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Made in au



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Made in gb
Tough Traitorous Guardsman






I just read the article and I think it's a great idea. Once I've played a few real games of deadzone I'm eager to try it out with these 40k armies.

I wonder if a decent Necromunda adaption would be possible.

I'm excited to see how this develops.
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Yeah it's pretty hard to do without any of us having played much other than a little with the beta rules but figured it couldn't hurt to get a headstart. Balancing will be much easier once we get our stuff and can start trying things.

I have no experience with Necromunda but I like the idea of the rival gangs in 40k hive cities. Shouldn't be too hard for someone to do up some army lists for them too. Rebels and Marauders would offer good starting points I'd say.
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Couple tweaks:
Space Marines
Terminator
- Removed Brawler, seemed overkill.
Assault Marine + Vanguard Veteran
- Added From the Skies! An additional +1 fight dice when moving into close combat, to help represent the visceral impact of charging in with a jump pack.
Equipment
- Changed Heavy Bolter from Single Shot to Support. Single Shot was a mistake.
- Changed Storm Shield from Energy Shield (5) to +1 armour vs. shooting attacks from the front and +1 armour in close combat. ie. based on the defenders shield that was FAQ'd, but with the addition of armour in close combat since it's not too cumbersome to use there.

Edit:
Added Space Marine Battle Cards. Mostly just renamed, but a couple have had different rules assigned. Table added to Article.
Added Space Marine Apothecary and Narthecium. I like the thought of these being required for some campaign goals, such as denying enemy VPs by harvesting own gene-seed, or gaining VPs by harvesting mission objective gene-seed.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/11/20 06:58:32


 
   
Made in us
Near Golden Daemon Caliber






Illinois

This looks pretty cool May have to play around with these rules once I've gotten some regular old Deadzone in

So Space Marines look to be pretty much the same as enforcers in terms of stats, that seems about right. My question is why are all of the sizes of the marines 2? Do you consider them to be that much bulkier than the enforcers at size 1? What about the scout? Surely scout armor isn't bulkier than enforcer armor? Or is there some other balancing act that those sizes are handling that I've missed?

I was going to ask about the high price of the scout marine, but then I noticed he's got a camo cloak AND a sniper rifle, so that probably explains that

It also seems to me that your 15 point captain could almost be a veteran/vet sergeant instead of a captain, and then the company master could probably be a captain. Maybe I'm wrong, it just seems like the really epic stuff they have captains and chapter masters doing require almost unreasonable stats for this size of a game, to the point where they'd be soloing a 70pt strike team

This is all very interesting, just adding some opinions to fuel discussion

 
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Thanks for the feedback!
- Yeah they were based on the Enforcers. Making them size 2 was something I thought worth trying out to see how it impacts gameplay - probably not much. But they *are* substantially larger than unmodified humans, and their armour is pretty huge too so there was some justification for it. Plus it could be used as a little bit of balancing - even though it's highly unlikely more than 2 will ever be in the same square. Swapping them back to 1 will be very easy and if that seems better, then for sure will do that. I missed the scout, he should probably be 1, thanks!
- Yeah wanted to make sure the scout marine was different enough from the tacs and not spammy like the cheap chaos cultists. They couldn't have the stats, but a cloak... pretty fitting! Fluffwise, they shouldn't be much more expendable than SMs either so didn't want them to be too cheap.
- Yep that's probably better. I initially had from serge to chapter master but thought it overkill, at least to begin with. Keeping the lower ranks makes more sense.

The more discussion the merrier, keep it coming if you think of anything please ; )

edit:
- Changed SM Scout to size 1
- Renamed Captain to Sergeant, removed Iron Halo
- Renamed Company Master to Captain
- Adjusted stats of leaders to fit new roles.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/11/22 23:32:45


 
   
Made in us
Near Golden Daemon Caliber






Illinois

Did you post descriptions of the weapons anywhere? I probably just missed them but I was wondering what your bolters were doing and especially your take on the MM thunder hammer powerfist all that jazz.

 
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

The spreadsheets have tabs, the second tab is an armoury with all the weapons and equipment, cards third tab, rules 4th tab.

The weapons are all "this feels roughly right relative to everything else" atm. Yesterday or day before I added a bunch of special and heavy weapons (and shotguns) so they're probably less-balanced than the rest. Also open to the idea of removing some to keep the rules more simple to keep with the Deadzone spirit, shotguns especially could probably be removed easily.
   
Made in us
Near Golden Daemon Caliber






Illinois

Oh dur, you guys and your intelligently created spreadsheets I'm just evolving from pen and paper here

 
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

 GrimDork wrote:
Oh dur, you guys and your intelligently created spreadsheets I'm just evolving from pen and paper here

Ugh... hard copy! ; p

Couple things I could really use some input on:
1. Imperial Guard: how to let them use a lot of models, but still keep gameplay fast and balanced. Is the +1 to blaze away from supporting models enough to let low Shoot, no-ap guardsmen have a chance against tougher models?
2. Imperial Guard: Redoing Battle Cards as Orders and baking some IG power into them. ie. models are weaker than their points would suggest but battle cards are stronger than other factions. Fun or bad idea?
3. Necrons: Reanimation protocols, thoughts on the best way to implement them? Couple ideas I've had:
- Bake extra survival into Surv/Armour/Toughness.
- Add a reanimation protocols roll when they die, same as 40K. Would probably slow down the game.
- Reanimation protocol battle card can be played to reanimate a model. Could be either any model that's died (ie. if you draw one you can revive a model dead for 4 turns), or needs to be played reactively, which is probably better.
   
Made in gb
Pious Warrior Priest




UK

For IG, use the Rebs as a template, have their main strength be a good selection of weapons teams, maybe a really cheap leader with good command special rules too. Battle cards focusing on command/morale sounds good too, but I really wouldn't reinvent the wheel and turn them into a separate order system.

For necrons I do like the idea of the battle cards the most, seems cleanest.

This message was edited 7 times. Last update was at 2013/11/23 09:11:23


 
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Thanks for the feedback SS!

Yeah Reb human, missile team and leaders were good templates to work from, but I had to look through multiple factions for references for plasma/flamer/melta/heavy weapons. A lot of the non-humans the rebels have aren't good references for IG, though Ogryn matched ok to Grogans.

I've got a card set done for IG that (imo) seems interesting and a good playstyle - very much orders based, but balancing... who knows ; p Since IG are so weak individually, it seems to me that giving a single guardsman +1 Fight is pretty useless, so I've gone for "all models in a cube" and so on. Could be horribly unbalanced, if so will happily change them but it's worth a shot imo. Needing to be in LoS of an Officer to play the orders is a notable balancing thing too imo. Places the officers at risk and you won't necessarily be able to play them where you need them.

edit: updated article with some rule changes:
- Removed Markerlights. Replaced special rule on Markerlights drone with Spotter.
- Updated Necron Reanimation Protocols to reflect card based nature.
- Added IG Battle Card list.
- IG had a round of balance tweaks to units and weapons.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/11/24 01:33:10


 
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

With the clarification of Rebel weapon team rule CSW - "crew served weapon", it seems like a perfect rule for IG weapon teams which I'm very happy with.

I've almost sorted a first try at chaos cards and mutation system, which is basically like the plague one but 2d8 options, some copied plague mutations and some new ones based on the 40k ones. Some include both pros and cons, ie. "Bloated" is tough but also slow. There will be a battle card, "Beseech the Dark Gods" to grant a mutation to a model that kills an enemy model. No free daemon princes though ; p It might also be the only way to get chaos spawn in campaigns which seems a cool way to go imo.
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User






I don't know if these would be useful but I started making unit card sheets for this before I knew about this project.
Yeah, they're in Powerpoint but they're easily modifiable.

I figured that Space Marines should be more fluff-like in that they are ridiculously armoured and vicious (but lose out a bit on mobility). My original idea was to have Space Marines at Armour 3 with no jump packs and a higher point cost. I wanted them to feel like they do in the fluff. I based the 3 on the Helfather's 3. This did make me bump my terminators up to 4 which seemed a bit ridiculous and I couldn't think about how to balance it.
Another thing I toyed with was having Chaos Space Marines as draw-greedy commanders. I have yet to play (but I've gone over the rules a lot) and figured it would make their command stat something like 4-2 or something. Maybe having them enrage easier as well?
I was also looking into the cult choices for CSM (as I play Plague Marines and Noise Marines) and was thinking of how to deal with those. I was thinking that a Plague Marine could negate a single wound per shot by making a survival check (like FNP). This would save him from small shots getting through but anything scoring 2+ successes would insta-kill regardless much like a high strength weapon. Noise Marines would just have sonic weaponry that negated the cover bonuses granted by the cube itself but did no AP damage and needed line of sight anyway. The blast master would damage the entire cube with a similar logic.
 Filename Deadzone Templates - Copy.pptx [Disk] Download
 Description
 File size 665 Kbytes

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/12/10 23:05:13


3000+, 2000+, 2000+, 1500+, 1000+
~200 
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Very nice! Mind if I pinch the layout of those cards for if/when I make them? I find a spreadsheet easier to work with when designing stuff, but the cards are definitely better/more fun for gameplay and look great. Feel free to use the spreadsheet layout if you want.

I agree with making the SMs act more like they do in fluff, and 1 armour difference between guardsmen and SMs doesn't seem right, but 3 armour on every unit will basically negate the majority of enemy weapons since a 3 dice shooting attack with no APcannot even hope to injure 3 armour. I'm not sure if there are enough mechanics in game to let no-ap weapons have a fair shot at that. Could be that the +1dice per supporting model in a blaze away action would work if you get enough models but I haven't got around to play testing at all yet. Then there's always the guard way (for example) of using special weapons to do the damage while the basic infantry are just there to die. It would be ideal if the 3 armour could be made to work inside the deadzone framework.

Re. plague marines and a FNP roll... I thought similar for Necron reanimation protocols, but a big selling point for Deadzone is that it's fast action, so adding additional rolls isn't ideal. My way around that for reanimation protocols so far is using battle cards. The Toughness ability was my plan for Plague marines, it's like armour but not affected by AP - the "Irresistable" iirc special rule however makes the weapons AP counter toughness as well, which I thought fitting for lightning claws. So toughness + armour will make them a pain, but is still counterable. Working from a base 3 armour though, as you say would be problematic as it would be up to 4 ignored successes despite being ideal fluffwise.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/12/13 01:06:31


 
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User






Go for it! I made them to share. It's easy enough to just grab pictures off google and throw them in, remove the back ground with the tool, and put them in the card.
I was thinking of doing a spreadsheet but I had the idea of which units I wanted to field so just started with cards for those. Now that I'm thinking on a larger scale, I'll probably pick up the spreadsheet idea.

Yeah, that was the main issue I was having as well. The Helfather being Armour3 and having similar looking armour was what made me want to set Marines to 3 but then they'd be incredibly well defended. I have a feeling that a lot of the Forgefathers will have Armour3 as well but it will have some sort of offset. The Helfather is offset by his "Slow" ability, and while it could be given to all marines, it doesn't exactly fit. Removing their ability to climb could even the battlefield, but I've always considered Space Marines capable of sprinting into battle like massive tanks. An aim action could give the necessary added dice and making Space Marines easier to hit as they are larger targets could help this out somehow?
I didn't back the KS so I can only really go off of the beta rules floating around and some of the other info I've gotten. My knowledge of available special rules is a little slim.

So far my mindset for converting 40k amour to Deadzone has been:
2+ = 4
3+ = 3
4+ = 2
5+ and some 6+ = 1
rest of 6+ and - = 0

In retrospect, I think the "Tough" ability would be better for Plague Marines but then they become almost too powerful against the rest of the existing Deadzone stuff. The thing getting in the way for me, and ironically is my favourite part of 40k, is that its so over the top and overpowered to fit properly in another universe. That said, points adjustments and other things could balance it out enough to be playable (and it would be playable against other 40k armies).

The Rampage and Brawler rules make for some great Khorne Berzerkers though.
I'm also on the fence about Chaos Space Marines having the Discipline special rule (especially those of Slaanesh and Khorne). I just couldn't picture them calming down mid-battle.

Outside of Space Marines, I like the idea of Reanimation protocols being cards.
It seems Eldar and Tau will be ok outside of the Eldar's psykers and both of their larger units. Aspect warriors and Firewarriors are perfect for this scale of game. A couple stealth suits, a small squad of FireWarriors, and a few pathfinders would fit right in. Maybe even having Markerlights as cards or something? I don't want to clutter the game with the regular Markerlight counters or stuff like that. Maybe do away with them all together?
I know that the psychic special rule is coming at some point, but I think Psychic powers could be represented in a deck somehow? Or just making spells act identical to weapons (kinda like the Zzap! rule in KoW).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thinking on it some more, I've changed my mindset between armour (when I compared the Peacekeeper to the Space Marine and Terminator).
Space Marines should be Armour 2 and I think the statline you've given them is actually a better representation than what I was going for. I was seeing them as heavier and bulkier than they maybe were in this scale.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/12/13 05:41:09


3000+, 2000+, 2000+, 1500+, 1000+
~200 
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Cheers, will do they're great and much better than visually-non-creative me could come up with.

The addition of the chainsword over vanilla SMs for chaos marines could be enough to make up for losing discipline without needing to add something else, since having a bolt pistol will rarely be useful for SMs I think. Having 1 AP in melee will make CSMs more versatile due to being more fighty than tac marines. Sold, removing discipline, can always add it back if it doesn't feel or play right.

The armour comparisons looks really good and is probably the best representation of 40k armour. Yeah slow definitely doesn't fit SMs, if anything they should be agile as they're pretty damn beefy in the lore. Losing the enforcer jump pack adjusts their mobility in some ways (when using enforcers as a base) and deciding on the relative power between enforcers and SMs is something I still can't decide on. If you beef up SMs to their fluffy representation, you end up with 2-3 in a 70 point game haha.

There are definitely some great rules already in deadzone that are perfectly applicable to 40k equivalents such as rampage and brawler. I also like toxic, it burns, irresistable and so on. Have you thought about the best way to make army lists for chaos? There are so many fluffy options when thinking about legion troops, cult troops and marked troops that you can't really make a card for each if you want to keep the Deadzone motto of simplicity going.

The rebel spotter drones could work well as a markerlight drone base, with the bonus of keeping it simple as the rules are already there. They don't exactly match the Tau way, but it's fairly close.

I've targeted SMs to be ~= to enforcers to start with. They've basically lost their jump pack for +1 fight and swapped weight of fire for 1AP on their gun which keeps it in line with AP in 40k.
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User






The chainsword thing sounds fantastic. Chaos as a more assault-based SM force works well. As soon as I get my copy of Deadzone, I'll try out a Loyalist vs. Traitor game to see if they feel right (or someone else who already has the game could )

I agree, it would be better to have more than 3 space marines on the table in a single game.

With CSMs, I'm going to ignore marked troops and marked cultists. This is because such things would be difficult to represent and balance for now. They could be done later on, but I think they'd just get special rules tacked on and get the points boosted ridiculously. You could just say they got "blessed" on their campaign and give them "Marks" (a.k.a. bonuses that suit their patron god) through that. I just think that Noise Marines, Plague Marines, Berzerkers, and 1K sons should be accurately represented as they are all iconic. In practice each would only have 2 or 3 cards:
Plagues would have Champion, Melta, and Regular (Special Rule: Slow, Tough)
Noise would have Champion, Blastmaster and Sonic Blaster (Special Rule: Agile? Maybe just Fast?)
Berzerkers would have Champion and Berzerker (Special Rule: Rampage, Brawler)
1K Sons would have Aspiring Sorcerer and 1K son (Special Rule: I don't know yet.)
I figured those 4 groups would be simple enough to implement. Champions would have 2-2 like Sergeants. They'd all be pricier than the regular CSM but I still think you could shove 4-5 in a 70 point game and then have points left for cultists.

I didn't know about the spotter drone. That sounds good. Anything that has a parallel in existing Deadzone sounds like the safest bet to keep this balanced. It's also nice that guns such as Flamers and Meltaguns have parallels too (Flame Throwers and Thermal Guns respectively).

The way Space Marines are right now sounds perfect now that I've mulled it over a bit. I can't wait to get my copy of the game and try them out!

Also, I've been thinking about Sisters of Battle and I've been finding that getting a Battle Sister to feel different from a Space Marine is a bit odd. I was thinking of just making them -1 fight from Space Marines and cost less?

And finally, I overheard someone discussing the Imperial Guard on another board. They were thinking that the statline for a Guardsmen as it is right now would fit a conscript better and that the Rebel Human's stat line should be the base line for a single regular Guardsman, and the Veteran should be more 4+ shooting, 5+ Fighting, 5+ survival (much like how they are comparitive statwise to Space Marines on the tabletop).

3000+, 2000+, 2000+, 1500+, 1000+
~200 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




Vairo, i was the person on 4chan discussing the whole guardsmen statlines and contesting your Armour scale. Lemme dig up the stuff i said.

i think the armor metric might be
-&6+=0 best i can reason for this is the plague dogs and mawbeasts and plague swarms having no armor.
5&4+=1, maybe some tough/very tough if it's a big tough gribbly (the phase one is ap1 and very tough.) another good reason for 4+ to fit here is the recon enforcer merc. he's wearing what would very obviously be a carapace armour analogue and is armor 1)
3+ is like. armor2. best example is just. enforcers in general.
2+. the closest i can see for this is the helfather merc, who has armor 3 and slow. and the enforcer peacekeeper commander which is tough and armor 2.


I was just looking at the spreadsheets on th e wiki-ish page. guardsmen are 6+/7+ and 3 points, and then veteran guardsmen are the same as human reb fighters. could probably just be fixed by changing name to "conscripts" and removing the "veteran" moniker. maybe make cultists a little better at fighting or boost them up to human figher teir but leave them at 3 points due to no armor?


Pardon any typos, that's just how i posted them on the other place.

It's all just me finding analogues between the two systems. -/6+ being no armor is me sorta comparing the plaguedogs/mawbeasts and plageswarms against gaunts and rippers. The enforcer only recon merc wearing what looks like a scout armor equivalent, enforcer basic powerarmor equaling 40k power armor (which would encompass sisters, inquisitors, marines, enginseers, anyone who wears PA), etc etc.

For the guardsmen, i'd just use the human reb fighter as standard guardsman baseline. A 7+ in a combat stat is equivalent to a Zee scavenger, which probably is as fighty as a grot. I'm not sure veteran guardsmen should be their own unit seeing as deadzone campaigns have their own veterancy systems, but if you want to do that, i'm pretty sure a stormtrooper has almost equivalent combat stats as a veteran guardsman in 40k, and their gear mostly makes the difference.

As for sizes, we have bulky/verybulky/extremely bulky to set those for us. Just make the size in Deadzone equal how many transport spaces the model would take due to the various bulky rules.

Pardon me for rambling.
   
Made in us
Near Golden Daemon Caliber






Illinois

I've been following a long somewhat, I think I'll have to agree with Pixel here. If you give marines 3 armor, they're going to be too tough. Virtually immune to small arms fire (and they're tough, but not impenetrable, that's more the realm of TDA suits).

And I think I need to argue against giving bolters AP1. I realize they shoot rockets and explode people, but AP 1 is probably more like ap 4 or better. The thermal rifle (screams meltagun) is ap 3. It's a harder call for me on the bolter than the armor, I could be wrong on the whole AP count.

If you *want* there to only be 3 marines on the table, because they're all beefy and epic, then keep those things, maybe even bump their stats. It'll be herozone, and maybe fun for it. I've considered devising some merc/vet team scenarios to play through that would have a very similar feel.

Just my loose opinion that armor 3 and ap1 bolters may be too much if you want enough points for a squad of 4-6.

 
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User






 GrimDork wrote:

Just my loose opinion that armor 3 and ap1 bolters may be too much if you want enough points for a squad of 4-6.


Right now it's Armour2 and AP1 bolters. The AP1 bolters are to offset the Weight of Fire special rule on Enforcer guns.
If the scale is currently: "Armour 1 = 6+ and 5+ saves" then the AP1 makes sense.
Space Marines pack a bit more of a punch but less maneuverable where as Enforcers can suppress units easier and move everywhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
pixel_kitty wrote:

As for sizes, we have bulky/verybulky/extremely bulky to set those for us. Just make the size in Deadzone equal how many transport spaces the model would take due to the various bulky rules.


Thats exactly what I was thinking.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/12/16 05:01:23


3000+, 2000+, 2000+, 1500+, 1000+
~200 
   
Made in nz
Disguised Speculo





Once I get a few games of this I'll try and help slap together some Orks rules.
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Loving the discussion!

Keeping marks for campaigns is probably a good way to start for now Vairosean. The cult troops... that's a lot of extra cards, but it may need to be done because as you say, they're definitely iconic.

Pixel, re model sizes - that is an ok system, but I'm not sure it's the best one. Armoured space marines are pretty damn big, and I don't think it unwarranted that two of them take up as much space as 4 guardsmen. It also adds a little balancing factor, by making marines spread out, you can give weak melee units a better chance against them. Think zerglings vs zealots if you play sc2 at all ; p (I love using SC2 for balance analogies it seems...) If the equivalent cost of zerglings (4 to 1) can surround a zealot, they'll destroy him. If it's 1 on 1 in succession, the zealot will easily win.

Grim, re. AP1 on bolters - what if the AP1 on bolters is a trade off (when comparing to enforcers rifles) for losing Weight of Fire? It seemed a lot more fluffy to me - bolters aren't a high rate of fire weapon, but they do go through small armour. Also, suppression will be the bane of weak units like guardsmen I think, that rely on being clumped up. Reducing the ability to suppress them a bit in this fashion is worth looking at I think.

My Deadzone has arrived.... sooo much stuff. Really happy we all backed this! Deadzone is going to be amazing, both vanilla and 40k imo ; )

If anyone has better ideas on managing this project - or if you want to look at hooking up Vairosean, please give us a yell.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/12/17 01:39:42


 
   
Made in us
Near Golden Daemon Caliber






Illinois

Hmmm ap1 is powerful but so are marines. If you rate their power like in the space marine shooter game... 2-3 of them should be a match for a strike team

 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




well, i'm just comparing model sizes, Yonan, sure a marine is larger than a guardsman, but it's not a significant larger. i wouldn't say that only 2 spacemarines can fit in a cube that 4 guardsmen could.

Also, remember that jump marines are bulky, as are terminators, so those two things already have that size factor working against them. I think it'll end up being that tacticals can swarm a square, but they're not actually particularly good in melee. they don't have chainswords or ways to beat armor in close quarters, so those guardsmen that are less than half their points will still be somewhat resilient.

For troops with different options(cult troops with acess to plasma/bolter/melta), i'm not sure we'd need three cards if the only difference is the gun they hold and there's no other stat alterations. It might be possible to list all weapon options on the card and just attach point costs to each individual loadout. it'll have to depend on how the layout of the cards would look.

To Grimdork, eeeeh, I sort of err on the side of how they're represented on the tabletop game and not how they are represented in the fluff or videogames? (though i agree with yonan that for now ap1 bolters is sufficiently different enough from the enforcer heavy rifles to make the teams feel different. just a matter of playtesting)
   
Made in au
Oberstleutnant






Perth, West Australia

Bulky assault marines, non-bulky tacticals... that could work well, didn't think assault marines were bulky (haven't played as them yet so not sure on a lot of specifics like that). Will adjust it to that and see how it looks!

Playtesting will definitely be essential for all of this, I have no illusions about it being ready for release as such for a fair while yet hehe. But definitely trying to make sure SMs have a different playstyle from enforcers, and if the humble bolter can contribute to that, that works for me.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/12/17 05:55:37


 
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User






pixel_kitty wrote:

For troops with different options(cult troops with acess to plasma/bolter/melta), i'm not sure we'd need three cards if the only difference is the gun they hold and there's no other stat alterations. It might be possible to list all weapon options on the card and just attach point costs to each individual loadout. it'll have to depend on how the layout of the cards would look.


As far as cult troops go, only Plague Marines can really take options (and even then it is just "Flamer, Melta, or Plasma") and as such making independent cards for each isn't a hassle. If anything, the card would maybe be too cluttered if you have each option on the one card.

As far as generic SM/CSM go, you're only really looking at about 8 cards each based on weapon loadout (Bolter, Flamer, Melta, Plasma, Autocannon, Missile Launcher, Heavy Bolter, Las Cannon) (8 cards seems par the course for different weapon load outs on Enforcers) but then add more cards for Raptors/Assault marines (maybe 1 or 2 cards if you want plasma pistols) and then your cult options for CSM and your sterngaurd and scouts for loyalists. Really, though, it wouldn't be horrible. You'd probably only have 24 different cards for an entire codex (CSM example: CSM (8) + Raptors (1-2) + Cults (2+2+3+5) + Posessed (1) + Cultists (1)) You obviously wouldn't be fielding all of these at once anyway. If anything, Obliterators, Mutilators and Terminators would be too powerful for a regular game anyway and can be ignored. Chosen would be through campaigning as well. Posessed could be left out too if you want to be "blessed through the campaign".

If you wanted to make a point buy system, it wouldn't be hard to just make a card for each option seeing as there aren't TOO many. If there were 100s of cards per army, I'd be more worried. Luckily we can skip out on things like Devastators and other such squads that consist more-or-less of regular guys with heavy weapons and just consider them identical to those in regular squads. The middle ground is that we could make a card each for troop, specialists, and heavy weapons where troops are just bolter, specialists are flamer, plasma or melta, and heavy weapons are just las cannon, heavy bolter, and autocannon. This would cut the 8 cards for CSM down to 3 (or the 5 for plagues down to 3), still represent the organization of the force (so that you have the right amount of troops), and would be easier to read than all on one. This would put my projected 24 cards down to 16 (neither counting lords) which is quite reasonable. The only issue would be making it incredibly clear what your guy is equipped with. This is fine if you WYSIWYG but if you want to counts-as it could be a bit confusing. As I'm writing this, I like the middle ground option.

The only issue I'd come across is making Lords as they are naturally incredibly customizable. Building a Lord on a point buy system may work well and could be considered for every HQ type unit in the game. It'd work wonders for Tau Crisis-suit commanders too. The difficulty just comes with balancing each part of war gear. It wouldn't be accurate to just convert the prices from regular 40k seeing as high S anti-tank single shot weapons are better in 40k than Deadzone.

Also, thinking about 1K sons. They should probably have Slow but also some level of Energy Shield.
[Thumb - Plague w Melta.png]
Rough Card for Plague Marine with Melta.

[Thumb - special plague.png]
Rough Card for Plague Marine with Special Weapon options. (Needed bigger card)

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/12/17 18:42:17


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So, this might be a bit off-subject, but was there still a concern that Marines weren't tough enough/were too tough with Armor 2 or 3, respectively?

I'd posted in the 4chan thread the idea that perhaps Marines could ignore 1 (or more) points of AP and have Armor 2, thus insulating them from piercing weapons without making them unkillable to light troops. A reverse of this might be Armor 3, but increase incoming AP by 1 (But if they have no AP, don't increase it), making them hard to kill for foot troops but die easier to lascannon/sniper type weapons. Terminators could have the same rule, but sit with Armor 3 for the former rule, or 4 for the latter.

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 darkPrince010 wrote:
So, this might be a bit off-subject, but was there still a concern that Marines weren't tough enough/were too tough with Armor 2 or 3, respectively?

I'd posted in the 4chan thread the idea that perhaps Marines could ignore 1 (or more) points of AP and have Armor 2, thus insulating them from piercing weapons without making them unkillable to light troops. A reverse of this might be Armor 3, but increase incoming AP by 1 (But if they have no AP, don't increase it), making them hard to kill for foot troops but die easier to lascannon/sniper type weapons. Terminators could have the same rule, but sit with Armor 3 for the former rule, or 4 for the latter.

We need to avoid adding extra rules where possible I think, a big part of why Deadzone is awesome is the simple, fast but deep gameplay. Rather than adding an immunity to partial AP rule, you'd be better off increasing the survive stat but staying at Armour 2 for example. Can keep it in mind though, since without playtesting everything is up in the air anyway hehe.

Something I'm still stuck on though, could it actually be good that basic troops can't really kill them? SMs being virtually immune to lasgun fire is pretty fluffy - if the IG list has other ways of winning, this isn't a problem. IG could have an expendable horde of guardsmen buffering the real killers in the army - plasma gunners, heavy bolter teams etc. The other thing they could do, is blaze away with 5 supporting models for +5 dice. That's only 18 points worth of guardsmen involved in that.

 Vairosean wrote:
Also, thinking about 1K sons. They should probably have Slow but also some level of Energy Shield.

Energy Shield is something I've seized on as a great tool. It suits storm shields, iron halos, tau shield drones... basically all invuln saves and all sorts of cool stuff : ) Also it's highly customizeable since it has a value from 1-8. It's an extra dice roll so probably don't want to overuse it, but I do really like it.

Also re. cult units - would it be best to have a basic CSM list, then separate cult lists? ie. a khorne list, a tzeentch list etc. At the scale Deadzone is played at, it seems more likely that only a single cult would be represented. It would also greatly simplify balance, but still let full cults be developed.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/12/18 04:38:07


 
   
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 Yonan wrote:

Also re. cult units - would it be best to have a basic CSM list, then separate cult lists? ie. a khorne list, a tzeentch list etc. At the scale Deadzone is played at, it seems more likely that only a single cult would be represented. It would also greatly simplify balance, but still let full cults be developed.


I was also considering this. I was just focussing on Nurgle and Slaanesh based forces but I was thinking it would be relatively easy to do the undivided CSM then just giving them special rules and stat/equipment changes to make them align properly. I wouldn't mind a set for each.

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