Just off to the Wargames Show at Derby. Taking a mental list of things to look at, though we all know what happens to plans…
There are some good pics of what to expect from the Terrain Tutor. That’s especially nice as it means I don’t feel any need to cart a camera about myself đ
I’ll post up any spoils I may acquire later…
As regular readers will know, I’ve put up a couple of experimental rules for Deadzone, and these have generated some very useful feedback. So, this having proved entertaining all round, I’ve got a couple of ideas you might like to try out for DreadBall.
Both of these ideas are to address Jacks. They don’t quite work as I’d like them to and are often seen as the poor relation of the player roles. These rules should bring them closer to parity.
Before I explain the rules though, please note that these are called experimental rules precisely because they are just that: experimental. These rules aren’t official updates, FAQ, errata or anything like that. It’s just that I quite like talking about games and one of the things I’ve been tinkering with is the way Jacks work so I’m sharing that here.
So, without further ado, two rules tweaks: one small and one large.
The small change is to allow Jacks to use any Special Move card. So, if a card says Striker, read that as Striker or Jack. If it says Guard, read that as Guard or Jack.
The second change is to do with the role(s) that get a bonus for certain actions. The idea is to move some from Strikers to Jacks. So Dash and Evade becomes +1 if the player is a Jack (not a Striker), and Stand Up becomes +1 if the player was either a Jack or a Striker.
Now these changes alter the relative usefulness of the players and therefore the points costs. This, in turn, changes the team compositions and so the knock-on effect continues. As I said, these are experimental.
Don’t worry about all the ancillary effects just yet. What I’m interested in hearing about is how you think works out on the pitch, in play. Clearly, as some teams don’t have all player roles, this will depend a lot on which team you favour. It may also take a while to adapt to the different options and new levels of risk for different actions. That’s to be expected. All of which obviously just means that you need to play a lot more games đ
So what are you waiting for? Game on!
Lots of interesting notions posted in the last few days, and not much from me. I’m afraid I’ve been caught up with sorting out my accounts, which is beyond dull đŠ
Still, it has to be done, and it almost is. Back to posting interesting stuff soon đ
Lots of very useful comments on my DZ Experimental rules. Thanks for that. What is obvious is that not everyone has the same experience of them. Some find the Deadzone rules perfectly balanced as they stand without the changes, others think the experimental rules cap things off nicely, whilst a further few think they cause more issues. This sort of variety is normal, and a good illustration of why balancing games is so complex. Whatever you do it is unlikely to suit everyone đ
I’ve got some specific points to address which I will do in reply to the comments there. Here I just wanted to round up my current thinking on these rules in general.
Firstly, I don’t think that they’re quite right yet. I do like the intent of both of them and think they add to the game. I don’t think either of them are currently balanced properly.
Changing the activation sequence can cause one or two issues with regards specifically to the relative power of Indirect weapons. Good point from Pika. I think the overall benefit outweighs this problem, though it is still going to need addressing.
A few people think that Excessive Force takes away too much from Tough/Really Tough beasties, and they may be right. As Peter B says, it is currently a little blunt in its execution, though the rule is necessary in some guise. Personally I think it works fine for some combinations of forces and not for others, depending on the actual AP levels of the weapons they have to hand. Of course, it needs to work for everyone…
Jack Trowell’s suggestion of a variant for Excessive Force warrants exploring. That’s one option. There are some others I wanted to look at too.
I do think that some folk have failed to understand the value in rating a model’s resilience by both Tough and Armour. This allows for a much greater degree of variation than simply making anything that looks hard Armour 3 or 4. That approach would effectively make many things identical in terms of resilience, which I think is less interesting. By using a combination of Tough and Armour models can not only have different levels of overall resilience, but also that resilience can degrade differently against different weapons, which I think adds far more interest to the tactical environment.
A quick aside for all you guys that have blogs or websites of your own: are you getting a huge increase in spam in the last few days? I’ve gone from 1 or 2 a day that sneak past the automatic filters, to 2-3 dozen for each of the last few days.
I’m assuming it’s the Shellshock bug. My guess is that it’s people hijacking computers to autosend huge amounts of extra digital crap and until people can patch their systems and update the filters it’s likely to continue đŠ
Please bear with me while this continues. I’m trying to keep the place clean, honest đ
(I am, of course, assuming that nobody wants to buy a goose down jacket, or a mechanical digger… )
Before we get into any new rules in the upcoming Kickstarter, what did you all think of the two experimental rules I posted some months back for Deadzone? If you have no idea what I’m on about I’ll wait while you refresh your memory (they are here and here).
There was some discussion at the time, but now you’ve had a few months to play them what do you think? First impressions are useful, but even more useful is experience. Have you been using them? Did they unbalance anything else?
Do you think these rules should be made official?
I don’t often look at Indiegigo. It’s not that I don’t like it, simply that it never crosses my mind to, so overpowering is the brilliant marketing of Kickstarter. However, every now and again I bump into something that looks like a good plan and happens to be on there. The latest of these is a painting book called Figopedia by JĂ©rĂ©mie Bonamant Teboul of Figone.
Not long ago I bought his painting DVDs and the fact that I’ve pledged for this book too should tell you a bit about what I think of them.
There are a large number of very talented designers, sculptors and painters hiding in the obscure corners of Europe. It’s a pool of games and miniatures that doesn’t always overlap with the English-speaking world of games, and we miss out on some real gems for that reason. JĂ©rĂ©mie in many ways is one way into one aspect of this – a continental way of thinking about painting which seems to me to be more painterly in many ways. Whether it’s useful for getting an army on the table is debatable, though that doesn’t mean there aren’t a wide selection of intriguing ideas to consider as well as plenty of eye candy.
Oh, and if you’re like me and don’t speak any useful amount of French, the English text starts half way down the project page đ
Mantic’s announced a Deadzone expansion Kickstarter, featuring the Veer-myn (among other things). This post is really just to act as a place for you to add any comments on that, if you have any thoughts you’d like to share. Some folks have already posted on the DZ FAQ page. I can’t see how I can move those comments to this thread, so I’ll list a few of the ideas here before I delete them:
Sounds like you imagine the Veer-myn to be a sneaky and stinky bunch đ
Anyway, we’ve not had much in the way of internal discussions on this yet, so if you have some ideas then now is the best time to throw them into the pot.
What would you do?
Following on from a question on the FAQ thread, I’ve been re-reading the rules concerning the way certain cards work. It isn’t really as clear as I’d like so I thought I’d try to make it clearer here.
The cards in question are the ones that give actions, or things that work “exactly like” them. For example, the cards called Courage and Move.
The first line of the rules on card play says that cards are played “in addition to actions”. What this means is that the card gives the model an action that is not restricted by the normal limitation of only being allowed to use a given action once per Turn. In other words, you get all your normal actions and the card is on top.
Other than the general exception of card play being “in addition to actions”, other aspects of the card effect are “exactly like” the action in question. This means that they are restricted in when they can be used, exactly like the action itself. So, assuming I haven’t done an action yet this Turn, I can’t use a Move card if I couldn’t take a Move action in this situation, and I can’t use a Courage card if I couldn’t Get Mean!
I hope that’s clearer.
Incidentally, it does make me think of a series of possible future battle cards that might work when actions wouldn’t normally be allowed. They’ll have a nasty tendency to create loopholes, but might be worth exploring đ
I watched a documentary on some headless Romans while I was having my tea (as you do), Â and it brought up a question I’d like to ask you guys.
It’s not about the main point of the story (though that is interesting too), it’s about their recreations of the Romans. Not having painted a Roman since I was a wee lad, I’d never really thought about how many different skin colours you’d find in a legion, century, or even a single contubernium. Now I actually come to think about it they should be a mix of all sorts of people from all over the Empire, and increasingly so as time wears on (and the recruiters get ever more desperate to fill the ranks). Now I know this harks back to the article I posted the other day, but I promise you this is just a coincidence.
Anyway, to my question.
Does anyone know of any published research on the ethnic origins of individual legionaries? Books, articles, whatever. I’m thinking about the origins of the men themselves rather than the nominal origins of the legions, which are unlikely to remain representative for long. Strontium isotope testing is unlikely to have been done on everyone in a cemetery, but there may be papyri or other stuff kicking about. Just wondering. I know of a few snippets from various places, but I really wanted a larger scale analysis.
And I know that I can paint things whatever I like. Happy to. I just like to know what the actual history is (if I can) before I ignore it đ
Having just finished re-reading some of Graham Sumner’s excellent books about the Roman uniform colour debate it would be an other facet that would not only make the legion look rather less uniform. The more I read, the more that Victorian textbook ideal is looking unlikely.
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