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Made in us
Arch Magos w/ 4 Meg of RAM






Mira Mesa

Last night, on a whim I rewrote my favourite expansion, Cities of Death, for 9th edition. My local group has been really positive about the rules, so I thought I'd share. Here's the link to my Google doc.

In updating it, I made balance changes to help the stratagems and missions deliver on their fantasy. I only cut things that were too far out of date or redundant with modern rules.

I'm still poking around, but I think it's in a good state. Let me know what you think, or if you see any glaring errors.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/24 20:56:27


Coordinator for San Diego At Ease Games' Crusade League. Full 9 week mission packets and league rules available: Lon'dan System Campaign.
Jihallah Sanctjud Loricatus Aurora Shep Gwar! labmouse42 DogOfWar Lycaeus Wrex GoDz BuZzSaW Ailaros LunaHound s1gns alarmingrick Black Blow Fly Dashofpepper Wrexasaur willydstyle 
   
Made in es
Inquisitorial Keeper of the Xenobanks






your mind

It is really cool. I enjoyed reading. Fire sweep and others are right on! The obscuring graphic is clear. Well done!

   
Made in dk
Loyal Necron Lychguard






What purpose does the Smoke and Shadows rule have? Is it just for nostalgia?

Plunging Fire is going to benefit flying ranged units a lot I would guess, making it a Stratagem would make the benefit less pronounced.

Booby Traps breaks the game. It also doesn't make sense why it is always the heavy weapon specialist or sergeant getting stuck in a booby trap.

Why the special Stratagem format instead of just making regular Stratagems that people can spend as many CP on as they wish?

4 missions in each format is a bit odd since 40k uses D6 for everything.
   
Made in us
Arch Magos w/ 4 Meg of RAM






Mira Mesa

 jeff white wrote:
It is really cool. I enjoyed reading. Fire sweep and others are right on! The obscuring graphic is clear. Well done!
Thanks mate, I stole the graphic from the original expansion book. Even though it's basic, I think Firesweep might be my favourite mission. It's exactly what you want out of an urban combat game: fighting to clear one building at a time.

 vict0988 wrote:
What purpose does the Smoke and Shadows rule have? Is it just for nostalgia?
It's a little bit of nostalgia and flavor, I'm trying to encourage the close quarters nature of urban combat. It also serves a practical purpose, because models will almost always be in a ruin and so almost never be Obscured. This rule was present in 4th edition, and specified again in this expansion, so I think it's core to the experience.
Plunging Fire is going to benefit flying ranged units a lot I would guess, making it a Stratagem would make the benefit less pronounced.
I wanted verticality to be a core element of the game, similar to modern Kill Team. You have all these ruins with multiple floors and vantage points, so you should be rewarded for using them. Plunging Fire was literally a stratagem in the original book, but it felt low impact compared to the others. Ranged weapons are already less useful due to restricted LoS and virtually everything being in cover. I'm also considering adding some Obscuring ignoring elements to being at higher elevations (there was a minor rule for that in the original book), but I'll play test it later this week and see it's necessary.
Booby Traps breaks the game. It also doesn't make sense why it is always the heavy weapon specialist or sergeant getting stuck in a booby trap.
Yeah, I realized today that Booby Traps can break the game if a multi-wound unit already has an injured model. The original rule let the unit owner pick the target, but that's lame because then it's just a 50% chance to kill a grunt. The point was to deliver on the fantasy of making dangerous traps. Maybe the simpler solution is that it just inflicts more mortal wounds, like D3. It's a cool idea that deserves to see play, so it needs to be strong enough to be playable.
Why the special Stratagem format instead of just making regular Stratagems that people can spend as many CP on as they wish?
I only call them stratagems because they are the literal origin of the stratagem concept in 40k, and this is exactly how they functioned. The problem with making players spend CP on them is they have to compete with the army's stratagems. I've seen this a lot playing the 9e campaign books which have universal stratagems. They have to be weaker or else they become oppressive. You just don't have CP to spare on weak stratagems so they don't see play. By making it a separate system, the players can engage with it guilt free. Plus, there's a risk-reward system in the order of declaring grand stratagems and the direct counters between grand stratagems.
4 missions in each format is a bit odd since 40k uses D6 for everything.
The original book only has 5 missions and 5 special missions, and I cut one of each for basically being Firesweep-but-worse.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/09/25 20:35:56


Coordinator for San Diego At Ease Games' Crusade League. Full 9 week mission packets and league rules available: Lon'dan System Campaign.
Jihallah Sanctjud Loricatus Aurora Shep Gwar! labmouse42 DogOfWar Lycaeus Wrex GoDz BuZzSaW Ailaros LunaHound s1gns alarmingrick Black Blow Fly Dashofpepper Wrexasaur willydstyle 
   
Made in dk
Loyal Necron Lychguard






 DarkHound wrote:
Maybe the simpler solution is that it just inflicts more mortal wounds, like D3.

You could make it D6-3, then it would still only require one roll.
   
Made in us
Arch Magos w/ 4 Meg of RAM






Mira Mesa

Hey, that's clever. Thanks, that's the kind of feedback I was hoping for. I had to think about how to Combat Engineers would interact with it, but simply an extra -1 to the roll is sufficient. Still decreases the odds anything happens, decreases the maximum damage, but doesn't make it entirely toothless.

I actually had to do something similar with the Demolition stratagem. Originally, you also secretly picked the turn the Demolition would occur. However, if you're using it to blow up an opponent's Key Building (which is the typical use case), then you should pick turn 1. That sucks for the opponent, they don't get to use their cool thing. Then it always detonates on a 2+, so it also feels awful to roll a 1 and waste your stratagem. With 4+ plus +1 per previous Battle Round, you can risk it earlier or wait until turn 4 for certain. It gives a reason to maintain some anticipation, and lets the opponent enjoy their stratagem too.

There were a lot of quality of life tweaks beyond translating the mechanics. For instance, Siege Shells neutered the weapon profile and Wreckers kept the unit from shooting or charging. That was pretty bad in 4e and 5e even if the game was slower, but it would be impossible to justify in 9e. Now a brood of Carnifexes can knock down a building and charge the occupants in one turn, which I think is extremely thematic.

There were a bunch of problems with the missions too. Like High Ground and Relief Force didn't specify the central objective building had to survive. In High Ground, you could take building destruction and force a draw if things weren't going your way. Worse, Relief Force's victory conditions were 'the attacker wins if they control the building', but the defender's was 'if the attacker fails to capture the building by the end of the game, the defender wins'. Which means you should knock down your own building to win automatically. I can see the realistic justification of 'if we can't keep it, don't let it fall into enemy hands' but it's insanely degenerate gameplay. Additionally, the High Ground objective could be a Key Building, so the player who declares first can just get Feel No Pain or Counter-attack on the objective and the only counter causes a draw.

This is also a funny one: Total Devastation, the mission where the attacker must knock over potentially 9+ buildings provided the compensation of... picking Demolition more than once. So, you could spend all your stratagems for 3 chances to pick the right building. But it gets worse: the defender picking the objective building happens before choosing deployment zones. If the defender wins the roll-off, they can pick the zone with their secret building and Demolition can't target it. Even if the attacker chooses, they have a 25% chance to give their opponent right the deployment zone anyway. Combined with the fact that Siege Shells and Wreckers kept those units from fighting, the attacker was fighting in a blindfold with one arm tied.

As much as I love the expansion thematically, reading the rules as an adult makes me wonder how it got published.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2021/09/25 20:03:41


Coordinator for San Diego At Ease Games' Crusade League. Full 9 week mission packets and league rules available: Lon'dan System Campaign.
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Made in us
Arch Magos w/ 4 Meg of RAM






Mira Mesa

I had another idea for a revision. I realized that snipers weren't represented at all, and they're one of the most common power fantasies of urban combat. They're bad in the core rules, so I should give them some help to let them see play.

I also decided against the way the Smoke and Shadows rule is currently worded. As it stands, models 7" inside a ruin can shoot out without being seen. That is the way it's worded in the original rules, and I can't remember if the 4th edition core rulebook had additional mitigating language. That's just asking for abuse, so instead models can only see 6" through ruins, even the ones they're inside.

Here's where that idea comes back around: that's now available design space. Snipers all ignore the Look Out, Sir rule. So why not have weapons that ignore that rule also ignore Smoke and Shadows. Snipers can stand in the back of their building and shoot into another building without being visible. Regular Obscuring still works, so they don't have vision of the entire board.

I was careful to check any weapons that ignore Look Out, Sir. They're mostly bad, so this is basically to encourage fluffy scenarios. The most powerful ones are Necron Deathmarks and Space Marine Eliminators, which are not blowing anybody's socks off. Realistically, this'll make you consider a squad of them, or Rangers, or Ratlings, to hold corner buildings in Firesweep safely while still contributing chip damage. They can also get chip damage into the objectives on High Ground and Urban Assault, but they're definitely not scoring anything there.

I don't think snipers become abusive with this change, but let me know if you can think of a way to do it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/29 09:54:25


Coordinator for San Diego At Ease Games' Crusade League. Full 9 week mission packets and league rules available: Lon'dan System Campaign.
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Made in gb
Executing Exarch





London, UK

Have to say, looks great! Definitely going to see if I can slot these into the Crusade campaign I'm running. Shouldn't be too hard to write up a couple of agendas and victor bonuses for the missions.

   
Made in us
Arch Magos w/ 4 Meg of RAM






Mira Mesa

Thanks mate, I think these would be great for Crusade games too. I'm still tinkering with the mission scoring, and addressing minor issues as I find them. I got my game in against my friend today, and I learned quite a lot. We brought all our terrain, plus the shop's bountiful terrain and played this board at 50 PL for Urban Assault.



That's 10 ruins, several industrial structures, a few ruined walls, and a couple craters. On top of that, we both picked the Obstacles stratagem and deployed barricades and armoured pipes. The crazy thing is, almost every terrain piece mattered. I tried setting up a board with 6 ruins, similar to the original game's recommendation, and it looked exactly like a normal game I played in the 50 PL Crusade league that week. 9th Edition just plays better with more terrain. I'm definitely going to bump the ruin recommendation up to 4-6, 8-12, and 15+.



The additional line of sight rules really reinforced the close quarters combat. The terrain could cover your advance right up to 12", but you had to leap frog from one building to the next to avoid fire. While that makes assault units very strong, the option of additional barricades significantly compensates for that, which I'll talk about later.



Due to limited lines of sight, it was hard to reinforce a losing flank. Each area was its own small battle. These Wraith units are half my army by power level, and they churned through 10 Assault and 5 Intercessors. The Marines in the stronghold, just 15" away, couldn't provide support to even the fight.



Meanwhile, flying was obviously extremely strong. Fast flying units can circumvent the line of sight issues to reinforce or exploit vulnerable flanks. I discussed this with my opponent afterward, who was debating bringing Inceptors. I think part of the charm of Cities of Death is tailoring your army to take advantage of the environment. It makes you consider and use units in new ways.



In the last leg of the game, the barricade pipes really hampered my ability to assault his base. You lose 2" moving over the barricade, and can't stand on top so some models won't clear it, then lose another 2" from the charge roll. His Marines prevented me from charging through the wall (1" engage distance would be halfway inside the wall). I failed to make the long charge to climb the outside of the building and fight from the second floor. He used the opportunity to unload at close range and counter charge with his characters.

Ultimately I was able to break through and win with the end of game bonus; I got a few models in his building, and my Dark Reapers prevented his stragglers from getting into mine, so the game ended 10 to 0. There was an interesting bit of cat and mouse on my side of the board, which is why I said all the terrain got used.

My opponent chose to play defensively from the outset and guaranteed a low scoring game. It tested the limits of the mission scoring, and I'm pleased that last clause punishes overly defensive play. That being said, we agreed it should score 5 points, so it would really tie-break rather than make up for a turn of scoring. The end of game scoring also taught me that Firesweep needs progressive scoring, to prevent a similar degenerate strategy.

Coordinator for San Diego At Ease Games' Crusade League. Full 9 week mission packets and league rules available: Lon'dan System Campaign.
Jihallah Sanctjud Loricatus Aurora Shep Gwar! labmouse42 DogOfWar Lycaeus Wrex GoDz BuZzSaW Ailaros LunaHound s1gns alarmingrick Black Blow Fly Dashofpepper Wrexasaur willydstyle 
   
Made in es
Inquisitorial Keeper of the Xenobanks






your mind

Beautiful table.

   
Made in us
Ship's Officer





Dallas, TX

I just received 'Urban Conquest' in mail, it has a city of death esque campaign book/cards/markers, and 2 set of terrains: 1 set is fallen statues, which was also available in now OOP KT boxset, 1 set of obj, 4.5/6 obj are exclusive. It has the rules for some of the new terrain, scenarios for a campaign.
   
Made in au
Owns Whole Set of Skullz Techpriests






Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

Are you the one who just posted about getting that on Facebook?

Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in us
Ship's Officer





Dallas, TX

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Are you the one who just posted about getting that on Facebook?


in the 40k terrain group? yeah, it was a steal for $60+ shipping as its now OOP and has some exclusive terrain/objectives.
   
 
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