Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The core mechanic behind Blitz/Sil isn't bad. Add some modifiers, roll finite dice, take the best and compare. Means the opponent is involved in most actions, don't need a thousand dice and it is--at its core---pretty quick to do.

Its trimming, streamlining and editing for ease of use that the system needs.

warboss wrote:@Brandon: Eventually I have to try out infinity (and by definition your HGT). Will you be updating the rules for the new version of infinity coming out this summer? I may take the plunge and pick up the book since I know it'll be current for a while. I know that the rules are online but I like having an electricity free copy to look at as well.

This I can do.

I still need to finish a few pieces, like the Bomber, for the current edition.

After looking things over, I'm still curious about how I'll work over the ECM. This appears to be one of the major sticking points, and one that I have a personal interest in because I know ECM is... well, not all that it's played up to be.

RJVF wrote:The core mechanic behind Blitz/Sil isn't bad. Add some modifiers, roll finite dice, take the best and compare. Means the opponent is involved in most actions, don't need a thousand dice and it is--at its core---pretty quick to do.

Its trimming, streamlining and editing for ease of use that the system needs.

True. I've never had a problem with the legacy rules, although as a fan there were several pieces of Perks/Flaws that I have written on in the past concerning minor changes.

Though mostly I just seem to make things more complex for the trouble... -_-'

-Brandon F.

 warboss wrote:
@Balance: Sorry to hear about the projects. Was the management tracking tool supposed to be for website issues or game issues like FAQs/questions/errors?

I was pushing it for game development, although I was open to expanding it to other projects as well. Not quite a FAQ tool (suggested that, too, but the preference is for traditional word doc type downloads) but mainly because I feel a valid concern is that there's no real feedback loop with current feedback mechanisms. I don't like that situations occur where things get reported and not fixed because J. Random Developer (Not picking on anyone specific here... And this is not a DP9-specific issue) is receiving feedback by several sources (emails, chats, feedback forms, facebook, forum posts, etc.) so I set up a system similar to those used by software development projects to try to encourage more of a feedback-loop.

My goal was an environment that minimizes errors where a book comes out and someone says, "Wait a minute, that thing on page XX is broken. I reported that months ago." by creating a system where defects are essentially reviewed and answered. Forums work poorly for this from what I've seen, as it's difficult to stay on topic and posts get lost.

As for the dp9 website, if there's specific things that bother you, let me know. I may or may not fix things as I don't have clear approval to do so and I'm unfortunately not in a place where I feel like donating my time. it's hard to get motivated when my frustration level is high and my sense of achievement low.

Balance wrote:
I was pushing it for game development, although I was open to expanding it to other projects as well. Not quite a FAQ tool (suggested that, too, but the preference is for traditional word doc type downloads) but mainly because I feel a valid concern is that there's no real feedback loop with current feedback mechanisms. I don't like that situations occur where things get reported and not fixed because J. Random Developer (Not picking on anyone specific here... And this is not a DP9-specific issue) is receiving feedback by several sources (emails, chats, feedback forms, facebook, forum posts, etc.) so I set up a system similar to those used by software development projects to try to encourage more of a feedback-loop.

My goal was an environment that minimizes errors where a book comes out and someone says, "Wait a minute, that thing on page XX is broken. I reported that months ago." by creating a system where defects are essentially reviewed and answered. Forums work poorly for this from what I've seen, as it's difficult to stay on topic and posts get lost.

As for the dp9 website, if there's specific things that bother you, let me know. I may or may not fix things as I don't have clear approval to do so and I'm unfortunately not in a place where I feel like donating my time. it's hard to get motivated when my frustration level is high and my sense of achievement low.

No issues with the website; I was just curious about the user side application of what you were working on. I definitely understand how you feel and I don't think you're alone in your frustration or lack of excitement currently given the mood on the exHGD(eveloper) support group mailing list.

BrandonKF wrote:
This I can do.

I still need to finish a few pieces, like the Bomber, for the current edition.

After looking things over, I'm still curious about how I'll work over the ECM. This appears to be one of the major sticking points, and one that I have a personal interest in because I know ECM is... well, not all that it's played up to be.

I'd be lying if I claimed to have any clue on the details of it but doesn't Infinity have a hacking mechanic built into the system? It may not operate exactly like with HG but frankly with the switch to a skirmish-only based system, I personally don't think it has to. I think it might be cool if that unassuming iguana over there could reboot the sensors on an approaching Kodiak via a wifi virus. Is there something wrong or vastly inappropriate about the hacking mechanic as applied to HG?

The hacking jobs are mostly to freeze a TAG (their version of a Gear).

If a hacker freezes the TAG, it can't shoot, can't move, can't do much of anything. Rebooting the TAG can only be done by a separate hacker or if the TAG beats with its own Save.

That's if I can recall the rules correctly from memory.

Edit: As for skirmish-level, I was aiming to go for 20-30 models and aiming for high destruction, where even a Hunter can put down a Kodiak. I wanted to make everything more explode-y (something I was always big on, knowing armored warfare), and more pew-pew sounded like the way to go.

Second Edit: Wanted a game with 20-30 models to last less than an hour.

-Brandon F.

BrandonKF wrote:
Though even I haven't heard of TMP. I'm not really huge on the Internet, you know. I just search-fu my way through lots of schtuff.

-Brandon F.

The Miniatures Page. Google should give you an address pretty quickly.

And you should go take a peek. I pretty much ignore the front page, but I poke around the forums (which are rather exhaustive, category-wise) every now and again just to catch the latest chatter about what's going on.

Eumerin wrote:

BrandonKF wrote:
Though even I haven't heard of TMP. I'm not really huge on the Internet, you know. I just search-fu my way through lots of schtuff.

-Brandon F.

The Miniatures Page. Google should give you an address pretty quickly.

And you should go take a peek. I pretty much ignore the front page, but I poke around the forums (which are rather exhaustive, category-wise) every now and again just to catch the latest chatter about what's going on.

So many sites to join... a man could get lost. I figured Dakka was THE place to go for all things miniature fans related. Now I find there is MORE???

-Brandon F.

For "news", I go to tabletopgamingnews, theminiaturespage, and bols (all .coms). That should get you a wide variety of news about minis games from all different genres. BOLS is basically 40k focused but they do cover some other popular scifi stuff. TTGN is more general with a slight slant towards CMON projects since they own them as well as kickstarters and new companies. TMP is more old fogey with a 1990's style web layout and a focus on historical games and smaller veteran niche companies moreso than the other two sites. Between the three of them, you shouldn't miss any real news. Dakka usually "breaks" the news faster and has the added benefit of more discussion but if you want to make sure you don't miss anything then going to the three sites above every few days should cover all the important bases.

As for the inifinity hacking, I figured it was more complicated than just freezing tags. I guess you would have to work on that a bit but maybe it'll be diversified in the upcoming 3rd edition.

For a long time that was pretty much all the hackers were intended for. That and they could freeze Heavy Infantry, not just TAGs. Light Infantry was off-limits because they were obfuscated as not having power armor exo-skeletons.

A 12-point hacker freezing your 100-point TAG in place and letting it become mincemeat was the rage-end of some newbie players who relied on the TAG Rambo rush, I hear.

-Brandon F.

 Balance wrote:

 warboss wrote:
@Balance: Sorry to hear about the projects. Was the management tracking tool supposed to be for website issues or game issues like FAQs/questions/errors?

I was pushing it for game development, although I was open to expanding it to other projects as well. Not quite a FAQ tool (suggested that, too, but the preference is for traditional word doc type downloads) but mainly because I feel a valid concern is that there's no real feedback loop with current feedback mechanisms. I don't like that situations occur where things get reported and not fixed because J. Random Developer (Not picking on anyone specific here... And this is not a DP9-specific issue) is receiving feedback by several sources (emails, chats, feedback forms, facebook, forum posts, etc.) so I set up a system similar to those used by software development projects to try to encourage more of a feedback-loop.

My goal was an environment that minimizes errors where a book comes out and someone says, "Wait a minute, that thing on page XX is broken. I reported that months ago." by creating a system where defects are essentially reviewed and answered. Forums work poorly for this from what I've seen, as it's difficult to stay on topic and posts get lost.

Lets just say you're not the only one to have tried that. Emphasis on "tried".

The number of time I have suggested the use of a source control system...

 Balance wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
For that to get green-lighted, Robert should have been capable of understanding what you were talking about, you know.

Actually, these were Dave, but the lack of enthusiasm has not helped my mood. Both of those efforts were done with me donating the initial up-front time, so I'm pretty much burned out on doing much without permission to bill for my time.
[..] while I may not always agree with them, I do think they get the setting better than the current tabletop effort or the video game [..]

 Balance wrote:
I don't like that situations occur where things get reported and not fixed because J. Random Developer (Not picking on anyone specific here... And this is not a DP9-specific issue) is receiving feedback by several sources (emails, chats, feedback forms, facebook, forum posts, etc.) so I set up a system similar to those used by software development projects to try to encourage more of a feedback-loop.
My goal was an environment that minimizes errors where a book comes out and someone says, "Wait a minute, that thing on page XX is broken. I reported that months ago." by creating a system where defects are essentially reviewed and answered.

It's a good goal, and worthy of time when it's appreciated, but something I've noticed more over the past few years, and yes, not just with DP9, is that there has to be enough humility in folks creating projects to admit they might have outright goofed or did not set about doing things in the most efficient way.

Unfortunately, such humility seems rare in TPTB folks, quite often encompassing not just a lack of ability to understand, but also a decided unwillingness to even tolerate having something explained to them when they clearly don't understand it.
Which makes even simple questions they might not have thought of on their own just a wee bit difficult to get answered in a satisfactory manner.
If those nice folks even deign to answer in the first place, and not simply ignore the issue completely.

This is never a good circumstance, as the personality type that suffers from this also tends to have the charming trait of absolute blindness towards how they are acting.

There has to be some kind of leader to get things done, but that doesn't equate to needing a foolhardy tyrant incapable of useful collaboration.

_
_

Brandon, do you apply filters to images to get your art over on the dp9 forums? Do you use Ghislain art or model photos? In any case, good job!

I included a thread on the Fan Art section here, warboss.

http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=16196#entry283755

On Flickr I have quite a bit of the art pasted in my own new profile.

On Deviantart, my name is thanatosstorm. So at thanatosstorm.deviantart.com I've included all the art there as well.

I use model photographs primarily from everyone I can find. Lots of old blogs from old members, acquaintances, friends, and even those I don't know very well.

Thanks very much for the compliment, I appreciate it.

I'll be continuing to update with new art as I go along.

-Brandon F.

BrandonKF wrote:
I included a thread on the Fan Art section here, warboss.

http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=16196#entry283755

On Flickr I have quite a bit of the art pasted in my own new profile.

On Deviantart, my name is thanatosstorm. So at thanatosstorm.deviantart.com I've included all the art there as well.

I use model photographs primarily from everyone I can find. Lots of old blogs from old members, acquaintances, friends, and even those I don't know very well.

Thanks very much for the compliment, I appreciate it.

I'll be continuing to update with new art as I go along.

-Brandon F.

You may want to tread lightly in that case...

http://www.contentfac.com/copyright-infringement-penalties-are-scary/

I'm going off to find my waders and see about that boat rental before tomorrow hits.


I already noticed one error on the back cover alone - in the field guides there is no such thing as a generic force.
During army construction players must choose a sub-faction, and that ruling has been in the construction flowchart for every book, including this one.

But still, it was tried initially to make this possible in the last book, except it doesn't work at all well with the field guide format.
And the idea was dropped.


So that must be a purely "Alpha/Beta" oriented addition to justify things planned for the sub-lists, put into a book using a completely different form of force construction.
The words "godawful mess" come to mind when contemplating how that was even slapped onto the previous material given what a headache making it all work over three months ended up being just using the source material alone.....

_
_

Sooooo...

If someone is interested in Heavy Gear... due to being infatuated with it in Videogame form back in the day, and is looking at playing around in the tabletop version...

...stay the **** away?

Or should I just buy some models and make up my own rules?

A lot of you guys are very passionate about all this. And cutting through the cynicism and grumpy comments, (which are understandable), I'm of the belief that you guys care about the game, and less so about the hands that are currently in control of it.

...I'm sure that's an understatement.

Also someone mentioned Infinity and I have a bad habit of showing up every time that is mentioned. Its like the gaming version of a coke addiction.

I say wait for the "beta" rules to come out this summer and, if they're free or very cheap ($5), try them out. If you like the mechanics, buy some models. The core rules are mostly seemingly nailed down at this point for better or worse but the army lists are still completely up in the air.

I definitely wouldn't buy any models now given that you don't know what variants will be legal and/or worthwhile in game or even what factions will be given a special "touch" in terms of power/variety over the others and there is no point in wasting your money in the meantime. Obviously that holds even more true for the books which will be even more useless unless you're playing the older blitz rules. Depending on what they plan to charge for the beta rules (if anything... don't know personally), I wouldn't even recommend buying them if they cost more than $5. You'd basically be paying DP9 for the honor of testing their rules for one year at which point your purchase would be worthless (normally with dp9, you get two whole years of value out of a rulebook before they abandon it). In all honestly, just wait for the final version to shake out in 2015. The rpg though might be worth checking out in the meantime but I don't follow that side of Heavy Gear much.

I have the PDF of the Blitz rulebook that I had printed out (when I worked at a place with a color laser printer), that is in a binder upstairs somewhere.

Thanks for the heads up though.

I don't really see this as being a game I'd be playing in a game store with people, but more something to maybe do with friends. Or another painting project for the time being. I've always like the way they looked, but never got involved.

I was actually thinking about digging into the rules and seeing if I could hammer out some sort of RP Campaign using the fluff and the base rules... likely with some modifications.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
Sooooo...
If someone is interested in Heavy Gear... due to being infatuated with it in Videogame form back in the day, and is looking at playing around in the tabletop version...
...stay the **** away?
Or should I just buy some models and make up my own rules?

A lot of you guys are very passionate about all this. And cutting through the cynicism and grumpy comments, (which are understandable), I'm of the belief that you guys care about the game, and less so about the hands that are currently in control of it.

...I'm sure that's an understatement.

Well, an understatement it might be, but at least it's an accurate one.

I did get into HG through the HG2 video game, so... yeah.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
I was actually thinking about digging into the rules and seeing if I could hammer out some sort of RP Campaign using the fluff and the base rules... likely with some modifications.

This is pretty much what the folks at the top have left for anyone who isn't willing to support their inane practices. There are a lot of things in the game and setting worth taking away, but unfortunately those things are also what the folks at the Pod are always trying to remove for the sake of whatever it is they hold as a "vision." Or at least their vision of the current moment.

I guess really what you might get out of the game depends on what you want from it; If you're into mecha-based play this is where they continue to take things, so that is the somewhat easier path to tread.

If you want a more down to earth setting, you'll have to be willing to put in a whole lot of work to make things consistent. Because between the former line editor, previous developers, current assistant game developer, current primary designer, and el presidente, virtually no one has been willing to approach company projects with either objectivity or an eye to coherency. Basically, every book and other company publication for the past 4+ years has been an all but total "one-off" in terms of unbalanced combat groups, variant naming, useless models, overpowered models, and often contrary model equipment that was all intended to fix a previous version of the game that was itself problematic due to those very same company decisions.

Each of the people I listed above who have a hand in things thinks nothing of inserting some sort of "easter egg" or "rule of cool / $$$ grab" idea without stopping to think that at each point in a project the rest of them are all doing the exact same thing. This is how the player-base continues to get products the company considers finished that turn out in practice to be unplayable messes requiring either multiple erratas, revamped versions, or both - which is usually not forthcoming, or else executed so as to cause even more problems rather than actually fix anything.

Calling any of them out on any of these practices is considered to be indicative of a "poor attitude." Standing up to any of them to stick to your point is simply not allowed, even when they are obviously shown to be in the wrong.

They want to sell miniatures, but only apparently want a small handful of folks to buy overpriced showpiece models based on how they go about that process, rather than trying to generate a stream of steady orders from a larger community. They also essentially do not care about supporting anything once you have purchased it, and have shown a marked tendency towards eliminating rules, models, and equipment loadouts almost at random when the mood strikes them.

To say things are often delayed by their choice of process, well, understatement doesn't even begin to cover it. One telling sign of late is that the company president has continued to post updates or previews on Facebook rather than on his own forums, where he has also been known to remove anything posted he does not want to see.


In the current rules revamp, the person in charge, Dave, has been unable to get the names right for models or variants that have existed for almost the entire span of years Heavy Gear has existed. Even when this has been pointed out to him he has refused to make the change from what he came up with - and, if you were a tester on some company project, pointing out something that might be changed for increased coherency was likewise equally ignored. Yet changes are apparently alright, but only so long as they come up with it, and whether or not it makes sense with any previous material they created is irrelevant.

Case in point, the Peacemaker Razorback - one of the most iconic Heavy Gear designs. Only it would seem "Peacemaker" is not acceptable for that equipment swap on other models compared to the apparently "cooler" moniker of "Chaingun."

Or, for Southern models which are named after snakes, and their variants as some play on snakes, "Striking" has denoted a recoilless cannon swap for almost as long. But apparently again this was not cool enough or understandable enough, so Dave changed it to be "Striker."


These kind of people are in charge, with no one able to put any brakes on them, and they think nothing of demanding that you respect both their person and their decisions no matter how incompetent they continually prove themselves to be. Plus on top of that, more than a few forum-goers expect you to behave in that manner as well towards those same folks, or else walk away from "their" game entirely.

_
_

So the DP9 Forums are under Martial Law that squashes any dissent, so the passionate folks that don't want the game to fail, or disagree with the design choices.

Viva la resistance?


But! I mean, you guys love the setting, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Reading through (I couldn't read everything, ya'll are rather verbose and I'd be here for weeks), but BrandonKF is sorta doin' his own rule writeup? How's that going?

And for those of you who have armies and play, what do you do? I'd rather skirt the developer drama if at all possible, as I'm a fan of the games I used to play, not whatever ruleset or stuff is currently flopping around. Landships and squads of Gears slugging it out in the wastes was always awesome. Still is.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
So the DP9 Forums are under Martial Law that squashes any dissent, so the passionate folks that don't want the game to fail, or disagree with the design choices.

I believe Smilodon is referring to the whole process of working for/with the pod as a developer/playtester/whatever. I've never had an issue with the way the forums are run personally and I'm not just saying that because Balance posts here. His moderation is quite moderate (pun intended). The only thing I've seen on the forums is the occasional inconvienent post disappear in an official announcement thread but I suspect that is more the compant owner's decision rather than a moderator one.

Well no worries either way. I'm a Dakka guy, this is where I lurk. I've just been going through the Blitz rules and trying to make sense of them and all, but I doubt I'll go wander over there. I'm workblocked on that site anyway.

There is a... LOT... of stuff that I just don't remember at all. Though I don't remember much from the game besides North and South sluggin' it out.

It's online. As expected the news was posted on Facebook, but not on the actual DP9 forums.

Let's see how bad it is...

Regarding the forums, the owner can, has, and will delete embarrassing posts within literally 30 seconds when notified by emails. Somehow it he spontaneously become capable of using email in that case.

I also resent accusations of verbosity. I would like to think that I am beyond mere verbosity.

 HudsonD wrote:
It's online. As expected the news was posted on Facebook, but not on the actual DP9 forums.

Let's see how bad it is...

Thanks for the update. I don't facespace or mybook and I wasn't due for a visit to the forums for a while (but apparently wouldn't have missed the news there yesterday). I'll have to check it out later today when I'm on my own WIFI as I don't want to log into paypal on a public system. Feel free to post interesting tidbits here. I imagine Smilodon will do the same thing after his cooling rods contain the reaction.

edit: From the free preview table of contents on DTRPG, it looks like we get a Scimitar Gear Strider but that is unfortunately expected. Just an FYI, that was added AFTER playtesting ended so Robert is likely the only one who worked on it with the occasional "yes sir" from the chief playtester (but likely no actual games). Some of the gears appear to be missing 1st/2nd edition RPG sketches as they're using black and white versions of minis pics instead. Also, the only model I was excited about getting (a real strider! no gear about it!) didn't make it in and instead got replaced by a gear-strider. The strider even had cool looking art. :( There is also an announcement now on DP9forum as well.

Overall, I haven't seen anything in Lion's Wrath that makes me depressed yet, but I'm only about halfway through.

The art has some 'gear grinder' moments for me: I really don't like the mix of art styles, at least when they're in the same 'context'. As warboss said, the random vehicle catalog entries that use photos converted to B&W. Also, some other places (like the Infantry diagrams) where there's an APC in a radically different line-weight.

I also prefer the older infantry, even if the minis are a bit rougher. They feel more realistic to me, especially for a setting where the answer to armoring infantry is to put them in large one-man vehicles.

Of the new stuff, I like the Leopard. Not sure about the Lion, since it's "Classified" I.E. Art Not Ready, I assume. I prefer the Lynx over the 'Pilum' no-art power armor the P.R.D.F. book got. I know it's a little bit of a weird note for the setting, but I'm wiling to be open to it. In my personal head-canon it's really something that should be akin to an ATV, but probably has a shorter deployment range and very limited vehicle-scale weapons. That's just me, though.

Metal Cat just seems like a 'mass production cheetah' and another claim to the Jaguar's palce as the eventual mainline trooper.

The Scimitar is something I know was expected (in some form). Hard to judge by a silhouette, but at least it has massive feet as a bone to the weight of such a design. I like that it looks to have big Kodiak-esque V-engine pods.

To be honest, my suggestion for a Northern "Big model" was to do something in the Mammoth/Mastodon family, with the idea that it's one of those up-scaled and given a new role. Make a cool design that sues those design cues (high-shouldered, helicopter-style cockpit, etc) instead of annother humanoid gearstrider.

The mammoth getting wheels is annoying, but I'll live. I feel like it's changing canon to suit a mechanics issue.

I like that the Camel is in the list.

I'll have to take a look at the League-specif rules in a bit.

 Balance wrote:
Overall, I haven't seen anything in Lion's Wrath that makes me depressed yet, but I'm only about halfway through.

The art has some 'gear grinder' moments for me: I really don't like the mix of art styles, at least when they're in the same 'context'. As warboss said, the random vehicle catalog entries that use photos converted to B&W. Also, some other places (like the Infantry diagrams) where there's an APC in a radically different line-weight.

The model pic B&W art bugs me a bit which is why I mentioned it but the addition of non-northern art bugs me more. I only have access to the free preview at the moment but why the hell is there paxton infantry pics in the NORTHERN book? Smilodon worked very hard in figuring out what models can go where to try and make sure players had multiple avenues to use each model (at least when allowed by the faction specific restrictions dictated from on high) so it shouldn't see as much of an issue with collections being completely invalidated like with FIF.

 Balance wrote:

Of the new stuff, I like the Leopard. Not sure about the Lion, since it's "Classified" I.E. Art Not Ready, I assume. I prefer the Lynx over the 'Pilum' no-art power armor the P.R.D.F. book got. I know it's a little bit of a weird note for the setting, but I'm wiling to be open to it. In my personal head-canon it's really something that should be akin to an ATV, but probably has a shorter deployment range and very limited vehicle-scale weapons. That's just me, though.

We didn't see any art for the Lion so I can't comment on that.

 Balance wrote:

Metal Cat just seems like a 'mass production cheetah' and another claim to the Jaguar's palce as the eventual mainline trooper.

The Scimitar is something I know was expected (in some form). Hard to judge by a silhouette, but at least it has massive feet as a bone to the weight of such a design. I like that it looks to have big Kodiak-esque V-engine pods.

The metal cat is supposed to be a mechanical fix for how difficult it is to hit a +2 def gear as it's primary purpose. It's supposed to use the same model as the stock cheetah so as not to disenfranchise northern players from their existing models as the standard cheetah (at least in the playtest documents) got less available overall. As for the scimitar, it's entirely new post-playtesting and robert's baby so I can't comment on that. From the name, I'd expect it to be in the Paxton book as it doesn't follow northern mammalian nomenclature. I don't see the scimitar outline in the preview document but judging from the Lion I wouldn't expect too much detail from it. The lion uses the outline of a grizzly from what I can tell so I'd expect the Scimitar to borrow the kodiak's.

 Balance wrote:

To be honest, my suggestion for a Northern "Big model" was to do something in the Mammoth/Mastodon family, with the idea that it's one of those up-scaled and given a new role. Make a cool design that sues those design cues (high-shouldered, helicopter-style cockpit, etc) instead of annother humanoid gearstrider.

The mammoth getting wheels is annoying, but I'll live. I feel like it's changing canon to suit a mechanics issue.

The "big" model was actually supposed to be a lighter, faster strider (plus a transport strider!) ala the naga since the "big and fat" roles were already handled by the duo of existing northern striders. It's hard to see on the preview table of contents on my phone but they both appear to be gone sadly. As for the Mammoth, I agree. I strongly advocated making the SMS an optional upgrade variant but it was decided instead to retcon it into every version (at least in the playtest). The ridiculous initial stats had a baseline speed boost PLUS the SMS and made the mammoth stupidly faster than EVERY fire support gear the north has. I believe smilodon coined the term "Rally Mammoth" for that.

 Balance wrote:

I'll have to take a look at the League-specif rules in a bit.

There is one VERY easy to miss but key and incredibly bad/unfriendly to players mechanic that I hated in that part that I'm curious if it made it to the final version. It took me a while to spot it in the playtest as I read it just like previous versions of the mechanic but it had a very significant FU component that I'm curious if people will pick up on.


From the DTRPG description:
"Choose one of the Confederated Northern City States (CNCS) five army options from the Northern Guard (NG), Northern Lights Confederacy Armed Forces (NAF), United Mercantile Federation Army (UMFA), Western Frontier Protectorate Army (WFPA), Northern Territorial Reserves (NTR), or make a Generic Northern Army."

That geneic army bit is new and something I complained about unsuccessfully during the playtest. The shuffling of models/variants to "faction only" status combined with the screw you rule I hinted above was made worse by a rule forcing you to choose a particular subfaction.

"Prior to the destruction of Peace River, hostilities between both the North and the South were flaring once again"

...who the flying feth has written this