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Post by Soul Samurai on Feb 26, 2020 16:18:16 GMT
I just hope that they do away with short ranges. I would love a range 20 sniper or something, like how Infinity can have a 72" range gun. It realistically won't come up, but it'd add a lot of flavor and give the guns an actual gun feel. Infinity makes a big point of covering the table in LOS blocking terrain, so long-range weapons are theoretically not hugely abusive due to the lack of really long fire lanes. Also the range bands mean that a long range gun in Infinity really doesn't want to get too close, because at close and possibly even medium range it's going to struggle to hit anything. Plus I think the opposed dice mechanism where you can get it so you're rolling more dice in a single opposed roll means you can counter a range advantage to some extent?
I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, so I don't know if NeoMech uses a similar range-balancing mechanism, or how much importance it places on filling the table with terrain. Personally I prefer that games don't devolve into simple shooting matches, so I would be cautious about the idea of introducing lots of long range weapons. Not opposed, just cautious.
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Post by michael on Feb 26, 2020 17:27:51 GMT
I just hope that they do away with short ranges. I would love a range 20 sniper or something, like how Infinity can have a 72" range gun. It realistically won't come up, but it'd add a lot of flavor and give the guns an actual gun feel. Infinity makes a big point of covering the table in LOS blocking terrain, so long-range weapons are theoretically not hugely abusive due to the lack of really long fire lanes. Also the range bands mean that a long range gun in Infinity really doesn't want to get too close, because at close and possibly even medium range it's going to struggle to hit anything. Plus I think the opposed dice mechanism where you can get it so you're rolling more dice in a single opposed roll means you can counter a range advantage to some extent?
I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, so I don't know if NeoMech uses a similar range-balancing mechanism, or how much importance it places on filling the table with terrain. Personally I prefer that games don't devolve into simple shooting matches, so I would be cautious about the idea of introducing lots of long range weapons. Not opposed, just cautious.
There did not appear to be any range bands yesterday. Either Oz or Will had a sniper who was simply out of range when he tried to shoot. Looks like measuring RNG functions just like WM.
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privvy
Junior Strategist
Formerly The Nomad on PP's forums
Posts: 317
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Post by privvy on Feb 26, 2020 17:59:09 GMT
Yeah, range functions as it does in WM. I know terrain will impact an actual long gun, but I like the fluff behind a gun actually shooting farther than you can run. It isn't the Iron Kingdoms anymore. Seems like NeoMech is going to call for at least a third of the board to be terrain covered, with all sorts of elevations. 2D terrain it is not.
Maybe I'm spoiled by games that Osprey puts out, like Ronin, where ranges feel more realistic while not being oppressive to the units that do get close.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Feb 26, 2020 18:13:05 GMT
I like the fluff behind a gun actually shooting farther than you can run. I can see that, guns are comically weak in WM compared to even mid-1800's stuff - and yet a decent gunline can still be very oppressive if you're not running a counter list. For a distant sci-fi game, they do need to feel more effective, though of course you still need a balance where you have a reason to move and manouver, rather than just stand back and roll dice. I guess terrain and objectives in a small model count game should go a long way to achieving that balance.
For what it's worth, my headcanon (I swear I don't plan these puns... but when I see one I go for it!) is that guns in a game like WMH are actually sending their projectiles much further, but their range represents the distance at which they have a semi-decent chance of actually hitting anything. Obviously that's just an attempt to consolidate fluff with game rules, but it's better than nothing.
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Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on Feb 26, 2020 20:55:00 GMT
a reason to move and manouver, rather than just stand back and roll dice. I agree, WM&H has quite a few advantages over WH40K and one of them: value of manoeuver instead of what you buy and how many sixes you roll, exist in large part thanks to relatively short ranges.
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Post by Charistoph on Feb 27, 2020 5:30:52 GMT
a reason to move and manouver, rather than just stand back and roll dice. I agree, WM&H has quite a few advantages over WH40K and one of them: value of manoeuver instead of what you buy and how many sixes you roll, exist in large part thanks to relatively short ranges. Yet 40K actually encourages heavy terrain in its game while WMH may have a house and a couple walls. As mentioned, Infinity is even more encouraging on that level. A lot is dependent on what you expect to put down and how much impact it can provide, particularly in blocking that line of sight. That much terrain will determine your maneuvers from cover to cover or across lines of sight (line of fire in Infinity's case).
If the average rifle's effective range is how far you can run in an equivalent amount of time it takes to to take another shot, then you get situations where the pike and halberd is still an effective battlefield weapon. Hi Steelheads, why didn't you bring your Riflemen? Oh, that's right, they can't provide the volume of fire to cut down units unless they're close enough to charge them.
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Post by michael on Feb 27, 2020 18:48:56 GMT
I agree, WM&H has quite a few advantages over WH40K and one of them: value of manoeuver instead of what you buy and how many sixes you roll, exist in large part thanks to relatively short ranges. Yet 40K actually encourages heavy terrain in its game while WMH may have a house and a couple walls. As mentioned, Infinity is even more encouraging on that level. A lot is dependent on what you expect to put down and how much impact it can provide, particularly in blocking that line of sight. That much terrain will determine your maneuvers from cover to cover or across lines of sight (line of fire in Infinity's case).
If the average rifle's effective range is how far you can run in an equivalent amount of time it takes to to take another shot, then you get situations where the pike and halberd is still an effective battlefield weapon. Hi Steelheads, why didn't you bring your Riflemen? Oh, that's right, they can't provide the volume of fire to cut down units unless they're close enough to charge them.
Warmachine very specifically encourages much more terrain than just “a house and a couple walls.” There are pages of the Steamroller packet dedicated to explicitly calling this out. Six to eight pieces of terrain, generally clustered around the center of the table, is quite comparable in density in practice to most 40K games I’ve seen. In my observation, probably half the terrain in 40K never gets interacted with.
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Post by shiza on Feb 27, 2020 19:20:31 GMT
in most tournaments that i saw in ru - there were few pieces of walls in the corners of the table)
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Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on Feb 27, 2020 21:56:56 GMT
Just like with WM&H the important part will be the rules. The short demo looks promising - quite a lot of steps of decision making but resolution relatively short and decisive (kind of similar to WM&H and opposite of WH40K which has very little time spent on decisions but a lot on tedious operation of the game's engine). I like the resource allocation that unlocks special skills of models (both ongoing-if token is present, and one-time-if token is spent), I like focusing on scenario play and the steady flow of reinforcements which keeps you in the game longer (or at least gives the feeling of that). I prefer that choice of a catch-up mechanism than WM&H's casterkill, which often feels like a random Gotcha! and anti-climactic. I don't know what to think about the spell cards. I hope they won't be prone to being too random - a good/bad hand being a decisive factor. I hope they won't go the way of pay-to-win with those cards, too, as GW did with WH:Underworlds. I like special dice with limited number of symbols (0-1-2) which makes the results less varied. I am not a fan of opposed rolls, on the other hand. It makes rolls more random as theres a potential for results being even more extreme and unpredictable (one extreme roll means one extreme result, but two rolls - for example an extremely successful attack vs an extremely failed defense - gives an extreme result square ) I like more predictability in my strategy games and less luck, especially post-luck. I like how they kept shorter ranges we know from WM&H. It puts more focus on manoeuver and less on what models you've bought and how many 6's you can roll (when huge ranges/movement values allow you to always and efortlessly get a mark on some target and then it's just dice rolling deciding the outcome). All in all it looks promising.
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Post by Charistoph on Feb 27, 2020 23:28:17 GMT
Yet 40K actually encourages heavy terrain in its game while WMH may have a house and a couple walls. As mentioned, Infinity is even more encouraging on that level. A lot is dependent on what you expect to put down and how much impact it can provide, particularly in blocking that line of sight. That much terrain will determine your maneuvers from cover to cover or across lines of sight (line of fire in Infinity's case).
If the average rifle's effective range is how far you can run in an equivalent amount of time it takes to to take another shot, then you get situations where the pike and halberd is still an effective battlefield weapon. Hi Steelheads, why didn't you bring your Riflemen? Oh, that's right, they can't provide the volume of fire to cut down units unless they're close enough to charge them.
Warmachine very specifically encourages much more terrain than just “a house and a couple walls.” There are pages of the Steamroller packet dedicated to explicitly calling this out. Six to eight pieces of terrain, generally clustered around the center of the table, is quite comparable in density in practice to most 40K games I’ve seen. In my observation, probably half the terrain in 40K never gets interacted with. Yet, oddly enough, I never see much more than a house and a couple of walls in almost any Warmachine game played. In some rare cases, they switch it up with two houses and one wall, but I don't think we want to get crazy. In 40K games, I usually see about 10-12 pieces of terrain.
But i guess that depends on the willingness of the players and the availability of the terrain in question, too.
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Post by Havock on Feb 28, 2020 0:07:34 GMT
You know what turned me off? The random cards you draw every turn. Sure, you can ditch your whole hand at the end of the round and hope for a good draw next turn, but it feels like a random element that did not need to get added in. So the game feels sort of like a game where it’s not always the models you take, not even the dice you roll, but whether you got the right cards for what you have on the table. Sure you customize the deck, but it still seems sort of random. I’m not saying it’s all going to be bad, but I think there will be more “ I just got really lucky” moments. Looking at most of the wargame crowd around here: this is what the current wargamer wants. Quick games with built-in uncertainty that can level the playing field. Warmachine is pretty much an anomaly, being a fairly archaic ruleset that's about close to 20 years old. Yes, make, but the game is still very identifiable to any would-be Mk1-playing time traveller. The game is pretty much rocket chess, with a low skill floor (seriously, the game itself is easy) but a skill ceiling you need binoculars to peer up to. And people are not willing to get slaughtered for 2-6 months straight anymore. It's good on PP that they expand because frankly, keeping people in this game when they hit that "play the game proper" skill cliff is hard.
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Post by michael on Feb 28, 2020 1:28:04 GMT
Warmachine very specifically encourages much more terrain than just “a house and a couple walls.” There are pages of the Steamroller packet dedicated to explicitly calling this out. Six to eight pieces of terrain, generally clustered around the center of the table, is quite comparable in density in practice to most 40K games I’ve seen. In my observation, probably half the terrain in 40K never gets interacted with. Yet, oddly enough, I never see much more than a house and a couple of walls in almost any Warmachine game played. In some rare cases, they switch it up with two houses and one wall, but I don't think we want to get crazy. In 40K games, I usually see about 10-12 pieces of terrain.
But i guess that depends on the willingness of the players and the availability of the terrain in question, too. My experience is the exact opposite. As soon as Steamroller required that much terrain, even the most reticent “4 pieces of terrain on a wide open killing field” players started doing it right. They always hated playing against me prior to this too, because I’d load up the table with 6-8 pieces of centrally-located meaningful terrain and they wouldn’t know what to do. Anyway, I can’t help you if players are doing it wrong. That makes about as much sense as one person playing 50 points up on the other, and then both complaining about how unbalanced the game is. /shrug
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Post by anoddman on Feb 28, 2020 1:33:39 GMT
Warmachine very specifically encourages much more terrain than just “a house and a couple walls.” There are pages of the Steamroller packet dedicated to explicitly calling this out. Six to eight pieces of terrain, generally clustered around the center of the table, is quite comparable in density in practice to most 40K games I’ve seen. In my observation, probably half the terrain in 40K never gets interacted with. Yet, oddly enough, I never see much more than a house and a couple of walls in almost any Warmachine game played. In some rare cases, they switch it up with two houses and one wall, but I don't think we want to get crazy. In 40K games, I usually see about 10-12 pieces of terrain.
But i guess that depends on the willingness of the players and the availability of the terrain in question, too. I think you need to see more tables. I play in metas across multiple states in the US, and everyone plays with the standard 6-8 pieces of terrain clustered around the center of the table. If people aren't abiding by it, I'd recommend foisting a few games of normal terrain placement on them. LOS-blocking terrain piece within 6" of the center, relevant terrain in and around every zone, and asymmetrical tables are crucial to the way Warmachine is designed to be played.
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Post by Charistoph on Feb 28, 2020 2:13:20 GMT
LOS blocking terrain gets in between the scoring zones, if not actually IN the zones, and can be hard to fit in the space there. I'm not the one setting up those zones or terrain, so I don't know why they are so self-limiting. Maybe it is because the zones are quite large and they don't want to cover it up as much or to be able to quickly transition between the zones?
As an interesting side note, 40K objectives are rather similar to the objectives that were used in Warcaster, and pretty similar of flags/objectives in Steamroller (except for who can capture it, of course), though usually many more.
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Post by michael on Feb 28, 2020 2:16:00 GMT
Today's stream dropped some weapon rules!
There are damage types! one of them is "Ballistic."
Th particle beam on the Dusk Wolf sounds FANTASTIC.
It is possible to double up on any of the warjack weapons, so you have have, for example, double energy shields on that Iron Star Alliance jack, and then a big ol' honkin' shoulder cannon. Neat!
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