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Got to play the first of what is likely going to be a long ongoing project of testing company-scale rules systems. The guy I play with had a few suggestions of his own, so we started last night with Strike Legion Tactical. I'll start with some impressions and move toward a more coherent, TLDR set of pros and cons. The game played quite a bit quicker than Epic40k, which is my baseline experience with 6mm scale poo poo. I think it would probably move even quicker on the table than on VASSAL because the electronics warfare rules require some hidden numbers that we didn't find a great way to model on VASSAL. That said, the electronics warfare part of tank dueling was probably the highlight of the system. Your tanks have a rating from 0 to 10+ that can be divided into offensive ECW and defensive ECW ratings. Points in offensive ECW decrease from your opponent's defense when attacking them, and their defensive ECW increases it. You allocate the points at the start of a turn before anyone has acted and place tokens face down so your opponent doesn't know until the unit activates or is shot at. You have to read the battlefield to guess which units need to be more offensive and more defensive, plus hope that your plan agrees with the winner of initiative. It adds a whole element of poker-like psychology to the combat that is lacking in other rules sets I've played. I'd say it feels kind of gamey rather than representative of actual electronic warfare, but it's a lot of fun so who cares. The artillery also had a nice element of choice, allowing groups of artillery to either choose to widen their explosive radius or increase their damage to better fit their needs. I appreciated not really getting into scatter rolls or most nods to realism that just slow the game down. Other than that we played a fairly small game (2000 points) and didn't get into the unit building rules, which seem like a real highlight. The main thrust of our armies was tanks, with me trying some artillery and both of us using a small amount of infantry. No flying units were used. TLDR Strike Legion Tactical Pros: ECM warfare rules add a very entertaining bluffing element to combat. Using a bell curve 2d6 to decide hits is better than a 1d6 for some other systems. The unit design rules appear robust and give this game a huge amount of potential replayability. Most combat gives a lot of options to the players to spice things up. It has alternating unit activation, which I greatly prefer. Cons: It's entirely possible it was due to bad rolls, but there do seem to be some balance issues. The heavier tanks dominated past their points and infantry was fairly useless. I'd need to play more to truly confirm this, though. There's still up to three rolls to confirm damage (to-hit, to-penetrate, damage), and still a lot of table consultation. Different unit types resolve damage in different ways, which took some extra time to adjust to. A lot of markers are going to be on a real table and need to be moved around with each unit since there are a lot of conditions that units may be subject to. Speed of Play: Average to perhaps the slow end of average. I would estimate a full sized game, or at least one at around 5000 points, would be done in 2-3 hours with experienced players, but with all the options available, players would have to be really experienced to avoid a lot of rulebook consultation. I like this game and would definitely consider playing it for real. Up next whenever we get another chance, either Dirtside 2 or Polyversal. On deck: LaserStorm, FiveCore Brigade Commander, Future War Commander and giving Horizon Wars another chance after getting a better feel for other games in its scale.
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May 28, 2021 21:25
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Does anyone play the "A Song of Ice and Fire" minis game? I was thinking of getting the starks+lannisters set to make it easy to pick up and play, since most of my games like this would be begging friends to play lol I guess I could get the other houses but it's not super clear like 40k which pieces go to which. Targ or Night's Watch I gravitate to, but there's a bunch of horse dudes or riders and a bunch of no-name grunts. Not sure what to get, any suggestions?
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Jun 4, 2021 16:03
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Does anyone know anything about the game Heavy Gear Blitz? It’s big in my FLGS right now and I thought about picking up a starter set. Thinking of the NuCoal faction right now.
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Jun 5, 2021 00:57
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Verisimilidude posted:Does anyone know anything about the game Heavy Gear Blitz? It’s big in my FLGS right now and I thought about picking up a starter set. Thinking of the NuCoal faction right now. It has just had a new edition so my advice may not hold 100% true depending on what they changed but I personally thought it was a great game let down by generally poor distribution (in the UK at least) and a very badly written rulebook. It tries to do a lot of things in one game, being a mech game that plays like a modern combined arms wargame (so your mechs are great against things equivalent to or lighter than a mech, but need to work together and outflank tanks etc, while infantry can do stuff armoured vehicles and mechs can't). This sometimes leads to things seeming a bit overcomplicated especially when it comes to the interactions of remote-guided missiles, electronic warfare, countermeasures, counter-countermeasures and so on. But when you get your head around it it's a hell of a lot of fun having teams of mechs zooming around, darting through cover and unloading massive amounts of guns at each other before a tank rumbles onto the scene and starts blasting. NuCoal didn't have their model line or rules updated when I played but I think they're one of the more quirky special forces-y/glass cannon factions who have less of the workhorse units of the core factions (North and South) but don't go full into weird gimmicks like Utopia (who focus on UAVs and small remote controlled drones), Caprice (who were horrendously overpowered because of the terrible rules for quadruped mechs) or Black Talons (every unit has a million special rules and overpowered guns but your army is going to be half the size of anyone else's). In short it's a game very much about maneuvering and positioning, which can support armies of all mechs, mixtures of mechs and regular tanks/infantry and all conventional units in the same game. I also like how it does squad building, you pick a squad type (General Purpose, Heavy Weapons etc) and then pick some mechs or units that have that tag on their profile - so you can mix and match, or the same mech hull can be put in different squads depending on loadout. I recommend if you're into that sort of thing magnetising weapons and arms so you can get more mileage out of the kits.
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Jun 5, 2021 10:57
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Bob Smith posted:It has just had a new edition so my advice may not hold 100% true depending on what they changed but I personally thought it was a great game let down by generally poor distribution (in the UK at least) and a very badly written rulebook. It tries to do a lot of things in one game, being a mech game that plays like a modern combined arms wargame (so your mechs are great against things equivalent to or lighter than a mech, but need to work together and outflank tanks etc, while infantry can do stuff armoured vehicles and mechs can't). This sometimes leads to things seeming a bit overcomplicated especially when it comes to the interactions of remote-guided missiles, electronic warfare, countermeasures, counter-countermeasures and so on. But when you get your head around it it's a hell of a lot of fun having teams of mechs zooming around, darting through cover and unloading massive amounts of guns at each other before a tank rumbles onto the scene and starts blasting. Awesome, thanks for the info! I'll definitely try to magnetize everything to get the most bang for my buck.
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Jun 5, 2021 14:46
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This here Five Parsecs book what I hold in my hands is real nice so it is.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:39
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GreenBuckanneer posted:Does anyone play the "A Song of Ice and Fire" minis game? I have done, but not for over a year, and there have been some pretty substantial (positive-sounding) changes in the interim. It's a pretty solid minis game, somewhere between skirmish and true rank&flank. The tactics board and card game elements are pretty interesting, but definitely make it "gamier" than your usual historical fare. Back when I played it we found it was just too spiky - you'd usually only bring 5-7 combat units, and it was pretty common to pick one up in one combo'd up attack before it got to activate that round, which is really hard to come back from. From what I understand they've toned down the lethality a lot so that attrition is more relevant, which sounds great. Mostly each house is a faction and you're free to choose any of its units, but a good chunk of Baratheon stuff works for either Renly or Stannis and can't intermingle. That's the only big one I know of. Other than that, you can bring mercenaries in any faction aside from Free Folk, unless they've changed that. The Stark/Lannister starter is quite good value if you like the minis, and would make an OK board game experience. They are currently in the process of a game-wide stat overhaul, so the cards you get in the box won't be up-to-date (and you'll want to update, since v1 Jaime loving sucks lol). One or two additional purchases per faction will massively expand your options away from "Lannisters wait and hope their denial works while Stark try to get a good angle". Happy to help if you have any more questions.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:40
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So after really enjoying my 5 Parsecs experience, I picked up 5 Leagues from the Borderlands and some modules to expand it. Going to probably give it a high fantasy "paintjob" as my mini collection is all ratmen, frogmen, tortles, beastmen, centaurs, goblins riding chickens, sentient badger wizards, etc. Went looking for generic fantasy dudes and was a little shocked I didn't have much. I do have a ton of historical Vikings and Korean Choson warriors but the scale looks just too off when a true 28mm viking is standing next to a 32mm heroic frog with a battleaxe. The layout of the modules/expansions and main book are a little scattered, so more digging to find what stuff means. I need to find out what the "Power" stat on a monster is still, as I didn't see it referenced and a player character doesn't have it. But its a little older material, and spread out so not edited as one concise book. Looks quite good though. Will give it a review after I campaign abit. Edit: found Power for monsters! just must have scrolled past it, but good ole ctrl-f does wonders Mr.Booger fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 21:01
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Quotin' mahself.Arquinsiel posted:Walked into a book shop I haven't been into in years and they have all the Osprey, Warlord and Battlefront books on mega clearence due to not getting random wargamer footfall over the last years. I was tempted to get FoW Nam and Arab Israeli War hardbacks for a tenner each, but I've got the original freebie versions and never played those either so I got some cyberpunk skirmish game instead. Was a struggle not to get all the Bolt Action splatbooks though.
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Aug 8, 2021 22:40
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Dunno if this has been asked before, has anyone ITT played the Bloodfields game by Titan Forge? I backed both their Kickstarters (the original one and the one they just did for the new expansion), and I just spent some more money on MMF to download the minis for two more factions (Cursed Sands, which are basically Tomb Kings, and Wildwood Sanctum, which has a Circle Orboros from Warmahordes vibe). I ask as I've just realized I now have the STLs for something like 15 complete factions, not counting the ones that are included in the expansion. I got all the factions that were included in the first Kickstarter, and I had subbed to the TF Patreon for like six months so I had enough STLs from their monthly releases to assemble some other factions (like their version of Chaos Dwarves). Figured I'd see if anyone had actually played it, and what their impressions of the game were.
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Aug 10, 2021 15:57
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This is going to sound like a bizarre question, but whatever happened to Gates of Antares? I was all aboard for the boxed set, played one game and thought it was fine, but the miniatures were so uninspiring that I moved it on post haste. I remember reading the rule/sourcebook and thinking that it was just like early 40k - which is very much my jam - but the game seemed to fall flat?
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Sep 24, 2021 12:32
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Southern Heel posted:This is going to sound like a bizarre question, but whatever happened to Gates of Antares? I was all aboard for the boxed set, played one game and thought it was fine, but the miniatures were so uninspiring that I moved it on post haste. I remember reading the rule/sourcebook and thinking that it was just like early 40k - which is very much my jam - but the game seemed to fall flat? I had no idea but I checked Warlord's page and lolled when I saw Stargrave higher on the menu. Even if the name of the section was "Antares & Sci-fi". Ouch. e: the newest article on Antares from Warlord turns out to be from 2020, so yeah. Not looking good.
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Sep 24, 2021 12:37
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I'd never really thought much about games dying, I had a fairly regular opponent who was happy to play whatever I wanted to play too - but now he's off doing other things I've realised half the games we played are now discontinued...
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Sep 24, 2021 13:21
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I had Dystopian Wars (this one is kinda back), Confrontation (and since last attempt at getting it back up turned out to be a scam it will likely stay under) and Warzone Resurrection (ha!) killed under me. You kinda get used to that
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Sep 24, 2021 13:29
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I was really into Firestorm Armada v2 and then Dropfleet, sooooooooo.... (although FSA2 had a good solid run there before Spartan went under). Gates of Antares seemed to be a modest, stable success. I saw it played regularly for a few years and then it vanished over the course of 2020. I suppose Warlord just wanted to move on. There might have been an aspect of "we hired big name designers and all we got was a modest success" too.
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Sep 24, 2021 14:01
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Loxbourne posted:I was really into Firestorm Armada v2 and then Dropfleet, sooooooooo.... (although FSA2 had a good solid run there before Spartan went under). TTCombat is still supporting Dropfleet though?
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Sep 24, 2021 16:23
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Origins 2006 "starship troopers is so cool! I'm going to buy an army and play at origins next year" Game died. I literally never got to play it
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Sep 26, 2021 02:52
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If it makes you feel any better I know people who did and it seemed to be a game of airlifting you MI from corner to corner and shooting the bugs as they ran at you like some mad game of piggy in the middle.
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Sep 26, 2021 02:58
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Antares is just a meh universe with an OK ruleset and a miniature range that exists. If the had started out with Isorians vs. Ghar in a more interesting setting, then maybe it would have lived. Mantic's Warpath kinda has the same issues, but survives through Deadzone, and by having plastics where a lot of Gates stuff is metal.
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Sep 26, 2021 11:43
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Gates of Antares makes me wonder why more companies don't license old scifi or use public domain stuff. That War of the Worlds miniatures game didn't do great, but everybody knew the background after the elevator pitch. If GoA were based on the 1910s fiction of JPM Pigmoyer's epic Starbattles from the Space Planet I could at least track that down or read a wiki summary of WTF is going on. Plus it would have the coherency of a single vision instead of a cross-section snapshot of miniatures racks.
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Sep 26, 2021 12:46
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JcDent posted:Antares is just a meh universe with an OK ruleset and a miniature range that exists. If the had started out with Isorians vs. Ghar in a more interesting setting, then maybe it would have lived. I remember reading a preview for Antares a year or so before it came out and thinking it was the most bland and boring setting ever published. Absolutely nothing about it stood out, and the models were also completely uninteresting. If I learned it was a 14 year old's first shot at writing scifi I wouldn't have been too surprised. Never even bothered reading the rules after being put off by what was essentially a heap of beige. Bring back at-43. Space gorilla's vs cool mech suits vs transhuman nightmares in a setting that was new and refreshing. Edit:  The big bad evil of the setting were humans that had evolved to be uncaring, and had conquered the entire galaxy. Every now and then pockets of 'normal' humans would pop up, but if they spread out too far they'd get the attention of these, and get exterminated Fashionable Jorts fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Sep 26, 2021 |
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Sep 26, 2021 16:40
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Antares' interesting fluff bits only show themselves when you really read into it. All the armies/races but one are descended from human stock, two of the armies are similar in that their creation came from one civilisation-controling A.I splitting and there being some sort of civil war(?) leading to two different A.I led civilisations competing with each other, one is a group of humans adapted to living on and mining asteroids, are rocky-looking and also herd creatures that live on/in the asteroids, one's a race of mutated/degenerated-from-their-own-radioactive-technology gremlin creatures that hate themselves and each other, then there's another that I can't remember what their shtick is and finally the last/latest released army which are actually alien and not human-derived.
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Sep 26, 2021 17:39
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I can't think of anything I'd like more than for Warlord to give up on Antares and then to rework the core book to be "Starlords of Erehwon" with a bunch of generic sci-fi factions instead of their homegrown universe. They could even continue to sell their kits but just rebrand them with archetypal names or suggest what more generic factions they would fit under.
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Sep 27, 2021 01:28
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Atlas Hugged posted:I can't think of anything I'd like more than for Warlord to give up on Antares and then to rework the core book to be "Starlords of Erehwon" with a bunch of generic sci-fi factions instead of their homegrown universe. They could even continue to sell their kits but just rebrand them with archetypal names or suggest what more generic factions they would fit under. If you're trying to sell a 28mm scale sci-fi skirmish game in 2021 and don't leave an open door for people to use their 40K minis, you're probably doing something wrong.
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Sep 27, 2021 08:09
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lilljonas posted:If you're trying to sell a 28mm scale sci-fi skirmish game in 2021 and don't leave an open door for people to use their 40K minis, you're probably doing something wrong. That's what I'm saying, and maybe that's what you mean too? Hard to tell if you're taking a swing at the Antares game itself or suggesting a hypothetical "Starlords of Erehwon" should try to avoid that pitfall. To be sure, I would want a sci-fi version of WoE to basically do all the things WoE does, just sci-fi. That would mean a list of "human infantry", various sci-fi versions of classic fantasy races, killer robots, an alien hive horde, and of course "super soldiers". It should be able to handle Starship Troopers and DOOM as easily as 40k or Warpath.
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Sep 27, 2021 09:06
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Atlas Hugged posted:That's what I'm saying, and maybe that's what you mean too? Hard to tell if you're taking a swing at the Antares game itself or suggesting a hypothetical "Starlords of Erehwon" should try to avoid that pitfall. Yeah, I was completely in agreement. I don't think Frostgrave would have taken off like it did, for example, if there were not a lot of people with dusty Mordheim minis or extra D&D minis that they didn't have a healthy, living minis game to use them for. I think Frostgrave did the exact right way: "here's a generic skirmish game, you can use our minis if you want, but knock yourself out using whatever". There's space for like, GW and maaaaybe a few second tier rulesets (Warmahordes, Malifaux etc) to be range exclusive with their minis. But even then their survival for more than a few years tends to be far from a safe bet. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 13:15
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You don't make money selling rules. You make money selling minis. Rules are just there to sell minis and if you can offload rule development to someone else so much the better.
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Sep 27, 2021 14:17
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Osprey seems to be, and it looks like their success is based on not selling minis.
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Sep 27, 2021 14:19
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moths posted:Osprey seems to be, and it looks like their success is based on not selling minis. Osprey sells WW2 porn and Tacticool Operator books. Very much the Boys-Own-Paper, 1969 Thunderbirds Annual market. A lot of their buyers are Very Serious amateur military historians (or tell themselves they are) who wouldn't be caught dead touching a wargame. That's why they have to shuffle off their fantasy works to a separate imprint despite reading very much the same as their core history market.
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Sep 27, 2021 14:33
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Z the IVth posted:You don't make money selling rules. You make money selling minis. Except that GW is adamant to sell you a load of rulebooks (and the rules suck) 
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Sep 27, 2021 14:46
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Z the IVth posted:You don't make money selling rules. You make money selling minis. Yeah but you make money selling minis by tagging them along to a ruleset that lets some players use GW minis and some players use yours. Which is why games like Kings of War made a ton of sense and shifted a lot of minis for Mantic. Like, if I was selling a sci-fi set of minis and wanted to tag a ruleset to them, I'd totally make sure that you'd be able to use Power Armored Super Guys, Mystic Space Elves etc with my rules. E: also in historicals there are plenty of companies only making rules, no minis. You won't become a industry titan doing it, but there are a bunch of small companies that survive on just rules alone. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 14:48
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Loxbourne posted:Osprey sells WW2 porn and Tacticool Operator books. Very much the Boys-Own-Paper, 1969 Thunderbirds Annual market. A lot of their buyers are Very Serious amateur military historians (or tell themselves they are) who wouldn't be caught dead touching a wargame. That's why they have to shuffle off their fantasy works to a separate imprint despite reading very much the same as their core history market. Their wargames do well by being cheap enough to be impulse buys or by being 2nd+ editions of established games for the most part.
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Sep 27, 2021 16:08
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Arquinsiel posted:That's the opposite of who their market is. Historical wargamers buy their stuff for the pictures to work from when painting and for the TO&E or OOBs for whatever they are trying to build next. Absolutely, a lot of their reference stuff is depicting what colors uniforms etc. were during various conflicts. The vast majority of people buying that type of stuff are people getting ready to put paint to plastic/metal/resin, whether they're doing stuff for a scale model kit or diorama, or prepping for a historical wargame. And Osprey put their games under the Osprey Games imprint because they're games, not an embarrassing sideline they don't want to mix in with their pure and noble historical reference works. Considering how popular Gaslands and Frostgrave have been for them in particular, I definitely don't see them looking down on them as lesser works or anything like that.
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Sep 27, 2021 18:46
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I assume osprey does in-house publishing, and distributes the games through established channels, which gives them two huge advantages over a startup indie game publisher. Add in the value pricing and name recognition, and they're pretty much doing everything right.
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Sep 27, 2021 19:01
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JcDent posted:Except that GW is adamant to sell you a load of rulebooks (and the rules suck) Which is worse, dlc/lootboxes in videogames, or a dozen garbage codexes a year from gw?
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Sep 27, 2021 20:04
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moths posted:I assume osprey does in-house publishing, and distributes the games through established channels, which gives them two huge advantages over a startup indie game publisher.
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Sep 27, 2021 20:51
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Arquinsiel posted:You assume correctly. I've picked up most of my Osprey wargames via Waterstones in London. They're right there beside Picadilly Circus, which is the most central "touristy" place to get wargames stuff in the city. Yeah basically Osprey realized that they are in a quite good position to make wargaming books because a) they already have TONS of nice illustrations for their history books that they've already paid for, which is usually an expensive part of making rulebooks, b) they're well known and have a vast experience of working with outsorced writers, and c) they have a business model of putting out tons of medium priced thin books where it doesn't matter if every single book makes a lot of money or even break even, as long as the multitude of milhist books ("Soviet outhouses of the Siege of Sevastopol Part 2") keeps them afloat. So they went from publishing the odd game now and then to churning out a ton of them, as it's basically the Blumhouse business model. They can get a rules writer to put down 50 pages of rules, throw in a bunch of existing art, and sell it for 15 quid. Some of them take off. Some of them are never heard of again. But they don't need to worry wether or not it's bad to have five fantasy skirmish games for sale at the same time, just churn them out. Hell, I visited their page and they're publishing RPGs now. When did that happened? Either way I think it's great. It means that there's someone ready to publish games of ambitious writers and get them out there, with nice art, and some of these games get a chance they would not have had otherwise. Some of them are bad! Some of them are good! Some of them are decent ideas that are not polished enough. But I like that they exist. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 21:02
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This! And I'm actually glad for it, as a bunch of them that are quite good would've ended up as a pdf on drivethru, or wouldn't get published. And they have a pretty nice production value, though a bit constrained by the standard format.
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Sep 27, 2021 21:09
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Wowshawk posted:This! And I'm actually glad for it, as a bunch of them that are quite good would've ended up as a pdf on drivethru, or wouldn't get published. And they have a pretty nice production value, though a bit constrained by the standard format. Hell, Pikeman's Lament was an ambitious home-made version of Lion Rampant by a fellow Swede blogger, and now it's a published book that's available across the world. If you don't think that's a cool thing of Osprey to enable then I don't know what's wrong with you.
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Sep 27, 2021 21:15
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Yeah, Pikeman's Lament is my favourite Osprey ruleset next to zona alfa. Another one that would've been self-published or something. That one has got quite a bit of following as well.
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Sep 27, 2021 21:26
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