Playtest - Orcs: Their own worst enemy

We had another play-test yesterday, with Farid and Michel playing Orcs and Plains Elves respectively. I wanted to test some specific aspects:

* Monsters
* Flyers
* Is it possible to fight a delaying action

 

Monsters in the making!

Tomorrow we'll be having another playtest session. I still have to decide what I want Farid and Dick to have a go at.

However, in preparation for that I added the rules for Single Large Monsters - big creatures that are not part of a unit. For a bit of an appetizer I'll post a few bits of text below.

My thoughts and intentions are:
* Monsters should be able to fight regular units, they are big enough for that. They should not be all-powerful, though.
* Monsters should however be vulnerable to enterprizing bands of heroes - even though the heroes would have to take a big chance.
* I do not want to add entirely new combat mechanisms, instead I want to tie them in with the existing ones.

Wiki updated, pdf download works again

As some of you know I am using a wiki to write the rules, and share them for playtesting/feedback.

About 2 months ago, a standard software update caused the collection extension to fail. Why is this important? Because that is the software that lets me create a pdf book from the wiki, enabling off-line access to the rules.

After a long struggle without any result, I decided to bite the bullet. I backed up all data, and did an upgrade of the mediawiki software to 1.1.15, and spent a few hours fiddling with settings. The upshot of this being:

PDF download of the rules from the wiki once again works

Playtest after long absence, rules for flying troops and monsters

It's been a long while since my last update, mainly because I have been very busy with:

• Work & business travel


• Holiday


• (Napoleonic) Re-enactment

Last Sunday however the good cause got picked up again. I playtested some new rules for flyers and individual monsters with Dick Bax, and am now working on writing up the actual rules. Some highlights:

Flyers

• Additional rules for using flying troops


• Flying troops can either be classed as flyer or hoverer


• Flying troops can be at different altitudes


• Close order troops cannot fly


• Heavy armour troops can only fly in extraordinary circumstances (munchkin alert!)


• Possible interaction with ground troops depends on altitude band

With the first draft of the flyers rules has been written, next action items are:

• Large single monsters: Single monsters strong enough to individually engage units (e.g. dragons, really large giants etc). Single monsters can be effectively engaged by (groups of) heroes


• Undead: Basically troops that need mages to control them and never test for morale


• Terrain: Some further definition of terrain classifications


• Evading: Refine text for evading

Action 2009 Demo

Well, it's been a (very very busy) week, and I finally have a bit of time to sit down and write the report on Action 2009 and our demo there.

Unfortunately I did not grab the opportunity to go out and take pictures of some of the excellent other demos there. I am in particular looking forward to seeing the ace Nosferatu demo that will be completely finished for Crisis in Antwerp. I WILL take pictures in Antwerp.

The event was a lot quieter than in previous times I had been attending. It is very obvious that the amount of UK troops deployed to Germany has dropped a great deal; it was new for me to run into more Germans and Dutch than English, at Action Rheindahlen.

Trader selection was fair, but not much to tempt my wallet this time. I did splurge on paint though, should have most of the deficiencies in my stock sorted again.

As for our own games, we got a fair amount of interest - but primarily in the miniatures and painting, not quite as much in the rules themselves. I think we must have created some name recognition though, as the plates were hard to miss:

I'll be posting a further report from our demo at Action 2009 lateron. For now here's just a quick copy of the posters I used to put on the promo board - A2 this time, I'm looking at A1 or A0 next time.

I'll be re-evaluating what to put on them text-wise. But I'm quite happy with the graphics as they stand, got lots of nice feedback on it too.

First, I'll be off to bed though.

Action 2009: T-1 days

I've been quite busy the last couple of days. Good news is I'm nearly
ready for the demo game tomorrow:

- Cards are all done
- Quick Ref sheets are all done (Thanks for the help, Lorne!)
- Built my whopping big promo board (2x 1.20x60cm), and it's actually stable and holding together ;)
- Just got back from the copy shop with oodles of copies to go onto the promo board
- Army List Dwarves is done

- Still need to do: Army List Orcs, Army List Elves (Plains + Mountain)

This means I might get some sleep tonight ;)