I’m reverting to Blaze Away not being able to get an Aim bonus. It’s getting too big a set of bonuses and making it too easy to suppress people. Whilst there are a few reasons to like it, overall it’s a better balance as it was originally.
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Quirkworthy 
I didn’t realised it had changed!
You’ve got to pay attention Matt. Things change awful fast round here 😉
have you decided if tripling a BA will give the opportunity to actually deal damage? Just seems a little strange to get real excited about dropping your big gun dude on some one in the open and “only” being able to suppress. Not complaining about suppression, just hope that the big guns can potentially do damage to someone foolish enough to face it in the open.
That’s a pretty cool idea! Spray enough bullets and you’re gonna get a lucky hit or two. 😉
Yep agree with the doing some damage with blaze away, makes sense to me!
Yes in principle. However, the elegant way of doing it gives the wrong answer and I don’t like the inelegant ways I’ve so far come up with.
Still working on a nice solution.
I’m sure you will come up with something great!
although as you know I also think that blazing away shouldnt be able to get the aim bonus, maybe you should consider also to slightly reduce the number of courage cards in the decks (maybe leave them in the enforcer deck as fluff matter) because if blazing away becomes slightly more difficult and its quite easy to overcome it with cards, players are going to go the straight way into not blazing away but shooting everything down. Blazing away is one of the signature features of this game and it would be a pitty that players do not use it.
this week we´ve had another night full of games, So here i go with the feedback again.
Players are getting deeper into the games strategy and more complex plays are being seen… mawbeast (non explosive ones) are seeing lots of play as “guard dogs” using them in overwatch to countercharge any melee threat to their more shooty units. Enforcers are the faction that seems to have more problems fulfilling their missions, apart from captain and assault enforcer they are not suited for close combat and most of their missions encourage them to advance. even both of them struggle against other factions melee specialists… with the older card decks enforcers could advance blazing away the most dangerous enemy units trusting that their armor would protect them against the rest of enemies… now there is no point in blazing away a teraton or 2nd gen as you know that your oponent is going to have a courage card kept in hand for that situation. Marauders seem to be the faction that better bluffs their mission.
we tried mercs being unable to gain Vps… not working bad, but seems a bit counterintuitive that merc “killing machines” are the worst mercs you can get in missions where you have to kill units…. at least teraton is being used over blaine once again.
still thinking that Boomer needs the boom ability and that Dr simmonds needs some kind of ability that gives him some personality… quite boring merc right now.
still couple of units seeing low to no play. stuntbot and hulk in marauders, the first one has lots of fancy weapons but with shoot/combat 6+ does not kill too much considered its high cost (20), hulk may see more play once more vehicles or high armored units see play… or maybe not as goblin guntrack is seeing play itself.
In plague, hound see no play as they are considered easy Vps for oponent for a unit that has no way to do anything interesting for its force. Mortar team is seeing low play due to not being able to shoot in a range lower than 5 so players prefer the boom-stick. but once games are played with more than one mat… oh man! they are going to rock!
In enforcers burst laser is still seeing no play as missions require mobility player tend to prefer regular enforcer… maybe with the no aim rule for blazing away… will see…
ingeneer needs some better way to deliver the sentry guns, right now its too slow.
fusion gun is finally seeing some play as it can clear objectives, interesting to see players use it point blank relying in their armor to soak damage,
flamethrower is also seeing no play… the it burn! ability isnt killing too many things, and regular enforcer blazes away better due to having better range and weight of fire. It may be a matter of time though as i think it could be an interesting unit. Main problem with enforcers is that they are quite expensive so very few models are used in each game, so there are many units that do not see play because you need a core force and very few suporting units can be added.
Rebels due to being the cheapest faction (with marauders second) have the option to use many different units in their forces, the only units not seeing play are yndij sergeant and weapon team. Yndij sergeant only offers tactician, and right now we do not know what it does… so maybe it will see more play when that ability is writen. Tk weapon team costs the same than a grogan with desolator… but grogan s tough, has better fight and survive and is not deliberate nor support… hope the CSW ability is awesome because right now grogan is faaaaaar better
hope this long feedback helps a bit… I´m trying to summarize as much as i can, but still end up with looooong posts… sorry about that
Hmmm, what if there were two types of BA? A short action that works like normal or a long action that effectively is an “aimed” BA? Maybe only as a special ability for certain units and or weapons?
I think that is already covered by weight of fire plus deliberate
Very useful stuff.
I’ve been working on a final set of cards and will try to get these posted for you all to play with. The Stuntbot is being removed for the moment as it’s not in the early releases and the other vehicles aren’t included (apart from Guntracks).
I’ve tweaked a lot of the mission cards and made it a standard game 10VPs to win. This gives a better balance between the various mission/faction combinations.
I’m not terribly worried about Courage. I think that you haven’t had enough practice and all the rules to really get to grips with the card management aspect of the game yet. Use of cards will also vary between one-off and campaign games as actually achieving the mission is more important in campaigns.
Also we found a little issue with the surge card, we think that its an unnecesary aleatory card, drawing it soon can give some advantage even against a player who has spent many points in having a commander with better leadership than yours… In our opinion drawing cards should only happen by abilities the units may have or by giving the entire force some kind of ability due to gaining xp
Surges are part of the balance between the different stat sets available between factions and the different way that each of them plays. I don’t want to have to include a 3/3 leader in every force as that’s dull, but they do need to be balanced in play. There are several other factors here, but that’s an obvious one. Overall, a better leader has far more effect than a single one-use surge card.
Hi Jake!
I ‘d really love to see a version of Blaze Away able to deal damage, because otherwise gun battles looks like a lot like the old A-Team episodes where Hannibal and Co unleash a hail of lead only to send most mooks running for the hills – unharmed. Hell, they even get out of their wrecked rides in time, but that’s not the point. Still, A-Team style doesn’t kinda sit right, does it?
I wonder have you considered to drop the Cover penalty for Survival checks from BA? This way, cover helps keeping the targetted miniature(s) a little more active in the game especially with Spotter and Weight of Fire etc around now. Also, without cover confering a penalty, it’d be more reasonable to allow a shooting doubles or triples result to cause damage.
Another reason for dropping the cover penalty would that if one is caught in open ground, they’d probably spend more time on the ground til it’s save to move again compared to being cover where the presence of cover allows you at least a little mobility.
I may have raised this point before, but I found it feels right, if it goes against your initial design decision and reasons for BA.
Cheers,
Captn M
DZ isn’t like the A Team because you can always choose to Shoot people if you want to injure them. I am working on a way of getting damage out of tripled BA, but it isn’t right yet.
Cover penalties for BA targets is one of the real world pieces of research which is key to the way I have approached this design and is not going to go away. Every other game I have seen ignores this commonly described feature of real combat, but I don’t see why I should make that same mistake 😉
My friend put forward the idea that perhaps the Battle Cards could be given a theme name, to make them easier to identify and refer to on the fly, rather than “Headshot/+1 Breakoff” for instance, you could give it the name “Sniper Class 101” or “Anti-social Behaviour” or something.
Just a thought.
i think it could be a good idea, cards would be more recognizable
Way easier to tell if they’re all there when pack up time comes around too.
It’s always a balance.
This time I have deliberately kept the same names on the battle cards so that it is easier and quicker to follow what your opponent is playing during a game. The mission cards have faction specific names even when they’re the same as they are only consulted by your opponent at the end of the battle. Battle cards needs to be quickly understood during the flow of the game to avoid slowing things down, hence the same name for the same effect on every deck. This also makes learning a new faction’s battle deck much quicker.
Sorting them out will be simple enough as every faction deck has a different back. You can then count the cards to ensure they’re all present. And, for future use, I’ve asked for each card to have unique identifier. If you do lose one then you can easily work out which one it is.
This isn’t realy on topic but…does anyone have any suggested starting army lists for each faction to play in trial games? I’m doing my first play with Rebels and Marauders this Friday and was wondering if anyone has any ideas of what to use to give a good feel for both factions?
i would suggest for rebels a leader, 3-4 humans (or other cheap trooper) a teraton a grogan and something else. for marauders a leader, 3-4 comandos, 1 or 2 ripper (or something big) 1 or 2 snipers and some mawbeasts (bomber or not)
those could be nice equilibrated starting armies, both would let you feel how the faction is suposed to work