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I really like the engagement level of Brushfire. It could be seen as a magnified part of a larger battle, or a small skirmish on the flank of a bigger engagement. These days, I don't go bigger than that: it take too much time to paint and setup. A nice balance between army scale and small skirmishes.

I also like the inclusion of war machines and fortificatilna. Those can bring story to your battle: the player wihout them might control a small scouting force hunting warmachine emplacement down. Or it could be a close up on the siege of a fortification. Anything can happen really, and those are a par of it.

One other source of inspiration for how a large part of how the game was designed is RTS Computer games, stuff like Warcraft and Rise of Nations. Hence 3 Resources and separate Heroes with their own talent trees and unique abilities..
Sadly we haven't figured out the logistics of making the models say a series of phrases when you poke them, but we're working on it!

"More Work?"


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 Tonio wrote:
I really like the engagement level of Brushfire. It could be seen as a magnified part of a larger battle, or a small skirmish on the flank of a bigger engagement.

Aye, you could easily say that a single Badger-At-Claw is really 10~20 of them only being represented by a single model.

I have an idea to scale down the siege weapons appropriately while also keeping their presence:

What if we rename the cannon to small canon(It has to have a french name), the ballista to a heavy crossbow (like the one that Detrius has in the Diskworld books I think it's called an Arbalest) and the trebuchet to a grenade launcher or something. This would scale their image down and maybe would make them more on scale with the skirmish level. Leave everything else intact, just make them look fit in scale.

The big siege weapons can return in the missions:

In objective Destruction Team A has a trebuchet aimed for something important of team B. Team A has to fire the trebuchet while team B has to stop team A to do so. If the trebuchet fires(aka some number of turns pass), team A wins, if it gets destroyed or contested then Team B wins.

The Objective retrieval should be Team A wants to get a Cannon or Ballista that Team B transports to somewhere. The cannon is not usable, it's packed for transport, but it's sounds valuable enough to fight for it than the misterious thing that is currently the objective.

Yeh those are all good reasons to make Brushfire the way it is. I wonder if the rulebook would benefit from a short description of what its all about at the beginning? It might make new players see it as intentional parody rather than something that doesn't quite compute for them? Maybe even back up the siege warfare with some fluff? Like give a reason why small units have developed to use a range of troops and bring siege weaponry and fortifications. That could be a nice retrospective foundation to lay it all on.

Also I get that distinct RTS feel, always makes me want to play AoEIII! With all that considered I think Lumber could be best used as solely for buying siege equipment. The simplified system being you need to spend your FD to buy/feed your units, GD to to buy/maintain equipment and LR to build/maintain large items like siege equipment and fortifications. Gold could be used to upgrade both units and siege equipment. This makes army building quick and simple. You choose what units you want and spend your FD, choose what siege stuff you want and spend your LR and then upgrade whatever you want to upgrade with GD. That way no one should have any extra resources lying around and forces will balance easily.

To continue that, FD costs on Exemplars would be high which would curtail their use which a few of us have shown concern about. If entirely necessary a GD cost could be introduced to them as well although I think it would be better to give them optional upgrades for the cost of GD. Mercenaries are interesting as it means you can spend your GD on more troops, who will feed themselves off of their pay, rather than upgrading your existing troops. You wouldn't be able to upgrade them further in case they run off with the shiny new gear so they would come prepacked.

There are certain things that don't seem to fit the mould but I think they could with a little rejigging. The Valkyr for example could go in as faction specific siege equipment which can be bought as an upgrade for the unit that pilots it. Another example could be the Siege Tortoise, buy it for FD, optional siege equipment for LR and upgrade for GD.

It may also be an idea to suggest a more regimented use of Hlvls for people who want to play a more strict ruleset. Say one level per 50 or 100 resources agreed upon. Using the first that'd be 2Hlvls at 100 resources, 10Hlvls at 500 resources. A pretty tight system I think.

I think these suggestions are beneficial to the game without taking anything away from it's flavour. They are relatively easy changes to make and give the system a stronger foundation to work from. It's possible that it's just my opinion but I think they are balanced and thought out changes to make. Interested to here what you think.


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Also I like White Roo's idea.

What I don't get is the parody angle you guys mention. The game is very referential, but not really "ha-ha" funny. I mean these are not exactly waterbaloon fights, there are pointy metal things involved.

Now I not too long ago found out Redwall exist and I finished the first six books and currently reading the seventh. Those books also not "ha-ha" funny, but really engaging and from that way, fun. Brushfire is more like in tone of these books than parodying it(and I really like that). Apart from that I'm not a big military fan, so if the game parodying historical military stuff, I don't see that. Also I want those miniatures you guys are making. Even if I never get to play the game a lot, I will collect those.

Maybe I'm just not in board with the definition of parody.

Maybe I should have used a different word. I'm on the same boat as you, I'm not into my military history so I don't 'get' all the in jokes within Brushfire. I've seen a few mentions of funny bits in the rulebook but I think 90% just goes over my head, that or I am taking it slightly more seriously than originally intended.

I was referring to the fact that siege weapons are being used on a small scale as a reference to historical times rather than being there because they fit the scenario.

The parody lies mostly with historical gamers rather than a game about Napoleonic animals (Or technically in this case, Moleonic animals ).

If you've ever been around a large gathering of historical gamers, they have a certain... air about them. I'm not talking like gamer funk, I'm talking this idea that they are superior than other wargamers. Their little toy soldiers were real people on a battle field, and not a 12 ft tall super human soldier in armor and a sword. So historical gamers tend to have their regiments painted EXACTLY as depicted from historical records, down to the precise shade of grey (or w/e color was used). They nitpick the details of uniform, of history, and of the outcome of battles. So Brushfire pokes fun at that through "absurdity" (at least in comparison). We have a small scale game, we have historical looking uniforms, we have an "attempt" at getting the colors the same, but at the end of the day, these aren't people, these are animals fighting. Which is where the humor comes.

When Cy told me that we were getting Jaques de Martinique as a miniature in the AdeptiCon swag bag, I was trying to get her to push for it to be included as the "historical" mini just to mess with historical gamers, sadly that didn't come about.

And, did the game hit with it? I mean do historical wargamers play this game?

 WhiteRoo wrote:
And, did the game hit with it? I mean do historical wargamers play this game?

Not that I've seen, but probably because they're not our target audience

But then the parody angle is not very effective, no?

 WhiteRoo wrote:
But then the parody angle is not very effective, no?

Depends, are we marketing the game to people who know how anal retentive some historical gamers can get, or are we marketing the game to historical gamers that don't want fantasy in their history (i.e. animals instead of humans)?

Good point

 WhiteRoo wrote:
Good point

I tend to have those every now and then

The reason why you may not have gotten the parody angle, is like you said. You don't know much about historical games, so, it's all good.

For Redwall then!

For the record, I do know of a few Historical Gamers that enjoy Brushfire. Usually it the ones who feel the same way about Historical Wargaming as we do, but still love history.. the sort who don't care that your French Army is painted in Pink.


Again though.. On the subject of costs of Siege Weapons, Exemplars, etc:

Please try the units in a few matches as is, and post Battle Reports.
Theoryfire only gets us so far, we need actual playtest data to be able to make proper changes.

I'm planning a match for tomorrow. I doubt that any siege weapon will be involved, the plan is 50 Resource HRLV 3 Killpoint games. Should I post the army lists?


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Ribenguo Vs Vandalands

Yeah, tomorrow make a new thread with the lists/battle report.

And don't feel constrained to the models you own, test EVERYTHING. So if you want to see how a 7 wanderers list runs, run that, models or no models...

I'm not going to be able to play test anything anytime soon but if anyone wants to test out my suggestions that'd be awesome.

Out of interest. How do you guys feel the ideas hold up in theory? I have more details and stuff about implementation but it's not worth going into if this looks like a dead end.

Nothing is really off the table, but I feel that shifting the resources around really is just a cosmetic solution. Perhaps some things could use a more standardized costs (all offensive stuff is gold, all defensive stuff is lumber).

But I don't want to discourage Exemplars or Siege stuff. Exemplars give players those psuedo-historical famous characters, providing more character to their army. (From a more cynical/business perspective, it also costs a lot to make a model that people only get one of, if they don't feel they're worth it, they wont take it, and we're not selling the model to cover the costs of producing it in the first place.)

Siege/Fort also helps set Brushfire apart from other Skirmish games. Each game has to have its gimmicks beyond just art style. Now, we have a number of different gimmicks, but each of them helps. Pulling some out makes the game feel less whole.

On the idea of making the siege weapons 'smaller' The ballista essentially is just a Scorpio/Polybolos as is. We're just using more iconic terminology. Same goes with the cannon. The Trebuchet is perhaps the only 'big' one, but its just silly, no one in history tossed soldiers in metal balls to attack enemies. In either case, unless mechanics are the issue, and after lots of testing, we've felt the siege weapons are not overpowered. In fact, in 1.X they were underpowered, with the awful deviations and what not.

If mechanics are not the issue, the debate comes down to presentation. Feel free to use small siege weapons from historical armies, ones that are from a smaller scale will do the trick well. Most siege being on a 50mm base in our game provides room to pretty up the base and make it feel like an important feature on the table. With many models being on 40s or 50s as is, 50mm is not a very big siege weapon.

Edited for Clarity

I'm not suspecting more than three matches tomorrow. But I suppose if we want to test if two resource is better than three, we don't really have to play, no? The resources lost their presence as soon as the game starts, so building armies of different sizes and see if having two or three resources really make any difference would also worth something. Or am I wrong?

It's more 'Test things as they are, and if they aren't broke.. Don't fix it.'

 WhiteRoo wrote:
I'm not suspecting more than three matches tomorrow. But I suppose if we want to test if two resource is better than three, we don't really have to play, no? The resources lost their presence as soon as the game starts, so building armies of different sizes and see if having two or three resources really make any difference would also worth something. Or am I wrong?

The problem with removing one of the resources is that (if you remove lumber), you have adjust and balance the items and accessories that cost lumber. So say for Gopher Engineer, you want to run 4 of them (2 squads of 2). A gopher currently costs 5 of each resource. If you remove lumber, you now need to create a balance system. Are you going to split the costs and add them to the 2 remaining resources? So now they're 7.5 and 7.5. You can't have "half" resources, so do you up them to 8 each, or drop them to 7? Now you've got a model that is equal to 15 resources over priced at 16 or underpriced at 14. So assume we have it a 7 resources. I now have to spend 28 food and gold instead of 20 fd,gd, and lr. This is kind of simply, but what if I move it into a different model like drummers, standard bearers, medics, or hell even my Mongoose Legionnaires (who are 10, 5 and 5). It might balance them out and put them at 10 and 10, but my non-unique exemplars now have to eat the cost of 15 lumber that they no longer have. S0 a model that is 5fd, 15 gd, and 15lr now has to do something with the 15lr. Where does it go? Does it all get moved into gold? Now I have a 5fd, 30 gd model. I'm now eating up more gd than I am food. Sure I can temper this by buy weasels, but now my weasels probably aren't going to get the chance at buying axes, because to offset the extra gold I'm spending on a single Marmot Medic, I have to buy 3 Weasels without axes.

What about my named Exemplars? Like Iron Claws? He's now 50 gold? If I'm playing a 150 Resource army I'd be better off not taking him, since that's one sixth of my total resources (combining food and gold).


I'm interested in how you think to balance the costs, but no please don't test a 2 resource system. Let's actually test Brushfire before we try to test something that isn't Brushfire as it stands.

My vision of removing a resource was to merge them, not add them. That way, you average Lumber and Gold to the new Gold cost, or just use the higher of the two. Running that principle on 4 test lists (Civitas and Ribenguo, both at 50 and 150), the list came within a model or two of their 3 resources version.

Then, you can adjust the new cost in Gold to have real choice to make, instead of just filling up your list with warma./fort., to use up the lumber left. Do you want a couple exemplars and cool upgrades? Or maybe you want to run exemplars and trebuchets to launch hamster, but keep your trooper bare?. Having less resources means that you have serious choices to make during list building, instead of the "fill up food, fill up gold, then see what you can do with lumber" that we see right now in v2.

Sure, the same rebalancement could be done with 3 resources. I'm just not sure that that level of complication it's a good fit with the game. The parody of historical games mentioned earlier is a bit satirical (probably not the right use of the word, but I am faced with my second language barrier now) when you have a list building system more complicated then most of those games, even if you only need 15 models to play compared to their hundreds...

Here is my idea:

Let's start with this:
You take every gold cost and add it to the lumber cost of that thing, then remove the gold. You also say that you start with X Food and 2X Lumber.

(I remove the gold simply because it's the third, but we can agree that the actual name of the resource is not relevant)

We can assume this would not change anything big, right?




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This is not the end of it, but I would like to see what you guys think so far.

 WhiteRoo wrote:
Here is my idea:

Let's start with this:
You take every gold cost and add it to the lumber cost of that thing, then remove the gold. You also say that you start with X Food and 2X Lumber.

(I remove the gold simply because it's the third, but we can agree that the actual name of the resource is not relevant)

We can assume this would not change anything big, right?




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This is not the end of it, but I would like to see what you guys think so far.

Keep going...

So how do you determine resource level? 150 resources is for food, and then you have 300 lumber?

so now, we don't have gold, but it's ugly because you have twice as much lumber than food, buut...

It's actually does not matter if wood worth twice as much than food, no does it. Going back to the current system, if we roll up gold ten times, as long as every gold cost is multiplied by then, you just say Vandalands changes gold to food in 10:1 and we are good.

So, now we just double the food cost of everything and also double the starting food, and say Vandalands can trade 2:1, not 1:1.

Alternatively we halve the wood cost, but that can end up in 0.5 woods wery easily.

 WhiteRoo wrote:
so now, we don't have gold, but it's ugly because you have twice as much lumber than food, buut...

It's actually does not matter if wood worth twice as much than food, no does it. Going back to the current system, if we roll up gold ten times, as long as every gold cost is multiplied by then, you just say Vandalands changes gold to food in 10:1 and we are good.

So, now we just double the food cost of everything and also double the starting food, and say Vandalands can trade 2:1, not 1:1.

Alternatively we halve the wood cost, but that can end up in 0.5 woods wery easily.

Doubling the food isn't a terrible idea... but it's needlessly inflating the point sizes of a game... It's like mk1 Warmachine where things cost a few hundred points, when the current system seems to work better and just makes sense.

And dropping the gold entirely then means that things don't balance out properly. You have to remember, when we build things into this game we are doing it with the 3 resources in mind to keep things balanced.

It would not be the same but would it be that different? Actually with the exception of only nine units, all basic costs of wood and gold are equal. So if you spend you resources, you most likely spending your gold and lumber equally already.

On top of that, all fraction specific weapon or armor is free (except two Ribenguo one), also you buy weapons from gold and/or lumber as well armor. Body armor costs gold and shield costs lumber. Not too many units can upgrade into both shield and body armor(I actually don't know, but I dare say noone can buy shield and armor as upgrade equipment). So it's not really matter if that's one or two resource, the amount that matters.

And you can always say that you divide all resources by five -or any number really- no? that would make it to be smaller. (yes I know some things cost one gold, but you don't going to buy one anyway)

Everyone can take Fortifications and Siege Weapons, even if you don't want to, which cost varying amounts of LR/GD.

The Campaign system would also need a serious overhaul.

If we drop one of the resources then every unit, item, and extra thing in the game has to compete for that resource. The way it is now, some things will use one.. others with use the other.. and a few things will take from both. You have more options available to you then.

But again, we're not changing the Resource System without actual playtesting to show issues.