Indie+Alternative Wargaming

[compact leaf]

The drop unit is cool

Kinda looks like they just strapped a human torso in there though... Which they totally could have given what ISS does

[echo marten]

The celestial guard look notably more 'cop' than they did before.

[compact leaf]

Yea

Their old design evoked star wars stormtrooper to me

This new one..
These are like, the spooky guys that stand near important people in obscene numbers

[echo marten]

Which isn't a bad thing, there's a lot of varieties of military fucker and despite their best efforts, O-12 doesn't have a monopoly on copbrain 😛

[compact leaf]

If anything, ISS is the original cop faction

[tepid steeple]

Mm

[compact leaf]

Hesitate to call them "evil cops"
It's more like uhh..
FBI sort of vibes, where O-12 is a SWAT team

[echo marten]

State-Sec vs Conventional Police.

[compact leaf]

Yeaah that's a better way to put it

[echo marten]

O-12 has a lot more like 'Texas Ranger turning up to frontier town'

[compact leaf]

Surprising amounts of Judge Dredd too

Like

Literally

[echo marten]

100%

[compact leaf]

God I really hope the LongWang gets a points discount when the ISS profiles come out

[echo marten]

A friend and I sat there on voice chat when we were getting back into infinity going through O-12 and going 'Oh god, the next one is Even Coppier' like 8 times.

[compact leaf]

Cause uh

Right now it's 74 points

[compact leaf]

Same!
The person who picked them up during our slow grow even painted them up as Judge Dredd style guys
Like
Really really leaned into it

Bluecoats are literally [specific comic book character I forget the name of]

Gosh thougg

I am

Profoundly happy with the models in that action pack

More than I thought

I was on the fence, but now I'm all in

Oh there he is

[echo marten]

Big Boy

[compact leaf]

By the way!!
That is possibly a thunderbolt!!
(It is otherwise a normal HMG)

[echo marten]

I'll admit, it mostly just looks like 'another rifle' but it's good to have some clue about them.

[compact leaf]

Indeeby

Hhhhfiebfj

"unknown weapon"?????

And their apparent playstyle

[echo marten]

...I do find it very funny that they stress being techie.

When MSV is literally the only thing in that description seperating them from a description of the Scots, one of the least techie groups in the game.

"Behold, our Grand Technology: The Bow."

[compact leaf]

ISS quite likes their visors, but historically they were very much the opposite of being an infiltrating camo faction

And now well

Apparently they're an infiltrating camo faction

(obviously the Koga is going to be one of those)

I'd have to assume the Palace Guard is an infiltrator of some kind too

Would be hilarious HD though

[echo marten]

Yeah, for a while they got basicly all the anti-stealth toys.

MSVs, Biometric Visors etc

[compact leaf]

Now they'll have that and stealth

But I really vibe with the gameplan of "I see you and I'm coming to get you"

[tepid steeple]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1181615854740324352/1344292373773156394/2.png?ex=67c06155&is=67bf0fd5&hm=b77ae0b030bc1905eb4719644239cb2895e8cf9d79acc531c8345bc191611e30&

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1181615854740324352/1344292373277970433/1.png?ex=67c06155&is=67bf0fd5&hm=8e2ebfb15576c62ad5935ec6a71880f49659d7850280b94a9043b5ac62699111&

[compact leaf]

Apparently the dragon lord is an actual trooper and not an HVT

And they've got "a few" other new troops

[sudden halo]

Oh that's neat.

[orchid tulip]

I love the Pangolin Palace thingy

[sleek trail]

Huh

[orchid tulip]

This thing

[sleek trail]

Cutie

[modern snow]

Pangolin Raptor gooooooo

[supple shale]

Infinity has had a great run of Freaky Lil Guys this past year

[compact leaf]

Absolutely

The sculpts have been stellar

This action pack and the jackals/magistrate in particular

but these

I almost cried when I saw them

[tepid steeple]

gZQPcmFtYWgtdGFza2ZvcmNlCVVubWFza2luZ4EsAgEACgGFIgEDAAKFIQEEAAOBMQEDAASBLQESAAWBLQEOAAaBLgECAAeBLgECAAiFIgEFAAmBLgEDAAqBLgEBAAIABgGBNQEDAAKBPgEBAAOBPgEBAASBOgEBAAWBTQEBAAYyAQEA

[twin mountain]

penny did you mean to post a private key on pilot net

[tepid steeple]

Dbshsv

[twin mountain]

oh I see

[tepid steeple]

Its an infinity thing

Just taking me a second to get a screenshot

[twin mountain]

... right, some meme culture thing, I'll just. see myself out.

[tepid steeple]

Sorry

[twin mountain]

https://tenor.com/view/homer-simpson-the-simpsons-spinning-walking-floor-gif-17234189

[tepid steeple]

Infinity’s force building app has copy/paste codes for sharing lists

[twin mountain]

OH. yeah like, uh, maybe put it in a quote block, and say more about what you're posting

[tepid steeple]

Yeah no makes sense

My phone was just taking a while to grab the screenshot haha

Code block makes sense, i usually put it in its own message cause its easier to copy but I think code blocks help with that too

Sorry again for the confusion

But yes this is a list I am playing today

Mid fielding hackers to counter enemy hackers trying to push the unmasking button and then maggie and core to defend the HVTs, remotes help with that too

Group 2 maggie so she can just spend orders doing stuff and can coordinate with the remotes for positioning

[compact leaf]

Ooo

Unmasking is a fun mission

Careful with that list though, you've got a pretty fragile line-up

Best of luck to you though!

I'll be playing a mission called core enclave today. The objective is to stand on top of a building

That's literally it

[sleek trail]

lmao classic infinity player moment

just dropping a army code in

infinity's army sharing is so good though

[tepid steeple]

hewwo

i faced vAriadna

my anti hacking plan was ruined

nahab was able to be fairly annoying just by dodging for a bit but the smg is kinda anaemic

didnt lose any of my core link though thats a plus. sniper zhayedan did some work

had a very tricky time placing hvts and accidentally left a nasty fire lane for my designated and opponent chose it first try. unfortunate but it is what it is! also was LoL round 3 oops

nahab parachutist murdered a pack of dogs and then booped a button it was pretty good

also probably shouldve just developed my board and stripped more orders turn 1 rather than playing the mission. definitely a thing to get used to for missions without turn scoring

[autumn sun]

https://www.laserforgeminiatures.com/collections/sci-fi-terrain Someone dropped this in another server and given the strong Infinity crowd here:

https://www.laserforgeminiatures.com/cdn/shop/files/20240908_174429_blkbg.png

[sudden halo]

those are sick, do you know when they came out?

[autumn sun]

No clue. They're in stock tho, so.

[sudden halo]

I'm wondering cause someone in my local area made a table like that out of found acrylic boxes and stuff, using extremely similar light cubes and his table got posted around. Wondering if his stuff provided the inspiration

[autumn sun]

It's possible, but also possible they took inspo from Tron and other scifi stuff.

[sudden halo]

i'm sure, its a common touch point

its just really similar

[autumn sun]

Oh very similar. Did they airbrush some colors in a few of the cubes?

[trail fulcrum]

I keep wanting to make this neon green terrain setup

Hahaha

[twin mountain]

The children yearn for the grid

[trail fulcrum]

I just wanna run my hexgames in peace

Hahaha

[compact leaf]

A shame!

No hackables...

We played our game tonight too, almost tabled our opponent on the first turn of the game (which was theirs)

Shindenbutai HI samurai foolishly tried to group up to avoid a rocket launcher shot and they got obliterated

...I also set up turrets and a sniper down the same sight line

[tepid steeple]

Omg

Ouchy

[compact leaf]

I and my opponent very much concluded it was a skill issue
Things were going well for them until they uhh
Well
Stopped trying to slice the pie and instead try to take on all of our defensive pieces at the same time

But uh

Anyways

I have concluded that Kestrel Colonial Force is pretty cool

And extremely good defensively

[tepid steeple]

They seem fun but kinda wild yeah

[compact leaf]

They're very fun!

Kind of oppressive if your opponent is trying to deal with all your defenses at the same time though

Which is uhh
Fair, because provoking several AROs from around the table is a terrible idea

[tepid steeple]

I didnt realise the super fusiliers are just a new riff on acontecimentos thing

[compact leaf]

KCF very much feels like a combination of shock army and Varuna

Moreso the former

[tepid steeple]

Mm

[compact leaf]

Varuna's defensive tricks, shock army's skirmishers

And line troops.
PanO TAGs, HI, Remotes

I don't think they're unbalanced, but the way you beat them is by defanging their scary pieces and those pieces are generally pretty annoying to remove

Or defang

And if you get one, there is probably another

[twin mountain]

OMG yoooo

Obsidian protocol looks so so good

I really hope the whole product comes together in English soon

[trail fulcrum]

I still have 3 more mechs to build

The calvary box and the frank ridiculousness of the Glacier HMG railshoulder combo

[trail fulcrum]

A bunch of people here are snapping it up ahaha

I'm getting it for models

[twin mountain]

c:

hell yeah

[trail fulcrum]

Using it for Lancer haahhaha

[trail fulcrum]

Also huh gonna br a bit oof about the existence of the Kempetai as a unit in Infinity

[compact leaf]

They're the unfortunate sacrifice to be able to have cool line trooper profiles

[trail fulcrum]

Real, "Yes let's make a German unit named the SS, they're considered an elite historical unit" energy

Kempetai was the Japanese imperial colonial secret police

[compact leaf]

Yeah...

Meanwhile in Yu-Jing we get shit like the Long Wang

[trail fulcrum]

That's just generic ass

Dragon king

Give us the Dare To Die

[sudden halo]

JSA post-uprising is not a good place. I think the name is intentional and it's not supposed to be because they're cool.

Of course I also think it's not always the best idea to do that sort of thing in a miniatures game where it's somebody's job to make everything seem cool enough that people want to buy it.

Stuff that's a good idea from a writing perspective isn't necessarily a good idea from a "this is a company that sells a product" perspective.

[sleek trail]

its not the first time that CB has used the name of something deeply controversial cause it seems cool'

[modern snow]

hello, Jackboots...

my canto-fluent wife always chokes on her water when I talk about Shasvastii's only remaining heavy infantry

[tepid steeple]

I think since uprising their name is consistent if nothing else

[compact leaf]

Don't they still have an emperor?

Or some kind of monarchy?

[sudden halo]

yeah, iirc they still have an emperor and they're really leaned in to the nationalism and samurai revisionism to the point of fascism, though they can't escape the fact that they only succeeded because the megacorps and organized crime families thought they'd be more profitable away from yu jing and financed/enabled the whole thing

[echo marten]

They're very...revanchism brand of fascism, as I understand it. 'We will take back everything we owned' (And a lot we didn't).

Good old prelapsarian 'here is the fictional version of our history for When We Were Great'

[sleek trail]

oppressed rapidly becoming the oppressor

[compact leaf]

Now both hyperpowers have a reason to hate them lmao

[trail fulcrum]

But like by being a playable faction of sci fi dudes people wanna play as they kinda have to be sold as at least somewhat cool

Oh wait deep missed the second para

[compact leaf]

My LGS is stocking obsidian protocol...

[tepid steeple]

played two back to back 4 hour games of Mindwipe

exhausted

drew 5-5 vs Torchlight and won 5-3 vs Military Orders

[compact leaf]

Niiice

I uhh

Don't have my list anymore cause I thought I was jank, but won 9-0 in my game against Onyx (playing as KCF)

I Crit with a Feurbach in active turn with a Griffin far, far more times than I deserve to have, and then a Redeye flew across the board and killed everything it saw

I am having a lot of games where I win on my turn 1 :/

[compact leaf]

But I am also playing hyper defensive lists so I guess it makes sense?

[compact leaf]

Hoooooly shit

I got news
Tea even

Our local 40k scene has a pretty bad That Guy around

Obviously they've kind of been shunned

They tried AOS, got beat on by a top 10 in the counrty player who just happened to be around, dropped AOS.
So
Now they're here.
Trying Infinity.

And uhh

Man

I never thought the game store owner would be the one to tell us to trounce him

We only hope he's changed his ways, because Infinity's ruleset on its own will absolutely not allow that kind of behavior

[tepid steeple]

Oof

[modern snow]

throw Nourkias at 'em

[sudden halo]

Yeah hit em with the "Welcome to Infinity"

glkNY29tYmluZWQtYXJteRNXZWxjb21lIHRvIEluZmluaXR5gSwCAgEACQCB7QEHAACB7QEHAACCFQEEAACCFAEBAACB9QEGAACB9wECAACCBwEDAACFEgEDAACB%2FQEBAAMBAAQAheoBAQAAgfUBBgAAgf8BAQAAghQBAQA%3D

2 parachutist dz, 2 impersonators. Basically the meanest thing you could do to a new player that doesn't include a notifier ML

[compact leaf]

See
But that's exactly the kind of thing he would do

We can't stoop to his level

Plus I'm not a CA player (our best player locally is, though)

[compact leaf]

Also

*not final profile

But uh
This guy can CC through smoke, technically

Or just flamethrower
It is a very, very funny choice to force someone to make

[orchid tulip]

This feels like a good proxy for Daemonist Observant

[compact leaf]

You are probably not finding many of these standalone is the thing haha

Daemonist is in its own box..
This thing is in a brand new expensive action pack

[modern snow]

Throw Morats at him lol

[orchid tulip]

Really dislike when they only release minis in big packs

[compact leaf]

I can't really fault them for it.
It works, and it's a starter pack with all the cool models in it

So..
It'll sell, at least

[orchid tulip]

Might be able to offload the rest of the box on a local YuJing player

[tepid steeple]

Yeah it does make me a little sad that the daemonist just has a weird demon guy and not a creachur

[orchid tulip]

The daemon looks like a cosplayer

[tepid steeple]

He might be even

[orchid tulip]

Considering who lives on the Bakunin ship, true

[sand cloak]

WE ARE EATING GOOD!

https://youtu.be/qPkDt3xR_Pc

TURNIP YES

[sand cloak]

What the fuck.

How did that end up even being more of a clusterfuck compared to the first one!?

[hot comet]

Because Turnip28

[sand cloak]

Oh yeah

But the accidental surprise attack from the town militia/social workers committee was just fucking hysterical.

[hot comet]

GIVE US THE DANGEROUS WEAPONS! GIVE US THE DANGEROUS WEAPONS! GIVE US THE DANGEROUS WEAPONS!

[sand cloak]

Proceed to accidentally kill the people you were trying to help.

To be fair, said people were dangerous.

[hot comet]

It's even funnier if you know the rule that caused it.

Tod's Folly cult rules mean you can flip combat results

So you're actually incentivized to charge dangerous opponents with shit troops

'Misplaced Confidence'

They think they're winning no matter what happens, essentially.

[trail fulcrum]

misplaced confidence is hillarious

10/10 rule

[autumn sun]

https://planetsmashergames.itch.io/rad-pirates-of-the-toxic-sands

From the Gaslands dev.

[twin mountain]

omg

@twin turret @maiden ermine @digital bay ^

https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMzAwODg0MC8xNzk5Mjk1Ni5qcGc=/original/43rN3p.jpg

[tender wadi]

BOAT

[twin mountain]

https://youtu.be/N7OnsYHWW4g

[modern snow]

the dev diary was a fun watch

[twin mountain]

I'm in a weird place right now where like, warcrow looks cool? it's always looked cool and it still looks cool? but damn moonstone just kinda feels more fun for that specific niche of mosh pit melee skirmish play

[sand sonnet]

Yeah I checked out Warcrow and while it’s fun it just doesn’t feel unique the way Moonstone does.

[modern snow]

warcrow also just feels kinda anemic rn

[compact leaf]

It is

Very unfinished

[modern snow]

and CB seems to be pushing for it to be a larger mid-tier skirmish (larger force sizes than Infinity?) when it really should be smaller

[modern snow]

they genuinely should've been releasing faction boxes sooner instead of fleshing the orcs and Hegemony as much as they did tbh

we're finally getting a new faction at adepticon?

[compact leaf]

And dwarves sometime this summer

And yalbadoath released

So.. we'll have 5 by the end of the year

[modern snow]

sorta. It's a LE army rn

[compact leaf]

But uh

Yeahhhhh

[modern snow]

where's my feudom, CB???

anyway

not pleased with how they're handling Warcrow but the core of the game is so cool

Hoopoe did good

[compact leaf]

CB has... A lot of trouble communicating with their players, I've noticed

Like
I'm fine with the release schedules and everything, but I'd personally like to hear about why they make certain changes, decisions, etc

Though we do understand their company is very much in a transitional period currently

They just bloody doubled in size

[sand sonnet]

I mean even before they got bigger they weren't great at it.

[compact leaf]

Yeaaaaaah

The community for Infinity is too great for me to just leave it

But the game makers are uhh
They need to talk about things more, I feel.
It'd make me feel a lot better if I had some insight.

[modern snow]

IIRC they are pretty communicative on the official Warcrow discord

[compact leaf]

Ah.. so
Oof...

[tepid steeple]

I like how warcrow does activations

And legion style group moves are fun too

Gonna check out moonstone thouuugh

[tepid steeple]

Yeah ive noticed theres a pretty large gap between like the suggested game size and what you get in [battle box + beyond] or [action pack] compared to infinity where those are theoretically full size forces

Which like I think also skews the perception of the game a little with the difference between a battle box only demo game and what they want a full game to be

[modern snow]

Yup. Lack of resources (like an army app comparable to infinity and a mission pack with smaller sizes) aren't helping🤔

[compact leaf]

Well
Warcrow should be getting an app sometime soon at least

Big issue is we aren't fully sure when

I think sometime this year or the next?

[tepid steeple]

Moonstone objective generation is fun

[sand sonnet]

It's as chaoticly weird as most of the rest of the game.

I've had some very odd drops come up playing Moonstone.

[twin mountain]

@modern snow if you've never played moonstone before I'd love to run a session for you post adepticon. it is a wildly interesting diceless game

all shared decks of cards

[modern snow]

I have! It's wildly whacky and I love it quite a bit, I wish I could get it to the table more often

I played it as part of my research when writing Yafsiga

[twin mountain]

fuck yeah! the shared melee deck and the way higher melee stats let you see more of the deck was really inspiring to me

I wonder if I can figure out some similar gimmick for infinity style two-people-shooting-each-other-at-once moments

like it's slow but I'm okay with slow if there's thinky gameplay happening in that slow and it's not just rote dice processing

[sand sonnet]

I really should get started working on the Shades stuff I picked up for it.

Some very fun models in that faction.

[modern snow]

RE: card driven combat systems. Contemplating adding a more blackjack-style resolution to Yafsiga's combat loop

dunno if discussion around this would be better suited for #game-design-discussion or here, but I could use some opinions.

[twin mountain]

would love to discuss it over in game-design-discussion to get more eyes on it c:

where can I find yafsiga anyway?

[modern snow]

Oops, I dropped this

https://blacksitestudio.com/pages/yafsiga

It's been extensively FAQ'd and I've been flirting with a 2E for a while now but the book itself is still something I'm super proud of

[twin mountain]

oooh i'll take a look at it sometime this week, probably not today

[maiden abyss]

Hello! I have a few questions I'd like to ask about Trench Crusade

The first is; is there anything preventing a Desecrated Saint from taking a shield for -4 armour? (They can only take weapons, not equipment)

And the second would be how does the Ophidian Rifle interact with the Iron Sultanate's Cloak of Alamut

[twin mountain]

hey guys gonna talk about relicblade in the main tabletop-discussion channel

[echo marten]

Yay

[compact leaf]

Woaaah infinity folks

Look at this guy

[echo marten]

God Damn that's a lot of rules for 27 points. XD

Specialist Operative + that sorta mobility/trickiness to shoot at is gunna do a lot of work

[orchid tulip]

Does this imply that the Iga went with the JSA?

[tepid steeple]

just a 1 wound guy though

bangbombs are very fun but not necessarily super reliable

[tepid steeple]

Hacker is neat

[modern snow]

what if ninja

...but better

sad that VYJ won't get it

[compact leaf]

The large majority of the ninja clans stuck with YJ during uprising

[orchid tulip]

Iga and Koga were the federations, not the clans tho

[compact leaf]

We did not read uprising, unfortunately
So..
We don't know for sure, we're just repeating what we've been told

But

The faction lists do sort of reflect a clear rift in their overall loyalties

(Kunai and Koga being YJ/PanO, YJ/JSA sharing Ninjas, JSA getting Kurayami)

[tepid steeple]

had a week of testing tournament lists and it went quite well

tuesday did supplies and won like 5-3? recovering from a turn 1 loss of lieutenant because a spektr snuck over and dropped a repeater in my deployment zone and guided a bunch of missiles. made good use of smoke launcher and khawarij super jumping doctor to do the mission while opp was murdering all my guys

tonight won firefight 8-1, it was kinda brutal. used the red fury mukhtar for the first time but they just sat in a corner and then scored three classifieds

got the fun but inconsequential grenades on maggie. didnt use them but ph 17 grenade....

so final two lists for tournament, missions are Supplies -> Firefight -> Battleground

list 2s goals are ambiguous LT, restrained specialists, and maggie group 1, mainly intended for firefight

list 1 features the khawarij doctor for supplies, group 2 maggie, and tuareg cause shes cool

then gonna decide what list feels best for battleground

[gusty basalt]

so is there anyone here who plays conquest last argument of kings here, ive been watching the play on tabletop series and thought "HEY thay looks fun especially with my luck"

[twin mountain]

Link that?

[gusty basalt]

for the board https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2068928527&searchtext=conquest+last+argument+of+kings

for the minis https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173968487&searchtext=conquest+last+argument+of+kings

[twin mountain]

What's the play on tabletop series

[gusty basalt]

should be this (their other stuff is fun too) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpjBHdLhEfc&list=PLOikTOPO5iDe0wxZrfjxShnUPXRwz1w9e

[compact leaf]

@twin mountain this video would also be a good introduction
https://youtu.be/nbXWcGWQY0k?si=GjJsAjHcqWwA7_Lk

[twin mountain]

thannkkss

[maiden abyss]

And it's free...

Aw but it's just like, Earth/Air/Water/Fire magic

[stable pelican]

by technicality i won and got 6th place in local infinity tournament

[compact leaf]

Woaaaoagh

That's awesome

How many people were there? We're curious about the missions as well

[stable pelican]

there were 8 and i was called in when theres a drop out

in terms of missions CB fucked up with the dates and it was done in a rush so 3 missions

it was B-pong, Mindwipe and Acquisition

[trail fulcrum]

Kinda

I goof off with

[sudden halo]

Conquest looks cool but I can't get over the fact that it's a rank and flank with gigantic models. It just seems so wasteful when it comes to table space and painting time.

[gusty basalt]

yeah thusly the TTS mods so your wallet doesnt need to cry

[twin mountain]

@gusty basalt was watching some laok with alex and it was a fun watch! cute to share some wargame history and design with her

also omg @fast glade here's another classic warhammer thing:

[fast glade]

oyo

[twin mountain]

I am gonna be super nerd mad for like 2 minutes: I hate this. I hate this standard. it's like a weird thing that has outlived any original design meaning where you had to pack a ton of unit stats into very tiny cards or whatnot, but for some reason to this day most wargames will represent their stat blocks as like

this unformatted table

two rows

bottom row is numbers, top row is single letters

why. why.

[fast glade]

yeah if you get used to it I can kinda see it

though I feel like glyphs are better if you gotta do compact

[twin mountain]

that's move, volley, clash, attacks (this one is NUMBER OF ATTACKS), wounds, resolve, defense, evasion

so

in order

it's

inches, success threshold, success threshold, integer, integer, success threshold, success threshold, success threshold?

like it's 8", 1+, 2+, 4, 4, 3+, 3+, 0+

but no. putting an inch symbol or a + in there would ruin the crusty horror and make it easier to read

you can even see this in dropfleet

@fast glade

like you can see the DNA here, but it has been dramatically improved. like it says "Thrust" and "7""

[fast glade]

yeah

[twin mountain]

but you can still see ES KS BS G

and the two row thing

[fast glade]

Shortened form but still pretty sensible

the G is probably the worst yeah

at least the other short forms are all variations on the exact same thing

Energy Save, Kinetic Save, Backup Save

[twin mountain]

but like, look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrdXLPs9x_w

argajldhgalksjkgsdj

M, WS, BS, S, T, W, I, A, Ld

[fast glade]

yeahh

and there's clearly enough space in that table for more hah

[twin mountain]

yes!!! DX

I think the modernest version is slightly better

found this 10th edition codex:

you can kinda see the weird clash between like. history? and the need to actually make stuff not terrible to read

[fallen rune]

I like how Age of Sigmar finally kinda got rid of it

With the critical stats wheel instead

[fast glade]

yeah

[twin mountain]

yeah you can slowly slowly see wargames moving towards like... board game / card game design? which is apex tbh

like basically every card game knocks this stuff out of the water

https://card-images.netrunnerdb.com/v2/large/30015.jpg

like this doesn't have any english text but there are 4 stats here

cost, top left, in a big credit chip

memory cost, top left, in a little SATA chip looking icon

power in the big white orb. this one is the worst imo but at least it has the clarity of having the same white power orb as on ice cards, which it directly interacts with

and the influence cost is in this hard to spot column of pips to the bottom right - deliberately hard to spot because it only matters in deckbuilding and has zero mechanical influence on actual play

this is brilliant. and it still has space to like make half the card into art

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a26c41ef09ca4da1420a6b4/1627925050157-N0VC5ASUY199ELQI9V72/baron_von_fancyhat.jpg

I love moonstone but once you know this DNA you can see it all over the place and how it can be pretty easily improved upon? ^

[fast glade]

yeah

there's so many elements involved in good visual design

so many ways to vary up how you display different things to act as like, reminders, and make things easier to parse and find

[twin mountain]

meanwhile, shoutout to @modern snow for how they formatted mobile arms

like here's a heavy frame

the hp is a line of boxes for you to cross out. maybe they could be grouped into sets of 5 to make it easier to subitize with the human eye - you can see moonstone do this

each arc has a visual pile of shields to show the defenses there

so instead of "3 2 2 1" it's like, a neat visual

3 big heat token circles for your heat tokens as you activate the unit

some subtle tiny numbers that are hard to spot because they're deckbuilding numbers: weight, power, module slots

heat value is a number, hardpoints is circles, power is a little phone power bar, dice rolled is a visual pile of dice (3 dice), surge cost is 3 lightning symbols corresponding to lightning symbols on the dice

damage is Pow 1, heat threshold is fire 3

"Pow 1" is like the closest thing here to classic wargame stat codes

excellent modern design. when the card overheats, it flips to a red hot "vent! vent! vent!" side

[echo marten]

It's funny how in the earliest edition, wargear for warhammer and 40k was on cards, then it got removed for 'streamlining' when 'putting shit you can add/remove from a unit on cards' is basicly the best idea they had/it's great.

[twin mountain]

I knowww

DX

[echo marten]

Being able to go 'Here is my lord and he's got X and Y' puts down cards next to him is great

[twin mountain]

anyway time for me to stop nerd sniping myself and go to bedddd

[fast glade]

lmao

[twin mountain]

https://preview.redd.it/4lz43lti6zeb1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=c42a1d4652e5ad05d5ff1bd5d146323e5dba2444

alex I have so many opinions

zzzz

[fast glade]

pinions

[twin mountain]

shhh i deleted that typo you can't prove itw as me

dammit

[fast glade]

<33

you've got the best pinions

🕊️

[modern snow]

fun fact! they were originally grouped into rows/columns, but in testing we found that in the process of crossing boxes out, one continuous line was a better experience with landscape blueprints

the columns make heaps more sense when we transition to portrait stat cards

[twin mountain]

Oh no I mean uh, like a row with breaks for every set of 5 let me find a picture

https://shop.moonstonethegame.com/cdn/shop/products/ribald_303eec2f-6b26-489f-b14f-e168e9f3e485_1080x.jpg?v=1670518969

@modern snow you can see it easier on the models with more circles ^

I can just look at that and go "oh, he's got 11 HP"

Because it's subtly grouped into 5, 5, 1

That's a neat human eye trick

[hollow crypt]

yknow I get the idea but the blue circle, while presumably gameplay relevant, make it very confusing at a glance imo

[twin mountain]

It's super relevant yeah because those are the HP where you lose action points

Which you'd use blue tokens for

So they have 2 points until that one circle is crossed and then 1 point until their last hp

It's important to be about to just glance at a model and immediately see how many blues they get next turn

https://shop.moonstonethegame.com/cdn/shop/products/Gertrude_180566f1-8531-4a52-9ca5-9e2c3a9fe63f.jpg?v=1680201091

Like this lady gets 3 action points and it's hard to deprive her of them

You can kinda tell at a glance

[hollow crypt]

yeah I mean for sure, as I said I was confident it was gameplay relevant, it just kinda negates the splitting up

[twin mountain]

When I try to count the HP here I have no landmarks to use, I just have to count them one by one. And my eyes can slip from square to square easy

So it's hard

[hollow crypt]

my eyes cannot focus on the divisions with the blue circles

[twin mountain]

Making it more divided could be nicer yeah

Always swings and roundabouts

[fallen rune]

It's interesting to me that HP is being tracked on the card that's kinda different from how I'm used to it

Which is usually little markers or dice near the model

[twin mountain]

Oh yeah this is a modern trick: you put a unit card inside a plastic sleeve, then you mark damage using a dry erase marker

It works really really well for units with double digit HP and it's incredible resilient to accidents

[fallen rune]

I usually see markers with the model for easier reference

[hollow crypt]

moonstone has a pretty low model count iirc

[twin mountain]

Yeah this is specifically for damage

Moonstone players will track damage on the card

But you put action tokens on the model so everyone can see them really clearly

It's about small numbers you decrement one by one vs big numbers you chunk rarely

Like if your guy has 19 HP and takes 7 damage you really don't want a pile of tokens for that

[fallen rune]

That makes sense

KT is usually tracked on dice by the models but generally HP is a little lower

And damage is pretty punchy so usually like when a 21 wound model takes damage it's probably taking a lot

[modern snow]

ooooooohhhhhhhhh

[orchid tulip]

How can you post a Warjack,and not a Warbeast? (Had real issues finding cards to display so a screengrab from the app will have to work)

[tepid steeple]

What on earth

[twin mountain]

You're right warbeast spirals fuck. But also warjack grids!

[sudden halo]

Warjack grids are my favorite way to do health when there's more than what is easily tracked on a dice.

[twin mountain]

@gusty basalt laok looks interesting but also it looks pretty traditional wargamey in terms of how many steps every attack takes. I'm definitely not not interested

if you're ever up for running a teaching game or something I'm interested

oh actually as an addendum to the previous rant I had yesterday about tabletop culture and the terrible "two rows: codes and numbers" thing - relicblade is also excellent

[gusty basalt]

sure, i also dont think i will play the game long term, mabye a gimmick game here or there but other than that eh

[twin mountain]

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/64666a1162bc3706055520a2/8ed539c7-053d-4116-86a4-57bd1595d159/Bounty-Hunter-card-numbered.png?format=1000w

@fast glade ^

like just look at that. damn. proper like modern card game style representations of everything. so much info on there and it's broken up in really lovely ways and it's easy to read

[fast glade]

cost, move, defense, attack options... and then 5 and 6 don't mean much to me because i don't know the rules at all

but would be pretty readable if I did, probably

[twin mountain]

bottom left is a health track - that's common semantics for "row of boxes"

you see it in mobile arms and guild ball from yesterday

[fast glade]

oh yeah makes sense

yeah

[twin mountain]

you can see the wounded hp point

[fast glade]

very good for visually representing damage tresholds especially

[twin mountain]

and the death point

to the right is a list of potential upgrades

[fast glade]

and then 6 is like... ah yeah

that makes sense yeah, wasn't sure if it was some kinda trait system or what, it all seemed to represent equipment

[fast glade]

pig

[twin mountain]

yeah it takes like 2 seconds to learn it and then you're in

[fast glade]

right and the icons on the left of the attack options also mean stuff

i'm guessing Inhuman Aggression is of the Natural Weapons category

[twin mountain]

you got it

[twin mountain]

subtle typing system that again takes a few seconds to learn but then you get it

@fallen rune you can see the card + sleeve + marker thing here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ALyNiGJkeY

with dry erase markers it's super trivial to mark and unmark the cards and hand cards over etc without worrying about dice being nudged or whatnot

and if the marker leaves a stain it's just a sleeve so whatever

[fast glade]

aka how they should've handled enchantments in tabletop gloomhaven

but instead they originally just decided enchantments were permanent, forever, across characters and entire campaigns 😌

[orchid tulip]

I remember sleeves and dry erase being the go to when I played Warmachine

[sudden halo]

Essential wargaming tools tbh. Your game is either bookkeeping light enough that you track with a small number of tokens, or you figure out how to make dry erase work.

Stat cards vs army sheets depends on how much you've got going on. Too many cards gets more unwieldy than having everything on one sheet. Warmachine was pushing it back in mk2. Xwing/mobile arms amount of cards is probably the limit. Gets to be a bit messy especially if you go for lots of cheaper upgrades but it doesn't exceed a reasonable ability to keep up with everything or see everything at once without having to flit through cards.

The glyphs could probably be improved but it's another place where Full Thrust was doing spaceship games right in the 90s.

[umbral prawn]

What is the xwing/mobile arms number of cards?

[sudden halo]

Like 3-4 unit cards that each have 2-5 attached cards. So like avg 10 max 20, but grouped into only a few discrete things that need to be tracked.

[sudden halo]

This is pretty close to the limit of glyphery for me. I know I'm a bit odd as I tend to think in text more often than not, but after a certain point things become glyph soup.

Learning a new board game is sometimes really painful and I'm sitting there like "things have names! Use your words! What the hell does a cross hair mean? Is that attacks? Accuracy?"

I don't have the problem as much with ye olde spreadsheet stat tables because I learn what the things mean once and that about covers it.

[tepid steeple]

really hard to communicate glyphs as well

like especially if they don't even have official names

(varies based on what the glyphs are actually are ofc)

I think for x-wing equipment type stuff like that it is more intuitive when you're just matching icons on cards tho

[twin mountain]

I feel kind of the opposite - the board game space has kinda proven to me that glyphs can basically be infinitely scalable and you get very good games that people can just learn

Like everyone complains about the number of glyphs in race for the galaxy but it's also one of the most popular board games ever made, constantly expanded and reimplemented and built upon

Voidfall needs a whole extra manual just for its symbols and people love it

Anyway - I see the value in full English text and stuff, I do. But wargame codes are like the worst parts of both

A3 W4 is really not that easy to read

[hollow crypt]

certainly harder than like, ⚔️ 3 ❤️ 4 imo

or maybe 👢 4 idk what w4 is meant to be

[tepid steeple]

Maybe what im actually saying is the way warcry did it wasnt great

Cause yeah some implementations are so intuitive you dont even really think about it

[twin mountain]

You were basically correct the first time - hp in wargames where most units have 1 hp are called "wounds"

Which is. A really weird name if you think about it for like 2 seconds

But that's wargames

The carnifex has 3 wounds, sure why not

[hollow crypt]

yeah I know, it's just half the time it's wounds and half the time W means walking movement type

[twin mountain]

Yeah exactly

And like, I'm not even gonna mention multi language support stuff

[hollow crypt]

I mean the carnifex can take 3 wounds

[twin mountain]

Icons obviously translate

[hollow crypt]

i dunno why it's not like. reslience or something

who knows

[twin mountain]

Cause toughness is another number

And they wanted a quantity I think

[hollow crypt]

isn't that your defensive save or whatever

[twin mountain]

Yeah exactly

[hollow crypt]

honestly the core loop of the old wargames has always felt real clunky to me

[fallen rune]

I think wounds must have been something like "wound capacity" in some distant age which got shortened

[twin mountain]

Yeah you can see the same effect on hp

"hit points"

As opposed to life points or something

[fallen rune]

Hit points is kinda interesting because the term is IIRC from D&D but is based on a mechanic which used nameless "points" to track damage in Don't Give Up the Ship AIUI

Don't Give Up the Ship is really confusing though

[sand cloak]

Yeah, that needed a couple passes.

[native portal]

Yes, I play Impetus

impetus is an italian wargame :^)

It's the full old school 'random letters'

except now they're all for italian words

so good luck

[twin mountain]

oh @native portal I know you mentioned you were potentially interested in helping upload battalion to tts - I have a lot of experience with making decks using the tts deck editor and stuff, I'd just need the card scans

it's sort of boring grunt work

but if you get me the scans I'll be happy to package it all up

[native portal]

The cards are the easy part, I don't know if the tokens will scan well

but yeah I can totally do it on a weekend

[twin mountain]

well we can always use replacements for the tokens

hell yeah, that sounds super lovely. battalion is nice too in that it doesn't really have a board or anything

now I gotta bully @hollow crypt into uploading undaunted 2200 for me

[native portal]

https://b1803394.smushcdn.com/1803394/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Battalion-3-1024x768.jpg?lossy=1&strip=1&webp=1

[twin mountain]

https://tenor.com/view/eric-nam-bird-attack-eric-nam-bird-kpop-gif-13786019229964484184

[twin mountain]

oh shit no you're right

the tokens are basically cards

yeah

[native portal]

When I backscrolled the conversation I had an initial like 'but I like army sheets and I know what all the letters mean'

and then I thought about how easy battalion was to learn

[twin mountain]

:P

[native portal]

and I was like 'shit they're right'

[twin mountain]

you oldie

you're so cute

[native portal]

yeah literally just grog reflex

[twin mountain]

musses hair

[native portal]

I've never thought of dry erasing sleeved cards before though

you kids and your new fangled technology

[twin mountain]

it's super obvious lovely tech when you first try it out

real "why haven't we been doing this for decades" shit

[twin mountain]

anyway you're right this is a really interesting shape

we'd want to like, be able to click them together too

so yeah no I'll have to think about this some more

[native portal]

https://punchboard.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PXL_20241104_194007904-EDIT.jpg.webp

yeah they rank

[twin mountain]

yeah it's pretty dope

like we can just make them rectangles I guess

anyway i'll think about this - can't commit to an actually effortful project in the next few weeks because my girlfriend is flying over

exciting time

very busy

[fallen rune]

The dry erase one I think surprised me since I'm used to die markers for visibility and electronic tracking

But I guess that's sorta unusual

This is kinda neat rules wise even if it's also extremely aged

I haven't read DGUtS very seriously

This is miserable lol

Weapons do damage proportional to poundage and (low) damage pts are compared to total tonnage as a percent

[twin mountain]

that's kinda neat

@digital bay @twin turret historyyy

[fallen rune]

Ship tonnage table

Yeah I think it's kinda neat it's just basically a paleowargame haha

Predates lots of good ideas

[twin mountain]

sloops vs ship-sloops

genius

does it even have carriers

does this predate carriers

[fallen rune]

This is napoleonics so no

Imagine playing this without a calculator lmao

[native portal]

morale is further explained in Part IX

I'm good, thanks

[fallen rune]

Oh wait nvm there's calculation tables the game is saved

[fallen rune]

I gotta say this no-diffs every game I've ever read published after 2000 or so for being hard to find rules in

I practically read the whole booklet before finding how ships sink

[digital bay]

this has strong late 1890s early technical modelling vibes

the kind of incredibly jank system they used to determine principles of early dreadnought design rather than a game trying to model the ships they actually built

[fallen rune]

I've also arrived at the proper way to look at HP now
1 HP=1 ton of wood and metal
1 damage= 1 lb of cannonball

[digital bay]

sorry, I'm a Boats 3e grognard, we're working in 14" shells only

even for triremes

you lose a bit of fidelity before about 1600

[digital bay]

they had a rating system for this

just call them sixth through first rates

[twin mountain]

yes dear

[digital bay]

in all seriousness, yeah, this is clearly a General Quarters style game that is about 33% game and 66% historical modelling tool

I have known serious historians sit down and play somewhat homebrewed General Quarters 3 to get a vague estimate of how a hypothetical historical battle might have gone

[native portal]

this is all well and good until someone (americans) started building stupid shit

[digital bay]

those things were just fourth rates

same speed, same vague scariness level

[native portal]

Eh true

so I guess just ignore the historical title and grant them honorary rating

[digital bay]

historical RN ratings for ships are like the Worm Parahuman rankings anyway - they're there to give you a vague idea of what to do with a given ship and how to approach it tactically, not to designate individual designs

"this is big enough that a frigate needs to run away but not scary enough to fight a ship of the line" is basically the definition of the fourth rate bracket in that period to begin with

[native portal]

I vaguely remember this making them Not Very Useful

[digital bay]

what, the ship rankings or the American heavy frigates?

[native portal]

Less american frigates and more like, the remaining british 4th rates

which tended to suck

[digital bay]

yeah, they were very much leftovers

often old third rates that couldn't stand in the line of battle any longer so they took the top deck off and called it a Big Frigate to get some more use out of the hull

they didn't build many dedicated fourth rates in that period

in the anglo-dutch wars you did see them in the line of battle but they were too small by the napoleonic period

the anglo-dutch wars are faintly silly because both powers are right next to each other and as such you have these giant nonsense lines of battle with scores and scores of ships in them

[native portal]

as silly as not really paying attention and letting the dutch sail up and burn all your shit down?

:^)

[digital bay]

you know I don't say this about historical events very often but that one really was a gigantic skill issue

but seriously, this is too many boats

and this was only just after the Dutch had taken twenty more off the English, the fleets were even more impractically huge earlier on

[sudden halo]

There's a ton of different ones out there, some smarter than others, but I really get tired of the classic piles of d6 that you keep rerolling successes against different numbers to get your final number of successes gets old super fast.

It's even clunky compared to like rolling 2d6 and looking at a chart imo

If slightly easier to understand on the first go.

[sleek trail]

Catching up on convo, brikwars uses unit cards with bg influence that imo are really good

Playes it yesterday so irs on the mind

I like the stats bar a lot personally BUT i do think it should be ordered and not different types of stats all over the place

Saves should be at the end, movement at the front

Etc

[hollow crypt]

gotta bully me into buying it first sadly

[twin mountain]

Oh nooo haha I thought you had a copy

[hollow crypt]

if only

[left onyx]

Are fireship losses not counted or did they just not light them up that day?

[digital bay]

Unsure, but I would assume not counted, Wikipedia appears to have no standard convention for that after a minute's look through various battles where fire ships were deployed

some list them, some don't

[umbral prawn]

"We need 4 different results, where two of the results are twice as likely as the other two. How should we use six-sided dice to determine this?"
"Two separate die rolls. That's obviously the easiest way to streamline this."

[fallen rune]

I don’t have the PDF open anymore but I think it makes more sense with the caveat that other parts of the rules let you do aim high or aim low orders to change the odds on the hit location die

[umbral prawn]

OK that makes a little more sense

[fallen rune]

The rules are generally lackadaisical in layout though and have some funny stuff like shore batteries being immune to high hits

[tawny sandal]

I’m curious, what are the effects for high hits? Trying to figure out if there would be any reason for it other than “oops”

Like, I guess a shore battery doesn’t tend to have a big ol’ bridge tower

[gusty basalt]

yeah i probably would be down to do a learning game as i as well need to learn the game do you know when would be a good time for you to do a learning game?

[twin mountain]

I'm like, pretty free today actually?

Otherwise probably this weekend

[gusty basalt]

oh hell yeah, would you be down to have a game in about 3 ish hours then?

[twin mountain]

@fast glade any interest in learning laok?

[fast glade]

hmmm

god knows when i'd find the time to play it, is the main issue

[twin mountain]

Yeah sure, I should be free around then

I'll tell you if my day gets more complicated

[fast glade]

i'd be happy to spectate a learning session, at least

[twin mountain]

@gusty basalt gimme like 30 minutes

[gusty basalt]

np, im still just getting ready for everything

[twin mountain]

okay i'm around!

@prime gate

[prime gate]

huh wuh?

[twin mountain]

let me find a video

[twin mountain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njMZKJgXz_k

[prime gate]

oooo neat i thought it might be based on the book for a second but i guess not

[twin mountain]

@gusty basalt thinks this looks cool and it's on tts and maybe we can play it on tts I dunno, I'm trying it out

it's like a warhammer fantasy sorta thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPwZMq337WU

[prime gate]

ooo actual ranked units

thanks for showin! i hope its fun

[compact leaf]

It's got a pretty cool activation system using cards

[prime gate]

oooooooo 👁‍🗨 i love a card activation system

dweg

[twin mountain]

I was saying the same thing watching that video with alex

this man has EXCELLENT dwarf king energy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtClrQJ29RQ @gusty basalt

here's a simple 1 hero vs 1 hero game, and it's still interestingly tactical and deep

lots going on even with no terrain

the full game is 3 heroes vs 3 heroes and it looks like...

these pics were from an excellent game with @queen epoch ^

if this sorta hex mash of armies activates neurons, could definitely use more excuses to play this

[tepid steeple]

godtear looks neat

i like its two phase thing

[twin mountain]

it is super neat, and the 2 phase thing is super neat. the big big... what's the word I'm looking for... caveat!

[tepid steeple]

where you have planning and chaos and different guys are better in different phase

[twin mountain]

the big big caveat is that this is like, kind of a bit more of a subtly abstract board game final fantasy tactics kinda experience than a simulationisty wargame

[tepid steeple]

yeah

[twin mountain]

• units have movement ranges and ability ranges in hexes
• there's no cover. none at all. it's like advance wars or fire emblem or a final fantasy tactics game - you just pick any enemy in 3 hexes or whatever.
• blocking is a big part of the subtle depth and space control of the game

heroes and big minions are 1 to a hex

small minions can group up to 3 to a hex

no unit can move through any other unit

you can block the big dumb enemy dragon by putting one (1) peasant in front of it

it is incredibly annoying for the dragon

I was fighting jas by like. flying crows into their face

caw caw caw

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0588/3232/2742/files/GT-Cards-Maxen-Followers-1.jpg?v=1631997706

0 movement speed, teleport 3 spaces away

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0588/3232/2742/files/GT-Cards-Maxen-Followers-2.jpg?v=1631997718

them you give em da pigeon poop

[tepid steeple]

nice

[twin mountain]

also hey @fast glade good reference point for modern-ish wargame design vs oldschool wargame design

4 stats in hexes with symbols, though the symbols are kinda garbage and very hard to read

top right is a ring of pip showing how many of the unit you get to deploy

[fast glade]

Yes haha, I've played this with you

[twin mountain]

yes! I remember!

just like, just mentioning DX

just aligning it with the previous stuff

[fast glade]

Though only in the introductory format

[fast glade]

Okay <34

With you it's best to check sometimes haha

[twin mountain]

me and my memoryyyy

[fast glade]

And yeah it is a good case study

[prime gate]

ooo just like warhammer
moveblocking was a big there when i used to play
fast chaff units can be so powerful

brains hard

[twin mountain]

yeah a little but it's a lot more like. abstract? a bit more "I block your fighter jet with my infantry on the ground" advance wars energy?

like I was blocking the grim reaper with tactically positioned pigeons

if you love that, play godtear it's good

if that seems too silly then maybe not

[prime gate]

oh that totally worked for a while in warhammer too you could block an actual plane with one guy on foot for a while

if i was less limited in energy i would totally give it a go

but for now i am going to ride the wave of relief about my dishwasher seeming to be not leaking to go and nap

[twin mountain]

lmao fair enough

[compact leaf]

Y'know

I do wanna try out conquest someday

The models are awesome

And huge

Like
Their cavalry guys are the size of 40k dreadnoughts
The scale is absurd

[tepid steeple]

i think godtear kinda leans into it so its more interesting while in Warhammer its often just a kinda annoying circumstance that becomes a core part of play

[twin mountain]

Godtear does lean yeah

The terrain free boards and stuff add to the chess energy

[prime gate]

damn godtear partys hard

[next pilot]

I think full scale games have you pick multiple heroes

[twin mountain]

yeah for sure

I've done 3v3

[next pilot]

what the 'main' game size like 40ks 2k?

[fallen rune]

2k

[tepid steeple]

For godtear its 3v3

[fallen rune]

Oh I misread the question whoops

[trail fulcrum]

It still is hillariously

[compact leaf]

(warcor picture)

[tepid steeple]

Guard creature is too good

[compact leaf]

It is surprisingly large

Jinyao wings are so huge

[compact leaf]

https://infinityuniverse.com/blog/army-update-march-2025

They changed a lot....

Also IS profiles are here!

[echo marten]

...huh...IS getting some ALEPH stuff was always a big part of it, now they don't get that?

[compact leaf]

It's just Dakini and Devas now yea

Granted, a lot of the new stuff replaces the old

Sad to see Sophie go though...

[echo marten]

I imagine opponents won't be sad to see her leave. XD

[compact leaf]

Probably!

But uhhhh

Welll

In light of losing that, they now have Shenji Ying

...which has E/Mitter turrets and burst 3 glue turrets

[sudden halo]

Glad the gopod made it through unscathed for now.

It's probably too good but I didn't want to have to pivot for Adepticon.

Wolfgang going to PS4 on his daccw is pretty wild.

Nourk changes are interesting. He's a better hacker now but losing Cybermask takes a lot of teeth off of him

[echo marten]

Yeah, Cybermask is fantastic.

[sudden halo]

Honestly expected more changes.

[compact leaf]

We'll probably see another balance pass in the summer

Hopefully

Not many big events have actually been run for N5

so I think CB is waiting for all the important data to come in

[tepid steeple]

This is mostly fixes i think

[sleek trail]

No garuda or sophotect in iss is nuts

[compact leaf]

They have like 3 drop troops now lmao

All of em are new

[sudden halo]

One of the biggest issues with their data is people not submitting lists. Which is honestly wild, I figured it was a requirement to play events but I guess not?

[compact leaf]

It is, last I checked

But a number of event organizers may use a different means of getting lists

[sudden halo]

It was rhetorical, it's not actually a requirement, as long as you have your printed lists and can produce them for the TO on demand during the event.

[compact leaf]

Ye

We understand not everyone uses CB's system for stuff

But
Eh

[modern snow]

I will continue to run a Sogarat until the data skews enough to warrant a sculpt 💪

[next pilot]

what's the beast thing in the center?

[compact leaf]

That'd be a Bayara Palace Guard

[tepid steeple]

Or the guard’s guard

As it were

[compact leaf]

Indeeby

Those two guys on the base are the same unit though haha

[compact leaf]

Hey who was bringing up Gudnak the other day?

Looks really neat

And concerningly close to a design document I made in 8th grade that I though was really cool XD

[twin mountain]

is me!

c:

gudnak lookin gud and nak

[compact leaf]

Oh it was you!

It is!

[twin mountain]

@crude pawn and @fast glade and I have been thinking of trying out gudnak sometime

[compact leaf]

:0

[twin mountain]

I normally post about it in the card-gaming channel

because it's like kind of a card game?

it's like somewhere between summoner wars and chess

[compact leaf]

Yeye

[twin mountain]

but yeah they got a whole new kickstarter now!

now is a great time to nak

[compact leaf]

Mhm!
We're a fan, have to do more research but if it's anything like our amateur gradeschool game then it's probably getting money thrown its way

[twin mountain]

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/best-hobby/zeo-genesis-scalable-smirmish-game/updates/4

New Playtest Rules (v0.7) are up on Zeogeneis.com. Includes rules updates, design updates and and lore/setting for the first time. Plus so much more art, it’s really starting to look great.

https://www.zeogenesis.com/playtest-files

[autumn sun]

Dropfleet has always been a game where I've gone "I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy it but I sure would like to paint one of these."

[tawny sandal]

The small amount I’ve played of it was a lot of fun

[autumn sun]

I vaguely remember it having a small scene locally about...a decade and some change ago.

[tawny sandal]

Yeah it’s difficult to find players for

You kinda would have to be the person who crowbars it into your local gaming space

It is very fun though

Even just stuff like the “oh shit restart the engine restart the engine” as one of your ships falls down orbital layers is

[maiden abyss]

Actually, could I ask for like, a summary of Dropfleet? I'm kind of interested but want to know what I'm getting into vibes/mechanics-wise before I start getting into it

[twin mountain]

gosh I got a lot of people into it a few months ago, maybe I can find that time in the backlog

[tawny sandal]

Well, it’s ship combat (generally) focused around planets and getting troop ships down to drop zones, with multiple orbital layers. You know where the enemy is at all times, but your own sensors for locking-on are limited by how hot they’re running their ship

It’s unfortunately been a long time since I last played, and they’ve changed editions on me since then

But it’s very much a Space Naval Combat game

If winged has played it more recently she can probably give a better description 😅

[twin mountain]

I guess my summary:

• it's the best 'traditional' wargame I know of where every unit is like a line of stats and you roll d6s to assign hits and the enemy rolls d6s for saving rolls
• alternating activations, strong objective focused gameplay where you generally win by dropping troops on objectives not blowing each other up. it's about supporting your carriers and messing up their carriers.
• cool rangefinding system where every weapon has infinite range but each ship has a scan range and also a sensor signature. The hotter you burn, the more weapons you fire, the brighter you are in the sky - and then everyone can shoot you

[tawny sandal]

There’s also cool stuff like having CIWS missile defense ships that can have an aura of protection against missiles/boarding pods for nearby ships so the fleet supporting itself is important

And those CIWS ships (like the Taipei, my beloved) that are absolutely brutal in close in combat since they’re turning an entire ship made up of missile defense guns onto another ship to turn it into Swiss cheese

Also arcs and positioning is important, since you have certain firing arcs for your various weapons

So like a huge ship-length railgun can only fire in the front arc, but some turreted weapons can fire on the front and side arcs

Also there is, as I mentioned, a neat system of high, medium, low orbit (and also ground but most ships just explode when they reach there because they’re not meant to be there), which determines what layers you can shoot into

In the physical game there’s a neat base system with dials you move to show where you are, it’s cool on-model record keeping

[twin mountain]

(not anymore)

(it's just orbit and atmosphere)

[tawny sandal]

Wait, really?

Aw man, that’s lame

I’m honestly really disappointed to hear that, I liked that mechanic a lot

[fast glade]

(well, some weapons have a specific trait that means they can only fire as far as your scan range, no matter how shiny and lit-up the enemy ship is. Others get a bonus for firing within your scan range and are generally weak outside it. but these are specific exceptions.)

[maiden abyss]

That does sound kind of lame, although I will hold off on judgement until I see what they do with it
Is it free?

[twin mountain]

hellbrute is clearly speaking from the perspective of 1st edition

[tawny sandal]

I am

[twin mountain]

2nd edition has done a lot to clean the game up and make it play in like. under 3 hours

[fast glade]

eh, orbit and atmosphere feels distinct enough as it is?

I don't see what a third layer would add

[twin mountain]

because 1st edition had a lot of stuff in it that did not really contribute much to the overall results of games

yeah

4 layers I think alex

the rules are free, the tts mod is free

[tawny sandal]

There was stuff like falling between orbital layers due to engine damage, and making it down to the surface from orbit with troop ships, making it more of a race

[twin mountain]

you'll have to buy physical models obviously

[twin mountain]

that's still a thing

now it's just descending into atmosphere

and taking damage in atmosphere

and then climbing back up into orbit

[tawny sandal]

Right but just having one layer is a lot less margin for error I’d say

[fast glade]

well. having more layers for it sounds like a lot of extra work that doesn't add very much

[tawny sandal]

And the positioning in orbit was interesting

[maiden abyss]

Do you have a link?

[twin mountain]

like. 4 layers -> 2 layers is an example of the sort of thing they cut out to make the game 4 times less fiddly for like 2 times less interesting storytelling

[maiden abyss]

This one?
https://ttcombat.com/pages/dropfleet-commander-downloads

[tawny sandal]

Personally, it really wasn’t much work

[twin mountain]

yeah

[tawny sandal]

You had record keeping on the flight stands so it was very easy to track at a glance

[fast glade]

Were there mechanical effects of being in mid versus high orbit?

[twin mountain]

the designers talked at length about it being incredibly fiddly in practice

also the entire ground combat system is gone

[tawny sandal]

Yeah, you could fire down into lower orbits but not up

So high positioning was important but also you needed to be low to get your dropships in

[fast glade]

right, but that still exists with just atmo versus orbit

[twin mountain]

if anything the one thing people dislike about 2e is the one layer of additional nonsense they added

the kinetic vs energy saves

[tawny sandal]

But it’s missing some of the tactical detail that came from having more layers

[fast glade]

there's special weapons that work fine in atmo against other in-atmo targets, there's special weapons that work fine from orbit into atmo, there's much less common special weapons that work fine from atmo into orbit, otherwise attacks between layers do receive significant penalties

[twin mountain]

https://www.reddit.com/r/DropfleetCommander/comments/1ggtt59/so_is_2_edition_worth_picking_up/ I'll just kinda vaguely point at stuff like this

It's a better version.

There's some people who are determined to stick with the old edition, because they prefer battlegroups and such but it's IMO a much better game.

The game plays significantly faster than first edition, around the 2 hour mark. More focus is placed on the actual spaceships fighting. Changes from battlegroups to alternating activations isn't "less" tactics as some seem to think, simply different tactics than before. Ships survive a lot longer so there's more room for different playstyles. It's also a much easier game for new players to pick up and learn now its free of battlegroups and that makes a huge difference if you're trying to build a community.

[fast glade]

the like, need for atmospheric capability and the tactical finagling around shooting down at ground/atmospheric target adds a lot of meaningful complexity in of itself

[twin mountain]

like going from 7 hour games to 3 hour games is just. it's just a qol that's hard to capture

yeah each individual interaction is less textured for sure

but the overarching experience has a different feel to it

[fast glade]

yeah tbh if your game takes more than four hours I think that's a mark against its quality in the vast majority of cases

[maiden abyss]

📝

[tawny sandal]

Im absolutely fine with alternate activations, but I gotta say that the games I was playing were also in the 2 hour mark

Like, I dunno how huge of games you’d have to play for it to be 7 hours

Again, I’m sure it works fine in practice, but that specific loss of detail rankles me some

[fast glade]

yeah I can see that, I'm a grognard for a lot of things too

but in this case I really don't see what any of the weird extra layers and details 1e apparently had would actually add to the game

[tawny sandal]

I’m a bit confused that alternating activations was controversial though for being “less tactical” to some people

[fast glade]

alternating activations feels a bit like the sbmm of wargames to me

[tawny sandal]

Since it’s more tactical and reactive

[fast glade]

it's obviously good in the majority of cases, but a lot of people have convinced themselves it's bad for the strangest reasons

[tawny sandal]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

You’ll never understand everyone

Anyways, Dropfleet is cool, I’m now remembering that I should really finish painting my models I have for it 😬

I’m glad it isn’t dead, since id heard it was going through a real rough patch for a few years

[compact leaf]

I do think the general consensus is that wargames where you can quickly react to what your opponent is doing (reactions or AA) >>>>> wargames where you have to sit there and take hit after hit until your turn starts

[twin mountain]

fwiw dropfleet 1e was somewhere in the middle, it used battlegroups? like you'd group a bunch of your squads together

[tawny sandal]

Yeah I remember that

[twin mountain]

but yeah I dunno, it takes a lot for me to get into a game that isn't just maximally reactive

but it's happened

like - I do enjoy the godtear planning phase

very interesting

godtear: capable of making me like IGYG. kinda. sorta.

[compact leaf]

How fast are turns in GodTear?

[twin mountain]

-# funny story I legitimately think legends of runeterra improved on magic the gathering by taking mtg IGYG and making it AA

[tawny sandal]

I will say, if you have a simultaneous planning phase and simultaneous implementation it can be really cool

[fast glade]

I do think turns/actions have to be pretty small for IGYG to work, and iirc they are in Godtear

[twin mountain]

-# and netrunner is kinda AA

yeah they are

so, turns in godtear are very interesting

[compact leaf]

dusts off Battletech

Eyup

[tawny sandal]

As in, you write down a bunch of orders and then do them all at the same time as the opponent

[compact leaf]

Ohhh

Yeah those are neat too

[tawny sandal]

There’s some neat historical wargames that do that, trying to focus on the order giving aspect and the whole fog of war

[compact leaf]

Mhm mhm

[twin mountain]

• you always have exactly 6 groups always: 3 heroes, 3 retinues. They constantly respawn and shit, you can never have more or less.
• in the planning phase, the winning player first has to perform all 6 planning activations of their side at once. this involves moving into position and some setup actions. it is extremely rare to be able to do damage in this phase but hey some heroes are weirdos.
• then the losing player takes their 6 planning activations together
• then the fight phase begins and you alternate and interleave until everyone's 6 activations are done

it's honestly really cool

[tawny sandal]

“Oh no, I thought that cavalry would stay there, now they’re all the way over there and my own cavalry just charged out into the open for nothing oh duck”

[twin mountain]

like it uses IGYG as a catchup mechanic

you have to like, show your hand and establish some vague structure to the fight to come

[fast glade]

oh right yeah it's split across phases, I remember now

unit cards have two faces - one for the planning phase and one for the tactics phase

[twin mountain]

yup

[compact leaf]

IGYG split across phases sorta occupies the AA space in my brain for some reason

[fast glade]

and in the vast majority of cases, the abilities on the planning side are movements and buffs and such and the abilities on the tactical side have far less movement.

[twin mountain]

so like, let's say I have my lovely dwarf boy and his crows

[fast glade]

(and then there's the funny Samurai hero/retinue that completely inverts this as its gimmick)

[twin mountain]

planning phase: dwarf lad moves around and builds more crows

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0588/3232/2742/files/GT-Cards-Maxen-Skills-1.jpg?v=1631997629

[tawny sandal]

I played a historical wargame once where it was IGYG but if one person got to move first, the other player got to shoot first, which was interesting

[twin mountain]

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0588/3232/2742/files/GT-Cards-Maxen-Followers-1.jpg?v=1631997706

and the crows can teleport around and like, reduce people's armor by pecking at them

and then! fight time!!!

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0588/3232/2742/files/GT-Cards-Maxen-Traits-1.jpg?v=1631997657

[tawny sandal]

You kinda traded off going first on phases based on which one you really prioritize

[twin mountain]

maxen fuckin SHOOTs you

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0588/3232/2742/files/GT-Cards-Maxen-Followers-2.jpg?v=1631997718

CAW CAW CAW pigeon shit time

[compact leaf]

Bird gun...

[tawny sandal]

Man, now I really wanna play Dropfleet again…

Also, I found out there was a Halo fleet battle game that apparently was also neat but is totally dead now

I’ve always thought the naval stuff in halo was cool

[tawny sandal]

Also, I never played it but saw some people play it on occasion, how is Dropzone Comander?

It’s basically a battalion level game, right?

But like, sci fi

[maiden abyss]

What are the factions in Dropfleet like playstyle wise?

[tawny sandal]

Okay, I’m going off memory here so anyone is free to jump in and correct me.
So, the humans are pretty I guess “standard”? They have rather heavy armor and guns, kinda Jack-of-all-trades as I recall.
You have the Scourge which have a lot more boarding/missile related stuff and try to close in.
The aliens I forget the name of are very fast.
And I entirely forget what the PHR does 😬

[twin mountain]

i'm busy cooking, but if you ask in strategy club there are people who play there

[tawny sandal]

I played the normal human UCM and mostly played against the Scourge

[sudden halo]

I don't like AA for spaceships, but its not because its less tactical. I just think you do phases so everything moves then everything shoots to better get that feeling of momentum. Within the phases you could do AA or initiative or whatever, I just think it creates a really different feel for movement strategy

[sudden halo]

I maintain that the best spaceship game on the market is Full Thrust, and it works this way.

They nailed it in one back in like 94. Reading the rules I thought it would be too fiddly, since you literally write down orders on a sheet of paper, but in practice it makes the game massively fast.

[tawny sandal]

I don’t mind having broken down phases, I just overall have come to like AA more

[sudden halo]

because there's no waiting during movement. both people write everything down, then when that's done, you just go for it, moving your stuff and only have to work something out when ships overlap. then you alternate for shooting but it all takes effect at the end of the phase.

[tawny sandal]

But there can be interesting IGYG phase brakedowns, like I mentioned a historical WWII game I played where going first in one phase meant you went second in the other

[sudden halo]

it feels more strategic to me than most AA games, because you have to plan ahead, rather than reacting to what your opponent does.

where IGYG honestly feels the most reactive of all the options. One player does their thing, then the other one solves their puzzle and does their thing, and back and forth forever.

I guess the best way to think of Full Thrust rules wise is streamlined space battletech with pre-plotted movement.

[twin mountain]

fwiw FFG just improved on the full thrust model dramatically

both the x-wing miniatures game and the battlelore wargame had phased movements but you programmed movements using dials

it was much much faster and less fiddly than writing down stuff on pieces of paper and checking each other's pieces of paper

[sudden halo]

i always felt like the xwing dials were fiddly and it was hard to know your options until you really used a ship a lot

i did play a lot of xwing though

i have considered how to do FT on dials. it works if you play standard rules but if you use the vector movement it falls apart.

[tepid steeple]

I think overall its a false dichotomy and other game design decisions matter a lot more. A bad game is a bad game regardless of what category you put it in

[trail fulcrum]

Dropfleet? Ships are so muchbkpre durable

[sleek trail]

A dial or similar would be as straightforward as full thrust if all units have the same movement options

Rather than some maneuvers not being possible for some stuff in xwing iirc

[echo marten]

Getting some art for Fulda Rift homebrew, super looking foward to it.

[clear shadow]

Ooooooooo