I AM CARVALLO posted:

Can someone explain the opossum meme? I've only been reading Trad Games since Marchish and I haven't figured it out yet.

Helen Highwater posted:

Also it was a pointless choice. Because the requirement for facing was that something in the unit had the facing to see you, not that the whole unit did. So you'd be careful to end your movement by having each guy in your squad all face different directions so that you'd not be caught out of facing. It slowed down play massively (in a system where lots of other pointless micro bullshit decisions also slowed down gameplay).

In the skirmish games where a unit was a single figure, facing was important but in 2nd Ed 40k itself, it was a pointless stick to beat newbies with.

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

You're not wrong in this case, but Opossums are the US species. The antipodean animals are Possums.

Leperflesh posted:

The absolute amount of time a particular passtime takes doesn't really matter to me - unless it's multiple days, at which point maintaining board state overnight becomes a problem. What matters is whether that time is passed entertainingly, or if it's mostly boredom and frustration.

40k taking three hours isn't the problem: it's that too much of that time sucks rear end to experience.

OK, it is something of a problem, in that it's harder to block out four hours to play a game (because you need some time for setup and teardown, plus a certain amount of faffing about before/after), but people manage to find four hours for all kinds of other leisure-time activities.

40k is a bad game. The fact that it takes three hours just makes it worse. If it was a bad game that only took 1 hour to play, you might be willing to humor a friend that is really into it, especially if your friend provides all the models and terrain. A three hour game has to be good.

Ashcans posted:

It's basically just that people like opossums. And also that a creature that is mostly considered vermin and eats your trash is better than GW. Also maybe a little of projection of skaven appreciation? I don't know.

I thought it mattered for individual weapons like heavies, etc, but I am not going to pretend that I still have all the details of 2nd edition memorized. It was a good choice to take it out when they did, but I think its fair that it should have been replaced with something else.

I don't really know how you could do a scifi battle game that operates with individual figures and still has units be more meaningful divisions. It seems like you either need to play a game where figures operate as individuals, which necessarily limits it to a skirmish-level force, or you go up to massive battles and then the units are abstracted onto a single base like DZC or Epic. Is there any game where you play games on the order of 40k where there are meaningful unit rules?

It's probably not a great idea anyway, because a big part of the timesink for a huge 40k game is actually just shuffling around dozens of figures on the board, so even if you had great rules that made the units more significant, you would still be pushing around dollies for an hour.

Ashcans posted:

It's probably not a great idea anyway, because a big part of the timesink for a huge 40k game is actually just shuffling around dozens of figures on the board, so even if you had great rules that made the units more significant, you would still be pushing around dollies for an hour.

Bistromatic posted:

The first idea that comes to mind is that when you have a unit you only measure movement for the leader and the rest of the figures just get placed up to a certain distance around them. Doesn't matter if some grunt moved from the back of the squad to the front and exceeded his nominal movement speed. The facing of the leader signifies there the squad is focusing their attention and they gain a bonus against things in that direction.

fake edit: instead of coherency by distance have the unit maintain base to base coherency. Give each unit a positioning rating, that tells you how many figures can be between any grunt and the squad leader. Positioning 0 means grunts have to be directly base to base with the leader, Positioning 1 means each grunt has to be either b2b with the leader or with someone who is b2b with the leader and so on. That way you have to only actually measure once for each unit movement but positioning and facing still matter. Obviously you shouldn't have huge figures with lots of overhang on tiny bases for this or it'll get ugly.

glitchkrieg posted:

What happens when the squad leader dies?

Atlas Hugged posted:

I'm not sure it's idiotic. There's plenty of justifications narratively and mechanically for allowing a unit to keep its upgrades and command figure. Space Marines train all day and everyone is equally good with all weapon types. IG weapons are just point and click so you don't need special training. Etc. Remember, the game is an abstraction and losing some of those weapons can be really devastating on the first turn of the game. Anyway, how does the positioning rule work? Is it just based on whichever model is first in line based on POV?

glitchkrieg posted:

What happens when the squad leader dies?

Ashcans posted:

Also that is clearly an Opossum in the picture, they look significantly different than Possums, which are significantly cuter and look overall less like someone irradiated a rat and gave it mange.

grassy gnoll posted:

It works in Infinity. If your squad's leader is killed you just spend a turn and a special resource to designate a new squad leader and off you go.

If you're just using one model as a squad with a bunch of extraneous figures, abstract your poo poo to the point where one model is a squad and be done with it.

Ashcans posted:

If I was going to start down this road I would probably eliminate targeting and removing specific figures anyway; you use the ability of Squad leader to draw lines of sight to target units and fire on them, but rather than killing specific guys you have incoming fire aggregate into blast markers like in Epic (showing that the unit is taking fire without literally removing anything) or you have it resolve with casualties that the controlling player removes, always favoring the Commander as the last left. That still means that things like special weapons or heavy weapons are protected by the rest of the squad, but if you use some sort of blast/incoming fire mechanic, they would be penalized for being under fire even if they aren't removed, so an attacker can still suppress them without having to kill the whole squad.

Atlas Hugged posted:

This is a good point. I've mentioned a few times that I'm trying to put together my own generic scifi miniatures rules and it's problems like these that I am trying to find justifications and solutions to. I think visual appeal is a valid reason to use a squad and not an individual. After all, if we're abstracting stuff, why not just go to chits and hexes? Having models to remove as a way of counting damage is a bit more elegant than adding damage counters to the table. You can also use removed models to impact morale. If you purchased support weapons for the squad, these can be modeled on some of the figures as a visual cue so that your opponent doesn't constantly have to keep referencing your army list to double check which units have extra gear. These are all things that in a game with just an individual, you would need counters, tokens, or damage dice for.

grassy gnoll posted:

It works in Infinity. If your squad's leader is killed you just spend a turn and a special resource to designate a new squad leader and off you go.

If you're just using one model as a squad with a bunch of extraneous figures, abstract your poo poo to the point where one model is a squad and be done with it.

glitchkrieg posted:

What happens when the squad leader dies?

I AM CARVALLO posted:

Can someone explain the opossum meme? I've only been reading Trad Games since Marchish and I haven't figured it out yet.

I AM CARVALLO posted:

Can someone explain the opossum meme? I've only been reading Trad Games since Marchish and I haven't figured it out yet.

I AM CARVALLO posted:

Can someone explain the opossum meme? I've only been reading Trad Games since Marchish and I haven't figured it out yet.

quote:

Warpath focuses on units rather than individuals, with small fire teams the base-level entity in the game. Essentially that means one statline for five figures rather than one for one, to improve the speed of play. There are still detailed choices to be made about the composition of your units, but these are restricted to the army-building stage so you don’t have to worry about them in the middle of a game. This squad focus does two things.

Firstly it focuses the player’s attention on overall strategy and tactical choice – the game is a lot more about which units to put where, which targets to shoot at which time, when to combine fire, when to split fire, and so on. It is less about the impact of each individual soldier, and takes more of a general’s view of the battlefield as opposed to a sergeant’s. This tactical decision making is reflected in the mechanics – suppression, charge reactions, the order of activations and Warpath’s Orders system are all designed to maximise tactical choice without adding complexity to the rules. Obvious choices are the bane of all games – it’s really important that the outcome of the game is directly influenced by player decisions to make those decisions feel meaningful.

Secondly, it means that the game can be more fast and dynamic, and that players can smoothly expand to bigger and bigger games without the game becoming clunky. We had the same goal with Kings of War, and we have successfully run 16,000 point games at our Open Days in just a few hours. We want to do similar things with Warpath, and recreate some truly epic battles.

by.a.teammate posted:

So you know those magazines, they come monthly and you get parts to build a ship or get a new model of a superhero? well just saw and advert for a 40k one, seems to be every month you get a new black library book. This feels like a new low for gw.

thatbastardken posted:

the american opossum is ironically far less dangerous than the common brushtail possum. those fuckers will wreck you with those claws.

El Estrago Bonito posted:

I think I mentioned this before somewhere, but opossums are actually too stupid to get rabies. Because their brains are so small they don't have to circulate blood as quickly as most mammals of their size, this means that their body temperature is also considerably cooler than other similarly sized mammals. Because their blood is so chilly, most types of rabies can't survive inside them and just die.

quote:

Calcium is essential for proper functioning of the heart, brain, and other organs. To keep those critical organs functioning, the body reabsorbs calcium that is stored in the bones to maintain blood calcium levels. If calcium intake is not sufficient or if the body does not absorb enough calcium from the diet, bone production and bone tissue may suffer. Thus, the bones may become weaker, resulting in fragile and brittle bones that can break easily.

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

Elukka posted:

What you need is a good density of meaningful decisions. You can have a game that lasts for 30 minutes or a game that lasts for three hours and it's possible that they can both be good, but the three hour game should really have about six times more meaningful decisions to do. Often they don't, and what you're really doing most of the time is processing. They don't provide you with actual gameplay at good pace, they only let you decide a few important things and then make you act as a really slow CPU to roll the rolls and update the game state.