Foundry God of Battles Day Tomorrow

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Quirkworthy

GoB_LOGO on white webWith all this Deadzone frenzy it would be easy to forget that I’ve designed other games and that we’ve got a few folk congregating at Foundry HQ in Nottingham to play one of them tomorrow: God of Battles.

This saturday (4th of May) there’s also going to be some painting tuition on hand from Will Hannah who you might remember from his days sculpting pirates for Foundry. A jolly nice range they are too. I’ve never met the chap and look forward to meeting him tomorrow.

If you fancy coming down for some painting tips, some God of Battles games or just to snaffle some tea and biscuits we’d love to see you there.

Don’t worry if you haven’t got an army or don’t know the game – I’ll be happy to run you though a demo.

Posted in God of Battles | 8 Comments

Deadzone Designer’s Notes: Turn Sequence

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Quirkworthy

One of the facets of Deadzone that has surprised a few gamers who’ve played my other games is the idea that it has an i-go-u-go turn system. It’s just not what I do. So why have I done it this time? Am I losing my marbles?

Well no, at least not all of them. It starts out as an i-go-u go system – it’s just not where it ends.

These days i-go-u-go systems are sometimes thought of as a bit old fashioned or even clunky, especially in skirmish games where people might expect more fluidity or interaction. However, all these good things come at a price.

 

Go Team!

Games such as Infinity allow a great deal of flexibility in the way you act within an i-go-u-go system (with interrupts from the opponent). To explain briefly for those who haven’t played it, each turn you get an action per model and may then give out those actions as you see fit. So if you had 10 models you would get 10 actions and you could then  theoretically put all of them onto your best model. Of course there are wrinkles, but this is the core idea. Unfortunately this tends to involve half the army standing about doing nothing except feeding actions to the really good bits, hence the fan nickname of cheerleaders for the cheap troops.

An alternative action based route might be to force people to use, say, half the army one turn and the other half the next, but I felt this too rigid and restrictive. It does avoid the cheerleader issue though.

 

Testing…

Early versions of DZ experimented with a variety of action based and alternate activation mechanics, but each one caused as many issues as it raised. The God of Battles system of alternate activations works well for the slower pace of a field battle, but in a skirmish I wanted to be able to act with fire teams in close mutual support. I wanted rushes of units, bursting through doorways into rooms or out of alleyways. Alternate actions breaks this up.

Then there are push-your-luck systems like Warmaster and that could work, though it suffers from a similar focus on the good bits of the army at the expense of the rest who get to stand about and watch.

Having not been happy with the first experiments I went back to basics: i-go-u-go. Each model on your side would do something, then each model on mine. This allowed for team actions, it made everyone do something and left no cheerleaders behind, all of which was good. Unfortunately it was also a bit predictable and cold. I don’t really like this as a pure system, though it works in some contexts. Here I felt that I just had to mess with it. I couldnt’ resist. So, I’ve added a set of Battle Cards for each faction, tailored to their specific fighting style. They can be played in addition to the basic actions of a model and allow them extra moves, bonuses to actions and some unique actions.

So instead of a system that says you can only act with half the models per turn (leaving cheerleaders) you have a system that lets you act with everyone once and some twice, which at least means that all your army is involved. A sort of one and a half activation instead of a half.

To encourage interaction between players there are several cards that can be played during your opponent’s turn and then there’s overwatch. So even though it’s i-go-u-go it doesn’t feel like a vanilla version of that concept at all and both players have reason to be paying attention at all times. It also encourages synergies and support, with models providing covering fire as their mates move across open ground. I really like this and it feels quite credible. Almost all I read these days is historical books, mostly memoirs, and this gives an oddly credible flow to the battle and the tactics you need to use to do well. I’m finding that the people who understand real world tactics are doing better than those that just treat it as another game, which is interesting. Part of the next phase of development will be to build on this and expand the effect.

Going back to overwatch for a moment, this also keeps your opponent honest in his turns. With so many actions in a player turn you might be able to overwhelm the opposition without overwatch. As it stands it works very well to balance out the wave assaults and mass fusillades. Other things that help are some of the Battle Cards which allow you to mess with your opponent somewhat. One forces him to discard, perhaps messing with his plan. Another takes away a model’s action for the next turn, and at a key moment this Distraction can cause havoc. Still more add to your own dice rolls, making it easier to survive attacks or to ignore the effects of suppression. Of course, there are only very limited supplies of such cards, and so managing that resource becomes very important.

Overall, what with one thing and another, the turn sequence in Deadzone works very well to both allow concerted efforts, team actions and synergies whilst keeping both sides involved. The fact that it plays so quickly stops a turn dragging on and there are enough unpredictable events to keep things fresh. But you don’t have to take my word for it for very long. The Alpha rules will be uploaded tomorrow so you can try them yourself 🙂

Posted in Random Thoughts | 23 Comments

Deadzone Designer’s Notes: Grids & Line Of Sight

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Quirkworthy

Probably the most unusual feature of Deadzone is its combination of a board game grid and skirmish game Line of Sight (LOS). This needs explaining as I don’t know of another game that uses this approach.

 

The Challenge

Those of you who have played my other games will know that I like fast and simple games which include a lot of tactical decision making and choice. The challenge for me here was to bring that design ethos into a skirmish game environment and avoid as many as possible of the traditional pitfalls and difficulties.

These problems tend to congregate around movement and who can see what. Getting tape measures into and between scenery can be awkward and whether things are just in or just out of range is a frequent debate that is only made worse by the measuring being difficult to do accurately.

These problems tend to multiply enormously when you add a third dimension as we wanted to do here. We had all manner of plans for buildings and other terrain and it would be silly not to have that impact on the way the game played.

Gridded boards, on the other hand, have a habit of putting off figure gamers who find their placement of miniatures to be vague and unsatisfying. They want to deal with the exact positioning of their sniper and decide their careful use of cover.

LOS is the biggie. Can you take the shot or not? There have been all sorts of different approaches to this over the years, and most of them are quite fiddly and not very fast to implement. Some work in their own context but would struggle in the confines of a Deadzone board. For example, some rules require you to see a particular part of the model (torso or head or both), some require you to see a certain percentage of the models, whilst others require you to ignore the model and calculate an abstract volume which the model nominally occupies regardless of pose. Each has its merits, but how do you work out whether you can see 24% or 32? If you must see a model’s torso what if they have a backpack? And theoretical volumes? No thanks. Not in the clutter of a close urban environment where shots are often through windows, past bulkheads, girders or other urban clutter. Can I see the space above the model which it nominally occupies? Past that walkway and through that window? Not very practical, and certainly neither slick nor intuitive.

So there were a number of issues that were obvious from the start and all of which made rules skirmish traditionally fiddly and muddy to apply. How to get round this? Well copying what had gone before obviously wasn’t going to work so I had to think of a new approach.

What I’ve gone for is a hybrid system that takes the best of both the figure gaming and board game approaches.

 

The Grid

The Deadzone playing area is a 2 foot mat that is divided into 3″ squares, 8 on a side. The terrain conforms to this grid and is also made in 3″ square tiles. The art is of the concrete slab foundation that is common for Corporation settlements and military bases alike and so the grid isn’t so much imposed on a background as an integral part of the way it should look.

In the game the grid is used for movement and ranges (not that most things have ranges). This obviates the need for a tape measure. It is also used for scatter, avoiding the need for templates. It is used for area fire like suppression (called Blazing Away in DZ) or blasts from grenades or missiles (avoiding the need for the other templates).

The grid is not used for LOS.

 

I See You

So how does LOS work? Well, unlike games such as DUST, in Deadzone a model’s exact positioning matters. He is in a given square, but he is also in a specific place within that square. To make sense of why you need to know a bit about shooting stuff in Deadzone.

When you are firing with a model there is a choice of two modes depending on what you’re using. These modes are Point Fire and Area Fire. Each calculates LOS slightly differently.

Point Fire: this is an attempt to shoot a specific target exactly. The pinnacle would be the sniper’s head shot. The aim is to injure or kill the target.

Point Fire LOS is calculated by looking from the model’s perspective. If you take a model’s eye view, can you see the target? By seeing the target I don’t mean can you see 23.5% of its abdomen or anything silly like that, I mean can you see it at all: yes or no. That’s pretty easy to decide. If you can’t see it at all then you can’t shoot it with Point Fire. If you can see every last bit of it then you have a Clear Shot and this gets you a bonus. The likelihood is that you will be able to see only part of the model and the clutter of the environment will obscure the rest. That allows a normal shot.

As an aside, you’ll ask how much of which bit of the model you need to see? What about pony tails, guns sticking out or whatever? I’ve gone for the simplest approach: any of it. We are already abstracting a moving, living creature to a static miniature; already abstracting the fact that both sides will be moving, changing position and stance and so on simultaneously into random slices of time we call turns. The easiest thing to is to say if you can see any of that model then you can see enough to shoot. After all, the model doesn’t change pose during the game. You, the player, put the model where it is and you could have chosen a million different positions. If you missed the angle your opponent moves to in order to take a shot then why start an argument about what he can see then? Why not just let him make the shot he’s earned by his tactical acumen? Explanations aside, this works very well on the table, is lightning fast to play, and is as free from arguments as you’re going to get.

Area Fire: this is an attempt to keep the enemy’s head down or to drop in a round that has a blast area and so does not need to be perfectly accurate to do its job. Examples would be Blazing Away with an assault weapon, lobbing a frag grenade or popping smoke.

Area Fire LOS still starts with a model’s eye view – after all they’re still doing the shooting. However, in this case all you need to see is any part of the target square, and you can target an empty square if you like. This is a binary question: you can either see it or you can’t. There is no bonus for a Clear Shot at the floor.

 

Implications

What does this mean in practice? Well movement is extremely quick in terms of rules – the only bit that slows things down is the player’s decision about exactly where to move to, and I’m happy with players spending time thinking and deciding on their tactics (I just want to avoid taking time arguing about rules).

Scatter, blast areas, where people end up after they’ve been blown off something by grenades and so on is incredibly easy and sorted with a single dice roll (unless they fall off something or are thrown into a wall which needs a second roll).

Line of Sight becomes the intuitive approach that I used when I was 7, peering over my Airfix soldiers to see who they could see among the defenders of my wood block forts. It’s literally so simple a child could do it. Can you see any of the model/square you want to shoot at: yes or no? It couldn’t really be much easier.

However, simplicity and speed of use haven’t stopped this allowing for all manner of exact positioning advantages and a great deal of jockeying for position among the walls and rubble of the battlefield. That’s the combination I was looking for: simple and fast rules plus lots of tactical decisions and skill.

 

A Brief Note On Cover

It’s worth mentioning that I have abstracted cover slightly in a similar way to area terrain in a normal skirmish game. Terrain is another difficult area to simulate well, so in Deadzone I have ruled that a square is defined as cover or not. This means that the modelling aspect is allowed free reign, and that you are able to easily add more cover if you like with a wide variety of options. In rules terms it makes cover valuable but not excessively so, and adds texture and tactical variety to the battlefield.

 

Results

The end result is fast, clean and intuitive whilst retaining the details of positioning and allowing skill in setting up ambushes or crossfires. I’m very happy with it and can’t see why nobody used it before.

Posted in Deadzone | 99 Comments

How’s It Going?

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Quirkworthy

Very well, thanks.

My New Plan to post something every day seems to be working alarmingly smoothly. Although I mentioned it on the 31st of March, I’d actually been following it since the 21st, which means that I’ve managed a post every day for over a month without missing any. It does seem to suit me a lot better than my previous system so I’ll be carrying on like this.

There is a downside in that the endless march of new things sweeps interesting posts and discussions away rather quicker than I’d like, so I need to rethink how I archive stuff and review tags and suchlike. Just because a post has been bumped down the front page doesn’t stop it being worth commenting on or reading. I know I read all the comments that come through even though I may not have time to answer them all immediately. I do get there eventually. It does bring up the subject of what’s worth keeping/archiving and what’s ephemeral. Many of my articles are intended to be discussion seeds and reference that is worth reviewing regardless of when you find them, and so these need to be archived accordingly. Not everything is worth keeping though.

So what have you got to look forward to over the next month(s)? More of the same to start with. More rambles, a lot more design notes and conceptual stuff (on DZ, for example), more reviews, some painting and modelling work in my newly cleared painting area, and other things besides. Some of my games have expansions and additions waiting to be posted, and others need proper FAQs. I’m curious about whether video posts would help or at least add to my writing in parts. I don’t want to just talk to camera, but for some FAQs and certainly if I try battle reports and tactics articles they may be helpful. That will be a bit of learning on my part.

There’s always loads to do, and as long as you guys are happy to come back to read and comment I’ll be here posting.

See you tomorrow 🙂

Posted in Random Thoughts | 17 Comments

Deadzone – Incoming Articles

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Quirkworthy

This is a heads up for what I’m currently writing. If you’re interested in DZ you might want to subscribe (over there, on the right) so you get an email when the new post goes up.

cautious-door-entryShhh… something’s coming…

Firstly, I’m almost done with the Alpha. It’s ended up as a little scenario you can play, and it’s been a blast developing it. When I say a blast, what I mean is that I keep adding explosives into it, and I have to say that I’m especially pleased with the cinematic way they now work. High point of yesterday’s games was the mad antics of an Enforcer Assault trooper.

There he goes, charging into a Stage 3 – he injures him, but before he can give the killing blow they’re joined by the Stage 3’s mate. Feeling a little outnumbered and without support, the Assault trooper dodges out of combat, picks up a grenade that had been dropped earlier and lobs in straight back into the fight he’s just escaped from. The resulting explosion kills the injured foe, injures the second and blasts him out of cover and into the open where he is promptly shot by the Enforcer’s mate from a distant rooftop. The Assault trooper himself is entirely too close to the explosion and is blasted backwards, but is saved by his robust armour. A couple of turns later the Assault trooper is making his way back to the Enforcer position when he picks up another item only to find that it’s been booby trapped. Again this blasts him into the next square, and again his armour saves him. 

Anyway, those rules will be up towards the end of this week, so there’s that to look forward to. You get to play with grenades too 😉

Secondly, I’m going to start posting up a series of design theory articles for Deadzone, here on Quirkworthy. The Kickstarter should have some game play videos up soon, and these are quite broad, especially the first one. I anticipate more of the lack of understanding I’m already finding because I’ve done some odd, or possibly unique things with the rules, and without you being told you’ve got no reference for them. It would perhaps be easier if I could just mind-meld with you all, but there would be side-effects.

The articles are both a chance for me to explain the thinking behind the rules and your chance to ask questions. It’s my way of trying to get everyone on the same page. By doing a series rather than just one I can hopefully keep a bit of a theme in each post’s comments so that we can all find things a bit more easily. The first one will go up tomorrow.

All of these will be linked from the main Deadzone page in the top bar, so if you want to bookmark a link that’s probably the easiest option.

 

Posted in Deadzone | 31 Comments

What Has Kickstarter Ever Done For Us?

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Quirkworthy

What have the RomansWith DeadZone live on Kickstarter I’m dealing with a lot more KS comments than usual and reading a lot more forums about it. Well, Deadzone plus pledging on a couple myself recently.

One thing I came across this morning was a comment that said, in essence, that Mantic was too big to need Kickstarter. On the face of it that might sound reasonable, but I think it falls apart when you look closer. Of course, I do freelance work for Mantic so you might think me biased. On the other hand my thinking applies to everyone, not just them. Even GW 😉

I’ll give you an example as illustration of what KS does. Mantic’s Goblin army release was 1 plastic tool and a bunch of metal releases. That was without Kickstarter. Their Kings of War Kickstarter campaign funded 22 new tools. Notice any difference? For Mantic customers this is great because they get a bucketload of models at very good prices. This is what people usually focus on. However, equally importantly, the funding means that the models get done years ahead of when they would have been made, if they would have ever been made at all. Partly this is a question of cash to pay for the tools up front, but crucially it also takes away the risk. A company that would have had to take a punt and hope that the tool was going to sell can find out in advance if it’s popular enough through Kickstarter. If nobody backs the campaign then you need to think again. That’s what happened to Gates of Antares – they started well and then began to lose money and backers so they cancelled it. I’m sure it will come back later when they’ve thought about what went wrong. And that’s a good thing. If we assume their £300K funding level was right they might have been in a bit of a mess if they’d spent that on their own and then got little support and sold only a third of what they needed to to even get their money back, never mind a profit.

With one-man-band operations this is where you hear of people losing their houses. They take out a second mortgage, convinced they have the next Monopoly, Settlers or whatever only to find out that the market disagrees. Kickstarter allows them to find out without having to live in a cardboard box by the canal if they’re wrong.

This principle applies to larger companies as well as one-man-bands, just on a bigger scale. I recently pledged on a new edition of the brilliant Uncle stories. He wanted just £7K and got lots more. That worked out very well for him and he’s ecstatic. Going back to Gates of Antares for a moment, their costs were vastly higher, so that amount of money is not going to let them do anything. They actually had £100K pledged, but that was only a third of their target…

So I don’t think that size of company has anything to do with it. There is always a level of risk for a self-funded project, and the proportional damage this could do if it fails to come off is just as bad.

For the customer, the flip side of all this is that they get to see projects which would probably not have been attempted at all, certainly not in the form they will now get them.  Overall, I’d say that KS means three things:

  1. More cool stuff gets made that would otherwise have happened. Things like Secret Weapon plastic terrain boards are the sort of thing that might fit in here. Was Mr Justin ever going to fund them out of his own pocket? He made a brilliant start, but all of it? Seems unlikely, and if he did then we’re still looking at number 3 and possibly 2 as well.
  2. What gets made can be done with a higher spec than if it was self funded. This is reflected in the quality upgrades you get during a KS campaign. Not just the quantity, but also sometimes the quality of components can be improved. For example, my Uncle books will be on higher quality art paper than originally specced because the KS did well. Usually this improved quality is reflected in any eventual trade launch too, so it’s also good for those who don’t pledge.
  3. Stuff that does get made can be done faster. I pledged for the very handsome looking Heroes of Normandie and I’d be amazed if they could have produced all the stuff they are now going to get to us in the next 6 months within 2-3 years without KS.

So, products you’d never have seen with better quality components and lots of free goodies in less time than otherwise possible – and all from companies that are (thanks to KS) more secure and can go on making the toys you want for longer.

Is any company too big to benefit from KS?

Posted in Deadzone, The Business of Games | 58 Comments

Smokin’

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Quirkworthy

Answering some questions on the BGG forums this morning I noticed that Deadzone had just snuck onto their Hotness list (on the left). Then I noticed that there is a separate list for people and companies, and it seems that I’m blessed with Hotness too. Looked in the mirror and had a good old laugh about that one 😀

Silliness aside, this is great news and is always a buzz to see. Thanks to everyone for making this so popular.

Now I must get back to playing the thing and writing it all up in my bestest neat handwriting 😉

Posted in Deadzone | 3 Comments

Deadzone Plague Stage 1 Eye Candy

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Quirkworthy

Plague-lord-fin-009

Here’s a close up of one of the signature models of the range – the Stage 1A Plague. Rémy Tremblay’s blog shows him off in great detail with loads of pictures. Surf on over for the full horror!

Posted in Deadzone | 4 Comments

Deadzone Kickstarter Rules FAQ

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Quirkworthy

deadzone-logo-blackLast update 27th April 2013

This page deals with all the rules questions that you might have about the Deadzone Kickstarter rules. When the full rules have been published and the game released in its final form I will replace this with a living FAQ for that.

Please read the questions and answers below to see if your query has already been answered. If not, feel free to ask in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

If you have any questions on the game rules, or if you see a post on a forum somewhere that does, then please direct them here so that I can deal with them all in a single document. That way questions get answered consistently and everyone gets the benefit 🙂

FAQ

The following are dealt with in 3 steps rather than the more common 2. As well as a Question (Q) and an Answer (A) I’ve included a Discussion (D) section  so that I can talk around the topic as needed. This might explain why a rule is as it is, the history of its development or the tactical implications among other things. The intention is to give you a better insight and understanding into the decisions behind the rules as well as the rules themselves.

Q: When will the rules be made public?

A: We’re aiming to put an Alpha version of the rules onto the Kickstarter by the end of next week (5th May).

D: I’m playtesting all weekend in-between writing up corrections, then it needs a day or two in layout to make it pretty and get the sample cards organised. The aim is to get a condensed version that will allow you to see the core rules and let us know what you think. It will contain examples of the different elements, but not all instances.

Q: What’s an Alpha?

A: An early version of the rules.

D: Rules normally progress through 4 main stages with smaller increments within them. The first is Proposal/Concept, then Alpha, then Beta and finally Release versions. I could call this a Beta (that’s what people normally call things that get released to the public regardless of their state), but realistically there are a number of things which still need to be addressed before we get there in my eyes.

Firstly, what is done? Well the core concepts and processes have been developed and the game works as something you can play – it’s just not been refined enough yet for me to be entirely happy. What has yet to be finished is the details and balancing of the many weapons, troop types, faction specific cards and so on. I’ve got roughs for most of these, they just aren’t all balanced yet. You can help with that.

Then there’s the Kickstarter. To a large extent you guys have the control of how much goes in the final Deadzone rulebook. I’ve proposed a raft of stuff to Ronnie, and he’s tipped a stack more ideas into the mix, but whether we can get them all done or not depends on how well the KS does. It all takes time and time is money. If we get the funding then well be adding more factions, “locals”, extended campaign rules and loads more as well as all the extra models, terrain sprues and suchlike you’d expect from a successful Kickstarter campaign. This means that I can’t really call the rules a proper Beat because I don’t even know what’s going to be in the final version yet! 

So the Alpha will show you the kind of game Deadzone is and you can easily see where it’s going. If you’re interested you can even chip in and offer suggestions. Always happy to listen to good ideas 🙂

 Q: Will the rules include… ?

A: Maybe.

D: The final contents of the rules (and the game in general) depends on the success of the Kickstarter. See my discussion above.

Q: Can I play without the board?

A: yes, with a few house rules.

D: If you really don’t like the idea of a board you could easily adapt the rules to a plain table. You need rules for movement, ranges and scatter and all can be derived from the grid measurements (movement and ranges) or borrowed from other games (scatter). 

However, I personally see no real benefits and two distinct problems with doing this. Using a tape measure instead of the gridded board guarantees a slower game and also offers more opportunities for disagreements. I chose to use the board to make a slicker, faster and less fractious game as I like all those features. 

To keep things tidy, comments and questions will be deleted from this page once they have been addressed in the FAQ.

Posted in Deadzone | 111 Comments

1000 Backers For Deadzone

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Quirkworthy

deadzone-logo-whiteOver a thousand backers for Deadzone in under 5 hours. It’s a runaway freight train, going downhill with the wind behind it – and we haven’t even got to the really good stuff yet!

Posted in Deadzone | 15 Comments