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 cincydooley wrote:
Anyone wanna stick those on a dropbox or email me a copy. I'm BLOCKED!

I'll e-mail them to you in just a bit...

There isn't much to them yet, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on them.

 Alpharius wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Anyone wanna stick those on a dropbox or email me a copy. I'm BLOCKED!

I'll e-mail them to you in just a bit...

There isn't much to them yet, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on them.

You are a gentleman and a scholar.

 Alpharius wrote:
ASSAULT TROOPER + add-ons does seem to the way to go...

So far, the only thing I don't is the vehicle design - none really work for me. They look more 'toy-like' than I'd prefer.

Maybe once we see actual physical models I'll change my mind though?

Hopefully vehicles won't dominate the game, and it won't end up mattering too much.

I am in agreement, at the time the vehicle designs just don't work for me. They do kind of remind me of hasbro-ish, not that it is a bad thing but it doesn't mix well with any other vehicles or forces I have. I like things that I can intermingle and there is no way I can mix them with my current stuff. I can however mix their troops and proxy in my own vehicles which I think will work out better.

It is possible once they see physical models I could change my mind, but right now they mostly look like fast attack vehicles. I don't think they will be a huge dominance in the game, at least I hope not, but if they are I'll stick with proxing some existing vehicles. I have an old Bulkhead from the Transformers Cartoon which fits the scale that I could modify anyways ^_^

Well they have made some noises about the Painters pledge and thinking about it. While Its totally understandable the bunker mentality and answering questions with clinical answers. Its good to see some changes happen.

If they did a Heroes/painters pledge any free heroes would be money ploughed back into the pledge to spend on booster packs. Suppose its a game of wait and see now still another 2 weeks for something to happen.

 Malkaven wrote:

Here are the rules. I'm my opinion they are more like rough draft rather than Alpha. Not complete at all but enough where you can get an idea of how it will work.

But that's is what Alpha is, what you are thinking is beta and this is a long way from beta.

Update #10

Nov 18 2014

Presenting: Bianca Carlson
Comment
5 likes

In Sayx society, where each individual comes into the world pre-programmed for a specific task, it is unusual for a citizen to leave the easy road and try to get through the effort of learning about a field that is not his. That is the case of Bianca Carlson.

Bianca had always been small for her age, skinny and slim, virtues that are not usually good for a soldier. Life at the academy was quite difficult and even though she managed to endure the training just like her more rugged companions, soon she had to start using her ingenuity to pass tests than other members of the academy performed merely with physical strength. The tricks and ingenuity applied by Bianca allowed her to finish her training as a Sayx soldier, but were not enough to pass the final test which exceeded her physical abilities.

Defeated and angry Bianca left the facility where she had conducted the entrance test for the Sayx troops, when she heard the sound of someone approaching her clapping. It was Tarko, who had been taking care of her since she was 16 years old when her father died.

“Why are you clapping uncle Tarko? I have failed...”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that...” Tarko reached out, giving Bianca a brown folder with a stamp reading "Confidential" in red on the cover.

"Nightstalker Infiltration Corps? What is this?" Bianca asked.

"Sounds like the kind of work that someone with your training skills could do, dont you think?"

Okay, so initial rules thoughts:

The Good

- I like the card mechanic. I think the notion that you'll be able to tailor your deck to suit your particular playstyle is really appealing, but in order to do that they're going to need to set some restrictions beyond "only two of each card" in your deck. I think it has the potential to give you a lot of customization and flexibility. It isn't anywhere near where it needs to be to be great, though.
- The command points system and Krithium payment system actually seems like it could have some legs. Neither seem to be over complicated, but both will give you, again, some flexibility on the battlefield.
- I like that all units will have their own stat cards with special rules on it. I much prefer this to other army lists. If Corvus Belli decided to release card decks that did the same for all of their units, I'd buy it immediately.
- The art is really pretty!


The "Needs Work"

- 8.2MB for a 9 page file? Come on, man! That file size is silly large for the volume.
- Both the Strength and Training statistic are counter intuitive. Training dictates your ability to hit, only you don't roll against your own training, but against your opponent. You must score higher than their training score, so if their training is a 3+ you'd need to roll higher than a 3 to hit. IMO, You should be rolling against your own training for to-hits. Strength rolls are similar, and find the defender trying to roll higher than the attacker's strength roll to see if they are wounded. For example, if a gauss cannon were to hit, the defender would need to roll a 7+ to defend the attack, with the number of dice being rolled dictated by their Defense dice (and the way the rules read, anything over a 7, weapon wise, is unblockable unless you have an armored unit, and even then you barely have a chance on the demo game Gauss Cannon---that can't be right, can it?) Armored units seem to get a modifier (Ares units get a D6+1, for example). This is a bit less counter intuitive than the Training rolls to hit, but It still seems a bit clunky to me.
- The Initiative and Fatigue mechanic is bad. It's completely dependent on dice rolls, and then if you win the initiative too many times in a row (which again, is almost entirely contingent on dice rolling) your units are penalized. You do get to select whether you have the initiative or not, so I guess that allows you to mitigate it, but I'm not a fan of being punished for winning an arbitrary dice roll. I understand why they've implemented it (as I suppose it can mitigate one person always getting to go first in a round) but I still don't like it.
- There a ton of clarifications that need to happen in the rulebook before theyre even remotely ready to be in even an alpha form, and most are as simple as clarifying where a modifier is applied (is it applied to your roll or the attribute you're rolling against), how you pay for cards (it doesn't seem to indicate if it's done with Krithium or Command Points), or the visual breakdown of one of the Command/Equipment cards.

So yeah, those are my initial impressions. It certainly isn't a gak fest, but it's definitely a pre-alpha version of the rules that needs a lot of work. I don't think there's anything too revolutionary here, though the card mechanic is one I haven't really seen done real well before. I'm actually pretty okay with the rules being relatively simple and beer and pretzely, as I'm really not in the market for anything new and complicated (I'll have plenty to learn with N3 for that). As someone mostly interested in the models for "OOHH PRETTY MODELS" sake, I'm okay with a simple, fun rulesset for this game. There's just a lot of work to do on these rules to get it there so that we don't have GW length FAQs.

I disagree on the training, it makes sense and scales better to have the target unit be the target number than having the unit doing the action be the best there is.

The card mechanic is interesting, I should know, I toy with this idea for two years now, for something personal, I would suggest a system that shows how many cards of a type/ category can be included in the deck and separating the cards into types.

The Initiative/ Fatigue mechanic is interesting, I like how it allows to keep the momentum and the penalty give a push your luck element into it, but the way to achieve and maintain initiative is... lacking...

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I disagree on the training, it makes sense and scales better to have the target unit be the target number than having the unit doing the action be the best there is.

Personally, I think the face2face type roll of Infinity is the best way to resolve a to hit (my dodge vs. your shooting accuracy) but it requires both players to roll. I think if they're going to have a single roll like 40k, then whether or not you hit should be contingent upon your actual model. I actually think their stat lines are a little bit too simplistic overall, but that's a whole different issue.

The card mechanic is interesting, I should know, I toy with this idea for two years now, for something personal, I would suggest a system that shows how many cards of a type/ category can be included in the deck and separating the cards into types.

Can you think of any other games that use something like that? I was wracking my brain and really couldn't. Which is cool. I think it would be neat if units could 'search' objectives on the field to draw additional equipment cards from a "general" equipment pile, but that may over complicate it.

The Initiative/ Fatigue mechanic is interesting, I like how it allows to keep the momentum and the penalty give a push your luck element into it, but the way to achieve and maintain initiative is... lacking...

Like I said, I understand why it's there, and I don't disagree with it in theory, but I agree that the way it is implemented in this pre-alpha is pretty poor.

But again: SHINIES!

SHINIES!

Where??????

Card mechanic wise in a wargame, well the nearest thing to hand I can think of is the Action Point cards in Rackham's minis boardgame Hybrid.

Infinity has the best game system for a skirmish game, this is squad based so the face to face roll would be tricky to implement, at least without treating the squad as a single entity with models been the wound counters. for what it is I prefer the target is the target roll, because it scales better, imagine playing 40k where the BS requirement is based on the target, it would allow far better balance and make elite armies more survivable.

Of course the single D6 is an old mechanic that supports few tricks to balance, but with given tools I think especially with scalability (upwards) in mind target equals target roll works best.

The system I suggest? not in miniature wargames, but cardgames and boardgames using cards have a plethora of implementations.

I see, yes, it is quite poor, I would rather they used a mechanic were completing objectives or causing damage allowed the Initiative to be held, that's what I would do at least, a player consolidation move would actually end the initiative rather than some odd dice roll characters could be used to maintain or steal the initiative as an added layer of strategy, or cards since the system is already there.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Infinity has the best game system for a skirmish game.

Well that isn't subjective or anything.....

Drake uses cards similar to this.

No it is not, but for me as somebody who has wargaming systems as a hobby and has made quite a few game systems myself as an amateur of course, it ticks all the boxes I want and solves some of the design struggles I had in my quests to make something I would really want to play.

So in my subjective opinion, it is the best system for skirmish wargaming.

Heroes of Normandie uses cards somewhat effectively too.

Warzone resurrection uses a card system with resources too.

Oh and rivet wars also uses a card system, not sure about resource collection though.

Hence why I said boardgames that uses cards but not wargames.

Adding card support is a recently emerging trend on wargames and I do not think we have yet seen some intriguing implementation, so far it is been used as an ability/ attack variant.

Yeah, I wasn't including "boardgames."

You should!

Rivet Wars and especially Heroes of Normandie are more wargame than boardgame to me!

There's lots to be learned with them!

There is a fine line in what is what, one should never ignore the other as a source of inspiration, but, wargames as a whole have more streamlined and contained rules.

As Myth has shown boargamers have higher expectations from a system than wargamers do.

I will elaborate on the Hybrid game's use of cards.

So AP cards can be used to modify the skill level of a model (the value on a d10 you need to roll under to succeed).

Now coupled with that the models have 4 action types, with 6 levels of actions. A model has a rank in each type from 1-6. So the play of an Action Card also allows you to access higher (perhaps more useful) action ranks (each rank being slightly different).

Now each side in the game gets 4 cards each at the start. And the cards have different values (0-4) and the use of the cards is who ever has the initiative (models alternate in activation) chooses to play a card, then the opponent responds with one card, and then the active player gets to use one more.

Action cards also can be used to force discards of opponent cards, see their cards, or steal them etc.

Action cards are only gained when a model you own dies.

Now on top of those are event cards. You get two from your faction deck, drawn randomly and placed face down. The first is drawn when both sides make visual contact. And the second when you cause first blood. Some of these cards act immediately, others are held in reserve.

And finally there are the non-faction event cards, which are drawn when a model triggers an event counter. You can only activate another event counter once your opponent has done so. Some event counters in the scenarios are traps.

So lots of cards that are used to maintain some sort of balance to the game even as you lose models.

 cincydooley wrote:
Anyone wanna stick those on a dropbox or email me a copy. I'm BLOCKED!

Blocked on kickstarter?

Maybe?

But even if he's not, he might be blocked from where they're hosting the rules.

I know I was!

Haha I was just blocked at work. It's all gravy now.

BIG news!

Update #11

Nov 19 2014

So you want to customize your starter box...
Comment

Hello everyone,

Today we come to you with an announcement that a lot of you have been asking for: the possibility of customizing your starter box!

We have thought long and hard about this, and after crunching through the numbers and stressing out our production manager, we have come to the conclusion that it is something feasible for us to do. It will require a lot more work, but we think it is worth it to satisfy our customers and expand our player base.

If, and only if, we hit the $85,000 mark and maintain it until the end of the campaign, then players will be able to choose one of the following 6 combinations for their starter box:

Ares vs. Riff (33 miniatures)
Ares vs. Sayx (33 miniatures)
Ares vs. Harvesters (33 miniatures)
Riffs vs. Sayx (38miniatures, +$15)
Riffs vs. Harvesters (38 miniatures, +$15)
Sayx vs. Harvesters (38 miniatures, +$15)

Once the pledge manager is out you are going to be able to make your choice. Please note that to choose any starter box that has 38 miniatures you will have to add +$15 to your pledge.

We are limiting your selection to only these 6 combinations and are not allowing the choice of picking the same force twice because it allows us to keep production at least a little bit easier. Anyone that has already picked a pledge level with a starter box does not have to change anything, and will still get to choose what factions they get in it.

So, what can you do to make this a reality?

Everyone that has been indecisive until now, or that has a friend who wanted to back but didn’t like the forces, or that knows someone that might be interested in the custom starter box, back now!

We have been listening to the community and want to make these changes to give you a better game, but we need your support for this. It is a big risk and the last thing we want to do is end up losing money, so the more people buy the starter box, the better it is for everyone.

Thank you all very much for the support, none of this would be possible without you!

And I am a very very happy men

Holy mother of god. This is cool. Did they say what the contents will be for each one? I'm assuming it's a combat starter?

That's a good decision. It seemed a very popular request, Ares in particular don't seem like the most popular force whereas Sayx seem particularly popular.

No idea why it would cause production manager issues, all the minis are already funded/going to be produced. You just make up the core sets, read the order and drop in the two that the customer picked (There's a guy in the KS comments who's been getting some real stick for telling them that I think). Still, they did it so that's the important part.

Think I'll swap out my Ares too.

Riff VS Sayx here we come!

Some questions remain on what the new box will contain, but quite happy now.