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Two new updates made last night.

First, I put together a draft mini-update, including a bunch of new rules that are sourced from old notes that weren't in the original rulebook. You can download the v0.1 of those here.

Second, I have now created a "Suggestion Box" for new traits and army characteristics (and other new rules). This gives a central location for people to post ideas that they might have to help support minis they might like, or just to add something cool to the game that they want to be able to do. Check that one out in the forums.

I'm currently in the process of reading through the new rules and had a couple questions:

First of all, in the first edition I found that DEX was one of the (or simply was) most important stat and armies with high DEX seemed to outperform those without. Is that still a problem in the current version of the rules, and if so, would it work to increase the specific cost of certain stats if they are used in more game mechanics?

Secondly, have any of your current playtesters done much min-maxing? I realize that this is not how everyone plays, however having a power-gamer or two testing what breaks the system can help balance the system. I also realize that having the ability to design your own army makes it much harder to protect against min-maxing, but it would be nice knowing that every option is more or less viable.

Thanks!

 Goremaul wrote:
I'm currently in the process of reading through the new rules and had a couple questions:

First of all, in the first edition I found that DEX was one of the (or simply was) most important stat and armies with high DEX seemed to outperform those without. Is that still a problem in the current version of the rules, and if so, would it work to increase the specific cost of certain stats if they are used in more game mechanics?

Secondly, have any of your current playtesters done much min-maxing? I realize that this is not how everyone plays, however having a power-gamer or two testing what breaks the system can help balance the system. I also realize that having the ability to design your own army makes it much harder to protect against min-maxing, but it would be nice knowing that every option is more or less viable.

Thanks!

To the first question, I made an effort to spread the importance of stats around. DEX is still going to be fairly important simply from the nature of the game, but it has been reduced in importance. For instance, DEX no longer affects the target number to hit a unit in melee combat unless the defending unit chooses to give up its STR on their own to-hit rolls. TEK and DEX are still going to be prime stats, along with CON, but not to such an extreme degree as in 1E. In addition, things that utilize STR (such as melee weapons and the like) have often been reduced in relative cost, allowing armies that want to focus on close combat to be able to match up a bit better.

To the second, I've not received reports that any of the volunteer playtesters have specifically attempted to powergame the system, but to date most of my effort has gone towards writing the rules rather than organizing dedicated playtesting. That'll come in the next couple of months as I get the last two major parts of the game complete.

Cool! I'm looking forward to trying out the new edition.

Thanks for the quick response too.

 Goremaul wrote:
Cool! I'm looking forward to trying out the new edition.

Thanks for the quick response too.

For kicks I went through and scanned the stats real fast to see where they're all being used (I don't have the notes from when I was trying to sort things out before I got to work).

DEX (5): Shooting To-Hit, Taking Cover action, charge distance bonus, melee initiative, melee defense if fighting defensively
STR: (3) Melee to-hit, Melee to-wound, melee defense
CON: (2) Wound defense (melee/ranged)
TEK: (X) Determines base cost and capabilities of all weapons and armor, determines availability of many abilities
MOR: (4) Coherency Distance, Withdrawal Move Attempt, Pinning Tests, Fallback Tests
PRE: (4) Preventing Withdrawal Moves, personality cover, Command Action range, Magic ability strength

So, DEX is used slightly more than the other stats, but not to any great degree.

That's handy to see actually.

Now to get designing an army...

 Goremaul wrote:
That's handy to see actually.

Now to get designing an army...

Please share when you do, I always like seeing what people do with the system. Sometimes it makes me go "wait, can do that?" even with something I wrote. That's part of what I like about the way the unit trait system works: there are a ton of possible combinations out there. Yeah... it might make for something being broken, but I can easily fix it when that happens. Even if/when there's a printed book, there's always going to be the "canon" digital version that's going to be the official wording of everything, and I can easily just make changes there to take care of problems.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Since I figured it might be interesting to share some of my design process, I posted my scratch design notes for the Artillery/Aircraft rules: http://www.titaniumspork.org/?p=763

If you plan on making frequent changes (or even the possibility of it) I would be extrememly cautious of making a printed book. It sucks to buy a nice printed book, then find out it is invalidated a month later due to a new pdf. I realize that that is the reason you are doing the game in pdf format though.

As a side note, where should I post my army ideas? I'm guessing on your forum at http://www.titaniumspork.org/?post_type=forum ?

Arty and aircraft stuff looks neat, though I'm not sure that it's necessary to have aircraft on the table at all, unless it is a grav-vehicle type.

Aircraft models are largely a marker for what is effectively "air strike artillery". Placing an aircraft model on the board allows for them to be shot at without extra abstraction. In first edition, though, there was also air to air combat, which was done off-table; I will likely keep that for interceptors: aircraft not capable of ground attack, but just there to protect against other aircraft.

And yes, either the TiSpork forums or here would be the best place to post armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I'm leaving towards a book if only because tablets aren't quite ubiquitous enough as of yet. For the most part, a physical book is going to be used at the table to look up gameplay rules, and I don't expect those to change very much once the game is finished. Mostly what I expect to be "living" are costs, and maybe small tweaks to abilities.

That would make sense. A mini rulebook with the core rules and a couple army lists, then the army design rules on pdf only?

 Goremaul wrote:
That would make sense. A mini rulebook with the core rules and a couple army lists, then the army design rules on pdf only?

That actually wouldn't be a bad way to go about it. I'm just enough of a gaming Luddite, though, that I'm still really hesitant about not having the rules available entirely in print: selling an incomplete product just feels too much like EA, even if the intent is for the print book to be a sort of "collection piece" and for the PDF to be the official, actual rules.

What I really want is to have army construction software available. The design system is a bit too complex for Battlescribe to handle, unfortunately. Also unfortunately I definitely can't afford to pay for a programmer to create one (short of making that a stretch goal on the eventual and inevitable Kickstarter).

I suppose the idea for the book would be to have a "quickstart" rulebook of sorts; something to get you playing with some basic lists, but not forcing army creation on people right away.

Army construction software would be pretty cool actually. I haven't played around with Battlescribe, but I have seen a couple of Excel spreadsheets that do a decent job of contruction (one was for Dystopian Wars with drop down menus). It'd take some time, but I wonder if you could work something on that?

 Goremaul wrote:
Army construction software would be pretty cool actually. I haven't played around with Battlescribe, but I have seen a couple of Excel spreadsheets that do a decent job of contruction (one was for Dystopian Wars with drop down menus). It'd take some time, but I wonder if you could work something on that?

Excel would be functional, certainly, and if I can't eventually find a dev willing to put together an app I'll probably consider doing something with it.

Since there were some questions early on about what sort of scale Aetherverse actually fits into, I decided to use one of my current favorite video games to demonstrate.

It's a bit of a long article (and it has lots of pictures), so I'll just link it rather than posting the whole thing here: http://www.titaniumspork.org/?p=774

So, played my first couple of games today.

There were three of us (played 1v1 both games). First game was ~600 points, just to get a feel for the system. The main thing that stuck out was how quickly stuff dies. We were running TEK 5/6 stuff and our units didn't last very long. Second game was 1000pts and one of us tried out a vehicle and a personality. We did had a couple of questions during that battle and some after brainstorming post-battle, so let's start with those...

1) Pinning tests: If I deal 10 wounds to a unit, but only kill 7 (due to LoS), do they take a pinning test vs 7 or 10?
2) Damage against a vehicle: I have a DAM 5 gun vs an ARM 20 vehicle. If I roll a critical for damage (total 15) do I still get to roll to reduce his ARM as if I tied it, seeing as I rolled a critical hit (auto-wound)? Can you ever get an additional roll to wound after rolling a 10 against a vehicle, and if so, when?
3) Personalities and Command actions: Can a personality use the Command action on a friendly vehicle?
4) Fearless: There are many mentions of it in the rulebook, but nowhere does it actually explain what it does.
5) Zero stats: One of your sample armies has some zero stats; is there a "limit" on how far that can go? Can I have a basic profile with zero CON, or a ranged weapon with zero DAM (just rolls d10 vs WL)? Alternately, if I make an army with the Militant trait (free off-hand weapon), could I "buy" a zero DAM melee/light weapon to gain the additional attack?

Now for some thoughts and observations.
1) Things die really quickly (except big vehicles if you don't have guns to properly hurt it...). This may have been how we built our forces, but DAM 4 vs WL 9 creates lots of casualties.
2) The morale/pinning type check after being shot at doesn't seem that important. Likewise, it may have been the forces we made, but it doesn't seem like it will be a problem for most armies, especially those with higher TEK.
3) Close combat seemed a bit convoluted at first. Using STR to attack STR seems to make allow both sides to hit each other -really- easily. Is "Fighting Defensively " supposed to be a default in melee, or just for the side that strikes last?

Some suggestions:
1) Beserk: there's nothing stopping the beserkers from Fighting Defensively. Is this an oversight, or by design?
2) There's no "Swarm" unit trait or anything that I could find. That might be something to consider adding.
3) This one's a bit more difficult. One of our players mentioned that he didn't like not being able to "save" against wounds. He suggested switching the damage roll into the defending players hands, thus the attacker rolls to hit, then the defender rolls to not die. Basically giving the defender/reactive player a bit more game time.

Overall we had a lot of fun with it. Combat was brutal and quick, the game feels overall like it will play quite quickly, and the activation system screws me up. Personally, I was having a tough time remebering to randomise the activations.

I'll post some armies (the one I used and two we came up with after) a bit later.

 Goremaul wrote:
So, played my first couple of games today.

Thanks for giving it a try. Replies to your comments and questions as we go...

The main thing that stuck out was how quickly stuff dies.

Definitely as intended. There should be enough terrain to allow for units to be able to maneuver out of line of sight for a while until decisively engaging enemies, but once firefights start things generally start dying fairly quickly. I'm willing to admit that it might be too fast and will look into making changes once I'm done with the writing updates (see the bottom for that).

1) Pinning tests: If I deal 10 wounds to a unit, but only kill 7 (due to LoS), do they take a pinning test vs 7 or 10?

It would be 7. I'll fix the wording on that to indicate that it should be 7 the number of casualties taken (except in a unit with multiple wounds-per-model).

2) Damage against a vehicle: I have a DAM 5 gun vs an ARM 20 vehicle. If I roll a critical for damage (total 15) do I still get to roll to reduce his ARM as if I tied it, seeing as I rolled a critical hit (auto-wound)? Can you ever get an additional roll to wound after rolling a 10 against a vehicle, and if so, when?

I actually hadn't taken into account critical damage rolls against vehicles; as they were the most recently written part of the rules I guess I just forgot. I think it will work as the following:
-To-hit rolls of 10 give another hit as normal
-Damage rolls of 10 that do not at least equal the vehicle's AV gain an additional roll that adds to the first (but do not auto-damage)

3) Personalities and Command actions: Can a personality use the Command action on a friendly vehicle?

If the vehicle is capable of benefiting from the command action, yes.

4) Fearless: There are many mentions of it in the rulebook, but nowhere does it actually explain what it does.

Bloody hell, it did. I probably cut that paragraph out accidentally while doing some layout. I'll make sure it gets back in. A Fearless unit automatically passes Pinning and Fallback tests.

5) Zero stats: One of your sample armies has some zero stats; is there a "limit" on how far that can go? Can I have a basic profile with zero CON, or a ranged weapon with zero DAM (just rolls d10 vs WL)? Alternately, if I make an army with the Militant trait (free off-hand weapon), could I "buy" a zero DAM melee/light weapon to gain the additional attack?

All of the above is a "yes". You may not bring a stat below zero, and you may not purchase or select a trait that would take a stat below zero (no picking Stout if you have 0 DEX, for instance). Zero DAM costs zero points; a ranged weapon must cost at least 1 point (since you need to purchase at least one Range Increment for it to actually be a ranged weapon).

Now for some thoughts and observations.
1) Things die really quickly (except big vehicles if you don't have guns to properly hurt it...). This may have been how we built our forces, but DAM 4 vs WL 9 creates lots of casualties.
2) The morale/pinning type check after being shot at doesn't seem that important. Likewise, it may have been the forces we made, but it doesn't seem like it will be a problem for most armies, especially those with higher TEK.
3) Close combat seemed a bit convoluted at first. Using STR to attack STR seems to make allow both sides to hit each other -really- easily. Is "Fighting Defensively " supposed to be a default in melee, or just for the side that strikes last?

1. As stated above, things do die quickly when they can be cleanly shot at; there should be terrain to allow for good maneuvering.
2. I've been thinking of adjusting those tests to make them a little more likely to fail; there are also a ton of ways to boost MOR and such so I might really need to do some tweaking of those. This is something I'll be looking into once the Magic system is in place.
3. Close combat is meant to be decisive, though if a unit is interested in hanging around for a while fighting defensively is probably a good bet. I have been looking at some tweaks to that section as well just because I've never really been happy with how well it's written in language terms.

Some suggestions:
1) Beserk: there's nothing stopping the beserkers from Fighting Defensively. Is this an oversight, or by design?

I hadn't considered it to this point; it's a good suggestion to say that they can't. They're berserkers, after all.

2) There's no "Swarm" unit trait or anything that I could find. That might be something to consider adding.

That is planned. Probably in the Magic/Mutation update.

3) This one's a bit more difficult. One of our players mentioned that he didn't like not being able to "save" against wounds. He suggested switching the damage roll into the defending players hands, thus the attacker rolls to hit, then the defender rolls to not die. Basically giving the defender/reactive player a bit more game time.

There were saving throws in 1st edition; they were removed as a way to reduce dice rolls and to further differentiate the game from 40K. The Cover and Deflect system were implemented as a way to represent defensive abilities without adding additional rolls into the game play. As I get more feedback on the system, though, I'll definitely be considering increasing Cover, increasing Deflect, reducing the impact of melee and making things a bit more survivable in the system. There is a single "Save" mechanism: the Invulnerable trait; it's just incredibly rare at this point. I understand that Cover as it stands doesn't help the defending player feel like they're involved with the unit dying and I do sympathize with the feeling.

the activation system screws me up. Personally, I was having a tough time remebering to randomise the activations.

You'll get used to it. My hardest thing is remembering to pull cards out for dead units.

Thanks again. I appreciate the feedback, and I'll definitely take into account things that you've brought up. I'll be doing a heavy balance pass over the rules once I've finished writing them all (just two more updates to go).

3) This one's a bit more difficult. One of our players mentioned that he didn't like not being able to "save" against wounds. He suggested switching the damage roll into the defending players hands, thus the attacker rolls to hit, then the defender rolls to not die. Basically giving the defender/reactive player a bit more game time.

There were saving throws in 1st edition; they were removed as a way to reduce dice rolls and to further differentiate the game from 40K. The Cover and Deflect system were implemented as a way to represent defensive abilities without adding additional rolls into the game play. As I get more feedback on the system, though, I'll definitely be considering increasing Cover, increasing Deflect, reducing the impact of melee and making things a bit more survivable in the system. There is a single "Save" mechanism: the Invulnerable trait; it's just incredibly rare at this point. I understand that Cover as it stands doesn't help the defending player feel like they're involved with the unit dying and I do sympathize with the feeling.

A random thought for the "to-wound": what if it was a base TN of 10, plus your con/wound level, minus the DAM of the weapon, rolled by the Defender? Currently if I have a DAM 4 weapon and shoot a WL 8 model, I will kill on a 4+ (70% chance). With the above system, the defender would "save" on a 6+ (8WL - 4DM -> TN10) (50% chance). It would make things live longer most likely, which may not be what you're going for. It does put a bit more play into the defender's hands, and keeps the wounding in the the same style as to-hit (base TN 10) though.

TN 10 + DAM vs WL + d10?

what if it was a base TN of 10, plus your con/wound level, minus the DAM of the weapon, rolled by the Defender

I'm going to have to read this at some time other than late Sunday evening. My brain just broke.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Brain-breaking aside, I think it more likely that if I were to add some sort of Save system to the game, it wouldn't be based upon the unit itself but more upon meeting certain conditions.

Alternately, just allow the defending player to roll the dice for the to-wound rolls. Instead of having to hit a TN with the damage roll, think of it as "each hit automatically causes a wound, unless you roll UNDER a TN that is defined by the difference in the weapon's DAM and the unit's WL". I think that's mechanically the same thing (I'd have to do more math than I'm comfortable with right now to be sure).

Here's the army list I made for the games yesterday:

Eisenkern Stormtroopers - 317 Panzergrenadiers: Iron Agressors

Basic Army Profile
DEX 5 |STR 3 |CON 3 |TEK 6 |MOR 5 |PRE 3 |Cost 69
Mechanized: Vehicles become Elite. Require 3 Basic units per Support.
Experienced: All units must be Veterans for 5 points.


Basic Unit - Panzergrenadier Squad - 6 Models |Cost: 183
DEX 5 |STR 3 |CON 3 |TEK 6 |MOR 5 |PRE 3 |MV 6 |WL 9 |WP 1
Armour: Combat armour (ARM 6)
Ranged Weapon: MG-42 (DAM 5, 30", Assault 2)
Sergeant: One model in the unit must be modeled as a Sergeant. As long as the Sergeant is alive, the unit gains +1 MOR and +2” to their coherency. This model must be used for all coherency measurements while alive.
Veterans: Unit may re-roll fallback or pinning tests.
Suppressive Fire: When firing with ranged weapons, declare that the unit is using "suppressive fire" before to-hit rolls are made. Unit causes no wounds, but the target unit must take a pinning test with a TN equal to the number of hits caused.

Basic Unit - Panzergrenadier Pak40 Section - 6 Models |Cost: 190
DEX 5+1 |STR 3 |CON 3 |TEK 6 |MOR 5 |PRE 3 |MV 6 |WL 10 |WP 1
Armour: Gun Shield (ARM 7)
Ranged Weapon: Pak 40 (DAM 8, 40", Heavy 1+1, Team-Served: 1 gun per 2 models)
Veterans: Unit may re-roll fallback or pinning tests.

Basic Unit - Panzergrenadier Mortar Section - 6 Models |Cost: 231
DEX 5+1 |STR 3 |CON 3 |TEK 6 |MOR 5 |PRE 3 |MV 6 |WL 9 |WP 1
Armour: Combat armour (ARM 6)
Ranged Weapon: Triple Mortar (DAM 5, 60", Heavy 1, Barrage: no LoS needed @ DEX 3, Blast: d5 hits per gun & no extra shots on crit, Team-Served: 1 gun per 2 models)
Veterans: Unit may re-roll fallback or pinning tests.


After the game my friend told me that he made an army that would easily beat both the ones we used (even 2000pts vs 1000pts). WARNING: some powergaming ahead... Here it is!

Hairy Elcor Things (He didn't name them, but that was the look he described to me)

Basic Army Profile
DEX 4 |STR 7 |CON 7 |TEK 1 |MOR 5 |PRE 5 |Cost 68
Archaic, Barbaric, Bloodthirsty, Hardened, Militant, Terrifying

Basic Unit - 10 Models |Cost: 140
DEX 4 |STR 7 |CON 10 |TEK 1 |MOR 5 |PRE 5 |MV 6 |WL 11 |WP 3
Armour: ARM 1
Melee Weapon: DAM 1
Berserker, Frightening, Offhand Weapon, Huge

Elite Unit - 5 Models |Cost: 140
DEX 4 |STR 9 |CON 10 |TEK 1 |MOR 5 |PRE 5 |MV 6 |WL 11 |WP 3
Armour: ARM 1
Melee Weapon: DAM 1
Berserker, Frightening, Offhand Weapon, Huge

Personality - Level 3 |Cost: 300
DEX 4 |STR 7 |CON 10 |TEK 5 |MOR 5 |PRE 5 |MV 8 |WL 14 |WP 8
Armour: ARM 4
Melee Weapon: DAM 5
Berserker, Fieldcraft, Ferocious, Frightening, Graceful, Offhand Weapon, Gigantic, Vampiric, Huge Mount (Gigantic)


In response to that, I came up with a (hopefully) more broken army. Here goes!

The Swarm

Basic Army Profile
DEX 8 |STR 10 |CON 1 |TEK 0 |MOR 0 |PRE 2 |Cost 87
Barbaric: +2 STR, +1 CON, -3 TEK, units may be Berserk for 20 points.
Bloodthirsty: +2 PRE, must charge if able.
Guerilla: -2 TEK, units gain Fieldcraft.
Militant: Free Off-Hand Weapon, but may never defensive fire.


Basic Unit - Swarmlings - 20 Models |Cost: 162
DEX 9 |STR 10 |CON 0 |TEK 0 |MOR 0 |PRE 2 |MV 5 |WL 0 |WP 1
Melee Weapon: Claws and Teeth: DAM 0
Berserk: Fearless, Invulnerable 2. Must move max distance towards an enemy unit at least once during each activation, unless already engaged in melee. If the unit is close enough to charge at any point, it must. No Heavy weapons and no armour higher than TEK
Fieldcraft: No movement penalties for difficult terrain.
Offhand Weapon: Gain an additional attack in melee
Phalanx: If all models in the unit are base to base with at least 2 other models in the unit, double the effects of their shield trait.
Shield (Large): Cover 2.
Size (Small): +1 DEX, -1 CON, -1 MOV, Cover 1.

Stats of note: 40 some attacks at DEX 9 (Initiative), Cover 5 all the time, really hard to be hit in melee, and with Invulnerable 2. Also, fairly cheap points wise (6 units at 1000 points).

I haven't had time today to put time into responding, Gore, but I'll definitely look those over and take your feedback into consideration.

One bit of news that I DO want to share is that I've gotten permission from a couple of miniature companies to create army lists for some of their miniature lines and include them in the free version of the rulebook. One is Copplestone Castings, the other is Anvil Industry (in a somewhat limited capacity since one of their lines I asked about is actually based on someone else's IP so they can't give permission).

These are not endorsements of Aetherverse by these companies, but it is definitely a good sign that there are producers willing to be supportive of the concept.

That's awesome! Definitely a step in the right direction.

I have completed the draft rules (v0.1) of the Aircraft and Artillery rules for Aetherverse, 2nd Edition. This adds rules for three types of artillery (ballistic, laser-guided, and orbital) which are all located off-table to represent their immense range. The update also adds rules for two new vehicle types: Aircraft and Helicopters as well as a range of new traits to support or combat them.

The draft update may be downloaded here: (v0.1, 18 July 2013).

Also: I think I'm going to release the official A+A Update a week ahead of schedule (so, 31 July instead of 7 August). It's pretty much already done, and I'd like the extra week to think about the Magic/Superscience system.

 Magc8Ball wrote:

 Goremaul wrote:


The main thing that stuck out was how quickly stuff dies.

Definitely as intended. There should be enough terrain to allow for units to be able to maneuver out of line of sight for a while until decisively engaging enemies, but once firefights start things generally start dying fairly quickly. I'm willing to admit that it might be too fast and will look into making changes once I'm done with the writing updates (see the bottom for that).

One note to add to this that I remembered this afternoon:

I'm still going to flesh out the rules for cover, as well as adding in rules for buildings (basically just immobile vehicles, but I'll probably need to flesh out specifics of firing points and whatnot). This will definitely be adding in more survivability for infantry. Heavy cover is going to be bringing potential cover ratings up to 4, maybe 5, and units in buildings will of course (probably) be immune to direct fire.

I'm not sure if it's something I'm going to do for one of the two remaining scheduled updates, or if it will be the first thing I add after those. Heck, I might just add it as an additional scheduled update to the alpha release, making it the October update.

EDIT: I went ahead and made this official: http://t.co/Ik7g6W16WV

Cool. That will probably help actually. I'm guessing that you are envisioning boards with a lot of terrain then?

Crossposted from the TiSpork website. Big-time thanks to Joel at Anvil for giving me permission to use some of their miniatures in Aetherverse. It's a big step for the game and one that I hope will raise the visibility of the game significantly.

One of the goals for Aetherverse has been to provide a centralized rule set that miniature manufacturers can use as a way to make sure that their miniatures have a set of rules that they can be used with. Even if a miniature designer doesn’t have the time to also create a wargame for their minis they’ll have a home in Aetherverse. Today we’re introducing an example of this ideal that will appear in the next update.

While they are planning to release their own game in the future, Anvil Industry has graciously agreed to allow me to include rules for their miniatures in the Aetherverse Alpha Release. The 1.04 update on 31 July will include three army lists for their miniature lines: the cybernetic A.R.C., the heavily-armored Exo-Lords, and their elite Black Ops detachment. These lists show examples of how Anvil’s miniatures can be used to play Aetherverse but are by no means the only way to use them.

I’ve completed the first of these lists and felt it was a good time to share the news. As part of the news, I’ve uploaded the army list for the A.R.C. that will be appearing in the rulebook next week. The list is made up of heavily-armored, high-firepower squads that all can deploy using the Teleportation reserve rule, striking from nowhere into the heart of an enemy formation.

I'm working on finalizing the 1.04 update (Aircraft and Artillery) and I'm glad that this update lets me put the "Space British" back into the game because this is probably my 2nd favorite piece of art from the original book:

See the original post at the TiSpork site.

Release 1.04 of Aetherverse 2nd Edition, the Aircraft and Artillery update, is now available for free download (PDF file, updated 29 July 2013). This is the release originally planned for 7 August, but we bumped it ahead by one week to allow for more time to work on the Magic/Superscience update (as well as possibly working in a balance update in the middle of August).

This update adds rules for both Artillery (support fire called in from off the tabletop) and Aircraft (as well as Helicopters, a new vehicle type for Aetherverse). These new features provide even more ways to represent any sort of army that one can imagine. One interesting note about the Artillery rules is that there is no requirement to have a model for those units, as their attacks come from well away from the center of action (or even from space). This doesn’t mean that they’re impossible to stop, as they can be fired upon by aircraft and other artillery, and because each type of artillery has to be called in by models on the tabletop. Kill those models, and you stop the artillery. The interplay among artillery-summoning models, counterbattery fire, and aircraft zooming across the table will add new and exciting moments of drama in your battles.

Another exciting part of the 1.04 update is that it is the first update to include Army Lists designed specifically for use with miniatures produced by a third-party manufacturer! Anvil Industry has graciously allowed us to feature their miniatures in the rules, and the first two such army lists are included in this update. We hope to bring other miniature producers on board as we move forward with the book and later updates.

I' m currently working on a set of balancing changes to be made with the 1.05 update that will occur in mid-August. The main goal of these is to make pinning tests actually matter, and to improve survivability of models in melee combat. Here's the current slate of tweaks to the game:

Pinning Tests:
• Now occur only if the number of hits exceeds the unit’s MOR (changed from every time)
• Pinning Test TN is equal to the number of hits on the unit (changed from wounds)
• Suppression Fire unit trait changed to cause a Pinning Test with TN equal to twice the number of hits (changed from equal to hits)

Melee Combat:
• To-hit roll TN changed to double defending unit’s STR (changed from just 1x STR). Fighting Defensively still adds the unit’s DEX

Deflect (DEF):
• Remove Deflect as a stat (as only two things grant it and it’s nearly pointless anyways). Instead, the abilities that grant it will grant a bonus to the TN to wound the unit (essentially it will become bonus armor)

Anti-Grav Vehicles:
• Change base movement bonus to 0” (from +4”). Add the ability to buy up to 4” movement for 20pts per 2”.

Finally came up with an elegant solution for the Mercenary army trait. In 1st edition it allowed you to create an entirely new secondary profile for your elite units. That was... well, overpowered. I'd been banging my head on how to fix it for 2E... but I figured it out! It'll be back in 1.05 as a unit trait.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And now I'm trying to decide if it is worthwhile to put out the magic release a month ahead of schedule...