Hello subscribers!

This month will likely be the last month you'll have to wait before we have information to give you about our pre-sale! We've been working on that extensively behind the scenes, but we can't reveal our plans quite yet. We should have some details for you in the May newsletter.

The one big piece of news we have this month is that Ross Watson will be at Chupacabracon in Austin during the first weekend of May. If you're not able to make it to that convention, don't worry! Ross will be running an actual play of Wrath & Glory with the Bell of Lost Souls crew, which they will be airing live on their Twitch channel! Watch our social media for more information about how you can tune in for that!

If you happen to be at PAX East this weekend, be sure to say hi to Stephen Rhodes! He's just attending the convention, but he's always eager to chat about Wrath & Glory. Follow him on Twitter to see where he'll be throughout the show.

And if you see a Wrath & Glory shirt at C2E2 in Chicago this weekend, that's me (Eric)! I'm also happy to chat about the game, though I'm not one of the writers, so I don't know as much as Stephen does.

With all that, let's get to the Diary!

Designer Diary - Initiative
When designing combat rules for Wrath & Glory, something that I knew I wanted was an initiative system that would encourage teamwork. We experimented with several different approaches, but the one that satisfied our design goals was an initiative system that promoted a back-and-forth flow between the players and the Game Master.

Here’s how it works: The players and NPCs controlled by the GM take turns, one at a time, until every character involved in the combat has taken a turn. The players choose one from their side, then GM chooses one from his side, and so on.

However, it is not entirely that simple! Both the GM and the players have resources they can spend to alter this setup. For the Game Master, he can spend his GM-resource—called Ruin—to act first instead of the players. And for the players, there’s a group resource called Glory that they can spend to Seize the Initiative.

When you Seize the Initiative, your side can have another character act before the GM’s forces’ turn. So, if the players choose to have Michael act first, they can then spend Glory at the end of his turn to nominate another player—in this case, Wendy—who can then take her character’s turn. You can only Seize the Initiative once before the other side gets to take a turn.

This ensures that there’s a flow to a combat scene, a back-and-forth where both sides get to take actions in rough proximity to one another. This also allows for that teamwork I was talking about earlier! If the warband was facing a tough opponent, for example, Michael could use his character’s turn to make an Interaction attack and render the opponent vulnerable, lowering its Defence. This sets up Wendy to take advantage and land a solid hit, potentially shifting more dice into the damage roll!
If there’s ever any doubt about who acts first, the characters simply roll their Initiative attribute and compare icons, with the highest number of icons acting first. In the case of a tie, player characters win over NPCs, and if the tie is between two players or two NPCs, the players choose who goes first (or the GM does, in the case of the NPCs).

This initiative system comes in handy when the GM is controlling several opponents during the combat. Sometimes, enemies who are individually weak—called Troops—can form a single group that acts at the same time. This is called a mob, and mobs act and attack much like a single character. The GM doesn’t roll ten individual attacks for a mob of ten orks, for example. Instead, he makes a single roll, and the orks gain a number of bonus dice equal to half their size (so in this case, +5d). Mobs can also split their attacks if they’re fighting multiple opponents, and the GM can, if they wish, split up a mob on their turn so that there are more than one group of enemies acting in the combat.

Now you have an idea about how initiative works in Wrath & Glory—plus some info about mobs, which are quite fun to fight (although they can be dangerous in large numbers!). Stay tuned to the Ulisses North America website as we reveal more about Wrath & Glory, Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay!

-Ross Watson, Product Line Manager

 schoon wrote:
...and 2m squares. I suppose that's more or less equivalent to 5 ft squares.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Can't say I'm a fan of the art-style, especially when you look at, say, their current Torg KS and the maps in that.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Maps look fine to me - the comic book drawn style is reminiscent of the old floor plans from yester-year. Don't know what you mean about not looking 40k - 40k can be anything.

 schoon wrote:
GenCon - not that far off, really.

 schoon wrote:
No new information, but a nice expose on Ross Watson .

Don't ever make the mistake of thinking that any member of the Adeptus Astartes is "just a Scout." And certainly don't ever SAY it.

Artist: Alberto Bontempi

warboss wrote:

 schoon wrote:
GenCon - not that far off, really.

Free RPG Day... even closer!

 Kanluwen wrote:
Just like the real Scout models, the face looks terrible!