BattleCON & Level 99: I Clearly Cannot Choose the Fist In Front of Me

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gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

What the hell is a BattleCON?

BattleCON (short for "Battle Connection") is the flagship game series of Level 99 Games, created by D. Brad Talton (both the game and the company). BattleCON vaguely mimics the mechanics of 2D fighting games to deliver a tactical anime punch-em-up experience. Two characters enter the arena--a small 2-D board, just seven spaces in a straight line--with 20 life and a fistful of cards. Only one walks away.

Okay, why should I care?

If you like deep strategy with no RNG fuckery, BattleCON is one of the best board games to come out this decade. No dice, no draw deck. Each player character has a fixed pool of known maneuvers. But both players pick their attack in secret, and reveal simultaneously. Can you make the call, dodge the hit, slip into the right blind spot and deliver the pain? Worse, can your do it while your opponent is trying to read and adapt to your play?

The game is also ridiculously huge. The current roster features 58 tournament-legal characters, plus two "mascot" fighters, three secret unlockable characters, and a pile of miscellaneous promos. And that's before tapping into a bottomless well of alternate game variants, teams and tag-teams, special arenas, multiplayer boss battles, and a co-op dungeon crawl mode. You will never play with everything in the box. Never.

And the best part? For a game this size, it's cheap as hell. BattleCON currently has three standalone sets, at price points $25, $50, and $75 USD. Each offers a full experience by its lonesome, or can be combined for the "full" game.

I'm listening. How do I play?

You can download the rulebook and a free PNP demo! But here's the basic basics.

Each character has a hand of 12 cards to play with: Five red-backed Style cards and seven blue-backed Base cards. The Bases represent generic moves, shared by all characters--your basic Strike, Shot, Dash, Burst, et cetera, plus a special move unique to the character. The Styles are the personal tricks and techniques each character has to offer. Every Beat (turn), you secretly pick one style and one base to make a complete Attack Pair. Like so!

A full attack pair for Pendros Schalla, featuring a unique style and a generic base. Note how the border creates a "complete" card!

You simultaneously reveal the attack pair and compare numbers. The higher Priority (yellow stat) attack goes first, then the lower priority attack. You'll need to get the enemy in Range (blue stat) to hit and deal damage equal to your Power (red stat). Note that the attack pair also lets Pendros move closer before hitting, and lets him pull the opponent around on a hit. Plus other fun stuff.

But! If you get hit and take damage before you attack, you can get Stunned, and lose your attack entirely! You're Stunned if the enemy deals damage greater than the Stun Guard printed on your attack. No Stun Guard? Then a single point of damage is enough. So you can't always rely on a straight-up damage trade; you've gotta be faster, slipperier, or at the very least tougher!

At the end of each Beat, you put your attack pair in one of two discard piles, where the cards have to cool down for two turns before you can use them again. No spamming the same attack, jackass. :colbert:

Then, you start a new Beat with a new secret attack, and continue until someone is dead, or the clock runs out on Turn 15.

In addition to these basic attacks, each character has a Unique Ability, maybe some special tokens, and a one-shot Overdrive Finisher super move. But we can get into that during your first game.

I want to try this out before I drop cash. How do I demo the game?

Like I mentioned above, this link here will take you to a free PNP Demo you can play with your friends.

But you're a goon, so you don't have friends. We can still help! The SA BattleCON community is almost constantly running Play By Post games. Just ask in the thread if someone wants to play a game, and you'll find an opponent and a moderator in no time. And if you decide you want to moderate a game, you can check out our goon-made PBP aids here!

Plus, Brad and co are working to get a digital version of BattleCON launched by next year, so there's that.

What do I buy to get started?

Good question! As of this post, the game has three standalone Core Sets, three expansions, and two "Extended Editions."

The Core Sets: War of Indines, Devastation of Indines, Fate of Indines

These are the base sets. You can buy and play with any one, or combine them together to get the full roster. (There are no character overlaps, so don't worry about useless duplicates!)

War of Indines is the first set, and recently got a relaunch with updated art and rules. It'll run you ~$50 USD for 18 characters, and includes a couple variants.

Devastation of Indines is the second set, and is the big one. For ~$75 USD, you get thirty characters, plus four Boss Mode characters and a ridiculous wealth of extras, variants, arenas, and the BattleQuest co-op game mode. You also get a respectable bludgeoning weapon.

Fate of Indines is the latest and smallest set. For ~$25 USD you get ten characters and the generic pieces, no extra frills. It's a decent way to dip your toes in, but a word of warning. The characters here are a bit more complicated than average, so it might not be the best beginner box.

The Expansions: Armory, Strikers, Light & Shadow

These contain variants to be bolted onto the main games. Armory features weapon loadouts and alternate bases. Strikers gives you tag-in powers, similar to Skullgirls or the Marvel vs Capcom games. Light & Shadow give you powered-up EX and ALMIGHTY upgrades for the core characters, sort of like the EX or Omega characters in the Street Fighter series.

The Extended Editions

These are just alt-art promos and standups, featuring new Unique Abilities. They're not tournament legal, however. Devastation Extended also includes the two joke characters, Borneo and Juto, if you're the kind of person who plays Dan in Street Fighter. DOES NOT INCLUDE FULL GAME.

This thing

If you see this, don't buy it. It's the original 2011 edition of War of Indines. It's what kicked the series off, but it has outdated rules, unbalanced characters, and ugly art.

Wow, these box inserts are terrible.

Yeah, we know. Throw them away and figure out your own storage solution. Or you can be like the OP and go stark loving insane.

This took me ~~$70~~ $90 and like ~~three~~ six days of work. I do not love myself.

Can I get those helpful links again, one last time?

For you, my friend? Anything.

Level 99 Games Webstore
Rulebook and Demo PNP
~~Downloads and FAQs (requires free account)~~ Currently under reconstruction.
Goon-Made PBP Tools
Stark. loving. Lunacy.
Previous thread: Indines In Hell!

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Apr 23, 2017

# ? Jul 10, 2015 05:03

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 09:59

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

Reserved for talking about other L99 games.

Gutter Owl posted:

gently caress I still need to write that post. Here's the short version:

Pixel Tactics: Concept is a card game version of tactics RPG combat, like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea. You have three ranks of dudes (vanguard/flanks/rearguard), and each unit has different abilities depending on which rank they're in. Amusing concept, but huge and swingy and unbalanced out of the box. Might be saved by the drafting variant from Super Pixel Tactics, which I'm told will be the official tournament variant. Alien Rope Burn and Tollymain know more about it than me.

7 Card Slugfest: Real time card game. Sorta feels like Brad wanted to make a gamier version of Falling or Slamwich. And by gamier I mean "trying to do more math really fast, with needlessly complicated special character abilities." Played it once at Gen Con 14, haven't felt the need to play it again.

Sellswords: Did you like Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8? It's Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8.

[Upcoming] Millennium Blades: Yugioh: the Anime: the Board Game. You are CCG nuts playing the fictional Millennium Blades card game. Plays like Galaxy Trucker crossed with a tableau builder, with a much more relaxed timer and a more interactive resolution phase. Game is split into two phases: Deckbuilding, where you build your tourney deck (tableau), buy/sell/trade cards with the market and other players, and assemble collections for bonus points; and Tournament, where you assemble and manipulate your tableau and try to disrupt your opponents. loving huge table eater like Argent. On my "must buy" list after one game at Gen Con. I will probably never get it to the table ever.

Disc Duelers/Power Play/Resistor/NOIR/Master Plan/Exceed: Never played 'em.

[Bonus round] Golden Sky Stories: Made in Japan, translated by Star Line Games, sold/distributed by L99. The single most twee, sugary tabletop RPG ever created. You play small animal spirits on the outskirts of a rural Japanese town straight out of Miyazaki, doing good deeds for the human townsfolk and the minor gods of the forest. Will rot the teeth out of your head. Sample adventures include:

Resolving an argument between grade school kids

Befriending a lonely and reclusive fox spirit

Guiding home a drunk who got lost in the forest

Convincing a lovesick god that she's being kinda creepy at her mortal crush and should probably tone it down a notch, geez dude
I have this on my shelf just to have it, and will probably never actually play it. Keep out of the hands of gross neckbeards at all costs.

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Aug 5, 2015

# ? Jul 10, 2015 05:03

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

potatocubed posted:

I made an automated BattleCON PBP moderator.

It's basically a gmail account attached to a spreadsheet in google drive, with a script which fires every minute to check for new messages. All it does is keep move choices secret until everyone's finished ante-ing -- it doesn't check any rules, make sure card combos or antes are valid, answer queries, or any of that. You'll have to work that out with your opponent. It's also not particularly robust: I designed it for use by people playing in good faith, so I'm sure a dedicated dick could break it over their knee with little effort. (From an infosec point of view though, it's all hosted in the Google cloud -- so it's exactly as secure as that is.)

I've tested it a little bit bouncing moves back and forth between two of my email accounts, and it seems to work okay, but I'm sure you talented folk can find ten thousand faults if you feel like giving it a test drive.

Known Problem #1: For Battlecon Bot to work, you and your opponent need to agree on a unique game ID. If you accidentally pick someone else's, you'll probably all get error messages or weird move choices.

Known Problem #2: There are no takebacks. Once you've sent your move or ante in, that's it. Locked.

...unless you send in another move or ante so quickly that Battlecon Bot reads that one first, since it checks from newest messages to oldest. This might be a bug or a feature depending on your point of view.

Known Problem #3: It's for 1-on-1 games only.

With those caveats aside...

INSTRUCTIONS

1. You and your opponent choose characters* and come up with a unique game ID between you. This is also where you'll set up the PBP thread, etc.

_{*I just now realised I didn't build in an option for this. But you can improvise a mutually hidden character selection easily enough using the same bot.}

2. Each of you sends an email to sabattleconbot at gmail doot com. The subject line should be your game ID. In the body of the email you should put:

Required: "Move:" followed by the move you've chosen.
Optional: "Active:" followed by "Y" if you're the active player this beat. For the purposes of finding out who antes first.

(If you use both, make sure they're on different lines.)

If only one of you claims active, that player is set to ante first. If both or neither of you claim active, it ~~goes to whoever's email Battlecon Bot read first~~ chooses between you at random.

You should both get a confirmation email, and one of you should get an instruction that it's your turn to ante.

3. You ante by sending Battlecon Bot an email containing "Ante:" followed by your ante. So long as the subject line contains your game ID this should work just fine; I know it works if you just click 'reply' to the message Battlecon Bot sent you, so... maybe just do that? And I'll try to make it more robust when I have time.

When you ante, you'll get a confirmation email and your opponent will get an email offering them the chance to ante. These messages go back and forth until both of you pass by anteing nothing.

When both players have passed, Battlecon Bot emails both of you the moves and antes, and then you can hie to your game thread and work out what all that means.

_{If you want to improvise a secret character select, make your first move the name of your character then ante nothing. That'll work just fine.}

HOW IT WORKS
Basically, the script reads all the unread emails in Battlecon Bot's inbox every minute, and vacuums up anything following the phrases "Move:", "Active:", or "Ante:" as a plain string. It then compares these to what it knows about the game state, checks to see if they're valid inputs, and either returns an error message or records the appropriate details in its companion spreadsheet.

It never shares anyone's emails -- it sends its messages individually.

After every beat is complete, it wipes that record from the spreadsheet, and it runs a cleanup every week to delete anything that's over 7 days old. In this way I hope to keep the spreadsheet down to a manageable size.

AND THAT'S IT
So, uh... go ahead and test it, if you feel like playing some PBP Battlecon. If you manage to break it leave a message here or DM me. You could theoretically email Battlecon Bot, but the only time I ever look at that mailbox is when I'm testing it, so you might be waiting a while for an answer.

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jun 18, 2016

# ? Jul 10, 2015 05:04

OmegaGoo: Nov 25, 2011; Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Malandrax Malandrax Malandrax Tanis Malandrax Endrbyt Malandrax?

Karin/Jager!

# ? Jul 10, 2015 05:14

Wol: Dec 15, 2012; See you in the
UNDERDARK

Yay! Fantastic OP. I'm half-eager and half-dreading making those tuckboxes for myself when all my stuff finally arrives.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 05:29

Baron Fuzzlewhack: Sep 22, 2010; ALIVE ENOUGH TO DIE

Ground floor woot

War and Fate are supposed to be shipping later this month, right?

# ? Jul 10, 2015 05:54

S.J.: May 19, 2008; Just who the hell do you think we are?

Baron Fuzzlewhack posted:

Ground floor woot

War and Fate are supposed to be shipping later this month, right?

As of the last we heard, yeah.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 06:06

Saguaro PI: Mar 11, 2013; Totally legit tree

Minor typo note, the current roster is 58 tournament legal characters, not 68, unless you've been hiding an extra ten somewhere. :argh:

# ? Jul 10, 2015 07:12

Baron Fuzzlewhack: Sep 22, 2010; ALIVE ENOUGH TO DIE

Maybe the extra ten are the promo characters from other games? Those haven't shown up anywhere yet, have they?

# ? Jul 10, 2015 07:16

Ldsity: May 29, 2015; Which guy?

That Huang Gai?

Hooray! A shiny new thread! Well done Gutter Owl!

# ? Jul 10, 2015 12:07

Thirsty Dog: May 31, 2007

A reminder that these things are perfect for putting individual character sets in (cards, tokens, standup):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002TT3KM

# ? Jul 10, 2015 13:25

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

I just want to mention to anyone new to the thread that the other popular title suggestion was Ha! You Clearly Did Not Expect Me To Be An Idiot! Which is honestly how I win about half my games.

Speaking of, I still owe Wol a thrashing with Cadenza. Anyone up for modding something to kick off the new thread?

# ? Jul 10, 2015 14:32

OmegaGoo: Nov 25, 2011; Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Thirsty Dog posted:

A reminder that these things are perfect for putting individual character sets in (cards, tokens, standup):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002TT3KM

I want 100 of those. NOW

# ? Jul 10, 2015 18:30

S.J.: May 19, 2008; Just who the hell do you think we are?

Thirsty Dog posted:

A reminder that these things are perfect for putting individual character sets in (cards, tokens, standup):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002TT3KM

Do they work if the cards are sleeved?

# ? Jul 10, 2015 18:32

Corbeau: Sep 13, 2010; Jack of All Trades

I continue to look forward to the digital version.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 18:35

Thirsty Dog: May 31, 2007

S.J. posted:

Do they work if the cards are sleeved?

Maybe! I'll dig some sleeves out and have a look.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 19:20

Shadow225: Jan 2, 2007

S.J. posted:

Do they work if the cards are sleeved?

I feel like the answer was no when I last tried, but I'll try it again when I get home. Great way to organize Devastation, though.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 20:00

gnome7: Oct 21, 2010; Who's this Little
Spaghetti?? ??

S.J. posted:

Do they work if the cards are sleeved?

I have the same thing for my set and all of my cards are sleeved. Basic penny sleeves, mind, but they are all sleeved just fine. Endrbyt's box is a tight fit because he just has so much to squeeze in there but no one else has a problem.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 20:06

Cerepol: Dec 2, 2011

Gutter Owl posted:

Reserved for talking about other L99 games.

Hello friend I have recently tried and enjoyed this game on TTS and am up for some sort of match. I haven't used any of the non base games stuff (expansions etc.). Do we set a game up here or post a challenge in the PbP area?

# ? Jul 11, 2015 01:08

S.J.: May 19, 2008; Just who the hell do you think we are?

gnome7 posted:

I have the same thing for my set and all of my cards are sleeved. Basic penny sleeves, mind, but they are all sleeved just fine. Endrbyt's box is a tight fit because he just has so much to squeeze in there but no one else has a problem.

I'd be using ultra-pro pro-mattes, so it'd take up a little more space than penny sleeves. But I might buy a few just to try out and if it doesn't work they can definitely be used in other games.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 01:11

Mad Fnorder: Apr 22, 2008

So I asked my usual training buddy to play a couple of rounds as Arec to see if the character has any weaknesses or bad matchups. I lost all three games- played Tanis, Byron, and Malandrax.

Hilarious note: from starting positions, Ottavia has one option against Mirrored Shot, Ante Hesitation- and that's Cover Burst- and even then, that still trades. This character is so stupid. Any advice other than "draft him first in tournament play"?

# ? Jul 11, 2015 01:36

Ldsity: May 29, 2015; Which guy?

That Huang Gai?

He is op and must be nerfef

# ? Jul 11, 2015 01:59

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

Cerepol posted:

Hello friend I have recently tried and enjoyed this game on TTS and am up for some sort of match. I haven't used any of the non base games stuff (expansions etc.). Do we set a game up here or post a challenge in the PbP area?

Match requests go here! Yes, that is a major purpose behind the thread.

I'd offer to moderate for you, but I'm in bottomless work hell for a couple weeks, and don't have the time. Anyone feel like stepping up?

# ? Jul 11, 2015 06:48

Wol: Dec 15, 2012; See you in the
UNDERDARK

I would, but I'm already running two games. If anyone else would like to try their hand at modding, it honestly doesn't take that much time or effort! It can be fun to see inside the twisted brains of Battlecon players too. All you need to do is check out those wonderful links in the OP and you'll find a directory full of all the files you need to get a game up and running!

Speaking of which, my computer just died a death. About to run a system reset, which should fix everything right up, but in case it doesn't and I take a while to update games, you know why!

# ? Jul 11, 2015 08:18

Thirsty Dog: May 31, 2007

S.J. posted:

I'd be using ultra-pro pro-mattes, so it'd take up a little more space than penny sleeves. But I might buy a few just to try out and if it doesn't work they can definitely be used in other games.

Hmm... I'm going to say no, it's too tight. Just tried my AGoT cards in there and yeah that's very tight.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 09:53

Shadow225: Jan 2, 2007

Yeah, they don't fit the sleeved cards all that well.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 10:01

Cerepol: Dec 2, 2011

Gutter Owl posted:

Match requests go here! Yes, that is a major purpose behind the thread.

I'd offer to moderate for you, but I'm in bottomless work hell for a couple weeks, and don't have the time. Anyone feel like stepping up?

Alright who wants to mericlessly crush a newbie? I've only played a Fire Sorceress who transforms from human to elemental, a guy with Weather Tokens and a lady with leveling.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 15:22

Ldsity: May 29, 2015; Which guy?

That Huang Gai?

I'd be down for another game if no one else wants to. Relatively new myself, and want to keep practicing a variety of characters.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 15:29

ActingPower: Jun 4, 2013

I'd be willing to mod for you guys. Send me a PM for your character choice, and we can get this show on the road!

# ? Jul 11, 2015 16:32

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Oh, boy, double newbie fight!

Those are always really fun to watch.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 16:58

OmegaGoo: Nov 25, 2011; Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Poison Mushroom posted:

I just want to mention to anyone new to the thread that the other popular title suggestion was Ha! You Clearly Did Not Expect Me To Be An Idiot! Which is honestly how I win about half my games.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 17:37

ActingPower: Jun 4, 2013

Poison Mushroom posted:

Oh, boy, double newbie fight!

Those are always really fun to watch.

Speaking of double newbie fights, was anyone curious to try playing the PnP version of Exceed that just came out? I would be willing to mod it if people wanted to give it a shot.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 18:22

Wol: Dec 15, 2012; See you in the
UNDERDARK

ActingPower posted:

Speaking of double newbie fights, was anyone curious to try playing the PnP version of Exceed that just came out? I would be willing to mod it if people wanted to give it a shot.

What's that?

# ? Jul 11, 2015 18:29

ActingPower: Jun 4, 2013

It's... how do I explain it... It's basically BattleCON, but with a randomized deck instead. It just got posted the other day. Here's the link to the announcement, and the PnP is at the bottom of that page. (Or you can click here to download it.)

# ? Jul 11, 2015 18:35

Corbeau: Sep 13, 2010; Jack of All Trades

Wait, if I'm reading that rulebook right [I'm not] ~~then you basically do a ton of stuff and only actually pass the turn over when you declare a strike. Wakeup is absolutely brutal if so.~~

e: I feel like this can't be right.

e2: Ah, figured out what I read wrong.

Corbeau fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jul 11, 2015

# ? Jul 11, 2015 19:24

ActingPower: Jun 4, 2013

From the rulebook, p. 1 posted:

Players will take turns, back and forth. On each player's turn, that player will choose whether they wish to Take an Action and Draw or Strike.

So one player takes an action, then the other one does.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 19:31

Corbeau: Sep 13, 2010; Jack of All Trades

Yeah, I misread the Cleanup step. It's only supposed to apply to a Strike action.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 19:32

ActingPower: Jun 4, 2013

Gotcha. The reason why the Wakeup card is there is because Strikes occur simultaneously. It tells you whose turn is next.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 19:38

Corbeau: Sep 13, 2010; Jack of All Trades

And because the characters will muck with that a lot. I'm seeing more than a little bit of vortex potential.

Which is okay. I played Yoshimitsu in Soul Calibur. Though I admit that I'm not a fan of the character aesthetics being shown.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 19:43

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 09:59

Cerepol: Dec 2, 2011

So do people use the other base sets often or just stick with the default? Also is it worth learning the expansion stuff or does no one really use them?

# ? Jul 11, 2015 20:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > BattleCON & Level 99: I Clearly Cannot Choose the Fist In Front of Me

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