Quirkworthy

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 🙂

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.

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?

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 🙂