and 1 teraton or even 3 commanders to try to pack a bit more punch.
grogans are suposed to be the other heavy hitters…. but they are a bit overcosted in comparison with other faction specualists and cant compete… desolator has 1 more ap than enforcer missile launcher and with armor 1 and tough is quite resilient… but i think you are paying for a 5+ fight that you are not going to use due to support…also the enforcer has shoot and survival 4+ but costs the same… its even more painful with onslaught cannon… it costs only 1 point less than enforcer burst laser, but has worse shoot, survival and deliberate! and no pistol at all!!! without doubt grogans should cost a point or two less. Drones are awesome, allowing humans to BA with 4 dice is just awesome and a real pain for their enemies, every commander was using 2 of these at least. the yndij hunter saw also some play as its agile ability gives some interesting mobility that with the drones allow decent BA where needed.the kraw warrior was quite squishy but a real pain, just an interesting cheap melee option that works fine. I did not see anybody playing indij sergeant nor sorak, im not vey fan of the sergeant, its only 2/1 command and not very interesting for its cost (3 points more than a commando just for tactician? with worse survival…) sorak instead is a good BA unit that can move and BA, with a drone around it can be really annoying, its quite squishy and with a quite short range though… so most player tend to use more humans instead because they can even try to shoot something down if they have a clear shot… not a bad unit… just underused for now.
GENERAL CONCLUSSION-
we had lots of fun this night and we are really looking forward to repeat! the game seems to flow in the correct direction, just needs some tweaks, but the general sensation is that we´ve got a very good game infront and that it can give us tons of hours of fun. hope that this looooooooooooooong feedback helps a bit…
im really looking forward to see rules to gain experience with the units, also some players commented that it would be interesting to be able to equip our troops with different weapons and equipment (just as we used to do in necromunda)
im for sure forgetting many things… as soon as i remember them i´ll try and write them here.
AWESOME WORK MR THORNTON!!!
oh and sorry for my english… it isnt my first language… maybe even not my second… X(
I think there are supposed to be restrictions on selecting specialists and commanders – Jake outlined them back in May here: https://quirkworthy.com/2013/05/08/deadzone-force-selection/
that could work better yes… lets see how is finaly implemented
I will probably revert to something more like this as my “cunning plan” isn’t having the emergent behaviour I wanted. These things happen. The Leader, trooper, etc had evolved into the ABC which was, I hoped, going to be more flexible in a good way. Plus, it was fitting into some other aspects of the rules nicely, but this is it’s first job and it seems it wasn’t working as well as I’d hoped.
Back to Plan A then 😉
Excellent write up asdepicas! Very useful. I’ve made some detail changes already and have more things to post later. I’ll look at the points you’ve raised.
always a pleasure to help with whatever i can 😀 at least if it is as fun as it was this past night. Once i´ve done my investment in this game i want it to be as good as posible 🙂
oh sure! i forgot something!
we tried playing the game without any restriction to free actions, then with only 1 free action per turn and finally with only 1 free move per turn… this last one is the one that worked best. playing w
ithout restrictions allowed melee experts (specially 2gens) to have horribly long sequences of combat that seemed to never end (i remember one with a 2gen jumping from one teraton to another for about 6 combats….) also against armies with lots of cheap troops it can happen to see a melee expert moving through 5 or 6 tiles in a turn (specially weird to see a teraton move like flash). with only 1 free action per turn melee experts seemed to have problems with “meat shields” (somebody said humans?) as they could only kill 2 in a turn… finally allowing only 1 free move per turn solved all the problems, there could no longer be infinite chain of combats, nor could a teraton move so many tiles but also a melee expert could kill all the figures in 2 consecutive tiles allowing them not to get stuck in meat shields.
Interesting. I’ve been playing that a Free action cannot trigger a Free action, which comes to a similar place.
First of all, thanks for this. Lots of data to absorb.
Enforcer Sentry guns are a terrible investment. You have to buy a 10A model just to place them, getting them out uses a full turn and they are armor 0, fragile models without a survival stat[!]. Even a shoot 6+ model will kill one 76% of the time. All this investment of time, actions and efforts to place a model which can only blaze away – 2 Enforcer riflemen seem a much better investment of 20 points than 1 Engineer & 2 Sentries.
The Enforcer Burst Laser isn’t quite as bad as the Sentry Gun, but I’m not sure he passes the “more useful than a regular Enforcer” test either. Yes, he can roll a 5-6d BA, but that’s only out to range 6 and it’s all he can do, while a regular Enforcer costs less, has range 8, rolls almost as many dice to BA, can shoot (to rng 8) and isn’t gimped a die in a Fight. That’s a lot to give up for one extra die with a BA, a point and a B model.
Plague Hellhounds need something to differentiate them since 3As picked up Fast. Yes, they’re cheaper, but that doesn’t seem interesting enough to me – a 3A is a much, much more flexible platform. A Hellhound shouldn’t be as specialized as a Mawbeast, but I feel like it should have something.
In general, it seems to me like there’s an overemphasis on distinguishing units through interrupt actions, while in my own play I’ve found overwatch to be a rarity. OW has a low chance to trigger at the 2 and 3 success levels (maybe 1/3 of the time), which makes it tough to use to defend against incoming charges, and once units are engaged in LOS, it’s far smarter to shoot or blaze away. I’m not saying the interrupts are a bad idea, just that it feels like they shouldn’t be weighted too heavily in making units distinct.
i agree with you in everything…. except for the burst laser, as our test pointed out, morale is one of the main tactical posibilities this game offers, being able to BA with 5 dice on the move is damn powerful. We had 2 players moaning about how damn good this unit was because they found themselves with a couple of units unable to act for some turns due to this guy. also, in combat there is little difference between this one and a regular enforcer, in the end both are going to lose combat if they get assaulted by a melee unit (other units are not going to charge in) those 2 extra dice to BA are much much better than being able to shoot, a regular enforcer really needs clear shot or luck to shoot down something… while burst laser almost always supreses enemies….
Regular Enforcers do get 4 dice to BA (Weight of Fire), so they’re only down 1 die to the BL, but that die can certainly be handy under the right circumstances…
its a matter of ensuring the blaze away, also think that the enforcer with the burst laser has also a pistol if he needs to shoot… only 3 range i know… but it sometimes come very handy
The OW reactions are differentiated because that’s what the rest of the stats on the model require. They’re usually the last thing to be written on any model and are simply what makes sense given the rest of the stats. I wouldn’t say they’re being used to differentiate models. Weapons, certainly, but reactions?
The burst laser shouldn’t have to worry about losing his dice in fights as he should be avoiding them. The +2 dice, on the other hand, are there all the time and are extremely useful. I’d be more inclined to side with asdepicas in that regard.
Sentries need looking at again.
One other issue with Sentries (& also Reb Drones) – seems a bit odd that they can be suppressed & pinned (and you can make them enraged to make them harder to suppress & pin since they can’t shoot). Perhaps some form of suppression is necessary, but it feels like they should at least be getting more dice against these attacks.
I agree that making them enraged seems odd. Not so sure pinning them is weird though. One assumes what passes for AI has a sense of self-preservation (which is all Pinned is).
agree in that sentries need a bit of reworking… the idea is awesome, but not working right now.
another thing i forgot to say is that many units are lacking the non-combatant and/or the beast abilities
Which ones were you thinking of, specifically? Currently I’ve used the following phrase in the rules to avoid having to include another special rule on loads of models:
“Models with the Beast, Crew, Flying or Vehicle ability cannot pick up equipment.”
2ng gens, hounds, drones and the like, that entry in the rulebook seems fine as simplification
beware of flying, in the future you might want to introduce some kind of flying alien that can pick equipment
Maybe. I’ve changed the name to hover as that better describes what it’s doing. In that case it seems unlikely that I’ll have lots of hovering things that need to pick up stuff. I can’t think of anything in the offing that would. Will cross that bridge if we ever come to it.