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Let me first apologise if I’m breaking any forum rules, we do have a thread in the news and rumours but that is more to do with our miniatures and this is a post more about asking for your help with our game.

I’m pleased to be able to say that Thundercloud Miniatures is finally ready to release the beta version of our game “Avendora” and we are asking for your help to turn this into a game that you want to play.

WHAT IS AVENDORA?
Avendora is a 28mm fantasy squad based skirmish game typically played with between 4 and 20 miniatures (depending on factions chosen). The game is quite fast paced, with a typical game taking around 90 minutes to 2 hours from deployment to game end. The game rules have been written with ease of learning in mind and you should be able to start playing without spending hours referring back to the rules every time someone performs an action.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?
Avendora is a fast paced game that focuses heavily on tactical planning. Great effort has been taken to make sure the game should be won by the player who played a better game rather than the player who gets a lucky roll. This is partly done by the use of a “Fist full of dice” mechanic, but it was also a core aspect of the game and all the rules have been written with this in mind.

The game is also fun, quick to learn and from our initial testing well balanced, with 2 gamers of equal skill usually coming down to a nail biting finish to see who will win. The game also comes with a huge range of scenarios (and more are being worked on) to provide a break from the usual “pitched battle” that is common in other games.

The game also comes with an extensive backstory, detailing the history of each of the factions and why it is that they are fighting each other. However this is not included in the Beta rules as we did not want to bog you down with extra information.

OK I’M INTERESTED, WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM ME?
Simply put we need you to play the game and let us know your thoughts. Did you enjoy the game? What would you change? What worked and what didn’t? The game has undergone extensive Alpha testing but one of the designers has always been on hand during these tests and, with the best will in the world, we have no idea how a more general audience will receive the game and what loopholes they will find in the rules as they are currently written. We need you to try to break the game so that we can fix it prior to final release.

SO HOW DO I PLAY?
You can download our rules from the following link, https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s3hd3xr65vcb983/GQ0eHAaequ for anyone who doesn’t want to use Dropbox you can email us at contact@thundercloudminiatures.com and we will send you a copy of everything you need to play. Whilst we do eventually plan to release all the miniatures needed to play we are aware the we currently do not provide these. To enable you to find suitable proxy models for your games we have provided the base size for each unit in the army listings. We want to assure everyone that we will only use your email address to keep you informed of when new versions of the rules are available and it will not be used for marketing or sold to third parties.

FUTURE PLANS?
Work is still underway on these rules. We are currently working on more advanced terrain rules that will be part of the advanced rules and can be used to replace the basic rules if you choose. We are also quite a long way into our campaign rules, these are quite in depth and are another major focus of the game but we are still not 100% happy with how they are working so have not included them in the current rules available.

I WANT TO GIVE FEEDBACK THAT IS NOT COVERED ON THE FEEDBACK FORM
We would love to hear it, the feedback form is just a template to help focus you onto certain aspects of the game we want to know about, but we would love to hear any other feedback you may have.

WHATS IN IT FOR ME?
Whilst we would hope that the joy of playing a fun game and helping to make the game something you would want to play is incentive enough we also want to reward you for taking the time to help us make a great game. For this reason every battle report or game feedback that is provided to us will be entered into a prize draw to win both of our current miniatures, the Hiskari Bear Rider and the Shadow Dreadlord, shipped free anywhere in the world. The more games you play, and the more reports you provide, the more chances you have to win. This system does work a little on the honour system and we hope that people will not just submit reports without ever even trying the game. Any report that has obviously been fabricated will not be entered into the prize draw and we reserve the right to withdraw any valid entries of anyone found to be doing this.

WILL THE GAME BE FREE?
A valid question, Thundercloud Miniatures is a commercial business and as such the final game will not be free. We will however keep costs as low as possible and our current thinking is that a PDF version of the rules will cost no more than £2, more interactive or paperback versions of the rules would need to cover the printing/development and will likely cost more. We will of cause reward ALL Beta testers with a free PDF version of the final rules.

Ive downloaded it, and ill hopefully have a look around later. Ill let you know what i think.

Had a good look. The AP system does look a little complicated, as does the Fatigue counting.
The role to hit system isnt too bad. That said it could do with a little refining. Using a chart, rather than the add/minus system would be better.
The wound system is the same.
Also the complexity of each unit having a weapon that adds something to them. Whilst this looks cool it can still get a little OTT in larger games.
The fleshwound idea isnt bad, but is once again, a skirmish rule. Keeping track of all these in a big game will be a nightmare.
I would also give each race an army specific rule or two. This helps define them from one another.

On the whole though, it isnt bad. Well done!

Thanks Master Of Ordinance, your feedback is appreciated.

You're not the first one to ask for a chart to reference the hits and wounds, and we will be putting one into our next draft of the rules which we will release once we've had a little more feedback.

The AP system can look a little complicated, but we've found that once you start playing you can pick it up pretty easy, and keeping track of the fatigue/fleshwound system is what the game tracking sheet is for, whilst we fully accept that it need improvement it is something we are aware of and working on.

You are correct that in very large games the fleshwound/fatigue system (and even the AP system) would become a bit of a nightmare to keep track of. The largest game we have managed to play was 150 points, which was around 30 models per side and everything went smoothly, though that was with people who had played a lot of games so knew the rules fairly well by then. We have thought about doing some more simplified rules for larger games but wanted to get the skirmish level ones correct before we started to change them for larger games.

Race specific rules are something we will look into, we actually had tried to do that with the weapon system (i.e. an Edimen sword gives different effect to an Hiskari sword) but again you are not the only person to point out that the weapon system could do with a little streamlining.

Thanks again for taking the time to read the rules and provide feedback, it is very much appreciated.

No problem. Next time i can get down to my FLGS ill try and persuade some of the guys to have a game with me, and put it to a proper test drive

Hi everyone.

We want to thank everyone who has given us feedback so far, it really is appreciated. We have already incorporated some of the feedback and released a V0.2 of the rules, we have highlighted in red the areas that have changed in this version.

We are still working on a lot of the feedback that has come in, but these are 2 quick changes we could make that most people have asked for.