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  BattleCON: War Remastered Kickstarter is live! Welcome to the Level99 Games thread! This thread will be mostly about BattleCON, but all Level99 Gameschat is encouraged. Who are Level99 Games? They are a new boardgaming company that broke out onto the scene using Kickstarter, starting in 2011 with War of the Indines. You can find their website here. So what games have they made? All sorts of things! The big ones are the Minigame Library (with games such as: supervillains on a game show, apprentice magicians running around in a library, and 2-4 player Mafia), Pixel Tactics, and the new hotness, BattleCON. This thread is mostly going to be about BattleCON, because it's most recent standalone box is probably the best board game released in 2013. Tell me about BattleCON then. With gusto! BattleCON was first released in 2011 with the War of Indines set, with 15 unique characters and a decent variety of ways to use them - one on one duels, tag team matches, boss fights, that kind of thing. The BattleCON system is a fighting game series, where you and opponent choose a character and face off in a duel that will usually take 10-30 minutes to play to completion. You play on a grid, and different attacks will have different ranges and movement effects, different speed and damage values, and, of course, a variety of weird abilities thrown into the mix that are unique to each character. You move back and forth along this grid, trading blows until one of you has no life left, or the timer hits 0. EDIT: You can grab a PDF of the rulebook here. What really makes BattleCON unique is the method of creating attacks on the fly that the game uses as its core mechanic. In this system, each player has the same basic attacks to work with (called Bases), but each different character has their own set of Styles. You play an attack by playing both a Base and a Style, and combining everything listed on both cards into a single move. Some examples of Bases are: Strike, Burst, Grasp. Some examples of Styles are: Howling, Regal, Counter. When you combine them, you get moves such as Howling Strike, Regal Grasp, or Counter Burst. The resulting move names are actually pretty cool, and it is recommended you announce them in a loud, booming voice when you reveal your attack for the turn. If your opponent winces when they hear you're performing a Stalwart Drive, then it's working as intended. The end result is that you know roughly what each player can do at any given moment - they all can Strike, they all can Dash, they all have a Shot they can fire - but the specifics of their Styles vary their gameplay significantly. It is a steady, asymmetrical balancing act, and it makes every unique matchup play out very differently. War of Indines started the series, and it's not bad. But it's not what prompted this thread. Devastation is.  Devastation of Indines has just been shipped out to Kickstarter backers, and is currently available for pre-order on their website. Devastation of Indines is a standalone game, just like War of Indines, and it is entirely compatible with the characters from War of Indines. What does Devastation bring to the table? Well. Everything, really. 30 new characters, 4 impressive Boss-level enemies, a Dungeon-delving co-op mode, Ex and Almighty variant rules for more high-powered games, Arena rules to have your battle take place in unique, varied environments that change during the course of the match, and each character now has 2 Finishers instead of 1, giving them more options to play with. There is so much content in this box that you could play for weeks and still not see everything - I know I have been. And since each individual round can be so fast, you just feel like playing it, oh, 5 or 6 times in a row, trying out new things every single time. It's fun. It's unique. And there's a wolf in a top hat.  Well that's cool and all, but that seems like a lot of stuff to keep track of! That's way too much to wrap my head around all at once. Level99 Games thought of that problem, and has you covered. Every single character and variant rule in both War and Devastation has a Difficulty level attached to it, and they are arranged in Flights. Flight 1 is the material you start with when you've freshly opened the box. It includes basic duels, using Finishers, and simple characters whose mechanics are easily understood. Flight 2 has more difficult mechanics and slightly more difficult characters, and as soon as you know the basic rules, you are set to dive on into this Flight. The higher level flights gradually introduce more and more complexity into the game, and you can safely advance up a flight as soon as you feel comfortable with the material in your current flight of difficulty. Well that sounds nice, but can you mix flights? Is it okay for Iaxus (flight 5) to fight King Alexian XXXVII (flight 1)? Or would Alexian have no chance at all? No. Flight corresponds to the difficulty of USING the character, not FACING the character. King Alexian's attack strategy is much, much simpler than Iaxus' attack strategy. Iaxus has a strange gimmick that requires very good knowledge of how Range works, how timing works on his planar effects, and utilizing that knowledge to properly zone out the opponent and keep the frail wizard man safe. King Alexian's game plan, meanwhile, is "walk up and hit him SO HARD." With two players who never played either character before, I'd bet on Alexian every time. With experience running the wizard man, though, the matchup becomes much more even. Huh. Okay, cool. But what if I want EVEN MORE THINGS? 30 characters and a zillion variant rules is just not enough for me if it only fits in one box. You're in luck, you crazy fanatic you! Devastation of Indines also has two expansion sets available - Devastation Extended Edition, and BattleCON Strikers. The Extended edition features: 2 joke characters, an Alternate Ability card for every character in DoI, errata'd cards for everything in War of Indines that needed it, and 3 alternate standups for every character in the game. You will need War of Indines to use the errata'd cards. Important note: The Alternate Abilities for Marmelee and Kajia make them actually playable! If you like them, strongly consider picking this up. If you have War of Indines and want to play with both DoI and WoI together, strongly consider picking this up. If you want to have a duel between a pastel penguin and a pastel panda who basically bounce off of each other constantly, strongly consider picking this up. BattleCON Strikers works for both War and Devastation - it is an expansion pack for either game. Strikers adds in about a zillion Strikers cards to the game. Strikers allow you to basically bring in a tag team partner, and replace Special Action cards - when playing with Strikers, you need to use them in a specific way to use your Finisher move. The Strikers add yet another variant game mode to the core package, with way more depth than the default Special Action cards provide. If you get this simultaneously with DoI, I'd consider this material to be Flight 4 or Flight 5 material. It adds an extra layer of complexity to the game. What if I want to play this online, right now? Thankfully, Wolery, ActingPower, and Baron Fuzzlewhack have you covered! They've created a reference document containing almost everything you need to run any character over in the PbP subforum here on SA. Feel free to recruit in here, or ask someone to run a game for you - the people here are both friendly and interested. Alright, I get it. This game has more layers than an onion, but it's easy enough to peel it down to the core. Is that it? Just about, yeah. If you like these guys as much as I do, though, give their current Kickstarter a look: BattleCON: War Remastered Kickstarter is live! gnome7 fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jun 16, 2014 |
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Dec 8, 2013 08:11
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Apparently that guitar, Branez, is cursed. What curse could it be, though? Voco seems awfully happy to have zombie fans. Voco's on a quest to conquer Gesselheim because the Overlord of Gesselheim, some vampire or something, keeps stealing his fans away.
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Dec 8, 2013 11:18
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Pixel Tactics owns. Unfortunately due to my inexplicably strong game the people I've played against stop wanting to play it 
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Dec 8, 2013 11:54
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Hur hur. Anyway, re: Marmelee. She's a little cumbersome, and revolves around a very defensive game with a lot of running away and using strike. I haven't played with her enough to say she's weak (I'm still working my way through the roster) but man, her alternate ability is radically better than her normal one. If you get stunned you don't get any tokens this turn, but that just pushes it back one turn. The only advantage the normal ability has is the fact she's guaranteed to have one concentration token each turn, and there's hardly anything you can DO with one token. I guess Sorceress Drive is OK? Not great, mind you. Meditation would be occasionally useful if she had any styles with stun guard or soak, but she doesn't, so. Meanwhile, if alternate Marmelee can go two turns without being stunned, she's at full power. Five tokens every three turns is a lot of tokens, and suddenly using her card's triggered abilities (which everyone else can just do) is affordable. Petrifying Shot, Sorceress Drive, Nullifying Grasp, Barrier Strike, all of these move from, "Kinda bad," to reasonably strong if spending two or three tokens isn't the end of the world. She still winds up defensive (dashing every three turns or so to give tokens a chance to cycle on through) but you can use all of her powers much more often. And they're not bad powers, really. The alternate power lets her build concentration tokens, which is key to doing... you know, things with her. And with people like Mikhail floating about, the occasional Hallowed Drive (Range 1-2, Power 6, Priority 5 SoB:Pull 1 BA:Advance 1 or 2 OD:Push 6) is almost unavoidably going to stun her. What can Marmelee DO about a Hallowed Drive? Dash past it, clash it out, or respond with petrifying and three tokens. Which means Mikhail can just leave those cards in his hand and she can't act freely. Does anyone else think Mikhail is really good? Most characters would consider Hallowed Drive a pretty good finisher.
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Dec 8, 2013 12:21
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Mikhail is absurdly good, yeah. He's one of my favorites for bosses or dungeon modes. But yeah, I feel like the only way to make Marmelee function on the same page as everyone else is to use her Alternate Ability. Her lack of any stun guard really hurts, and she needs to avoid being stunned to accomplish anything on her default ability. And having nothing that pegs off of only one Concentration token means she doesn't get to really DO any of her fancy style moves. The Alternate Ability helps her a lot. Also, if anyone wants to write out a "So tell me about pixel tactics" for the OP, I will add it in there. This also goes for a "tell me about Argent the Consortium" or "tell me about the Minigame Library" or anything else.
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Dec 8, 2013 20:20
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gnome7 posted:If you want to have a duel between a pastel penguin and a pastel panda who basically bounce off of each other constantly, strongly consider picking this up. Aw man, when I watched the video review and the guy mentioned a panda, I thought it would be a legit character. Hey, it worked for Tekken.
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Dec 9, 2013 01:54
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Saguaro PI posted:Aw man, when I watched the video review and the guy mentioned a panda, I thought it would be a legit character. Hey, it worked for Tekken. Unfortunately, no. Borneo and Juto feel like they could have been legitimate characters, and I really wish they were because their gimmick is "they have styles and bases from a variety of different characters." Juto has a bunch of unique bases from War of Indines, and Borneo from Devastation, which could be really cool! But all of their bases are watered down versions of the full ones, and all of their styles are extremely simple. This wouldn't be a problem if their numbers were higher to compensate, but they are not. Neither of them have any way to deal more than 5 damage with a single attack, and they don't have a Dash card. It's a shame, because they're actually really fun to play! Just. Very underpowered. Maybe if you made one of them EX you could play them against a normal character (this would give them 30 Life and +1 Power with every attack). For those of you who got this from a Kickstarter, it is worth mentioning that the bonus characters from the kickstarter are not very well balanced with the main characters, either (sort of. I'll get to this.) Borneo and Juto are underpowered, as mentioned already. Mark P.TO is probably balanced, but our group looked around at the cluttered room we board game in, looked at his Fourth Wall Toss that throws the opponent's standup across the room, and collectively banned him on the spot. He's hilarious, but that one move really invalidates him. Bridj effectively gets two attacks per turn. Each attack is about normal attack strength. There is no real drawback to this - if she gets stunned she loses her ally, but she can recover allies with some of her cards, and with her extra attacks it is very easy to stun the opponent out first. She is absurdly overpowered. The last two, Iris and Legacy, are entirely fine though. I'd put Iris at a flight 3 character - managing her Rhythm mechanic requires two turns' worth of planning, if you want to get the most out of it, but I've found you don't explicitly need to do that to make her function. Her Rhythm mechanic is fantastic, and she fits just fine in the regular fighters base. She has rapidly become a favorite of my playgroup. Legacy has only seen play once, but he seems fine. You cannot use him at all without the Strikers expansion, though - his unique mechanic is that he gets a team of unique Strikers. Unlike Bridg, though, Strikers replace your normal attacks with a special, specific attack, and he has a special mechanic that prevents him from recovering his Strikers as easily as a normal character does. Essentially, he is a fourth Heavyweight character - he hits hard, but he has to use his Strikers to do so, and he has a built in drawback to make it harder to use his Strikers constantly. He seems to also be fine, though. I'll have to play him more to get full results. So. Of the bonus characters, I have to say Iris is undoubtedly the best, Legacy is fine, Bridj and Mark are banned, and Borneo and Juto are disappointingly mediocre, but only in comparison to the other fighters. gnome7 fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 02:12
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So has there been any word on if they might manage to ship pre-orders before the end of the year? Because I missed this Kickstarter entirely, but I'm loving what I'm seeing and kind of want to get it as a Christmas gift for myself and my game group.
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Dec 9, 2013 10:52
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I'm still waiting on the extended edition, which didn't make it to America with the rest of the game because of customs issues. Don't let me chase you away from it, because it's a great game and worth the wait, but shipping has been an issue for Level 99. I would suggest picking up a copy of War of the Indines (first edition, 18 characters with maybe an overemphasis on speedy dudes) except for the fact that also seems to be unavailable. L99 needs to get it's production eggs in a row because BattleCON is apparently sold out.
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Dec 9, 2013 20:05
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I guess saying, "This game rules and you can't play" isn't very nice, huh? Well, if you're willing to give it a shot anyway, there's been three print and play demos released, each with four characters. The first was four characters from War, the second was four characters from Devastation, and the third was the easiest two characters from both. Two of them still exist! The one that doesn't exist is the War of the Indines preview. It got wiped when the BattleCON section of the Level99 games site got replaced with the new flash site which is full of exciting new functionality for content you can buy with an unavailable currency. It had four characters: Hikaru, a generalist with a variety of tokens that let him be good at anything. Kallistar, a blaster style character who could set herself on fire for extra power and speed. Khadath, a character who lays a slowing trap on the ground and has a lot of fiddly movement effects. And Cadenza, a big dumb robot who always wins. http://www.battleconnection.com/uploads/Devastation_Preview.pdf That's Devastation. Its four characters are: Eligor Larington, a slow, close-range swordsman who fights defensively and relies on absorbing hits and acting second, or using his Counter style to abruptly cancel whatever his opponent is trying. Shektur Lenmorre, possessed by a demon or something who wins fights by going first and tearing people clean in half. Joal Kalmor, a monster hunter who can replace the standard bases with his own, very slightly better bases. You need to know the advantages of his alternate bases, and choose the proper ones. Malandrax Mecci, an evil genius who fights by setting off traps and having his poo poo pushed in. Very tricky to use properly. And finally, if you sign up for an account at https://www.battleconnection.com not only do you get access to a tremendous number of non-functional web 2.0 nonsense, you can go to the downloads section, scroll past all the stuff for sale for the nonexistent currency, and pick up the BattleCON PNP Demo Game which contains Eligor, Shektur, Hikaru, and Kallistar. So that's six characters (Eight if you can find them) available right now, for free. Print 'em, sleeve 'em, tell us how your first game went.
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Dec 10, 2013 07:23
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Mystic Mongol posted:I guess saying, "This game rules and you can't play" isn't very nice, huh? I've been intrigued since hearing about the game last week, and discovered an iOS app for free. It seems to have the set of four characters available from War of Indines, with others as in-app purchases. Sadly it doesn't look like its been updated in ages and I haven't been able to find anyone when I look for online matches. It also seems to freeze or lock up when I lose a match. But the training mode is good for learning the basics of the game. It's kind of sealed that I'm going to be picking up a copy of Devastation eventually.
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Dec 10, 2013 07:45
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Would those four free characters happen to be Hikaru, Kallistar, Cadenza, and Khadeth?
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Dec 10, 2013 07:46
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Mystic Mongol posted:Would those four free characters happen to be Hikaru, Kallistar, Cadenza, and Khadeth? Yeah, I recognised it as soon as you said "big dumb robot who always wins"- Cadenza.
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Dec 10, 2013 07:48
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I found the iOS app as well. It's quite fun. Also, the online store has print-n-play versions of the Devastation fighters. It doesn't seem to come with any of the extra stuff like alternate modes of play and such, and like all print-n-play games it's deceptively pricey to actually get up and running, but I know that a printed, prepared copy of the first Flight is on my Christmas list.
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Dec 10, 2013 08:50
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So this is emulating a fighting game, right? CoolStuffInc has it down for 1-5 players. How does that work? Also I feel bad that the first Level 99 Games, uh, game I played was Pixel Lincoln, which was a terrible deckbuilder game. This looks much better.
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Dec 10, 2013 09:58
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Spincut posted:So this is emulating a fighting game, right? CoolStuffInc has it down for 1-5 players. How does that work? You can play EX mode, where one player controls a single opponent with 30 health, better bases, and a boosted unique ability, against two foes. You can play Almighty mode, where one player plays one Almighty character against three normal characters... with 40 health, an even better unique ability, and even better bases. You can play Boss mode, where one player plays a single boss against 2, 3, or 4 opponents. You can play team mode, where it's two on two. And you can challenge the dungeon (you can, I can't... left my booklet at the red cross) where one, two, three, or four players play against monsters with randomly determined attacks. The core of the game is still a 2 player one on one match. Also, Pixel Lincoln =/= Pixel Tactics.
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Dec 10, 2013 10:07
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Mystic Mongol posted:You can play EX mode, where one player controls a single opponent with 30 health, better bases, and a boosted unique ability, against two foes. You can play Almighty mode, where one player plays one Almighty character against three normal characters... with 40 health, an even better unique ability, and even better bases. You can play Boss mode, where one player plays a single boss against 2, 3, or 4 opponents. You can play team mode, where it's two on two. And you can challenge the dungeon (you can, I can't... left my booklet at the red cross) where one, two, three, or four players play against monsters with randomly determined attacks. That's really cool! Sounds like a lot of stuff to do in addition to the veritable poo poo-ton of characters.
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Dec 10, 2013 17:39
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Absolutely! I'm pretty crushed that I managed to lose the dungeons book, because the dungeons are rad. (Could someone scan it? Is that files? You can't play w/o the cards. I promise I won't distribute!) If you want to clear the first dungeon, may I suggest taking the almighty base "Cannon" and opening every single goddamn room by killing all the zombies? Zombies can't handle being shot with a cannon. Is there any interest in an AAR of a match or two?
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Dec 10, 2013 18:39
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I just got this kickstarter in the mail and holy crap it's really huge. A lot bigger than I expected for a card game. I really like the main art style but there's alot of random style on some of the cards. It's neat though and I'm excited to try it out.
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Dec 10, 2013 22:19
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Mystic Mongol posted:Is there any interest in an AAR of a match or two? Totally! I'd love to see how it plays. Buckwheat Sings posted:I really like the main art style but there's alot of random style on some of the cards. Can't be worse than Sentinels of the Multiverse! 
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Dec 10, 2013 22:49
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 That box is entirely full. I had to take out the plastic liner/organizer dealie. If I shake it, nothing shifts.  That is the 13th Age book I have on top of it, for a size reference.
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Dec 11, 2013 06:06
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By the by, I put together a thing people might want. The Print and Play board (available for free on their website) is formatted weirdly for printing and I had to mess with it. By splitting it into two images, it becomes a lot easier to print each of them onto a full sheet of standard printer paper (although I recommend printing onto cardstock). Since BattleCON only comes with one board, you will need this if you want to run more than one game at a time: BattleCON PnP Game Board: https://www.mediafire.com/?cx083xdb4w3554s Now go run a tournament or something.
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Dec 13, 2013 01:43
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Double post, but right now there is a free Christmas alternate ability for Kajia available. You just need to follow that link, click on the December 2013 banner, and follow the on-screen instructions to download her. It'll take you through a few screens on your way there. I've only give the card a look, not a play-through, but it seems like another Kajia variant to make her a bit more viable for play, with another different way to hand out bugs.
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Dec 13, 2013 03:16
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How would you make standard Marmalee a balanced fighter?
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Dec 13, 2013 03:20
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Spincut posted:Totally! I'd love to see how it plays. With us getting a few rules wrong and Mongol STILL losing, apparently. 
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Dec 13, 2013 23:51
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Tollymain posted:How would you make standard Marmalee a balanced fighter? I don't know! I'm planning to use her alternate forever. That said, I feel like if you wanted to try modifying her basic form, consider entirely removing the sentence "if you are stunned lose all your Concentration" and seeing how that works out. Considering Ophelia and Iaxus exist, I don't think that would make her overpowered, but who knows! It is worth a shot. Also, crossposting: Mikan posted:Just a few of my favorite characters so far: This game has so many wonderful characters. My own favorites: Karin: Wolf with a top hat. Heck yeah. Mikan already described her, up above. Tannis: Tannis has three dolls in play, and every single turn, she switches places with one of them. She can never be the same doll two turns in a row, and she switches which doll she is at the end of each turn. It's pretty cool, and the positioning aspects of her dolls lead to serious shenanigans - she has a style that lets her trade places with Mephiles at any time, a style that pulls enemies towards Eris, and a style that doesn't let anyone, including her, move past her Loki doll. Kaitlyn: Kaitlyn drops Wormhole markers that increase the range required to attack through them, and then all of her own styles give her huge range boosts while messing with the enemy's range. She teleports all over the place through these wormholes and is an extremely controlling character. I like Tacticians a lot 
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Dec 14, 2013 07:30
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Baron Snow posted:With us getting a few rules wrong and Mongol STILL losing, apparently. Fortunately the match we're writing up is the one where neither of us cheated, much at all hardly. Also shut up. Mad ups go good buddy Baron Snow, who agreed to participate in and write up a three round match. He's spent less time obsessing over the cards than I have, but is a generally stronger judge of character, so he's a good match for me.  I choose the character Lesandra Machan. A power character, she does serious damage and has a reasonably strong mid-ranged game. Her unique ability is the power to summon minions. She starts with a near-useless penguin (win priority matches) and at the end of her turn can summon any one of five summons, ranging from the penguin to the extremely powerful Raven Knight. If she damaged an opponent that turn, she can summon any minion that costs up to the amount of damage she delt, using her opponent's blood to pay the summon cost. If she didn't deal any damage, she can still summon a minion--but it causes her to lose as much life as the summon's cost, instead. The cost in blood MUST BE PAID. Also, during the ante step, she can choose to discard the summon she has in play and gain it's ante power instead of the regular power. For some, this is an upgrade to their base power, while others have completely different effects. Discarding the raven knight, for example, gives her a +4 to priority, but leaving it in play means her opponent loses one life whenever she activates, even if her attack misses.   I chose César Grist because he has a bunch of tokens labeled Threat Level, and I wanted to know what that was all about. He's classified as a Heavyweight, with a bunch of stun guard and low priority. His fastest style is a whopping +0 and his unique base keeps you from moving past him. He's also got styles that keep him from being forcibly moved, or allowing you to adjust himself based on his opponent's movements or damage against him. The threat level mechanic is pretty simple. He gains a counter each beat on the ante step, and the number of counters he has grants him certain abilities, mostly power and stun guard. The trick is that when he reaches 4 counters, he stuns out and is shut down for that round. The trick is that he never "activates" so before and after activation abilities on his cards don't trigger, but start of beat, end of beat, or blanket abilities still hold up. The following round his counters go down to zero on the ante step and the cycle starts again.His weapon is called an iron star, and it's a combination broadsword and shield. It is only more ludicrous by the fact this is a common weapon in Indines. Both characters were new to us, so we used the default discards: I discarded Invocation Dash in pile 1, and Pactbreaker Grasp in pile 2. Because the discards cycle, this means I wouldn't have the dash until turn 3, or the grasp until turn 2. He discarded Phalanx Dash and Unstoppable Grasp. For supers, I choose Invoke Duskstalker: A range 1-3 attack of moderate speed, that drops Lysandra's life to 1 and gains power equal to life lost. On a hit (if it doesn't one-shot her opponent) she heals back up again, but on a miss she's dropped herself to near death for nothing. Baron Snow chose César's Level 4 Protocol, a power 7 attack with comical priority 11. Also, using it unstuns him, so he can even use it during his down turn. This attack is so fast it can't be dashed away from. Round 1!    Turn 1 Lesandra: Guardian Drive, ante Borneo César: Inevitable Shot I went in hot here, confident that he had literally no play that could outspeed me. With Borneo (the penguin) I could win a clash, but he couldn't even move that fast without his grasp or dash, so I ante'd it for the ante power, cheaper summons. His threat level would still be very low, and I didn't think he'd use a strike this early... it meant closing with him, which sucks. But honestly he's got so much movement closing with him is pretty much inevitable. I saw inevitable's debuff of -3 power and decided it was the way to open up. Mongol generally plays pretty aggressively, so I felt pretty secure that he wouldn't jump out of range with burst. I didn't think he'd be so kind as to get adjacent to me either, so shot gave me the widest range of hitting him.My drive went first, advancing me 2. Guardian granted a range boost and a damage boost, so I did a clean 4 damage. But the default stun resistance from his threat level stacked with that of his shot, so he wasn't stunned and did a 4 damage shot right back at me. At the end of the turn, I summoned Raven Knight--normally the cost of it is 5, but anteing Borneo reduced it to 4. And because I had done 4 damage, summoning it was free. Lesandra: 16, Raven Knight César: 16, Threat Level 1 Turn 2 Lesandra: Binding Burst César: Fueled Strike Two squares away from César didn't seem like enough, so I went for a burst to escape. Binding would punish any attempts to chase me by damaging any movement effects he would play. Fueled gives me a bit of movement, and I thought I'd go in for a high powered hit with strike.Fueled gives César another threat level token, boosting him to level 3. But Binding Burst moves Lesandra away from him, so his immunity to stun does relatively little. I moved Lesandra back two, so she'd be out of range of the retaliatory strike--this meant he missed, while my burst did no damage thanks to his debuffing Inevitable effect from last turn. The binding effect did 1 damage, and then Raven's Knight causes César to lose 1 more life. Lesandra: 16, Raven Knight César: 14, Threat Level 3 Turn 3 Lesandra: Invocation Strike César: Unstoppable Suppression César couldn't act this turn--he was about to get his fourth threat level, stunning him. So I went ahead and did what looked like the strongest attack available to me. Were I playing this game now, I'd have summoned the salamander this turn, for its ability to ignore soak. Instead I stuck with the Raven Knight, for free damage. After checking exactly how stunned functions, I went for full defense this round, unstoppable granted me immunity to On Hit or On Damage if he moved up, and Suppression would keep me from being hit if he didn't move.Much to my surprise, César can actually continue advancing on me even while stunned, and has a number of effects that trigger regardless of stunning... for example, Suppression making him dodge all attacks made at range 3 or greater. Which is the range I was at. My beautiful power 6 strike missed completely, then suppression moved him forward to base me. I suspect Suppression is designed to be used while he's stunned--it lets him end the turn by doing an extremely slow advance 3, which means he acts second and closes to melee almost unavoidably. Neat. Still, my Dusk Knight still drained a health from him. Lesandra: 16, Raven Knight César: 13, Threat Level 4 Turn 4 Lesandra: Pactbreaker Shot (Ante Raven Knight) César: Inevitable Grasp Fueled was still in César's discard pile, so I knew he'd spend the turn at Threat Level 0, his weakest condition, with no real stun guard. And since he's playing a slow character I decided to ante the knight for his +4 priority ante power and use Pactbreaker (which only works if you anted a summon) to make Shot, a traditionally slow attack, faster than anything he had. I saw that shiny debuff again, and tried to work it in on a high priority attack to make sure I got if off.It worked out nicely--Baron Snow tried to get me with a grasp, the fastest and weakest attack he has, but my Raven Shot was just too fast for him. A clean four damage, no consequences. Nice! Then I summoned the Salamander, because I noticed its ability to ignore soak, or ignore soak and stunguard on an ante. Did I mention neither of us had played these characters before? Lesandra: 16, Salamander César: 9, Threat Level 0 Turn 5 Lesandra: Guardian Drive César: Fueled Strike I saw a strike coming here, so I went for a range boosted drive.. advance two past him, and then hit him for a clean five damage. He was only at level 1, and nothing but strike could stun guard that--and strike would be out of range for retaliation. I didn't like my low threat level, so my big aim here was to knock it higher, and try to get a hit off.Yeah, that didn't go quite as I had planned, but close enough. Fueled boosted César to level 2, he took my shot and got a free advance before activating, and he struck back for 7 damage. Ouch. At least I still had health advantage. Note well: This is where César drops to 7 health or less. He can now use his super attack, Level 4 Protocol. Lesandra: 9, Salamander César: 4, Threat level 2   Turn 6 Lesandra: Invocation Grasp César: Unstoppable Suppression This turn things took a sad turn for me. I was really, really afraid of that super, but I knew if I used burst and he responded with anything except a super, he'd just nail me with the super some time in the next two turns. Level 4 Protocol is TOO FAST to dash away from (bullshit) which meant only a burst would let me dodge it. And since this was probably the only turn he'd be able to use the super and I'd be able to not die from it, I decided to use Invocation, the style that lets me discard my summon for 2 points of soak. And Grasp, to offset Invocation's priority penalty. I figured I'd take the super on the chin, survive, and then summon the Raven Knight. If he drops his super and I survive it? It's my win. At 4 remaining health, his ponderous character can't match up to my speed. Even if he wasn't about to enter threat level 4 (and get stunned) a raven knight pactbreaker shot would ruin him. And since he was, a salamander pactbreaker shot would be even better! It was smooth sailing if I could just bait out the super right here, even if I was doing it the dumb way by facetanking it instead of using a burst to dodge it completely. The secret here was that I was saving my super for the turn I'd be shut down. I was using unstoppable suppression to make sure my positioning would work for the super next round, and a hit would just be gravy.This turn was disastrous for Lesandra. He didn't hit me with his super (which would have done 7 damage, plus 3 from his threat level, minus 2 from my soak, for 8) so my goofy invocation play was useless. And invocation adds to grasp's minimum range, so I flat out missed him. Then he hit me for five damage--essentially free damage I could have avoided if I had done... anything else. Argh, what a mess. I discarded the salamander to soak two of it, and summoned the Wyvern. Lesandra: 6 César: 4, Threat Level 3 Turn 7 Lesandra: Window Dash César: Level 4 Protocol Why didn't I do a friggin pulse here, throw him into one corner and escape to the other? Why didn't I burst back away from him? Why didn't I trigger my wyvern's free teleport and escape? Of course he was going to do level 4 protocol here. Anyone would do level 4 protocol here. He was at threat level 4 and it was in the super's name. I can't even pretend to know what I was thinking. Was I sure he'd pass on using his super again, even though he didn't have many other options or the health to survive a protracted conflict? Did I just forget that, unlike every other slow-rear end attack he had, his super's comical priority 11 would let it outspeed even my dashes? Between Ante Wyvern, Ante Raven Knight Dash, and Burst, I could have stayed away from his super indefinately. Argh! So dumb! Yeah... I can usually count on Mongol to out-think himself.Dash lets a character dodge nearly any attack in the game--as long as it acts first. Normally the fact it's got 4 more priority than the fastest basic attack in the game is more than enough. Here, it wasn't. Level 4 Protocol drilled me for seven damage, which was curtains for me. Round 1: César Grist! Lesandra: -1 César: 4, Threat Level 4 Mystic Mongol fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Dec 14, 2013 |
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Dec 14, 2013 22:08
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Great report! I've only managed to get a couple of games of this under my belt since the box got here, and only a couple of games of War before that. Looking forward to reading other peoples' analysis of play.
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Dec 14, 2013 23:44
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Yeah, this settles is, I have to get this game, all of it. Nice write-up!
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Dec 15, 2013 01:51
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I just got my copy of Devasation of Indines with a nice bonus - I had been given a copy of War of Indines as a gift, only minus the promos, so I asked if I could get those with my order. I didn't know if I would get them or not, but it turns out they were kind enough to send copies of the War promos along with my Devastation set! Character picking choice anxiety will be mine! 
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Dec 15, 2013 02:09
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Character picking choice anxiety will be mine! I'm so terrible about this. I've got my eye on probably fifteen different characters at this point and I'm considering picking up War of Indines for even more variety. Tatsumi and Juto look like a cool, trickier version of Karin and Jager. I've been playing Gerard since he's a good mix of a brawler and a trap character, but his gold generation can be inconsistent and Larceny seems useless unless you can predict a Dash. I can't speak to balance yet, but I can say there's not a boring character in the set. Each one has a neat gimmick to play with and a variety of options.
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Dec 15, 2013 02:17
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War of the Indines is another 17 great characters, and loving Cherri who gets bonuses from extending the game with endless, pointless clashes.
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Dec 15, 2013 02:30
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I badly desire War of Indines, especially since I already have the errata'd cards from the Devastation Extended Edition, but it is out of stock literally everywhere. I hope they restock it soon, I want to give them all my money but don't want to go through print and play. I'm basically out of cardstock paper and ink is expensive. Also, Mystic Mongol, that play report is great and I should type one up next time I play a round with Malandrax or Kaitlyn, to show how complicated this game can scale up to. gnome7 fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2013 02:40
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I'd love to order this and Pixel Tactics, but everywhere still has it listed as pre-orders. Any idea when non-kickstarter backers can order copies?
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Dec 15, 2013 02:51
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Gravy Train Robber posted:I'd love to order this and Pixel Tactics, but everywhere still has it listed as pre-orders. Any idea when non-kickstarter backers can order copies? You can order them now! I ordered BattleCON from the pre-order page for Mikan last week and he already has the game, just make sure you use their official site.
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Dec 15, 2013 02:59
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Gravy Train Robber posted:I'd love to order this and Pixel Tactics, but everywhere still has it listed as pre-orders. Any idea when non-kickstarter backers can order copies? The level 99 store has it shipping, looks like. And other folks are supposed to get distribution copies around early January at the latest.
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Dec 15, 2013 02:59
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I'm just popping in to say that this game looks rad as heck and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.
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Dec 15, 2013 03:14
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gnome7 posted:You can order them now! I ordered BattleCON from the pre-order page for Mikan last week and he already has the game, just make sure you use their official site.  I'm not sure why I didn't think to look at the official site.
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Dec 15, 2013 03:31
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It's clever how they organize the cards for each character. There are cardboard folders for each character so all you need to do is grab the right one and start playing. Well, except for the tokens. I still don't have a good way to keep those sorted. The character folders don't fit in the dividers either so I've got them sitting on top of the board, along with the alternate arenas and life rings.
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Dec 15, 2013 03:33
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I'm pulling out some card-sized "ziploc" plastic bags (you can get them at a craft store) I used to organize War of Indines to separate all the characters tonight. War of Indines had so many fiddly tokens that would be trivial to lose otherwise, for about half the time I was organizing it I was convinced I'd lost something or other, though in the end I hadn't.
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Dec 15, 2013 04:40
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