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Yeah, Terminators are a weird one - I think they're fine defensively, but they don't hit as hard as they should.

Grenade harnesses and vexillas (vexillae?) are things I'd love to revisit, as they were very late additions and got barely any testing.

It's always fun to revisit old projects, though! The other day I was thinking of a way to remove the dice from Gorechosen - I think it'd appeal to certain people a lot more without them! Might have to rework some ideas for future projects...

 lagoon83 wrote:
Yeah, Terminators are a weird one - I think they're fine defensively, but they don't hit as hard as they should.

Grenade harnesses and vexillas (vexillae?) are things I'd love to revisit, as they were very late additions and got barely any testing.

It's always fun to revisit old projects, though! The other day I was thinking of a way to remove the dice from Gorechosen - I think it'd appeal to certain people a lot more without them! Might have to rework some ideas for future projects...

Yeah, terminators would be about right if they just had a bit more punch in them. Now, they kind of work, but damn if it doesn't take a lot of trying to win in the missions where you have only those. Some other fixes might be applicable as well, if one wants to push the game in that direction: you could have two terminators fit in a single hex (more blammo per action, possibility for utterly devastating double flamers in a larger battle) or perhaps my personal favourite, make them durable like heroes and let every terminator ignore their first death. That would help their problem of always being outnumbered without needing obscene amounts of dakka, as arms races never end too well in games. It also fits the theme of the best personal protection in the galaxy. It never works like it should in other games, could it do so here at least ? Let a man have dreams!

As for vexillas, yeah... they are devastating. Sergeant + vexilla + dude trio murders about anything it touches. If one wanted less oomph, the vexilla could be changed to grant rerolls up to the number of guys in the squad or something similar like lightning claws do. Nifty, but not earth shattering. For some shattering, let's math

Sarge (2) with pistol (+1) and a chainsword (+1) and two normal guys (2+2) are a squad. Pretty heavy already, but let's say they are next to the Chaplain (+1 x 3) and use Frenzied Charge (+1 x 3). That alone gives them 14 dice, which makes for 7 hits, of which maybe 2-3 are criticals and give about 1-2 more hits from the chainsword, which easily kills a terminator or a couple of normal guys barring extraordinary luck. Now we add a vexilla there for 10-11 basic hits and 2-3 chainsword strikes and anything goes splat. For extra lulz, throw a sacrifice there for +6 dice and crush your enemy, drive them before you and hear the lamentations of their commanders. Actually, I forgot the vexilla rerolls everything so add a few more hits there as you also reroll the extra dice from the chainsword

Many are the times that humble sword has ripped the dreadnought to bits, as well as captain Aethon or the terminators. Even ordinary guys do 4-5 hits with he vexilla without any buffs, making them a scary prospect to take on. Luckily that is hard to spring on your opponent and the bearer can be shot to shreds by good positioning, but such are the vagaries of war.

Yeah, two Terminators to an area could work - although I've got a very fuzzy recollection of having tried that at one point in testing, which means I might have removed it for a reason! As is always the case with game design, the only answer would be to test it, test it, test it...

Letting them ignore their first death is fine from a mechanical point of view, but it would break one of the design limitations - keeping components to a minimum! I was dead chuffed with one of the reviews of BaC when it came out, which praised how the game had so few components but didn't feel like it was missing them. I had a very tight budget for cards, dice, punchboard etc., so it was nice that people didn't think that hurt the design.

So yeah, the characters can totally have a two-wound system because their profile card only refers to one model. With the Terminators, though, you'd need some way of marking that they're wounded. You can't do it on their card, because it's one card for all the Terminators on the board. You also can't put, say, numbers on the card and number the models, because as I said in another post, another design limitation was that people had to be able to put these models together and paint them for playing 40k / Age of Darkness, so we couldn't do anything that meant you *had* to mark them in a certain way. You couldn't use wound markers, because that's extra components.

So yeah, it's a puzzle! If you can think of a way to solve it, I'd love to hear it

 lagoon83 wrote:
Yeah, two Terminators to an area could work - although I've got a very fuzzy recollection of having tried that at one point in testing, which means I might have removed it for a reason! As is always the case with game design, the only answer would be to test it, test it, test it...

Terminators use bigger bases. In order to squeeze two Termies into one hex you would need bigger board tiles. Bigger board tiles mean bigger boxes or less hexes on a single board tile.

Bigger hexes mean you would need to have at least 4 tactical marines in a hex because only 3 would look... weird.

More Marines in a hex mean more shots so bigger probability of critical hits. Suddenly criticals become a little less special (you would need at least D8 dice or maybe even D10 instead of D6).

Also 4 tactical marines mean killing this most important guy with heavy weapon or Seargent is harder to do (as he would be taken out last). I suppose you would have to introduce rule that if you score 3 criticals shooter can choose which miniature is being targetted first instead of the owner of the miniature.

4 tactical marines mean you might have to limit the shots of heavy weapons to maybe 4 dice. Perhaps limit the maximum number of dice a squad can shoot to like 10 dice. It is to prevent one unit totally outshooting everything that come into view with a bucket load of dice.

Base size is an issue, yes. The current hexes are about 6.5 cm wide if I remember correctly, which is too small for two 40 mm bases. Personally, not a biggie, as that isn't a very interesting direction to go anyway.

Lagoon83, I like the component simplicity in the game, especially in this age of FFG and other board game companies that flood the table with clutter, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea that they wouldn't fit on the punchcard. Say you want to include half a dozen wound markers in the game, maybe a blast or a blood drop half the size of an activation point counter. The punchcards have space for that and even if not that, the game includes more point counters than is needed (15 per side). Sure, it isn't the most elegant thing ever, but I feel it might help the game a bit.

 Sherrypie wrote:

Lagoon83, I like the component simplicity in the game, especially in this age of FFG and other board game companies that flood the table with clutter

Ohh yeah. FFG has some weird talent to make rulesbooks very, very big. I played like a dozen years ago first incarnations of 40k CCG by Sabretooth Games. The LCG 40k Conquest that FFG made is based on those old CCG rules but instead of giving me a big leaflet with all the rules on 2 sides they actually have made 2 books (1 rulebook and 1 guidebook) with 20 pages each. Even with so many pages (or because of this) i had much more issues with the new rules than i ever had when playing those old CCG.

Ofcourse the new game added lots of additional gadgets and paper coins to track different pools.

Anyway Ockham's Razor is the way to go.

P.S. If i get some more time i will try to test 2 Termies/4 marines on 1 hex with a maximum of 10 dice per attack with 3 criticals giving you the possibiliy to choose the model taking the hit.

 Sherrypie wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

I have yet to play Prospero - it isn't as good?

Sadly, it isn't. I get that Hewitt wanted to design a second game with different mechanics, but in my mind it just fell a bit flat.

The game works in kind of alternating phases (where BaC alternates actions), except one side can crunch a massive advantage from that. The resolution system uses paired dice (eq. my highest vs. your highest, then the next and so on), which massively favors the side with more dice to throw and on top of that the Wolves get a bonus for ties, which turns most matches to foregone conclusions before first turn is over. The mission balance is much worse than it is in BaC. Given that the psychic powers are pretty interesting and fun to use, it is a shame the whole is a bit of a let down. It would have been amazing if this had carried on and expanded upon the core game fron BaC.

I wrote more details here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/713493.page

I lost track of that thread. My bad. You posted a good write up. It deserved a rebuttal. I just posted one.

 Gobbla wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

I have yet to play Prospero - it isn't as good?

Sadly, it isn't. I get that Hewitt wanted to design a second game with different mechanics, but in my mind it just fell a bit flat.

The game works in kind of alternating phases (where BaC alternates actions), except one side can crunch a massive advantage from that. The resolution system uses paired dice (eq. my highest vs. your highest, then the next and so on), which massively favors the side with more dice to throw and on top of that the Wolves get a bonus for ties, which turns most matches to foregone conclusions before first turn is over. The mission balance is much worse than it is in BaC. Given that the psychic powers are pretty interesting and fun to use, it is a shame the whole is a bit of a let down. It would have been amazing if this had carried on and expanded upon the core game fron BaC.

I wrote more details here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/713493.page

I lost track of that thread. My bad. You posted a good write up. It deserved a rebuttal. I just posted one.

Heh, I mused some more on that there. Let's carry on in that thread

 lagoon83 wrote:
One interesting point - the WWII board game Memoir '44 (and other games in the Command & Colours series) has some surprising similarities to BaC. I played it for the first time about a month after Calth was released and I had a sudden sinking feeling and felt like a complete unoriginal hack. I'd been so excited about my fresh ideas, and it turned out they'd been around for ages! Thankfully it's different enough that I don't think anyone's ever accused me of nicking ideas... But anyway, for anyone wanting to expand Calth, I might recommend checking out Memoir '44 or Battlelore (same thing but with fantasy armies), as they might have some interesting ideas you could borrow.

I played so much Memoir '44 back in the day, even got a friend to get our boxes together in one place and we played the 6 player overlord mission. Tons of fun. A great example of how an incredibly simple ruleset can be tons of fun.

I recently ordered a second box as I have finished painting the contents of the first box.

It is now no longer available, looks like I may have received the last copy.

Glad I ordered it when I did, but sad to see the game is now out of print. It also seems that the Burning of Prospero is also out of print.

I recently dug my copy – shamefully bought purely to cannibalise the models – out of storage and had a game. What fun! I've decided to build some figures to replace the missing models, and have come to the Word Bearers. The first couple are here:





Since I've still got some to build, any thoughts on interesting weapon choices? I'm not really talking about 'the best'; merely what equipment made for entertaining games for you? Flamer and heavy bolter? Sergeant with sword?

Sergeant with a chainsword, properly supported with a banner and cards, is the killiest unit in the game with enough dice to tear through anything that can be stuffed in one hex. Anything.

I'd say pretty much all equipment has a place and the variety offered allows for slightly different plans, though I'd keep sergeants without combiweapons to encourage all sides having a few combat monsters on the move instead of hunkering down guns blazing. Using different weapons on both sides is also something I like, to go along the often asymmetrical forces.

Very nice conversions! I would like Primaris to be a little more converted on the legs but overall looks nice.

Sherrypie wrote:Sergeant with a chainsword, properly supported with a banner and cards, is the killiest unit in the game with enough dice to tear through anything that can be stuffed in one hex. Anything.
I'd say pretty much all equipment has a place and the variety offered allows for slightly different plans, though I'd keep sergeants without combiweapons to encourage all sides having a few combat monsters on the move instead of hunkering down guns blazing. Using different weapons on both sides is also something I like, to go along the often asymmetrical forces.

Thanks for the ideas. I'm leaning towards the Word Bearers having a squad with flamer and missile launcher, and a squad with melta gun and heavy bolter. One sergeant with classic bolt pistol and chainsword armament; but not sure on the other.

For the Ultramarines, perhaps a plasma gun and heavy bolter? I'd like my Terminators to pull double-duty for Space Hulk, so will likely look there for inspiration on armament.

Glumy wrote:Very nice conversions! I would like Primaris to be a little more converted on the legs but overall looks nice.

Thank you. I've trimmed away the ankle 'nubs', as that's a detail I dislike, but I quite like the knee fins for Word Bearers.


I did take them off my Blood Angels, but that's a bit off-topic.

Word Bearer cards allow extra movement, giving more mileage to flamers and meltaguns, whereas the Ultramarines give more dakka through grenades, LoS shenanigans and extra actions. Plasma works well with them.

For terminators I'd make a varied lot, as claws are pretty effective against infantry and powerfist alone kinda flubs (a singular termie with a fist is a bit weak). The heavy flamer is very nice, especially when combined with extra actions and seeing through a LoS block.

Aaaaaaaa but give them proper bolters not this Primaris armament! Theyre too big!

Thanks for the feedback, all. I've managed to get a few polished off, thought I'd share them:

Kurtha Sedd

Those are great, Apologist! Imposing and dark like proper monsters they are.

I loved it - but assembled the models with Ultra's getting Mk3 armour and Word Bearers Mk4, likewise space wolves Mk3 and 'sons Mk4. Wanted to show how the cards had been set up prior to the actions by Horus determining who was getting resupplied first.