Indie+Alternative Wargaming

[hollow slate]

Still need to do that though, lol

[compact leaf]

Here ya go
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/15k120DGjbFHfYP4Sr7Magh3_M7rVU1Wi/mobilebasic#h.46r0co2

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Go2Y-uyU5_mMbjo1oBndbjkS6Q0DuQ-56VL9Mk8qyGs/edit?usp=sharing

[compact leaf]

Most definitely

[twin mountain]

Ran moonstone today for @fast glade and it reminded me how much I fucking love that game

@latent rover @stray breach would absolutely love excuses to play it more with you guys

[stray breach]

It's very fun!

[sand sonnet]

I should really get my Shades together.

[twin mountain]

I suspect @fast glade is gonna end up with a leshavault or shade list

[sand sonnet]

I've mostly played Goblins, but there's lots of fun lists out there.

Does the TTS mod have the standee art, or did someone scan in the models?

[twin mountain]

Just standee art

But hot take alert hot take alert

I like standees

I prefer paper dolls to most models

They're just cute and easy to manage and see

It's basically only mechs that I think look better in proper 3D?

For the flailing goobers of moonstone I like the card art more than any model

[sand sonnet]

https://tenor.com/view/scared-bird-jump-woah-gif-5121521

Fair for TTS though I suppose.

The models are very cool in person for Moonstone which is why I ask.

They capture the character of the art well in the sculpts.

Like look at the Goblin Airship:

https://shop.moonstonethegame.com/cdn/shop/products/MS-BG012-Goblin-Airship_c6d1f8c5-6217-45eb-85de-4fdb3c3b1b22_900x.jpg?v=1670517278

It's just spot on to the feel of the drawing.

[tawny sandal]

That model looks like it would probably be asking the opposing model to please kill it

[sand sonnet]

One of it's abilities is to pull models in with the frog's tongue.

[tawny sandal]

“YOU SUFFER WITH ME NOW”

[sand sonnet]

[twin mountain]

I'm a board gamer

I play chess and ironwood and card games

I don't need super detailed physical dioramas to capture my imagination, and in practice they can kinda take me a bit out of the experience cause of how they depict scenes

It's like pixel art vs people who really want 1080p 3D games

I play pixel art

[orchid tulip]

Do you play chess with standees?

[twin mountain]

Chess pieces are standees yes

Physical models of kings and queens would suck

Like does battle chess look good to anyone?

[orchid tulip]

My granpa's chess set has "humans", horses, and windmills

[compact leaf]

Oh yeah.. how are you liking Ironwood anyways Winged?
You've had it for a while right?

Or have been playing it for a bit-

[twin mountain]

I love it

Played it a bunch and uh

No one will play it with me anymore

https://tenor.com/view/kaguya-kaguya-love-is-war-chika-sweating-gif-22020682

I just beat people and then they ragequit

[compact leaf]

I uh..
Oof..

Ironwood was cool, I ultimately decided it wasn't for me but we're glad to hear you enjoy it :3

[twin mountain]

I really did yeah

And it got me like, back into card games kinda

Just realized how much I miss tight sequencing fights

[compact leaf]

Gudnak did that for me, it turns out I had been missing the back and forth for a while

Got very tired of playing games with super long player turns.. with the exception of ones with interruption mechanics that are satisfying to use

[twin mountain]

Yeah it even got me into like, trying godtear?

I wanna play more tight turn based experiences

Have you ever played moonstone till

[compact leaf]

I haven't!

I've looked into it a little bit though!

There just uh, isn't a local scene for it so I hesitate to try and jumpstart one myself

And ultimately I don't know much about how it functions as a game-

[sand sonnet]

It’s very cool in gameplay. There are a couple of unique card mechanics that really give it depth

[sudden halo]

re: models vs standees - I prefer standees to unpainted models, and I like the option. I love miniatures and painting and the whole thing but I also love a good hex and counter game

the modelling hobby and the game hobby are relatively separate things in my head, only really coming together as necessary for one another in specific circumstances

like right now a friend of mine wants to do a big spectacle game of epic 40k, so the painted minis and the diorama nature is half the point - its all building this specfic narrative.

but any given game of infinity sometimes i wish it was just standees and cubes so everything was more clear

[sand sonnet]

It very much depends on the game.

Infinity already works off of a defined volume so standees work fine.

Warhammer would be terrible with them.

[sudden halo]

gw games having you measure from the model is wild.

im reading through the adeptus titanicus rules and part of it is like "if the model could pose in a way it could be in a spot without a base, just talk about where it is and pretend. measure from that pose"

and im like.... what in the fuck?

[sand sonnet]

Vibe first game design

Awesome in theory, clunky in execution

[tepid steeple]

One thing I found a little odd about fsd was like, it has base to base measurement and line of sight etc

Or like most things are actually centre to centre which is fine, but line of sight is centre to the whole base

And then also theres like, no base size for any unit. You base as you like

There is a guideline of like, 1” - 1.5” minimum (or its scale equivalent) then larger as needed by bigger models

[sand sonnet]

Basing for advantage

[tepid steeple]

But its basically like. Only actually regulated by the assumption that a group is gonna vaguely agree what base is appropriate or have the same supply of bases etc

Which isn’t necessarily wrong

[sand sonnet]

It’s fine for a local small group or basement meta.

But try defining clear rules for that for everyone at like Adepticon or something

[tepid steeple]

Overall im not actually sure what one would do if you were of a mind to game it

[sand sonnet]

Smaller/narrower bases essentially

[tepid steeple]

Bigger bases do have the advantage when like, changing direction I think

[next pilot]

Is ampersand a new keyword for outcasts?

[tepid steeple]

Played tag raid!!!

(Just realised I never actually mentioned it here, I got a huge infinity lot with all of tag raid + many haqqislam goodies including maggie pilot!!!)

But yeah this was really fun actually. Deathmatch board game based on infinity ARO rules

[twin mountain]

ooh

i like board games 👀

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2628331847&searchtext=TagRaid

[tepid steeple]

Unfortunately it was a ks only thing 😭

[twin mountain]

... huh. this reminds me of adrenaline

oh god

it's a wargame

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

you actually use measurement tools and everything on a hexmap?

[tepid steeple]

Yeahhhhh the hexmap is weird

Cause

They dont completely ignore it

[twin mountain]

begone, blasphemous creature

a beautiful hexmap and it uses measuuuremeeent

waaah

[tepid steeple]

Its used instead of zone of control from infinity

But tbh thats worse,,, cause it ends up all dissonant

[twin mountain]

https://tenor.com/view/horimiya-anime-crying-teary-eyes-gif-16110711996255784827

thank you for introducing me to this unending horror penny

i shall never forget

[tepid steeple]

Yw!!!

[twin mountain]

terrible insight

etched into my brain

[tepid steeple]

I could really see it using the hexes but it just doesnt really

[twin mountain]

https://tenor.com/view/bocchi-bocchi-the-rock-anime-mental-breakdown-on-floor-gif-27026753

[tepid steeple]

The monsters use the hexes though and are really cool. Big worm pops up in holes, big dragon slots in the outside borders of the map, and the funny doggy runs around on tiles without terrain on

Each of their bases are hexes

[twin mountain]

my current moonstone list

2 lists from @fast glade

[sand sonnet]

Solid. I really should get fancyhat at some point.

@torpid garden has trounced me with him a few times.

[torpid garden]

Can confirm: Fancyhat is v fancy as he does unspeakable things to opposing models in melee

And he was really fun to paint!

[next pilot]

How does list building work?

[sand sonnet]

Pick eight models that work for your faction. You'll play six of them in a full size game, but you get to choose which ones as you're deploying, so you can kinda pick and choose counters to your opponent's roster.

[twin mountain]

5 in a full sized game

tos are recommended to expand lists to 10 when playing 6v6

[tepid steeple]

I have an offer from a local to play moonstone at some point. I think Im not into the models enough to invest in it personally but tts is less about that 👀

I do like the idea of bunnymancer shenanigans

[trail fulcrum]

Notbyet

Production on English cards finish next month

End of

[compact leaf]

Evil hell table from infinity tournament today

And we played a PanO mirror match on it-
Pure carnage

[autumn sun]

I wanna know how they made those highway strips.

I can see thin cork for pavement but like...is that wall trim for the sides?

[modern snow]

RE: the Hex Map: it's also used for the roving beast that harries the players. It's on a jiant hex base that interfaces with all of the non-tile portions of the board.

[sudden halo]

Is that the whole 4x4? That would be insane to play on. Like go in a guide on how not to build infinity tables bad.

[modern snow]

that's a warhammer board

definitely played infinity on one of those boards more than once and it was certainly... something lol

[compact leaf]

This was very very intentional
I'm not 100% sure I agree with it being a tournament board but... It's an interesting exercise to run through as training for when you just have to play on an awful board

[next pilot]

What makes it hell?

[compact leaf]

So, I'm not sure if you know how Infinity works, but there's a reaction system in it and a lot of those reactions tend to be shooting at something.
So Infinity tables tend to have pretty dense terrain so that scary snipers don't reign supreme the entire game.

The hell table, however, has a lot of places where putting a sniper lets them see the large majority of the table.

It's got almost no cover on the ground safe for a couple buildings and a train

And the high ground presents commanding sightlines for anything with long range weaponry

[twin mountain]

hoooly shit

what a crazy game with @fast glade

she absolutely wrecked me with melee outplays the whole game

until eric the squire, of all people, got 6 damage on joana to tie it

[fast glade]

blawawa yeah I think you had the stronger overall deck, or at least straightforwardly strong

[twin mountain]

I think I technically win sudden death but we're calling ita s a tie daamn

[fast glade]

a smarter player than me could probably have done very funny things with Liv

though setting Flintlock's pants on fire on turn one was very funny

[twin mountain]

@violet sonnet

[next pilot]

So which player goes first gets a sniper on high ground and dominates

[sudden halo]

Even worse than that, both players will likely have some very good spots to deploy snipers in the beginning. Idk that it favors first player or second but I really favors factions and lists that are all about gunfighting and hoses most of the mid range more skirmish-y toolbox factions.

[compact leaf]

And we played a PanO mirror on it XD

So it was uhhh
So many machine gun duels

[twin mountain]

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

... this is a surprisingly anemic gamefound page

they're for sure funded though so good for them

[compact leaf]

Yeah I had my eye on it but.. the scale just wasn't what I was looking for unfortunately

[sand sonnet]

Using their oldhead GW people's names is probably 70% of the marketing strategy here.

[tawny sandal]

Happens a good amount, a big part of the hype of Trench Crusade was “oh shit the guy who made Mordheim was a key developer”

[sand sonnet]

I mean Trench Crusade did a lot more than just that, but it was a big selling point for it.

[tawny sandal]

Oh I know, I didn’t mean it was the only thing lol

[sand sonnet]

Zeo Genesis seems to be selling it on "Andy Chambers and Gav Thorpe were here" and little else.

[sudden halo]

Andy Chambers tends to make pretty good games. Not perfect and more Warhammer feeling than I usually like but I know I usually like what I'm getting into. Game looks pretty fun but still, I don't love the aesthetic.

[compact leaf]

Yeah that's another thing that didn't particularly grab me

[modern snow]

I'm so thoroughly whelmed by Zeo from its initial presentation.

not gonna knock it if people have fun w/ it though

I just feel like Warcaster thoroughly beat Zeo-Genesis to the punch by every metric

I would definitely say though: Check out Sliprunners. Same universe as Zeo, but it's this cool ship-maneuvering game. It's very neat.

also: Jamie Daggers did some of the painted minis for Zeo Genesis and she's pretty cooooooooool 🤩

[sand sonnet]

Sadly that game got pandemiced hard.

Hopefully Steamforged does something with it eventually

[compact leaf]

Apparently there's a warmachine crowd where I am and I know... Not much about the game beyond your leader mattering a lot and there a big robots

Is it like.. Warhammer scale or more skirmishy?
Somewhere in between?

[hollow slate]

I had a period I was into Warmachine (but couldn't afford to buy/play), I think it's between

[modern snow]

the Lost Legion army looked so fucking sick

[modern snow]

inbetween. older editions got very infantry heavy

I'm a little biased but Warcaster is the superior PIP game. Haven't played the SFG edition yet but I've been assembling the starter for little skirmish games

Also the starter is the perfect size for a game of Yafsiga, woohoo!

[sand sonnet]

MKIV learned a lot from Warcaster.

The movement for infantry is almost entirely lifted from it tbh.

[modern snow]

@sand sonnet look what they took from us

[sand sonnet]

I know.

I was there.

[modern snow]

https://tenor.com/view/i-was-there-gandalf-the-day-the-strength-of-men-failed-fail-critical-fail-fumble-gif-24779224

[sand sonnet]

I did playtesting for Privateer right around then.

Flying was nerfed because of a game between me and a friend that we reported.

In the OG rules flying just made you immune to melee.

[modern snow]

that's a terrible idea

looks at Infinity's vehicle rules

(I actually don't mind them because vehicles can't interact with objectives and such)

[sand sonnet]

Yeah it's less weird there as a rule.

At least we got Corebus.

[compact leaf]

sigh
I've just looked and uhh

Yeah this looks like it would've been pretty cool if it took off

Or.. did it?
I'm under the impression that it didn't perform well and got canned

[sand sonnet]

It's kickstarter launched and funded before lockdown, and by the time it arrived we were all quarantining.

It never got the chance to really succeed.

There's still a dedicated fanbase for it, and it's now owned by Steamforged along with most of Privateer Press's other IPs.

Steamforged has stated they're focusing on Warmachine first, but haven't really shared anything other than they want to do stuff for the other games eventually.

[compact leaf]

I see I see

[sand sonnet]

There's a decent TTS mod for it.

[compact leaf]

Well, MKIV seems to be doing well, we'll see where things go from there I suppose

I'm probably gonna end up getting into whatever has the local scene with people I like in it anyways

if I do

[sand sonnet]

Steamforged is really making the right business moves that PP wasn't able to to let Warmachine succeed again.

Yeah what you can play locally is usually the best option unless you're willing to put the work in to build a community from scratch.

[twin mountain]

Oh will do!

[twin mountain]

... I try to not be a hater for indie games but I'll admit

I found mobile arms while looking around for stuff that was like zeo but that I actually liked

So. Consider this my vote for you

[twin mountain]

Is it AA

👀

[sleek trail]

Warcaster i think has very little juice

I think the most interesting things about zeo are in its force org and the continuous activations, rather than rounds

Id be willing to give it a shot but i doubt you get the plan/execute high i look for in minis games

[modern snow]

It has some clunk, that's for sure. I liked the force recycling aspects, but the cardplay aspect felt super tacked on and I hope they ditch it in Warcaster 2E

[sand sonnet]

Yes.

[sand sonnet]

It has that in a turn to turn way, not in a build an engine and watch it run kinda way if that makes sense?

[native portal]

I know why

(no offense to Chambers or Thorpe, who have done good stuff in their time, but who seem incapable of moving significantly past whatever they were doing 30 years ago)

[twin mountain]

Gosh tell me more

Because I'm clearly missing a lot of history and context here

These are just two guys to me

[twin mountain]

We should godtear @_@

It's got igyg

[autumn sun]

Chambers and Thorpe got their start with Games Workshop and were hugely influential there in the 90s and 00s. Both were there for about 14 years.

A lot of their design ideas are heavily influenced by their time there so when Suki says they're incapable of moving past their past work, it's because of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Chambers Like, if you look at Chambers's body of work damn near half of that is GW games.

[twin mountain]

Huh interesting

I did think zeo genesis had a weirdly... Slow attack sequence

So many steps

[autumn sun]

Kinda emblematic of GW style of games. Lots of rolling and checking for things to roll against.

Like, an average round of shooting in 40k typically went like this:

• Roll to hit, using ballistic skill as a base and adjusting for any modifiers;
• Roll to wound, comparing strength vs toughness
• Target rolls armor save, if applicable; they may have a cover save, invuln save, or regeneration save either replacing the armor save or on top of it (with regen)
• Roll leadership if enough damage is done; if failed, fall back 2d6"
  All of this is just one unit across many and is entirely too many steps. So if you see this sort of thing in an Andy Chambers game, well...

[compact leaf]

And then there's all the re-rolls and command point spending that happens too, muddles it all up

[autumn sun]

Yuuuup

Lots of rolling dice for often questionable effect. A whole-ass unit of 50 dudes can fire their lasguns at something and end up doing no damage.

[echo marten]

(Now I feel bad because Fulda Rift also has a chunk of steps/is actively designed around the idea that a unit could put a round of fire into another one and do nothing because small arm guns are more about suppression than they are about killing in the game.)

[autumn sun]

It's kind of dependent on why it has a lot of steps, and also general scale of the game. Skirmish games can benefit from it because you've got less models on the field and each one can be important; in 40k you've got a lot, so it only serves to slow things down.

[echo marten]

Fulda Rift is like '3 squads of infantry and 1 real tank' in size.

[autumn sun]

Oh yeah that's fine.

[twin mountain]

yeahhh zeo genesis has a whole like. extra step to see if you roll your faction superpower or something?

though also it's a wargame so it has that insane gameflow where they get funding for a game and print and sell it purely on how pretty models are

while rules themselves are still in beta or something

which always throws me for a loop

okay not so bad in the latest playtest thing

[fallen rune]

Yeah that's pretty pared down it looks like

[twin mountain]

yeah, I can see how the special superpower step is just part of rolling attack now

the 'combat die'

[sleek trail]

To be clear im not a huge pure igyghead, though i do suspect id get a bit out of godtear

But more that like. In infinity every turn is a problem you have to solve

Ive been playing netrunner, i get the same high

I think thats what i like out of games

A limited number of tools where you just act with them, for a period

[echo marten]

I'm having fun working on Anti-War for Fulda Rift.

[native portal]

Slim did it for me but I'll add that chambers left GW and made Bolt Action, a very competent ww2 game that is just GW's rules with his own personal changes and the numbers filed off

I don't mean to say he's a bad designer but rather that these are very His Thing

[sudden halo]

Warcaster looked soo cool. And the rules were so dope

but it died before it even started

[sudden halo]

re: Andy Chambers - he usually brought a lot of new ideas to the GW space. Epic 40k brought a really cool blast marker basted morale system and then Epic: Armageddon made the game AA. Battlefleet Gothic became Dropfleet, both of which were Chambers.

unfortunately he's also kind of married to the Hit - Wound - Save or at least Hit - Save paradigm

[modern snow]

in his defense that's like... his thing

[sudden halo]

I've found largely that I love the 2nd edition of games he worked on. Usually keep the good stuff but aren't afraid to kill sacred cows. DFC 2nd is great. Epic Armageddon is great. I guess that's it but all his other games are Warhammer or Bolt Action, which Bolt Action has an awesome activation system but is also just historical Warhammer which is the complete and utter opposite of what I want in a historical game.

[twin mountain]

play moonstone with meeeee

[tepid steeple]

First three FSD units done 🥳

[autumn sun]

Adorable.

[teal cloud]

In the defense of the hit/wound/save paradigm having no save (chance) to respond to attacks can kinda suck- as much as I enjoy battletech, having to spend a bit watching your mech get torn apart with no chance to "roll back" is unpleasant

If you play very tightly with the alternating shooting actions so that there's a better cadence of "i shoot, you shoot" it can be better but not everyone abides

[echo marten]

Yeah, it's why I really like Riposte/Fulda Rift. It's very much about reactions (Hence the name Riposte). When a unit activates, you can attempt to activate one of your own in response (And if you beat them in an init roll, you act first).

US Airmobile Infantry are really annoying to try to melee because A) They have jump packs so they can move quickly B) They are US units so they have pretty decent init. So if you charge them there's a solid chance they'll zip back and hose you down with fire.

[twin mountain]

there are just tons of solutions to this

you mentioned alternating activation cadence, but there's also like...

• systems where both players roll at the same time (offense vs defense, face 2 face infinity, etc.)
• systems where players take part in a bigger minigame with reactive components inside like playing cards (everything involving moonstone arcane rolls for example)
• systems where nobody rolls
• systems where people roll but very little?

like the bad feelings are compounded when it's just one person rolling 20 dice, 20 dice, 20 dice over and over while you watch stuff dissolve

and for sure nobody likes that

even "I just roll 2 dice, once" and you move on to the next group can be fine

[echo marten]

The area where i feel the hit/wound/save paradigm has the most meat is where you can leverage multiple roll types to add mechanical texture.

Things that are tough but not armoured etc

[twin mountain]

I think basically any system where you have to sequence through like 3 to 5 rolls with no choice points at any point is... it's just slow

maybe it feels good to older players but to players like me it feels like the game itself kinda stops to buffer and load results

[echo marten]

While I'll admit I can often find games that fold things together too much a bit lacking in texture.

I like the distinction of 'this is tough but not armoured' or 'this is high ROF but low power' mechanically interesting/gives a lot of fun hooks to design with.

[twin mountain]

I guess to me the interesting stuff is like, when it affects your decisions around initiating attacks against what kinds of enemies

[echo marten]

That said; I think 40k uses it very poorly these days.

[twin mountain]

not getting to see the 5 step process of rolling to see bullets ping off armor

[echo marten]

As it was clearly a mechanic designed for much smaller games.

[twin mountain]

there are just. simpler systems that emulate that

[twin mountain]

do tell

[echo marten]

40k games back in 1e/2e were more like '2-3 squads and maybe one armoured vehicle'

They were not these 'massive armies on massive armies'

So there was a lot less 'I need an entire barrel of dice for my turn'

As the numbers of dudes being worked with during a phase were much leaner.

In addition, there's been serious inflation in the scale of weapons. Back in 1e/2e a weapon having 2 attacks base was the sign of being a Very Fast Firing Weapon.

While 40k now has a lot of things just due to power creep where it's 'hey, this is my pretty basic gun. It gets like 5 attacks'

Also back in earlier editions, armour and toughness were much more distinct.

As vehicles didn't have toughness.

they only had armour.

So weapons that were low power, high AP or low AP, high power had a more defined role.

While now where a solid 70-80% of the game is 'Another fucking space marine', vehicles also now have toughness and armour saves.

[sand sonnet]

I disagree about the current game using it poorly, it's just a different abstraction than it used to be in that system.

That said it is a mechanic that is better for smaller games just on resolution times.

[tepid steeple]

I think iterated d6 operations is actually kinda underrated

like I'd rather roll 10 d6, split it into two piles, then roll one of the piles, than roll 10d20

[echo marten]

My thoughts on using it poorly is more 'it's a system that has issues with scaling as games get bigger but 40k has increasingly gotten bigger'. There's a reason why Apocalypse treated entire units as single models, it was to make the game a lot faster than going 'well, I have 100 imperial guardsmen here. I will roll for all 100 of them'. XD

[umbral prawn]

I'm with Winged, here. How does it affect your decisions?

[tepid steeple]

it's not about decisions

[twin mountain]

I can understand how the stepwise sequences tell a story

[tepid steeple]

it's about the speed of parsing results

[twin mountain]

and some people are more interested in the procedural story

[sudden halo]

Apocalypse also drops it to two rolls and not everything has an armor roll. Also it makes hitting unlikely but shooting at all effective. Being small scale it captures the mass battle feeling of the 40k world better than 40k ever does, and does it with less moving parts.

[twin mountain]

like if you roll...

• how many shots actually pass your own skill check for aiming
• then how many shots do the enemy dodge
• then how many shots hit and do damage based on your weapon damageness
• then how many shots actually hurt based on enemy shrugoffdamageness

then that does kinda tell a story

you can track each d6 as a bullet going through a story arc to land somewhere

[teal cloud]

40k increasing in model count by 10 to 20% across the board in 10th edition sure was something

[twin mountain]

but also. oh my god that's a lot of rolling while nobody is actually doing anything. and to people like me who are trying to engage with the systems of a game and want to be immersed in the decision space / headspace of commanders etc

it really sucks

[teal cloud]

Not the first time but since I was watching 9th closely it felt more egregious

[twin mountain]

(and also like, a lot of these steps can be compressed together. like how you see modern systems rolling armor dice AND attack dice in one big roll)

[sudden halo]

I do feel pretty strongly that your mechanics should reflect your fiction and your fiction should reflect your mechanics, so I agree here. If there's a difference in universe between something good at punching through armor and something good at dealing a lot of damage I want to see that represented mechanically rather than both being high damage weapons, but in the end it has to be a fun and interesting game so a designer has to choose where they put their abstractions.

[umbral prawn]

There are ways to represent those tradeoffs without three nested rolls

[echo marten]

Like to talk about Riposte (Which was designed to be a 'slightly more modern take on what was liked about earlier 40k'. The game does use both 'armour' and 'toughness' because the game isn't really about killing stuff. Models can get taken out but it's more about positioning and morale.

Toughness is used for determining 'Is this a weapon that can kill this unit, or just one that can injure people?', while saves are there to save people from the things that can kill.

[tepid steeple]

riposte just also as a design goal doesn't overly prioritise minimising rolling or anything

[sudden halo]

I like when systems combine the rolls but keep all of those factors in play. Infinity face to face then save. Heavy gear face to face then margin of success. Silent Death being a very DnD type roll over Defense Value but the weapon tells you which of the dice you already rolled is the damage. Of course sometimes you're subbing out a dice roll for a calculation, which isn't necessarily faster.

[tepid steeple]

but also just stuffs much more stuff into the same amount of rolls

[twin mountain]

y'know what, gonna roll into this discussion with an excitedly hot take

[tepid steeple]

like there's so much going on even with just the hit roll in riposte

[twin mountain]

I think a lot of systems I see in wargames are designed to like, tell immersive stories about what is happening in a kind of mind's eye theater in your head - and that's also where stuff like this toughness vs armor and rof vs penetration etc all fit into

... but saves make no sense

[echo marten]

Demons and Angels for example are IT 6/WT 6. You can't hurt a demon or angel. You can kill it but if you don't, it won't care.

In contrast, Combat Cosmonaughts are IT4, WT8. They are nearly impossible to kill...but they're not much harder to hurt than a normal human because they're a big genemodded human.

So it does a lot more with 'toughness' than 40k does.

[tepid steeple]

cause it calculates like, range and pinning and target size and shooter skill

[twin mountain]

like saves are actually sort of a weird fighting retreat into gameism to make people feel good by letting them roll a die in the process instead of the other guy

like if you get shot you die actually

there's nobody doing heroic willpower to push bullets out of their wounds in most of these diegetic settings

[sudden halo]

In terms of agency the bullet is the one rolling all the dice.

[twin mountain]

saves are just strictly nonsense in 99% of situations I see them in

yeah

like about the only time it makes sense is when you roll for will saves in psychic contests and stuff

I kinda see the story there

and... maaybe rolling a fortitude or dexterity save kinda makes sense? in a sort of personal virtue stepping in and averting catastrophe sense? but an armor save?

your kevlar vest has agency now?

[sudden halo]

I definitely prefer systems based on armor pen values and thresholds and margins of success causing better hits rather than an armor save.

[twin mountain]

[echo marten]

I mean, saves are often more about 'does your armour stop the bullet' than 'heroic willpower' or such...I'll admit I'm not 100% parsing this.

[sudden halo]

Honestly I liked the way infinity last edition had saves be the only roll over. Mathematically the shooter was the one making the roll, and it was a roll under as usual. They just handed the dice to the other player

[twin mountain]

sure but at that point why not do a luck save for people shooting you instead of them doing a skill check

like there's nothing in here that's a representation of your soldiers performing an action

[sudden halo]

Like the defender was hoping the attacker failed their "kill check".

[echo marten]

So this is more about 'the dice get handed to the other player' than the fact something is rolled?

[twin mountain]

yeah

like "saves" as a concept are just like "the dice we hand to the defender in our sanctity-of-turn game design"

[sudden halo]

Of course this is all on the assumption that a dice roll represents agency instead of arbitrarily determining probability, but it does generally hold true for most mechanics.

[twin mountain]

that's sorta where they started and that's sorta what it still means

you the attacker have total choice at all points in this turn of yours buuut they get to roll this die here so they feel better. and like, valid. feel better is a design goal that is worthwhile

but I've always found it directly competing with the rest of engines that are trying to be super grimy and tell clear stories of how somebody died

[tepid steeple]

to use riposte as an example again save rolls are just like, abstracted hit location

combined with luck (miracles)

[sudden halo]

This is all sort of why I really liked Heavy Gear 2Es dice system. Despite the multiplication you needed to do. You multiplied your margin of success by your damage and compared to thresholds.

[echo marten]

Mulitplication in games basicly always makes me break out into hives 😛

[sudden halo]

So it really sold the idea of doing more with accurate hits to vital spots

[twin mountain]

wait I thought heavy gear dropped the multiplication

[sudden halo]

Or just a big gun overpowering armor with any hit.

[sudden halo]

It did. I'm talking about the version from 1998 or so. The new ones you just add the margin of success and it is a worse game for it (though significantly more playable if you aren't really good at your times tables)

[twin mountain]

gotcha

tbh a lot of systems still secretly do multiplication they just hide it better by dropping remainders and stuff

like I'm a big big fan of @modern snow 's mobile arms and it is secretly a multiplication system

the way it works is:

• you roll once for all your strike symbols
• for every set of strikes = enemy defense, you get a hit
• do weapon damage x hits

[sudden halo]

The thing was you never had a margin higher than like 3, so most of the mult wasnt bad.

[twin mountain]

so lets say you roll 5 strikes vs an enemy defense of 3, that's 1 hit. if you rolled 6 strikes that would be 2 hits

[umbral prawn]

Would you tolerate it if the biggest numbers you multiply were, say, 3 times 5?

[twin mountain]

your weapon has 3 power

so that's 3 damage

or 6 damage if you had two hits

the end

this is... this is just multiply and divide

but with some simplifications

you divide first, drop remainder, then multiply

it keeps numbers smaller and the math much easier

and nobody notices

[sudden halo]

It makes side and rear angle shots really effective, because they're not just easier shots, they've got a damage multiplier effectively.

[twin mountain]

yeah

mobile arms just does an amazing job by using very small numbers and never letting the multiplied numbers go over 10

by putting divide first

it's secretly genius

enemy defense values scale from 1 to 4

you roll 6 dice maximum

[echo marten]

Part of the armour thing with Riposte is also the fact that 'stuff dying' is not really the goal of the game and armour saves are another gate for 'You must be X high to knock the unit out of commission'.

Like almost no M16 bullet is going to actually kill a Pontifical Guard but it can very much knock him flat on his ass/cause some minor injuries and that's a distinction the game really cares about it. XD

[twin mountain]

so that's.... 12 strikes maximum

and your weapon has a power value of like 1 to 3

[sudden halo]

Then you have something like the howitzer ability to reduce shields, and it really makes things interesting, being able to adjust both sides of the equation potentially.

[twin mountain]

and if you roll 7 strikes into an enemy 1 defense backside

and have to multiply by 3 because you shot them with a railgun

the sheer joy of instantly totalling an enemy will probably make having to multiply 7 by 3 feel easier for you

:P

because everyone has like 8 hp total and you did 21 damage

[sand sonnet]

Yeah at that point you skip the math and say "boom"

[twin mountain]

yeah I'm a fan of multiply systems honestly I'm just a hater of big numbers

and if you can keep the numbers low it works well

the problem with multiply and divide is like when you ask someone to divide 29 by 7

and they want to die

[sudden halo]

HG I think the highest damage was 21 or 25. Which was kind of painful but 2x or 3x are still pretty quick. You didn't have hit points, just armor thresholds and light damage heavy damage and dead.

Worked out was faster than Battletech

Because you weren't filling out scantrons every hit.

But did take some getting used to, and was a fiddly game in enough other aspects to add up to kind of an inspired mess.

[twin mountain]

I can believe it worked well yeah

[sand sonnet]

Look, I go to Battletech when I want to fill out scantrons every hit.

[twin mountain]

I'd have to see it in practice

[sudden halo]

I do blame it for why I'm good at mental math. It was the first wargame book I bought when I was 12 or so.

[echo marten]

Battletech also sorta has more room for 'Filling out scantrons' when you're working with like...2-4 mechs per side. XD

[sand sonnet]

There's a joy in clunky for clunky sake sometimes.

[echo marten]

Each machine is a much higher percentage of your game

[sand sonnet]

Usually yeah.

[sudden halo]

Heavy Gear 1st and 2nd edition were built for playing a single squad of 5ish.

Wasn't till Blitz that they moved to bigger forces.

Blitz is also pretty close to being great but needs to basically be handed off to someone who can tune it and shape it up without the baggage of legacy setting details and angry old men.

[sudden halo]

Big numbers and bookkeeping are the two big enemies of smooth gameplay. If you can keep everything on tokens that live on the board, and numbers small and memorable, things generally go really quick.

[twin mountain]

angry old men do tell

[sudden halo]

I guess there's this group of old Heavy Gear fans that play in their basement and are chronically offline that get extraordinarily toxic and upset when things don't go exactly how they want.

And sadly they're also very important revenue wise because dream pod 9 is just rob and his casting machines with a few part time contractors doing rules and stuff, so they can't really tell them to fuck off

[twin mountain]

huh fair enough

and tbh that makes sense, like, why make more heavy gear when heavy gear exists and has its fans and you can just roll up a new mech system whenever you want

and call it... gamma wolves

or whatever

steel legion

[sudden halo]

💯

[twin mountain]

wait isn't steel rift literally the latest gamma wolves game

need a markov model to make me mech game names

MOBILE ARMS

looking at you @modern snow

🫵

[sudden halo]

I love the setting but like I can make something with all the bits I liked and do it my own way.

[twin mountain]

like the ONE thing I think zeo genesis has going for it over every other mech game I love is that oh my god what a great name

I guess obsidian protocol is like. it's fine. it has obsidian. it has at least one non mech word

but every other game is like

"heavy gear"

"mobile arms"

they all blend like poutine in my brain

[modern snow]

Mobile Arms was the working title but we had a few other contenders

[sudden halo]

It's so hard to come up with what to call a mech that isn't a mech classic new mecha anime problem

[modern snow]

I was a fan of Ferrous Frontier but BSS was like nah

[twin mountain]

damn that does kinda fuck

[modern snow]

we also worked with Venantes for a little while when the theme was mor esoteric/grimdark

[sudden halo]

Frame
Exo
Acronym that includes tank
Core

Wildcard is going fantasy/myth but those are also played out
Titan
Golem

[twin mountain]

but yeah I think mobile arms is like. honestly it's surprisingly clean and good I'm surprised you found a spot in core mech word space that wasn't taken

but it's for sure one of those "we need a colon and a subscript for SEO" kinda names

Mobile Arms i sleep

Mobile Arms: Endless Destiny let's goooooo

[umbral prawn]

It's a bit off topic but how's "Night Sky Falling?"

[twin mountain]

omg that fucks

it really does

I thought night sky falling was SUCH a cool name damn

better than manifold wire even

and I'm proud of manifold wire

[umbral prawn]

Manifold Wire is very good

[modern snow]

I'm sitting on Eisentanz as my "other mech game" title when I get around to writing that one

[twin mountain]

I have a little google keep note of cool names, and my favorite that I've never gotten to use is Cry Wolf

I think that's a sickass name

i'll let you guys steal it

make a cool game, call it Cry Wolf

doesn't matter what the game is about

the name will fuck anyway

[modern snow]

Skullforge and I are working on a concept for a game called Interloper

[twin mountain]

ooooooh

have you played the videogame interloper?

i loved interloper

https://store.steampowered.com/app/356420/Interloper/

Steam

Interloper

Interloper is an online multiplayer real-time strategy game with matches that take only 5 minutes. Instead of destroying your opponent, you win by claiming domain. By predicting your opponent's movements, you corner them to claim the entire map.
Interloper distills RTS mechanics to their essence, bringing a focused, stripped down, fast-paced,…

Recommendations

231

Metacritic

77

▶ Play video

[modern snow]

lol I'll let Jordan know the name is taken

[twin mountain]

i mean it's interloper, it's taken a million times

just steal it

[modern snow]

Interloper: SomethingSomething

[twin mountain]

I think my favorite "invader" word is Irruptor, from the GURPS madness dossier. what a cool fucking word

irruption, the unknown opposite of eruption

in the madness dossier, they're invaders from an alternate timeline where humanity lost incredibly hard against some incredibly scary entities

[sand sonnet]

That you're working with Jordan might be the most exciting news since Adepticon.

[modern snow]

We're cookin'

[fallen rune]

I showed up late but I think one of the things which made 40k’s laborious resolution kinda make sense is that a lot of stuff used to be more modularized in terms of equipment

Like you kinda need a to-hit roll because anyone can pull a bolter out of the armory

[twin mountain]

... That's fascinating

I can kinda see that

[fallen rune]

And you kinda need toughness to represent the difference between a very frail and very tough target - but you need armor as an independent variable because anyone can buy power armor out of the armory

[echo marten]

Yeah to go with a very basic example:

Scout Marine (Medium Armour, Superhuman Toughness, Medium Skill)
Space Marine (Heavy armour, superhuman toughness, high skill)
Battle Sister (Heavy Armour, human toughness, high skill)

Could all be in the same army and all using a bolter.

[fallen rune]

But since the universal armory hasn’t existed for 8 editions and faction armories mostly haven’t for 6 it’s kind of just pure historical inertia now

[umbral prawn]

~~Pure Historical Inertia might as well be 40k's subtitle ~~

[tepid steeple]

exemplified most in aos where there's no toughness so every weapon has defined chances for both rolls

[fallen rune]

Yeah idk why they’re separate

[tepid steeple]

so its about like the lore of different types of buff and also to some extent buffs having different effectivenesses for different units

[fallen rune]

I guess it means more levers for buffs to pull on?

[tepid steeple]

and also like again would argue that two sequential d6 isn't actually that awful but yeah

[echo marten]

Yeah. Riposte has a lot of stuff that modifies accuracy and stuff that affects wound rolls separately.

[teal cloud]

40k really has just given up on having modular weapons for better and worse

[fallen rune]

Yeah it’s kind of annoying to me

Like for no given justification Deathwatch bolters hit harder than normal space marine ones

[tepid steeple]

there are reasons for it but there is something to be said for obscuring those reasons in favour of efficient card based referencing

same with like invuln saves etc

there's just not a whole lot of room left to write lore

[teal cloud]

Yeah I think its probably the right move between the increased size of the game and the pain of WYSIWYG is such a pain in the dick in the community

And the solutions to those are 1) "the game should go back to 1 tank and 20 dudes is 2k points" and 2) "stop being dork ass losers"

[autumn sun]

https://www.wyrd-games.net/news/2025/4/30/waldos-weekly-rust-and-salt

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/408609553597464579/1367201949350494289/WW.png?ex=6813b98a&is=6812680a&hm=1e0130bedcab50e080a08a3c88d0b0c1017721247ba49a300d682f456521d641&

Adorable.

[next pilot]

I thought ampersand was a new keyword

Oh near it’s the sentient robot town from the through the breach event a while back

Geez that was what, 2017?

That looks like 7 models instead of the usual 6 for starters, I wonder if they’re increasing in size

[sleek trail]

Funny little guys

[gusty basalt]

i wonder where all the trench crusade people went? i remember we organized a campaign and then it just stopped one day, i hope we can start it up again

[compact leaf]

Likely waiting for rules 1.0 to pop up?

The game is gonna take off big time in June-july

[gusty basalt]

cant wait :D

[gusty basalt]

(though i would love to have like a one off game here or there)

[modern snow]

New Ghibli-inspired PvPvE skirmish game from BSS just got announced

loving the vibe

[sand sonnet]

Are there models to go with it yet?

[modern snow]

yes

having read the alpha doc- it looks like this interesting mix of Mausritter and Frostgrave

there's a definite skew towards narrative campaign and it feels very sandbox-y

uses d4s and d8s

[sand sonnet]

Sounds interesting, all for more narrative campaign stuff.

[sudden sundial]

So having 5 anointed in my trench crusade campaign is a great feeling

what's not a great feeling is that they're too expensive to field all together

Maybe equipping the heaviest weapons on them wasn't the sly ploy that i thought it was

[twin mountain]

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/cardboard-dynamo/grave-trigger/updates/20

congrats to the grave trigger guys

[twin mountain]

https://youtu.be/5ApbNEdVhug

https://tenor.com/view/for-all-mankind-moon-marines-moonrine-moonies-gif-26456837

[tawny sandal]

Oh hey, someone else who thinks LUNAR is cool!

I’ve been chattering about it off and on for a few years now

[modern snow]

@twin mountain Lunar is probably next on the TTS list after MA

it's a toss-up between Lunar, Don't Look Back, and Hametsu

[twin mountain]

fuck yeah, good luck to the lunar team!

[modern snow]

btw the best part about lunar is that this is what people expect out of the game, when instead it's a bunch of punching, shoving, overhead smashing with rocks, and scrabbling for resources

Beanbag guns are a big deal and actual guns are hard to come by and exceptionally deadly.

ISRO gets the closest thing to an artillery piece and it's literally a 50cal on a rover

[twin mountain]

I only just got around to starting to watch this today

looks dope

[modern snow]

full factions are like 5 dudes

it's such a low-barrier game

love it

[hollow slate]

Last week I played Trench Crusade with a second friend, this time it was a Highlander New Antioch list vs my Pride Court warband. I won on points, though there werent too many casualties

He laid out a yoke fiend early on, and my Desecrated Saint took out his Cleric, then last turn my Praetor charged one of his yeomen and cut him in half, and then used Light of Samael to disintegrate another one

[tawny sandal]

Yeah, it’s more accurately that “If a astronaut killed another astronaut with a rock on the moon how fucked up would that be?” post

Except it’s like, a rock hammer or a sample drill

[twin mountain]

@modern snow the way they do math in lunar hurts my soul. like... it can be made so much better by just rearranging the steps ;o;

6 + 4, 6 + 8, difference between 10 and 14

just calculate the success threshold in advaance DX

4 vs 8 means you need a difference of 4 aaskdjafhlsdfhasl

[modern snow]

listen, you're in the BSS discord; I would not be opposed to you asking why the Lunar math is the way it is

[twin mountain]

I don't like throwing shade at random indies waah

[modern snow]

https://tenor.com/view/why-tho-though-gif-7485441

[twin mountain]

I'm just, like, the trivial-UX-optimization girl

"this could've been two fewer steps" is my THING

[modern snow]

in a scary, un-optimized world

[twin mountain]

it IS a scary unoptimized world

imagine adding a bunch of numbers so your final substraction is between two two digit numbers

Just Because

[modern snow]

we still talkin about games or

[twin mountain]

too real

[modern snow]

too real

[twin mountain]

is lunar still accepting rulebook tweaks?

if not I'm not gonna bother bringing it up, it can just be annoying once stuff is all printed

and it barely matters

[modern snow]

It's in 2E right now but I can get you on the horn when they get ready for 3E

[twin mountain]

oh sure, sign me up

[slow tinsel]

Question about Mobile Arms rule if anyone happens to know. The first step of activating, with free movement action

1. Does this NEED to be your first action
2. Can you forgo the free move all together

[twin mountain]

1. yes it needs to be your first action
2. no you can't.
3. actually secretly you can

this is something I've talked to @modern snow about

you can just say "as my first free move action I rotate 0 degrees"

it feels weirdly gotcha-y and gamey to me

[slow tinsel]

What if you use the mobility that has no turn degrees (looking at you all wheels drive)

can you just say "rotate" 0

even if it has no stat for it

[twin mountain]

I. don't know. Coreyyyy

the mandatory movement thing has always read super janky to me, but I don't really playtest the game much so it's not my place to throw out a lot of gamefeel based feedback on no actual gaming

but yeah I think RAW you just. have to move.

[sand sonnet]

Having to move and having to move a full distance brings the delightful mech piloting clunk to the system.

[slow tinsel]

i agree

[twin mountain]

having to move a full distance is nice and clunky and good

but having to move, period, is just a bit weird

in practice you don't, I guess unless you're in a vehicle, and then you literally can't stop driving. but it's not even a momentum thing cause you can backpedal?

[slow tinsel]

if you are in the mode for one mobilty, you literally have 0 movement options (entrenched mode)

SO I would assume you just skip

[twin mountain]

god good point. more feedback for @modern snow I guess

[modern snow]

there are a couple bits of clarification being made in the revised rulebook- one of which is around Mobility cards that lack templates for certain Mobility actions. In the case of AWD, for example, you only have Move and Backpedal available so you'd have to choose one of the two as your mandatory Mobility actions. This can lead to some funny Austin-Powers-esque 80-point-turn shenanigans that are inherent to the limitations of this setup, but that's part of the charm I suppose lol

Each mobility card does have at least one Mobility option available to perform as mandatory and Free. Even Quad's Entrenched mode, which is supposed to be the most stationary mode, has a rotation option so you can adjust facing for free.

In the updated rules, though, we address what happens if you try to perform a mobility action and can't due to a lack of clearance: the action fails and you stay put. I'm thinking of adding that if a mobility action would fail, you may instead perform a 90-degree (or less) rotation.

[twin mountain]

if you're gonna do that, you'll need to assemble some rules structure to prevent people making illegal moves on purpose so they can fail into rotations they may not be able to normally do

just giving you some advance warning

[trail fulcrum]

Lunar sounds a lot like dark comedy

[tawny sandal]

It is a bit!

But it’s also kind of a bit of a nightmare scramble on the moon

[trail fulcrum]

Like space force but less goofy

[tawny sandal]

Like, doing the equivalent of having a shoving match escalate into a guy nailing someone with a rock hammer escalating into a guy throwing a det charge at them next week escalating into one crew calling down to Mission Control to “hey, maybe consider sending us up a goddamn gun on next resupply”

A campaign usually ends up kinda representing a scuffle spiraling out of control over the next few weeks or months

[modern snow]

that's the highest praise you could give it and I know the BSS guys would love that summary

[twin mountain]

I do love any game that has postgame "what're the consequences" rules structures

lancer battlegroup has totally tactically irrelevant rules for figuring out how many people survive after you take a ship out

that's good energy

[slow tinsel]

one last question, besides not being to shoot, are there any other actions being in S of an enemy mech prohibit from doing?

[twin mountain]

That's it

[hollow slate]

I specifically remember from when I ran it as part of my long-term Lancer campaign that ended this year players tensely rolling to see which ships survived

Most of them were just disintegrated by superheavy fire, though

The opposing fleets (most of which were fairly normal, either in-system aligned with a corpro-state or actual corporate forces) were hulled but out of action, but my players cheered that the big bad ship got annihilated

It had basically been the Boogeyman of the campaign, it had nuked a concentration camp/archeological site the players were liberating, and later took out the UIB command ship they were operating from. It had it coming

[twin mountain]

oh nooo

[hollow slate]

The funny part was only one player took Ace, so I just said that was the player team

So they were sweating whenever an enemy squadron targeted them

[twin mountain]

https://www.wargamer.com/burrows-and-badgers/heir-to-warhammer-mordheim

[twin mountain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13-_Kor078M @maiden ermine

[autumn sun]

Oh, Death Ray Designs! I've bought some of their MDF stuff in the past.

[modern snow]

Steel Rift is very good. I haven't played it in a while but we ran a fair amount of it when it first came out. Clunky in spots but it's got a lot of charm

[twin mountain]

I should check it out sometime

I have battletech friends

[modern snow]

it's a good alt ruleset to test-drive for a day, and it's in the same scale!

[native portal]

This sounds very fucking cool

Also random aside, I love trench crusade and it fucking baffles me every time I remember it's a skirmish game

In my head I imagine it at a much larger scale

[teal cloud]

I'm literally counting the days for my TC stuff to come in, I think the creators found a new money printer

[sudden sundial]

It sells scale like warhammer, but at an affordable scale

[sand cloak]

And you can kitbash whatever you want!!!!

Everything is table legal! Yea! Even that clay abomination that blew up in the oven!

If I ever get into TC

New Antioch

Brightly colored warband

Probably be called something like "The Resplendent Wrath of Heaven"

[native portal]

I mean, its lore sells scale, the game absolutely doesn't

I see trench pilgrims and I'm like 'fantastic, amazing, I'd like 120 of them please'

[teal cloud]

The prices are also just straight better than 40k
Roberte Guilliman and a Desecrated Saint share base size and the saint's $40 to Rowboat's $70

[sudden halo]

My Warhammer friends decided we were just going to play Epic: Armageddon and do all our warhammering at a scale where it feels like Warhammer.

Which makes it super cheap.

At least by Warhammer standards. The Legions stuff is kind of pricy but E:A doesn't need nearly as much stuff as Legions. And there's a ton of 3rd party manufacturers and print files around, since it's not an actually supported GW game.

[twin mountain]

oh what's that? 👀

[sand sonnet]

6mm Warhammer on a grand scale.

https://www.net-armageddon.org/

[sudden halo]

It's the last version of the tiny scale Warhammer game that Games Workshop used to make. It's been kept alive and refined by the community, who keeps up with balance and expanding the game to have army lists for basically everything

https://www.net-armageddon.org is the main hub but there are a few other communities as well.

[sand sonnet]

I think you'd like it Winged just from a game design space, it has a lot of unique elements that make it fun.

[sudden halo]

The rules also inspired the xyz war commander series which are pretty solid games for large scale wargames (with tiny minis)

[sand sonnet]

A lot more parallel to the historical space too.

[sudden halo]

I agree. It's not necessarily going to be something you're crazy excited to get into but I think there's some parts that you'll really appreciate from a game design perspective. It does a really good job emphasizing command and control and morale without adding any bookkeeping aside from two types of tokens.

[twin mountain]

do tell

[sudden halo]

There are two main core mechanics that differentiate it from similar games. Initiative checks and "Blast Markers".

It's an alternating activation game. When it's your turn you choose a formation, say what order you are doing, and make an initiative test for them. Usually, in a vacuum you either can't fail or only fail on ones. If you pass you activate as normal. If you fail the formstion gets a blast marker, then can either move or shoot but not both. Once you're done you can pass back to your opponent or you can attempt to "maintain the initiative" making a test for another unit, this time at a -1. Which adds an interesting push your luck element. You can't ever activate more than two units in a row.

Blast Markers are the main morale mechanic. Any time you get shot you add a blast marker to that formation even if it didn't get hit. Also any time a unit takes a casualty, fails an initiative test, or a few other situations it can accrue blast markers. Each blast marker on a formstion makes one of its units suppressed and unable to fire, and any time you have as many blast markers as units, the formation becomes broken and has to flee. There are really actions and ways to get rid of blast markers. It adds some deterministic ways to influence the game, and makes keeping fresh reserves something really impactful

[twin mountain]

Ooooh

That's really cool

[sudden halo]

There's a few other things that are neat little bits, like adding orbital spaceship support as part of your army where you choose a turn in advance and that's when the ship is overhead and can use its weapons and drop off troops.

[twin mountain]

You're right that is neat

[autumn sun]

Epic was also born from Adeptus Titanicus which used to have utterly insane unit cards like this.

[sudden halo]

Original Titanicus cards are so goofy. The new Titanicus is really slick though.

Epic 1st and 2nd edition are very different games from 3rd and Armageddon. I wish titans had a smidge more detail in Armageddon sometimes but I like that the game is designed to go fast.

[autumn sun]

Yeah. I get that a lot of people were turned off with 3rd, and for valid reasons, but after looking through 1st/2nd I cannot imagine it playing very smoothly.

Despite seeing a game of Epic being my first intro to the hobby I've never played a single game of it. Maybe one day.

[trail fulcrum]

I keep wanting to play tau in epic

Hahaha

Nobody here plays

[autumn sun]

I'm in New England and I've been told there's an Epic community here but I've never seen them.

[fallen rune]

I’ve heard mixed things about the balance in Epic as well

But I’ve also not played and it’s always hard to tell the difference between “game isn’t balance for real” and “game isn’t balanced when you read archives of grognards talking about it”

[sudden halo]

Epic 1-2 are also more or less alive in Legions Imperialis. They're not exactly the same but LI heavily borrows from them. I'm not impressed by those rules though.

There isn't an epic community around here but one friend who is very good at organizing things (he runs the infinity and trench crusade scenes at the best store in the area) decided he really wanted to have a huge battle with some titans and he was going to paint it all for like an event game.

Which sort of pulled people who were interested but not aware anyone else was interested out so now there's ~4 of us getting into small scales (and still putting on the big spectacle event game)

[sand sonnet]

LI is fun, but much less creative of a game than EA is.

[tepid steeple]

checks title I played full spectrum dominance on saturday :) 40pt lists

I need to take proper pictures of my force

But yeah it was pretty easy to get into and fun to move around tiny guys. Compared to stuff like epic its more like skirmish equivalent scale / playing a 15mm wargame but shrunk

The dice stuff is really really engaging

[sand sonnet]

Yeah Warhammer thread leaks a lot. Lots of other cool smaller scale games and minis.

What do you like about FSD?

[tepid steeple]

Uh I liked how much depth it felt like it had from relatively simple rules, theyre still contributing a lot

Like the base attack mechanic is like, a dice of x size vs the enemy’s x dice of x size

But if the enemy is rolling two dice it very quickly gets to the point their save is very reliable, so you need to bring ap

But even with ap if your attack dice is smaller than the enemy’s size its also really tough to punch through

We really enjoyed the…rules based line of sight? Its all base to base, and then stuff like the high ground is handled by rules

We had a lot of high ground and having the rule just be the target is either on the edge and in cover or off the edge and cant be seen was really simple but tactically engaging vs just tlos

And then really cool rules for infantry where any terrain like buildings or forests they can occupy by touching it from any direction which is a fun abstraction to have dense terrain and big bases but still have the versatility of infantry

And then similarly they just move through that terrain point to point while bigger units gotta go around

Or fight other infantry across the piece of terrain

[sand sonnet]

Sounds like a game I should look into then.

The abstractions seem to help the game flow from how you describe them.

[tepid steeple]

And then the activation dice stuff is really neat. The game expresses combined arms by engaging your optimising brain and making co-ordinated attacks much more efficient, which means less dice spent activating units and more on getting to slot into the bigger guns

Cause theres a command mechanic where activating a unit by spending on your ~8 dice per round allows you to also activate nearby units without spending a dice

Different units having different numbers of unit you can do that with

[tepid steeple]

Yeah definitely!

We were both playing the same faction, the Tech, which has a gimmick of rather than characters being upgrades for specific units they float around to different units each round, or during the round a limited number of times, and some of the stuff I did with that made my opponents eyes light up and got really into the tactical possibilities there

The dice are also kinda anti-skew somewhat? You can make big forces of a particular profile and it can be really effective but it restricts your dice pool a lot more when you need multiples of the same result. A bad roll can mean that section of your force cant do its thing so you have to alter plans to use your dice efficiently

Didnt massively experience the victory card mechanic cause we did horribly at the mission objective and only got one each, but it does hidden score values to focus just on doing the best you can with the mission. Mission objectives give you cards, which each have different points values and usually some twist, like being able to be played for an immediate game bonus but are worth less points. We ended up drawing the same card, worth 2 points, and then I lost more of those points due to casualties at the end of the game than he did. Which felt very fair as I had lost a lot more units for both luck and tactic reasons

[twin mountain]

Big fan of clear meaningful tactics over realism fr

[twin mountain]

Wish this was easily playable on tts, it looks amazing

[sudden halo]

I thought they had a good demo table up for it? Maybe I'm misremembering, or it's just not a great TTS experience?

Speaking of small scale games, I really want to try Polyversal. It seems like some legwork to get started if you aren't into the sample armies, since a big draw is that it's kind of a build your own units thing a la Full Thrust, but it has really neat command and morale systems and a super cool hex based list building system.

[twin mountain]

they do have a demo table up, but it's just a demo table

[twin mountain]

do tell

[sudden halo]

The unit stats are all on these little hexes, with the company commander in the center. Everything works with the d4-d12 set of polyhedrals. Units have an Effectiveness die based on their training that factors in to most things. As a commander you can adjust your focus, making some units less effective, dropping their die, to make others more effective giving them a larger die. Effectiveness decreases as units get stress or other situations.

Also you issue commands as orders. It a unit gets out of command range you move its hex away from the commanders hex, and you can't issue it new orders, so it continues doing what it was last told to do, so it's not necessarily a bad thing to send a unit off to operate independently but it means you lose a bit of ability to shift their game plan. There are also command range repeaters on units.

They have a web app for making your own hex tiles and calculating points costs and things so making your own forces is pretty easy. They also sell a kit with hex blanks and sticker paper to make decent quality physicals, which seems fun.

[tepid steeple]

Neat!

[sudden halo]

Overall it's a bit fiddly seeming but also has a bunch of cool ideas. I think its the type of game where a 2nd edition would be really solid if they get that far, but it needs more people playing it to get that all worked out.

[twin mountain]

huhhhhh so the hexes do matter

[sudden halo]

Yep. Not entirely clear just how much, as I haven't bought the game or found the rules online, just watched a review and a learn to play. It has some potential but it's kind of in that old school rules selling zone where it's kind of opaque before you buy it.

[twin mountain]

@modern snow researching steel rift is just making me fiend for mobile arms more

😩

[modern snow]

what a problem to have lol

[sand sonnet]

I need to get more mechs to be able to demo it at my local shop.

Got them looking at ordering it in since they already carry BSS.

[modern snow]

you are a saint

bless 🙏

[twin mountain]

"hey kids steel rift is cool cause you just show up with light / medium / heavy mechs, and it's fast and AA and you spec out small squads of like 4 suits with whatever guns makes sense from this big book, and" asfkjahdlfhlhasd

https://tenor.com/view/jealous-bird-tosses-toy-duck-jealous-bird-gif-6650530389512168014

[sleek trail]

this is a weird thing to say in the lancer discord i know but im getting a bit of mech fatigue, i think

esp mech v mech

theres something to be said for mechs only being meaningful in the context of non-mechs

[twin mountain]

[twin mountain]

I do appreciate full spectrum dominance for that tbh

Like I do like combined warfare stuff too

[sand sonnet]

Infinity does a pretty good job with TAGs mixing it up with other kinds of troops too.

[sleek trail]

yeah infinity is my fave model for mechs rn

partially because szalamandra and i love lizardy mechs

but mostly because they are very small, street scale, and they actually have a meaningful tactical role within that context, being units able to cart huge weapons around while maintaining mobility

they exist cause of genre but they also have a reason to be there beyond that, and they add to the world

[sleek trail]

FSD looks so rad

i def want to give it a go

But yeah i think mechs are a bit too special and thus kinda lose some of that spark, i think. if a mech is only fighting mechs, as well, what makes it meaningfully a mech?

(also we just need more mechs with fucked up shapes and shit. more legs, tentacles, lizardy, digitigrade)

[sand sonnet]

I mean too far in that direction and we just wind up at Battlebots.

[tawny sandal]

Battlebots was a cool-ass show

I love how they had to keep making the safety glass taller and taller after people kept making more dangerous robots

[sand sonnet]

It's a fun idea, but a lot of the time in practice the most boring bots win.

[twin mountain]

I mean honestly I just like cool anime battles

Cool anime battles except everyone is a sci fi metal guy is why I like mechs

Replace hot blood with hot reactors, swords with... Honestly keep the swords, have everyone zipping around at crazy speed dodging bullets and stuff

It's just a way for me to have cool anime battles except a single bullet doesn't instantly kill anyone

I've never been interested in battletech style tanks without wheels

https://youtu.be/cdJMtT4rAjw

I don't need mechs to fight non mechs to get this ^

-# Also hot take I really really did not vibe with the whole "mechs stepping on people who can't fight back" power fantasy of titanfall

[hollow slate]

Oh I need other vehicles for context

One of the first things for Lancer I tried was widespread vehicle rules

It's why I never cared for armored core

Obsidian Protocol is set to get more units sometime before the heat death of the universe, but the fact you aren't piloting mechs, it's basically slightly tall robots is interesting

[twin mountain]

They're mechs :p

[hollow slate]

My definition of mech at least includes an internal pilot

One faction is controlled by brains in jars, so that counts, everyone else uploads themselves

[sudden halo]

Heavy Gear was always my favorite for combined arms. Something about that ~4 meter mech size makes them interact with infantry and vehicles in a far more interesting way than being big ol kings of the battlefield

Setting wise that is

[hollow slate]

I looked into it when the new edition dropped, it seemed really interesting

[sudden halo]

I don't mind so much when it's mostly mechs when a setting is mostly about space battles. Ships provide their own bit of context, and there's usually fighters and things.

[sudden halo]

Heavy Gear Blitz is a decent game and has a new edition in playtesting. The new edition of the RPG is probably a better wargame though if you use it that way and a decent RPG in its own right, at least if doing tactical mech battles is your thing (which I assume is at least partially true since we're on the Lancer server).

[hollow slate]

The other group members that were interested bailed back when drama went down, so I mostly moved into other systems

[sudden halo]

I'm a bit biased towards HG though. Heavy Gear 2nd Edition was the first RPG or wargame I bought with my own money in 2000 or so. I was a big fan of it and the Silhouette system but there were some ways it was fundamentally broken, mostly in that attributes massively outweighed skills.

[hollow slate]

I saw the old edition that also had d20 rules in a bookstore once

[sudden halo]

The current iteration of the wargame has enough issues that I haven't made it my main game, but I keep it on my radar. Haven't got the chance to play the RPG yet but I have a character with art in the book which is a nice little vanity thing that makes me happy.

[sudden halo]

That would have been 3rd edition. It was largely the same as 2nd other than one thing with skills that was confusing but did help the balance, and adding the d20 system rules,as was the trend at the time.

Sometimes I think people shoehorning DnD 5e into every setting is bad but everything got a d20 version back then. There's an infinite number of shovelware d20 supplements in the world from like 2000-2010

[tepid steeple]

played unmasking

tried this whole khawarij rigamarole and they're quite tricky but damn that mk12 does so much work

when it works. and you dont end turn 1 with 3 models stunned 😅

was playing against oss! Asura LT, Hawkwood link (scaryyyy), andromeda, posthumans, many bounty hunters

[twin mountain]

I'm gonna continue calling gen:lock a mecha anime

You might as well say mecha aren't mecha if they run on magic

They're genre objects

[compact leaf]

Same atm, though depending on how infantry are implemented into Obsidian Protocol that could change!

[sudden halo]

You know a mech when you see it. Id generally agree that a mech is when the operator is inside the mech and it's piloted via controls rather than "worn" but there's close to as many exceptions to that as there are things that fit it that I would definitely call mechs

[sleek trail]

I like titanfall but its at its best when a non-mech poses a legit threat

But mechs def feel meaningful in it

[sleek trail]

I suppose I'm less enamored with the anime fight model, at least for war games. An anime moment is cool as shit but i love a team coordinating

Armored core i do think manages to sell the mech as mech feel though, at least in 6

Some combo of scale, the enemies you face, the way you engage with weapons

[twin mountain]

I'm definitely a fan of team coordination too, and if I want a moba teamfight in a sci-fi setting then I'm looking for mechs

Lancer fights for example are pretty involved with lots of team play and roles while everyone is a giant metal dude

[echo marten]

Mechs often also have a bit more room for 'mess up' without 'gone', so there's more ability for back and forward/people to mess up their role without getting immediately taken off the board.

Not always but generally in most games

[twin mountain]

Yeah mechs have clear mechanical genre these days which includes

• blowing up piecemeal
• pushing yourself with heat
• pilot drift compatibility / link / etc as an internal quality that sorta matches fantasy setting qi stuff

I don't need to position a mech next to a tinier person for them to feel like a mech

If my unit has parts that blow off and a heat track and they can get boost out of fire, they're a mech

[echo marten]

I play my theme music to improve my dice rolls. 😛

[twin mountain]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xXDiKDCcbds

[twin mountain]

https://youtu.be/l1T-ozoNPn8 music separate to avoid copyright strike

[echo marten]

One of my favourite jokes about mech theme songs came about by accident in the Super Robot Wars games. A guy in that game, Ratsel, turns up as both boss fight and friendly unit. The devs didn't think about the fact that boss theme music overrides all other theme music and since he's a boss earlier in the game, he's got a lower ID (For tiebreaking). Everyone found the bug hilarious.

So for the rest of the series, whenever he turns up, people keep going 'What the hell is that song?' as his theme music diagetically overrides everyone's comms.

[echo marten]

That is very cool music.

[twin mountain]

I dunno if I can link the full fight here cause it's just the whole movie on Dailymotion with a time stamp

But I'll pm you

[twin mountain]

Amazing lmao

That reminds me of my favorite tactics music joke, which is weylon's theme and the turn timer in days of ruin

The first couple of times you run into this hotshot pilot dude Waylon, he's just running away from somebody and pouting at you for help

He's just a little guy!

🥺

So when his turn comes up in the turn sequence he immediately passes

So you just hear the first two seconds

https://youtu.be/lV-ULQEsdcg

And it's this warbly sad trombone kinda thing

And then when you finally have to fight him, he doesn't pass, and you hear the rest of his song

Hot damn what a fucking play

[echo marten]

Hahahah. Suddenly the electric guitars kick in.

[twin mountain]

It's so fucking good

Check the comments, he's a hard fucking fight too

https://youtu.be/ggW4K-btKTM

[echo marten]

I'm sad the Advanced Wars reboot did poorly and we won't get any of the later games rebooted any time soon.

They did some great things with the theme songs in the reboot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQU8UtAZ-GM&ab_channel=MegaTank Like they updated Sensei's theme to swing music to fit the idea that he's a warrior of a previous era.

[trail fulcrum]

I want advanced wars as a rpg

Hahahaa

Rpg wargame thing

[potent wyvern]

Oh this is hot

Ngl i have seen nothing of AWRC

It kinda just came and went

[trail fulcrum]

Like it's kinda lancer but army

I know I'm harkening back to the origin of wargames

Haaha

[hollow slate]

Last night we played our first game of Trench Crusade on campaign, I mostly won (was winning on VP and forced a morale check, they failed and I won) but my opponent is in a better position than me mostly for game 2

Both of us were able to demolish someone with artillery, his artillery witch absolutely annihilated my sniper Janissary on a miss

I rolled at -1 for the wound and got triple sixes

Next turn I dropped a MURAD directly on one of his troopers, though

MURAD is nasty, I realized that I can use it to force morale checks

[hollow crypt]

this feels a bit no true scotsman because like, I don't actually think battletech falls into this

[twin mountain]

It's a cluster property, I'm not saying battletech isn't that - I'm saying that stuff that has all those properties makes it mechlike

Battletech kinda invented the heat and parts thing anyway

It just doesn't have high speed armored core stuff

[hollow crypt]

oh sure alright

[orchid tulip]

I wonder if a dial based movement, infinit shooting range, mech game would work

[sudden halo]

Like xwing style movement?

I think it would be pretty cool, especially if they were highly mobile mechs. Mobile Arms has some of that, with infinite range and distinct movements but it's not pre-plotted.

[sudden sundial]

To quote the Brazen Bull
"Moo! Rad!"

[trail fulcrum]

I mean there's already a dial based rank and flank

It does

Died

Rip fantasy flight

[sleek trail]

Dial based to me means pre-comitting movement

Vs template based being movement having to follow specific patterns

X wing has both

[tepid steeple]

While gas lands is an example of the latter without the former

[trail fulcrum]

Obsidian protocol is dial based actions

[trail fulcrum]

I have no idea how to get the advanced war vibes on a tabletop

Ahahhaa

[compact leaf]

Is it time for PNET to make yet another tabletop game?

Am curious what specifically you're looking for, though

[trail fulcrum]

I'm not sure beyond like definitely grid based combat I want to avoid doing frog

And like trying to condense the vibes of advanced wars is a bit

Hmmm

Is very vibes so I can't really

[compact leaf]

I see I see

[sleek trail]

The big thing i see is that building units would be a pain

[compact leaf]

Mhm

[sleek trail]

Because you have to have them on hand

As minis

The summon problem

[compact leaf]

The way I'd manage that kind of thing is just.. limit the amount that a given unit can be on a table?
To the amount that comes in the box or STL of whatever.

Though that may be a bit too limiting if we're trying to emulate perfectly

This kind of thing may be better as a board game

(that just happens to have minis, potentially)

[trail fulcrum]

Like definitely not 1 to 1

More

Vibes

Is the only word I have sadly

Is warioware hex and chit sufficiently vibes?

Bahahaha

Hex and chit with unified units and like commander specific specialisations

Hmmm

[modern snow]

🫵 RUNEWARS MENTIONED 🫵

[trail fulcrum]

Ayyyy

Decent game zero rizz@modern snow

[twin mountain]

God what a perfect way to describe it

What's the name of that setting

Terrinoth?

[twin mountain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z06Wkio3D6g omg

[sleek trail]

Oh hell yeah drunk driving

I should have vacked

[sand sonnet]

Is this just off brand GorkaMorka?

[sleek trail]

No

Its dexterity based

[twin mountain]

@sand sonnet

[sand sonnet]

Oh no.

Please tell me this has an optional drinking game variant in the back of the book.

[twin mountain]

hey you wanted Not Gorkamorka

you got it

@sand sonnet

[sand sonnet]

To be clear that is “Oh no” [Delighted]

[twin mountain]

excellent

[twin mountain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilv-TAgLtmo

[distant monolith]

so

I might or might not be making a mistake

[echo marten]

Oh boy

[fallen rune]

👀

[distant monolith]

I do like to have a better tagline though

hell on earth is, true, but generic

[echo marten]

If you want one that comes from a more apocalyptic christian bent, could use the title of Babylon from the Book of Revelations.

'Mother of harlots and abominations'

[distant monolith]

hmmm

[echo marten]

It's theorized to be a reference to Jerusalem, the 7 crowns of the dragon symbolizing the 7 hills on which it stands.

And well, that's where this shit is coming from in Trench Crusade

[distant monolith]

oh huh

[echo marten]

It's not certain, there's a few places it's theorized to be.

Rome, the Modern Church, Actually Babylon etc

[echo marten]

Another solid one: 'Upon a White Horse'

The introduction to the first of the four horsemen of the apocalypse

[distant monolith]

famine?

[echo marten]

Which is often identified as Pestilence.

[distant monolith]

ah

[echo marten]

And well gestures to Black Grail

Sorry if neither of those are great.

Oh, another possible pair @distant monolith 'Breaking of the Seventh Seal' or 'The Trumpets of Woe Sound'

[distant monolith]

I guess I

I'm more looking for something slightly more comedic

[echo marten]

That's fair. Sorry.

[distant monolith]

no problem, don't be sorry

you are just suggesting, nothing to be sorry about here

also, i really like the Iron Sultanate and the 7-headed Serpent but like

why that flesh colour

it's look so much worse than raw fucking beef

[tawny sandal]

I’m trying to think of a pun on World War One but can’t

[tawny sandal]

If you mean for the alchemical creatures and the Seven Headed Serpent, I think the idea is that they look gross, ya know? Unless you mean something else

[distant monolith]

they definitely look very gross

[tawny sandal]

In that case, seems like mission accomplished then

Also, I can’t remember what you’ve all done videos on before, have you done a campaign skirmish game before?

[distant monolith]

well there's magnagothica

that's about it

[tawny sandal]

Fair

[distant monolith]

I guess Flying Circus Chariot of Steel technically count

too

[tawny sandal]

I’d recommend just if you’re interested in the lineage of this game in particular, take a glance at Mordheim and OG Necromunda a little

[distant monolith]

ah there we go

Holy War One

there whole setting happened because some guys in first crusade fucked around with shit they should not anyway

so technically it's still the First Crusade because it never ended!

[tawny sandal]

Sorry, maybe should have been clearer, one of the designers on Trench Crusade also worked on Mordheim to explain the link

[distant monolith]

ahhhh

[tawny sandal]

He didn’t work on Necromunda, but it was in the same design lineage

[echo marten]

Also DK: Since I know you love your Fate Jokes. Eire's Berserker is literally supposed to be 'Get a Cu'. I've talked to the devs before and he's expressly you getting a Cú Chulainn for your warband (Which makes technically Eire the only faction that's backed by both Heaven and the Fey)

[distant monolith]

oh damn, now that's really interesting

[echo marten]

#1240361529124192366 message Yeah, he's said that the bersekers keep the ability to use ranged weapons while berserkering because Cu Likes His Thrown Spear and Sling.

[orchid tulip]

Was about to suggest "Go to war with hell on a count of three, not more nor less"

[sudden sundial]

Trench Crusade
Demons, Dragoons, and the Divine

[twin mountain]

World War Nun

chuckles

[distant monolith]

Nice

That's actually really funny

Alright scratch holy war one, it kinda holds an unfortunate connotation anyway

[twin mountain]

Yeah it's unfortunate

[fallen rune]

Oh I dig that

World war nun is better though

[hollow slate]

If you're going for a comedic bent, then World War Nun is best

[sudden sundial]

it's abbot the best you can get imo

OOH

Trench Crusade: Hell, It's Abbot Time

[teal cloud]

These puns are inflicting blood markers on me

[sudden sundial]

Blessing markers*

[hollow slate]

The Great War: Hell Edition

[sudden sundial]

All's Hell That Ends Hell

God Hells Those Who Hells Themselves

[sand cloak]

Goodbye to Heaven and all that

The Guns of Augustine

[teal cloud]

Too Trench Too Crusade

[distant monolith]

these all sounds like if Trench Crusade is a multi sequels movie like Fast & Furious

[sudden sundial]

-# "Family, family, family, family, family, family,
family, family, family, family, family, family, family, Family, family, Family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family

FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY, FAMILY"

"Hi, I'm Dominic Toretto, and this is what Trench Crusade really is about."

[hollow slate]

What my opponent sees when I say my artillery is pretty inaccurate

[sleek trail]

Dardanelles moment

[tawny sandal]

He’s got that Kentucky Windage down, he just feels it in his bones

[sand sonnet]

Big errata for Shatterpoint today: https://www.atomicmassgames.com/transmission/shatterpoint-2025-update/

[sand cloak]

Might become a Tunrip enjoyer during the summer.

A couple guys at my LGS told me they've used a 3D printer at the library to print out mini's.

[potent wyvern]

Tunrip

[sudden sundial]

Turnip? More like I'm-Turning-This-IP-Into-Multimedia-Empire HEYOOO

[modern snow]

I am a simple man. BSS posts new Whispers of the Deep previews, I post.

[sand sonnet]

Okay the blobs are going to be incredible in the hands of a good painter, and questionable for a lot of other folks.

Robot is great though.

[trail fulcrum]

My brain is hankering for underwater mech fights

[next pilot]

Never heard of this one, what is it?

[modern snow]

An upcoming Narrative Adventure Battle Game under development, heavily drawing from Ghibli influences. Mechanically, it's got a lot of Frostgrave-meets-Mausritter vibes.

I'll post the video overview as soon as it's uploaded :3

They're releasing this in the same window as another game of theirs, We Played God

Cooperative Narrative Survival Horror

with Dinosaurs!

[sleek trail]

i do like dinosaurs

[twin mountain]

yoooo exciting

[twin mountain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QauK_PBhrFc @toxic trench @twin turret

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2920905487

[hollow slate]

I'm trying to get one of the friends in my group into Trench Crusade and have no idea what he'd likely play

When we tried to get into Killteam he wanted to play Harlequins, and when my friend was trying to get us to play actual 40K is gravitated to World Eaters because he liked the big Lord of Skulls model

[compact leaf]

Trench Pilgrims or Iron Sultanate, based on that

[sudden sundial]

Backing TCP here

[sleek trail]

SULTANATE STRONG

[autumn sun]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqtVgY672pw Speaking of.

[pearl knot]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/775453022045601833/1374090370811559977/IMG_4352.jpg?ex=682f6be1&is=682e1a61&hm=3e757ed2459798b45f0e4b6083379728dbd184357967d6c111c621e14904336c&format=webp&width=1370&height=960&

[compact leaf]

We can go ever further

[fresh hull]

Hello errybody, I've whipped up a little something

https://contagonist.itch.io/stars-go-cold the hybrid roleplaying wargame, Stars Go Cold, now has a open beta release!

Stars Go Cold is a hybrid roleplaying wargame that combines an efficient narrative layer, a tactical company-level combat engine, and a modular campaign construction system into a military scifi saga in a galaxy plunging into war.

[next pilot]

What faction sylbol is that?

[compact leaf]

PanOceania. CB's main public speaker, Carlos Bostria, is often quoted saying those words (he likes Yu-Jing, the in-lore direct rival to PanOceania)

[echo marten]

I wish there was more Oceania in PanOceania

There's the Bolts and...that's mostly it.

[compact leaf]

Yeaah :(

[echo marten]

...ironically I think there's more Dropbears outside of PanO than inside it.