Changes to Core Rules & Advanced Rules (Patreon)

Hello,

I've just updated the early access folder with a bunch of new files for you to take a look at, mainly modifying morale in the core rules and some of the advanced rules in the full rulebooks.

Firefight & Skirmish

One thing we were never fully satisfied with in our skirmish sized games was the way that wounds are resolved and how stunning works. In order to get the games closer to our vision we had to make some tweaks, but to understand why we made them first we need to explain the logic behind the wounds system.

Because you only play with a handful of models at skirmish size the game gets really short and boring if models are killed as soon as they take wounds. Usually by the end of the 2nd round most models would already be killed and then the rout system would kick in to likely end the game (for those of you that are curious we might explain in-depth as to why we have the rout system in the first place in a future update, but for now let's focus on the wounds system).

To make sure that the game doesn't end too quickly we have the wounds system where models have a 66% chance of surviving a wound. Whilst this does solve the problem of short games it introduces a different problem: units can survive forever.

This is where the stun system comes in: units that survive a wound don't just keep fighting, but they are stunned first, which makes them lose an activation. This is already a good trade-off for getting to keep your unit, however it introduced yet a different problem: high defense units are already difficult to wound, and with this system they are even harder to kill.

So here is where we added a twist to the stun system: if a stunned model takes any hits from shooting or is charged again, it is immediately killed. This added a lot more strategy to the game, since now you can make combos to kill units by stunning them first and then going for an auto-kill. It also introduces a risk/reward system where units can auto-kill a stunned model by just charging them (no need to even hit), which rewards you for putting your units at risk by charging.

The final touch we gave to the rule was that a stunned unit loses its activation, so that you can't just immediately get up and undo all that work... and that's where the problem is and our new patch comes in.

Right now if a unit is stunned it basically loses 2 activations, which really sucks. This means that some of your cooler models might spend half the game just waiting around, and nobody wants that. Also once a model has managed to get up again all of your hard work goes to waste, and you have to wound them again to get a chance at knocking them out.

What are we doing to fix that you ask?

In the new version of the rules stunned units don't lose their activation, so they only need to spend 1 activation idle in order to recover. To balance this out however units now accumulate wounds, which give a +1 to the wounds roll each. This means that as models take wounds the chance of knocking them out steadily increases so that there are no more unkillable models.

Grimdark Future & Age of Fantasy

Ok that was a really long explanation so let me try and be short with the changes to our main games: units that are pinned/wavering automatically fail morale tests. That's it.

We liked that in the skirmish games you can combo-kill units, and with this change we are trying to introduce the same thing in our larger games.

With this change if you manage to kill 50% of a unit and get them pinned/wavering, then you can now go in for an auto-kill by charging into melee and winning combat. If you do then the unit will automatically fail its morale test and rout for being below 50% of its starting size/tough.

Advanced Rules

Here are some small changes we made to the advanced rules:

- Immobilized results now give -2"/-4" movement

- Take Aim has been re-named to Aimed Fire

- Clarified that Heavy Charge has a max. charge move of 6"

- Heroic Inspiration now has a range of 12" (Grimdark Future Suppression)

Smaller Fixes

Here are some other small fixes we put in the game:

TAO Coalition

- Added more upgrades for the Grunt Captain

Titan Lords

- All units can now be upgraded with Extra Armor or Power Shields

Goblins

- Fixed Cave-Beast Herd not having Boing special rule

- Fixed point cost of Mountain Trolls (Skirmish)

Havoc Warriors

- Fixed point cost of Ogres, Havoc Trolls and Drake Centaurs (Skirmish)

Undead

- Added spell list for Skeleton army

- Added the Command Group specail rule for the Ghost King (Skirmish)

Wood Elves

- Fixed point cost of Tree Revenants (Skirmish)

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Alright that was one huge update, hope you made it through to the end without bleeding from your eyes! :D

Cheers,

Gaetano