After play testing AV twice today, I made some headway.
Strengthening Ranged helped.
Lowering Defense helped.
Rules we played by:
3 Fate Coins were given. They were used to either add a die to attack or Gear Down your difficulty to hit.
Fate Coins do not replenish.
Initiative is rolled after every round.
While engaged in combat, you may leave combat at half speed without provoking a model's attack.
While engaged by 2 enemy models, you cannot move.
Charging a model allows you to move at 1.5x speed. Example: Mov 5+2.5= Charge distance of 7.5
Charging gives you 1 additional die to your attack.
Cover Gears Up the difficulty of Ranged Attacks by 2.
Shooting into melee Gears Up the difficulty of Ranged Attacks by 2.
A die explodes on a 12.
You may make a Ranged Attack then move if you are not engaged.
No bonus for "steadying aim" by forfeiting your movement.
We played with 6 models each; The Guild vs The Madmen
Scenario: Secret Leader - Number your models and roll a die but do not reveal the outcome. The number rolled is your leader. If your leader is exhausted (killed) the game is over and you lose.
All models had 10 HP and point cost wasn't established for play testing. That will be later on during balancing.
Runtime: About 1.5 hours. Though I didn't really check.
It looks like 6 health is the minimum life total a character starts with. 10 will be the beefier characters.
Archer Duncan needs some nerfing.
I also don't know what to do about model deficiency. If you loose too many models, how can a player come back? A Fate Coin on the start of each round for each model lost?
If anyone's been following these blogs, I'd appreciate ANY input.
Comments
Negative feedback
I think model deficiency is a problem inherent to wargames. Do you know the concept of positive and negative feedbacks? (if so, skip the rest of this paragraph) Basically, a positive feedback is something where if you gain the lead, it makes it easier to stay in the lead. Risk is an example of this, since when you capture a lot of territory, you get more armies each turn, which makes it easier to capture even more territory. A negative feedback is where when you gain the lead, it is harder to stay in the lead. Pool is an example of a negative feedback, because if I sink 3 pool balls and you haven't gotten any, then suddenly I have to navigate around your balls, and have fewer options.
Most wargames have an inherent negative feedback. The reason is, if we both start out with 6 models, and I kill 2 of your models, then suddenly me killing a third will be easier than you killing a first model. As far as I have seen, there are two ways to deal with this. The first is to somehow limit what a superior army can do. For example, if I only get 3 actions per turn, then dropping from 6 to 4 models doesn't actually mean less firepower (and if you play like Heroscape, where you can give 1 person all of your actions, then suddenly dropping from 6 to one doesn't change your firepower). The second way is to introduce some sort of negative feedback to the game, such as the losing player getting Fate Coins, as you mentioned. I haven't been following your posts well enough to give a more detailed suggestion than that, but I'm sure after a few playtests you will figure something out.
Simon
Thanks, Simon. I think your
Thanks, Simon.
I think your second paragraph meant to say inherent POSITIVE feedback. haha. I really don't want to put a limit on activations but it seems like a good idea.
I guess if there is a point cost to the models, I could allocate activations based on it. A 50pt game will have 6 activations per side. In a 50pt game, each player can fit about 7-9 models (as an example) this way, you aren't terribly hurt by early losses. If you drop below the activation bar you start hurting, but at the same time the enemy doesn't too much of a leg up. I don't want to have a game of Secret Leader take forever, so I think it would be a rule that "The Secret Leader must be one of the models you move during the first round." because you could stall your leader in the back ranks.
The other option is the person with less models gets 1 Fate coin for every model less than their opponent? Maybe... but then if you take Heavy, Hard-to-kill bruisers, that would kind of sway things in a way not intended.
If we're playing by the rules of "Fate Coins do not replenish", maybe gain 1 Fate Coin if your model dies and you have fewer models than your opponent?
If "Fate Coins replenish at the beginning of every Round", maybe Add 1 to the total Fate Coins replenished at the beginning of every Round?
Activations sound like a
Activations sound like a better idea now. Let's say we have 5 activations @ 50pts. If your model count drops below the activation number, The remaining activations may be allocated evenly among the remaining models. The minimum models you can take is equal to the number of activations of that game.