Indie+Alternative Wargaming

[native portal]

There's a batman wargame

[next pilot]

I have crisis protocol minis myself

which I started painting over a year ago and never finished

[midnight vine]

How does it look mechanically?

[modern snow]

I'm sure if you sent them a message, there'd be a fair chance they'd would be cool with it. 🙂

Titanic RPG is such a funny concept. Ben threw it out there as an April Fools gag at one point, and the concept stuck in the back of his head and he just had to exorcise it at one point. I'm really glad he finally made it, it's something I've been hearing him talk about for a while

[full bolt]

Any Warmachine fans see the news today?

[sudden halo]

I didn't, what's up? Sfg dropping big news?

[full bolt]

Auxiliary stuff for Old Umbry

I'm excited for specifically bear cav

[tawny sandal]

Might give it a shot, here’s hoping

[tepid steeple]

Imfinity

Played Decapitation and had a real good time

Round 1 was both of our main plans (ninjas for my iss opponent, tuareg hacker with nahab support for me) failing on contact with the enemy but managing to pick up one hvt kill
Round 2 was developing pieces and cleaning up but not really gaining ground
And then round 3 was a fast gunfighter flanking deployment and killing everything possible (evo buffed rui shi for opp and Tarik Mansuri for me)

And then in the end we both had both enemy hvts killed, and then it came to army points killed and I lost 137 to 139!!!

Impossible to reduce that to any one roll or decision (for either side) but particularly memorable was a kuang shi monitor that refused to die and my monstrucker fumbling a repair

Tarik going for broke and catapulting across the board to murder stuff was pretty amazing though

[modern snow]

Monstrucker my beloved

[tepid steeple]

Shes very good at everything she does except fixing things

[tawny sandal]

After a delay in when they were open, gonna be back on my bullshit and printing more vehicles at the local library. Looking to print up a few Chinese ones for the PLANMC, probably a ZBD-05 and ZTD-08

Basically trying to make a companion force for my Bradley platoon to fight against to do demo games

And I think just for fun I might do a mix of the wheeled and tracked IFVs they have

[modern snow]

she's so good at putting down that AP Rifle Turret

[teal cloud]

Man, I don't think im built for kickstarters. Trench crusade's kicked my mini delivery date to late October now and 🙁
Even knowing this is a fast delivery schedule, seeing like, 4 delays sucks. Thought id be painting my goobers in june.

[sudden sundial]

Hh

-uh, my friend got his stuff like early June

[teal cloud]

I got the biggest package with some of my friends and that puts us dead last in queue

[twin mountain]

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/black-site-studios/mobile-arms PREVIEW UP

[sand sonnet]

Are those the designs that were at Adepticon? Or new-new ones?

[sudden halo]

thyre the adepticon ones

[compact leaf]

Big bobot..

[modern snow]

These designs were both previewed at Adepticon, but will have new poses and additional design tweaks!

[sand sonnet]

Thought they were familar but different. Hype to see them!

[tawny sandal]

I talk more about it in Miniature Painting, but here’s some Chinese IFVs from Down Range I printed up

[willow wyvern]

Was told to also post this here

random question

how important do y'all consider campaign/long term rules for a wargame?
Does that change for skirmish wargames?

[tawny sandal]

I talked about it some in tabletop but I think it’s generally a nice addition, but also not an absolute requirement

Often because your average game is often going to be a one and done, because that’s what most people have time for

However, it’s very nice to have

[modern snow]

I like them because they offer some longevity, a bit of investment into picking a game up more than once. They also help make games against the same repeated opponents more interesting.

Narrative rules also have the added bonus of implicitly suggesting that the game isn't meant to be taken as seriously in a competitive tone. I find that communities for games without campaign rules tend to gravitate towards a more competitive WAAC mindset. That's a bit anecdotal for me though, YMMV

[willow wyvern]

nodding

[twin mountain]

that's insightful, I like that

[orchid tulip]

WAAC being "Win at any cost"?

[sudden halo]

I like them a lot too, as well as narrative scenarios, in particular asymmetric ones.

One of the things I picked up from my dad's interest in historical games. Scenarios where the forces are relatively fixed and theres no expectation of fairness (or at least that the situation is equally winnable by both players), where doing your best with what you've got is important.

Makes for cool stories and always feels like a fun puzzle to solve.

[sand sonnet]

Balancing them can be tricky however. You don’t want to end up in a snowball situation or a really lopsided battle because of campaign rules.

They are some of the most flavorful things in minis games though so that’s generally good.

[tawny sandal]

Oh yeah, that’s why doing historical battles can be really fun, even ones where the outcome was a total route on one side. Since it becomes less “can I win” and more “can I do any better than the historical commander”

And on the other side it’s often “oh man it’ll be kinda embarrassing if I fumble this considering what happened historically”

Historical wargames can be pretty fun when the scenario is “no this isn’t fair, war isn’t fair, do your best”

Obviously a utterly lopsided thing isn’t fun, but sometimes it can be really interesting to go up against a much bigger/more experienced firce

Or one that has an advantage like an ability to undertake a hidden ambush

A lot of historical wargames aren’t really meant for tournament or structured competitive play, so they’ll often have more stuff to encourage making minor modifications to suit different scenarios or suggestion on how to work with your fellow player to make a ruling on how to do something a little unorthodox

[tepid steeple]

I think a lot of campaign games are not game designed yeah

And also a lot of the like

Cool new wargames with game design

Theyre very focused on like the matched experience and kinda dont do campaign play at all. So theres less development in the space

[left moss]

I do love the battletech campaign books, a really good base system then a great campaign style adds so much

[sand sonnet]

Shatterpoint is kinda trying both but is much more of a matched play experience even in its campaign style events.

[tepid steeple]

I never played it but I really liked the look of kt21's campaign play and Im a little sad its not around in kt24

[twin mountain]

For what it's worth, I'm a win at any cost player but I just want to be given clear goals to optimize towards. Like, I would love to see more wargames that generate an end state report that's not just who won but also what were the human costs involved etc etc

I like role playing games, I own a big rpg server, but imo those games need a ton more setup to flesh out emotional stakes than just throwing together two armies of toy soldiers and asking people to kinda wing what they do so it creates a good story

like, this is adjacent to stuff like casual table balance in magic the gathering EDH players and the like

I don't think mechanics need to be at odds with narrative - mechanics can fully immerse you in the headspace of the narrative you're playing. I'm in a solium infernum game right now and I'm always blown away by how much the game makes you feel like a miserable little prick

and outside of some very specific wargames like mythic mischief, every headspace I'm supposed to embody is WAAC?

like if I'm playing in a wargame I'm generally playing in a war

[tawny sandal]

Yeah, historical wargames are generally much more fine with have imbalances and having some suggestions on ways that the players themselves can modify things to suit their play intentions

While they can still have tight rules, it’s also common to have stuff suggesting ways to modify rules to suit what you want to get out of it and generally a bit more “use common sense and agreements between players on unexpected circumstances”

[twin mountain]

yeah, not a huge fan of that myself

I don't need balance I just want a clear system

like roll both armies completely randomly, I don't mind

a lot of random scenario design is like that

[tawny sandal]

I mean that more in the sense that many of these are meant to be able to play a wide range of battles, but you’re not gonna be able to account for every single thing that has been done in historical conflict, so they might not have exact rules for how to establish a pontoon bridge while under enemy fire but have systems that can be used as a basis

Especially in stuff meant to cover wide swaths of history and be open to scenario designers

While having specific rules for everything you are able to do in the game is nice, and definitely needed in a competitive game to kinda limit the play space, in more historical or scenario focused stuff that can result in major limitations

[twin mountain]

I'm not sure I agree. Or like, sure you can set up historical wargames as general roll-your-own-scenario platforms

but one of the best historical wargame style games I've played is Undaunted and that's a very precise board game

and it puts you in the headspace too cause every lost soldier is their own card with their own name destroyed from your deck

[tawny sandal]

But a board game isn’t necessarily what a lot of these type of wargamers are looking for

Where the more fluid nature is a benefit

I guess this is just a situation of wanting different things out of them

[twin mountain]

it has benefits but it also comes with a cost

if you walk into a game with the headspace that anything can happen and you're just gonna do what makes sense directly in front of you at every decision point, sure, that creates a particular vibe that works for what it's trying to do

in fact early wargames (and to this day military-run wargames) had a GM and the GM would just make shit up every turn based on what you said you'd do

but like, there's a reason why people don't really play that style anymore right?

[tawny sandal]

I’m not saying to have no standard rules at all, I’m more saying that sometimes it can help to have the ability to tweak things

[twin mountain]

if you walk into a fight with an expectation of what all the systems are going to do with all the components you can and can't see, then every decision and component has stakes and tension associated with it

[twin mountain]

the games I'm talking about generally have their cake and eat it too by letting people design whatever scenario they want with scenario rules in advance, but then you enter the scenario and you lock in

and then it's mechanical

I don't really want to play a wargame where like, there's a bog in the center of the map. what does it do? well when you walk into it, we figure it out

ehhhhhh

[tawny sandal]

Usually stuff generally has that kind of basic movement, shooting, etc stuff figured out, I worry I’m not explaining this well enough or you may not have played as many of these types of historical wargames

And I don’t mean that in a mean way I just don’t know how much of these you have or haven’t played

So I don’t know how best to discuss this

I just kinda worry we’re talking about different stuff if that makes sense, since what you’ve been saying hasn’t been my experience with this kind of stuff

I just don’t wanna be talking past each other by accident

Most stuff isn’t OG Kriegspiel is what I’m getting at I guess

I worry I made it sound like I’m talking about games that have no set rules at all, I more mean that they will have stuff on the edges that is left as suggestions or for players to figure out that likely won’t come up often

[sand sonnet]

Have you tried Shatterpoint Winged? I don't expect that the theme itself would interest you, but I think the game mechanics would be of interest.

[tawny sandal]

Rather than having an exact rigid play space of only allowing you to do these specific things

I feel like I explained what I was meaning poorly

[orchid leaf]

would a more codified version of what your talking about Hellbrute be something like Btech's Tactical operations book which is mostly optional rules that are optional becosue they slow the game down even if they add a lot of texture. like the tournament rules haivng woods give you a penalty to your attck roles VS the optiona rules that make it soe woods provide some DR on a per damage pack basis, but also requires you tracking how much damage the woods takes, on a per hex basis?

[tawny sandal]

Yeah, I’m talking about stuff that definitely has a bunch of core rules, but leaving some stuff like “can you build a pontoon bridge and how” or “how do you represent something like needing water in this historical battle where it was very relevant” up to players to decide on their own, but common stuff like “how does difficult terrain effect movement” is in the rules

Basically scenario stuff or occasional oddities that come up

GMs are definitely still used in some wargames or in bigger, multiplayer ones with a lot of moving parts or hidden stuff to keep track of, but most historicals and even ones that have some degree of “figure some of this out with your opponent” don’t have them by default

Usually the idea is just that you’re both there to experience the scenario and have a good time/learn a little and will be a reasonable person about it, especially since there isn’t a whole thing of tournament results hanging over you

I definitely understand the people who want a very mechanical and clearly laid out system of what you are specifically allowed to do and how because it means you 100% know what’s going on, but for me when you’re trying to replicate various interesting historical battles or concepts it can be nice to have just a little bit of flex in the edges (but still with a firm basis of core rules at the center)

I apologize if I rambled on this too much and if I didn’t explain what I was trying to say well

[sudden halo]

I'm with you on this. I definitely feel like once we're in game, unless I'm teaching a new player, I should be making my best decisions and trying to win. I just like when that's in a context that's a bit more interesting than a fair, symmetrical tournament setting.

For a video game context, like playing the bandit queen in Total War 3 Kingdoms or playing Belgium in Hearts of Iron and trying to not get overrun by the Nazi's by the end of 1940. Its super unfair but i'm still there to try to win.

I do wish there were more GM'd wargames still. I'd really like to write a game that captures Legend of the Galactic Heroes' energy, with a rules light narrative RPG for the political drama and court intrige, then a rank and flank spaceship game when the admirals all get called up for war.

where you'd have the rigid systems for combat but the flexibility to maybe try things the rules don't represent. but that'd still pretty explicitly be an RPG

[echo marten]

I think part of my love of more campaign-focused wargames is also that it often adjusts the incentives to the battle a bit. For example, in battletech if it's just 'One shot', there's no issue with having an armless, weaponless mech run up to kick people because 'fuck it, get value'.

But if you make it campaign focused, it's a lot more of a weigh up of 'Is continuing to push this mech in for the good of the long game, not just the short game? Being able to take a few hits that might have gone to allies? Valuable! More valueble than pulling back and making it repairable for the next game? Maybe not.

It makes 'I'm losing' also have more decisions than just 'Eh, I can't win from this position. Good game'. As it's 'okay, what am I willing to spend to get this victory' or 'Is it better to try to cut him down as I lose or pull back and see minimal losses myself long-term?'

I have more than once in campaign wargames gone 'I am losing this individual game but that model is his cornerstone. If I can curbstomp that model into the dirt and give it a long term injury or kill the pilot or such, I'll call it good as I've got a much better chance for future games'

Is that remotely makes sense?

[tawny sandal]

Campaign play definitely incentives really thinking about when it might be a good idea to call it and retreat or if you really want to commit those elite troops to see if you can pull out a win

Or just the danger of using those elite troops in the first place if they’re hard to replace, which then gets you potentially accidentally replicating those historical situations where the commander was worried about losing their elite formation, dithered on committing them, and then ended up losing even more by only committing them well after the tipping point had passed or just not at all

Which is potentially a lot more interesting than the mindset of one-off battles (if you aren’t really setting out to think like there might be a next battle even though there won’t be) where you just smash all your guys into the enemy with the wild abandon of there being literally no tomorrow

(Not that one-off battles are bad, it’s just a bit of an interesting mindset shift)

[echo marten]

I have some very fond memories of a Clan vs Inner Sphere campaign I was part of where I went in, played good and honorable...and then when the other player committed his super elite Star Commander to a duel, I had my entire lance blast him and run away. XD

I didn't get the benefits of clan honor for the rest of the campaign but I also murdered his 1/2 super expensive pilot 😛

[tawny sandal]

What does clan honor do mechanically?

[echo marten]

They have to announce who they're fighting and they can't gang up.

It forces them to make 1v1 fights.

[tawny sandal]

Basically challenges stuff?

[echo marten]

Yep

[tawny sandal]

So the other guy can’t gang up either, even if he isn’t a clan guy?

Clanner?

[arctic hollow]

i've been thinking about doing a short campaign game with my firelock playgroup

[tawny sandal]

I don’t really know Battletech

[echo marten]

Yep! If you do that, you're being dishonorable and the rules don't apply any more.

This benefits clanners a good bit as clan pilots are A) Generally more skilled B) Generally piloting much more high tech mechs.

So 1v1 duels are something they're very good at.

[tawny sandal]

Oh so you wouldn’t lose honor if you did it to someone who’s known to be dishonorable?

[echo marten]

Yeah, there's no honor issues if you're just putting down mad dogs.

[tawny sandal]

That’s neat

[echo marten]

It's why you generally get one good shot at breaking it before they go 'Oh, I'm not doing this any more'

There's also a few oddities there that can fuck with clanners too. Clanners are being dishonorable if they run entirely outside of LOS.

So they can't just hit and run constantly.

[ocean holly]

Also, they have less funny missile warhead loads

[echo marten]

The big thing with clan designs is: Clan mechs are really good at duels but not really war machines.

An Inner Sphere mech might have 30 or 40 shots with a gun because he might be being expected to hold a position for hours.

A clanner design might have single digit numbers of shots

[tawny sandal]

I would just wanna say real quick it’s definitely possible to play like this if you put your mind to it and try to get into the mindset, but that campaign games force you to be “honest” about it

[echo marten]

Because he's here to beat one mech then go 'Glorious Dueling Victory!'

[tawny sandal]

That’s very interesting

[echo marten]

Which is actually part of the reason to go along with clan dueling. Your first guy might get taken out but the second guy he challenges is dealing with an enemy mech that's likely down a chunk of armour and half the guns are clicking empty.

[tawny sandal]

Though I think I recall hearing that Battletech tends to have a bit more of a focus on the clans rather than inner sphere? Since inner sphere definitely sounds more interesting to me as an outsider

[ocean holly]

Also, clanners bid to take planets

Lowest force wins

[tawny sandal]

As in, amongst themselves?

[echo marten]

Yeah. In-universe you are literally fighting Lowest Bidder.

[tawny sandal]

Lmao

[echo marten]

So like one guy will go 'I can take this with one company of mechs'

And another guy will go 'Wow, you suck. I could take it with 3 stars of mechs'

[tawny sandal]

I could actually make several historical allusions about this, including with several real, recent military plans

[echo marten]

And a guy, currently drunk of his tits, will go 'I can do it solo!'

[tawny sandal]

As ridiculous as that may sound there are historical parallels

[echo marten]

And then regret it the next morning as he's now in charge of taking the planet with the forces he said he could do it with.

This has led to a few funny events in universe where the clanners turn up and go 'We challenge you, what forces do you bring?' and the planet goes '...we don't have an army'

[ocean holly]

And to fail is beeeeeeg honour loss

[echo marten]

And the clanners have to work out how to spin that as an honorable victory.

[tawny sandal]

“We’ve got Ted, he’s got a hunting rifle”

[echo marten]

As if they go 'we have no mechs, we have a squad of colonial militia infantry?' and you go 'Well...I bid...one mech? A super light one?' you're doing your best to keep it honorable.

But mechs have gotten taken out by rocket launchers before.

[ocean holly]

I love that vehicles are pund for pound just....

[echo marten]

Part of this is also that the clan value of things is not the same as 'how valuable it actually is'

[ocean holly]

Better

[echo marten]

Yeah, this.

Clanners see being a mech pilot as super honorable

And thus mechs rank highest in 'what you bid'

But like...a heavy mech vs 2 heavy tanks? (What clans think is even). Umm...that's something the mech could lose pretty solidly.

I've seen a Demolisher before.

[ocean holly]

RL 740 tank, my beloved

[tawny sandal]

I’m curious, is it technically possible to run a BT army with no mechs?

[echo marten]

Very easy

Though if you bring out the Aerospace rules the other player might go 'urg, please no' as they're a bit complicated.

[tawny sandal]

I feel like I would find it very amusing to just run the equivalent of Space Bradley’s and Abrams

BT has infantry, right?

[echo marten]

Yep and they're very scary if equipped right!

BT infantry are, pound for pound, the scariest thing in the game.

[tawny sandal]

Do they have IFVs?

[echo marten]

But they're also...slow as fuck.

And short range

[echo marten]

Mechanized is an infantry type for 'light IFV' level. There is also full APCs for Really Big Transports.

[tawny sandal]

Mostly due to doing a lot of research for putting together some basic mechanized platoons for Down Range demos, I’ve been on an IFV kick lately

[ocean holly]

Jumpers are... managable

[echo marten]

Mechanized infantry are pretty solid. They're faster than most infantry and SRM Mechanized Infantry can really frustrate a mech.

[tawny sandal]

SRM?

[echo marten]

Short Range Missile

Guys with Space ATGMs

The big issue mechs have with infantry is that...most weapons designed to fight mechs are not designed to fight infantry.

[tawny sandal]

Doesn’t BT have absurdly short range stuff? Like, even in-universe, not counting tabletop range compression which happens in basically every non-army group sized wargame lol

[ocean holly]

With a maximul range of.....

270m

[tawny sandal]

Sometimes, you just need to compress stuff a bit to deal with the fact you just have a dining room table

[echo marten]

The ultimate, most badass 100 tonne clan mech with 4 ERPPCs that can shred other mechs and makes players annoyed about how good it is would take...several turns...to kill a single infantry squad.

As infantry measure HP in 'dudes in squad'

And it doesn't care how dead you made that dude

[tawny sandal]

You can really explode PFC Dan with a TOW missile, but it doesn’t make him more dead

[echo marten]

Yep. It's why Flamers and Machine Guns, two of the less used weapons for Fighting Other Mechs have a serious role in expanded campaigns.

As a machine gun? Yeah, that will kill a lot of dudes.

[tawny sandal]

Man, it feels like I could very easily become an absolutely infuriating BT player just due to being interested in infantry and armored vehicles lol

Is that like, bad form?

You’re playing Battletech while I’m over here having got lost playing Fistful of TOWs lol

But seriously is that a dick move to do, be more focused on infantry and vehicles other than mechs in BT?

It just feels like it’d be kinda interesting to play a bit more of the less-focused on guys, you know?

[echo marten]

It's only really bad form if you don't let the other players know ahead of time.

People will generally make it clear what's accepable for given games.

As battletech has enough stuff that things are generally more a whitelist than a blacklist.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/839069555015155715/1403982465852244029/20250810_160336.jpg?ex=68a17110&is=68a01f90&hm=4ebb498ffaeb567460fede595035fb282e29dea0b7c4d69f0fbc17568feca85c&

Have a picture from stuff I'm part of.

[tawny sandal]

Aww, do all the infantry bases have lil fortifications?

[tawny sandal]

Also could you elaborate some on this? I’m just kinda curious

[echo marten]

These ones do, yeah. Helps them stand out on the board.

[echo marten]

Okay so non-hover aerospace need to deal with acceleration and turning and G-Forces.

If you take too tight a turn, your pilot might black out.

And your units don't stay still, they're always moving

The primary killer of aerospace in battletech isn't 'blew it up', it's 'rattled it around enough that the pilot crashed'. XD

The slang term is 'lawn darting'

[tawny sandal]

Lmao that does sound like it’d be a bit of a pain to deal with

[twin mountain]

Yeah I'm definitely a fan of multi axis outcomes to fights

I don't think you need a campaign for it necessarily, and also campaign stuff kicks the can down the road slightly to a win at all cost campaign finale of some kind

But until then yeah it's very interesting

Like I'd genuinely be interested in seeing what a wargame designed like poker looks like

You don't just win or lose you can fold early and control how much you give up etc. Of mmr or whatever

[twin mountain]

Oh? What's that

[twin mountain]

Firelock as in the WW2 game with werewolves and stuff?

If so heads up we all got into firelock and I invited the designer into pilot net then I had to ban him for a slur

[echo marten]

'Outcome: Battle of the Somme. Nobody won and you both lost a generation of troops trying'

[twin mountain]

Yeah exactly

Like, there are ways to fold it into a binary win system - board games have had it figured out for a while. You set up some utility function and then roll for it for example

[echo marten]

It would take some tinkering but I think in a more convention one-off game for tournaments you could likely do it with a scoring system...yeah

[twin mountain]

Like every time people die you put enemy victory tokens into a bag

When you accomplish objective you put your own victory tokens into the bag

[echo marten]

Get points based on 'Did you do the objectives' and also 'How much of your army didn't get turned into mulch'.

Yeah

[twin mountain]

When the game ends you shake the bag and pull one token

That person wins

Is it fair? No. Does it force you to absolutely maximize every single point for point and keep people alive on an actuarial science level? Yes

[echo marten]

...it would be actually really interesting with planes and other 'we spent more training the pilot than we did on the plane itself' to have a clear distinction between 'vehicle knocked out' and 'crew killed/captured' for value.

[ocean holly]

This is kinda like how Undaunted Stalingrad does its campaign

[twin mountain]

Yeah it is

[left onyx]

You already see wargames do various degrees of asymmetry in mission objectives

[twin mountain]

Undaunted fucks

[ocean holly]

I would kill for a videogame roguelite Stalingrad-like

[left onyx]

It’s just that the non-historical games all assign VP per objective and look at whoever has the most VP

[echo marten]

I am now imaginine how many roguelites do nodes and they mark the 'elite' notes with an officer cap. XD

[twin mountain]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2916010/Rogue_Conflict/

Steam

Rogue Conflict

In a world where feudalism has once again become the dominant system of government, monarchs wage endless wars and compete for control of the land. As your kingdom comes under attack, you must take command of a newly formed army group to drive the invaders from your realm and bring glory to yourself and your sovereign.…

Price

$14.99

▶ Play video

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2916010/view/509588921973211340?l=english

[ocean holly]

That's not specifically Undaunted

[twin mountain]

Oh you mean the card system? Yeah the closest I've seen to that is the royal writ

[ocean holly]

Yeah

[twin mountain]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3333700/The_Royal_Writ/

Steam

The Royal Writ

In The Royal Writ, you don't just play cards - you command them on the battlefield. Place your loyal subjects strategically as they advance toward the enemy, dealing damage. But beware: any card that reaches the enemy base before victory is permanently destroyed and removed from your deck for the rest of your run.

Sacrifice isn't just a risk…

Price

$11.99

Recommendations

216

▶ Play video

This game fucks ^

Your deck is your army. When a unit dies the card is permanently destroyed from your deck

Hold onto your people as best you can

[ocean holly]

I like Stalingrad's "Lose 1 per 4 casualties, round up"

So, your dudes you send into fire could be fine, right?

[twin mountain]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/681730/Nowhere_Prophet/

Steam

Nowhere Prophet

Build a loyal band of followers and survive the journey across a broken world. Barely.

Take on the role of a powerful leader and mystic. Empowered with the gifts of technopathy, the ability to sense and affect electrical currents.…

Price

$24.99

Recommendations

689

Metacritic

73

▶ Play video

Nowhere prophet is very good and plays with the same space

The first time a unit is killed it's wounded

If you field a wounded unit into a future fight and it's killed again it's gone forever

And you can control who goes into your deck at the start of every fight and healing is rare

Lots of reserve management

[ocean holly]

Oooh, I likey

Have you played UD?

Stalingrad, that is

[twin mountain]

Also I think your wounded units are literally cheaper to field so there's some human wave strats

Not stalingrad

Sadly WW2 bores me

I really want to play 2200

[ocean holly]

Ahhhhhh

I will say, even if WWII bores you

[arctic hollow]

ah shit

[ocean holly]

The simple addition of storybooks, suddenly made me care

The names carry across

[twin mountain]

Stalingrad is excellent yeah

But I won't play it haha

[echo marten]

I'm in a weird place where I find WWII interesting but...not any of the bits that ever turn up in video games. XD

[ocean holly]

Ain't that a mood

[echo marten]

Nobody is making a Kokoda Trail video game, for example.

[ocean holly]

They should be

....actually

I would love CNA as a videogame

[echo marten]

The Kokoda Trail would be a very good place for a 'keep your shit alive over a campaign' game.

As yeah, there is conflict but so much of it is fighting the wilderness and your limited supply lines, not just the enemy.

[arctic hollow]

not the same place jus bc they start with a k but I did Kalkhin Gol in Armored Commander and it was refreshing to see a few places that weren't just kursk/el alamein/stalingrad/normandy

[echo marten]

Considering how much people go full Wehraboo about Rommel etc, it's kinda funny that Tobruk so rarely gets a showing. Likely because it's where the myth of 'We'll just break through their lines with the superiority of panzers and meth' died in the sand.

[twin mountain]

Hmm. https://store.steampowered.com/app/863500/All_Quiet_in_the_Trenches/ ?

Steam

All Quiet in the Trenches

1915, World War I, Western Front. As a German Unteroffizier, you are responsible for a group of soldiers. Whether they will survive the war is in your hands. Welcome to the trenches, Herr Unteroffizier!

The time in the camp is marked by heavy labor with an insecure supply situation. Is there enough time for the men to rest? Can they process…

Price

$24.99

Recommendations

733

▶ Play video

[echo marten]

Oooh, wwI

That's much more interesting than WWII

Like I like punching nazis but if you want to focus on 'survival in pointless conflict', you really need that WWI 'the enemy are not even really bad guys' aspect to suck a lot of the prestige out of the conflict.

[twin mountain]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/863500/view/542231772987917400?l=english

[echo marten]

Very funny historical fact: Australia has a general in WWI who A) Was renowned for being an absolute strategic genius B) Has become utterly forgotten because the thing he invented has just become 'no shit sherlock'.

... the true role of infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements—(I am thinking of Pozières and Stormy Trench and Bullecourt, and other bloody fields)—but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward; to march, resolutely, regardless of the din and tumult of battle, to the appointed goal; and there to hold and defend the territory gained; and to gather in the form of prisoners, guns and stores, the fruits of victory.

John Monash: "Trench warfare is fucking stupid. You're all doing this thing wrong. Get the planes and the tanks and the infantry working together."

[twin mountain]

It'll never catch on

https://tenor.com/view/general-melchett-baah-baah-general-melchett-melchett-baah-gif-26727905

[echo marten]

He's amusing as there's all these records of other entante generals going 'His units don't march as well as ours and his men are not as well trained but somehow this fucker's troops always has a warm meal and we are so jealous of his wizard magic'

[echo marten]

Your decisions between the needs of the soldiers and the demands of the superiors result in a unique story each time. But your choices don't change the war. They change the life of your soldiers.

I am very intrigued.

[tepid steeple]

Meanwhile in france they were all fawning over a pamphlet that was like “if everyone marches in a straight line and then aims their guns all at the same time the enemy will simply surrender on the spot”

[echo marten]

Monash, unsurprisingly, went home after the war and became a Civil Engineer. Because his true passion was supply lines/intergrating various systems together, not gun stuff.

He's the basis of one of the Relics I put in for Australia in Fulda Rift. Where a book of his notes makes your troops not shoot any better or take hits better but they rally well because they have the magic power of 'They all got good sleep last night, they had a hot meal and they know the local hospital has plenty of medical supplies'. Weirdos who pay attention to things other than 'how good gun shoot' XD

[ocean holly]

Monash was a man ahead of his time

[echo marten]

Sir Monash's Notes 20 pts
Relic, Unique

This memoirs of a WWI general famously bore those interested in combat to tears. There is no mention of guns beyond talk of crates of bullets and explosives only turn up in the context of difficulties in transportation. Instead, this book relays how to make sure supply lines stay functional in everywhere from Europe to the Astral Plane. It's also pretty good for driving back marines, less because it's holy and more because it's full of very large words.

The description of the relic I put in for Fulda Rift Australia. XD

[ocean holly]

Fulda Rift?

[twin mountain]

Excellent

[echo marten]

Cold War Gone Weird wargame. It's being developed by Erika of Flying Circus fame. I'm working on Australia and the Anti-War Movement for it, since she opened it up to 'sure, make up your own armies for it too'. XD

[ocean holly]

Ayo

Might need to check that out

Flircus is on my "to get someday" list

[echo marten]

It's still very much in development but it's got very fun vibes as it's all about 'War is kinda stupid', using the superscience and supernatural aspects to put the lens focused on that.

Infernal Auxiliaries (USA)

The CIA went through a large number of euphemisms for their newfound allies after the successful coup of Satan and the installation of Henry Kissinger as the new lord of Hell. They tried extra-dimensional advisors, subreality freedom fighters, and infernal auxiliaries before finally just admitting that their new shock troopers are, in fact, literal baby-eating demons from the heart of Hell itself. They are considered a positive step in the agency’s moral standing.

[ocean holly]

Pfffffff

Laying the satire in thick, I see

[echo marten]

Yep, like how the USSR and USA normal-ass army officer are mirrors of each other.

A regular officer in the US military, confused and terrified by the strange happenings and political intrigue around him. They just want to serve their time, get out, and get a cushy job in the military-industrial complex; they didn’t sign up for all these demons and aliens.

A regular officer in the Red Army, confused and terrified by the strange happenings and political intrigue around him. They just want to serve their time, get out, and get a cushy job in the Party infrastructure; they didn’t sign up for all these psychics and supersoldiers.

[ocean holly]

....I like that

Is there mecha at all?

[left moss]

No in universe laser's and ppcs are horizon range weapons

[echo marten]

Yes but very limited. The USSR has one and so does Australia. It's mostly more conventional things.

[ocean holly]

Mhm, mhm

Can I give Aussie input?

[echo marten]

Sure. I'm Aussie myself but I do always like thoughts. XD

[left moss]

The short range aspect is just tabletop contrivances rather than in universe limits

[ocean holly]

DMs, or subthread, or here?

[echo marten]

DMs works. I wouldn't want to eat up the entire thread with my stuff.

Borne upon a spectral horse, the ANZAC Spirit calls again for the country to bleed in the name of Conquest. In its presence, soldiers get a dreamy smile and talk about heroism, duty and the immortality of legend. The ANZAC spirit never speaks of mud and blood and tears; of watching comrades and friends die screaming for a medic that will be too late.

That said: I'm really pleased with the fluff I gave the Aussie Special Character HQ. The ANZAC Spirit

It's likely the bitterest I get in the writing.

[ocean holly]

Sent!

And man

That is...... nearly perfect

[twin mountain]

Feel free to eat up the thread

[echo marten]

A big thing I'm trying to avoid with the Aussie stuff is glorifying stuff too much. Fulda rift is very much not a 'yeah, war is so cool' sorta game.

Australia's foremost special forces, the Special Air Services test carefully for moral fibre, intelligence and decency. If a candidate shows any of the three, they are immediately rejected. Specialists in wetwork (murder), wetwork (swimming) and wetwork (Getting pissed), the SASR are feared by anyone with common sense and most without. In contrast with most infantry wanting to do their job and get out, the SASR relish this work and keep ‘kill boards’ as part of a competition of which of them can destroy the most human lives.

Luckily there is no end of 'oh, that's just awful' in history to defuse any 'cool guys doing cool things'. Like the SASR, Australia's spec ops.

That kill boards thing is actual history. They did that during vietnam

They kept fucking scoreboards like it's a COD match

SASR Captain

To rise in the ranks of the SASR requires a level of rat-bastard cunning that eludes many violent thugs, the ability to not only commit the most heinous of offenses without blinking but to have the knowledge to know how to conceal it from journalists. There is not a single SASR officer who doesn’t know where he’s going when he dies, it’s just a matter of how many screaming souls he can send to herald his arrival.

In the relics they also get one of the weapons of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Conquest. Because Aussie military history is a whole series of 'and then we were sent to help england kill more people'.

Conquest's Bow 20pts
Relic, ADF Only. Unique

The dogs of war are driven onwards by the strum of their master's bow. Dripping with plague from its arrows, this bone-white bow was the weapon that drove the Empire's growth. British knights with blood-flecked spittle carved their way to 'put an end finally to the malice of the Welsh' in 1282, Ian Hamilton used its power to whip colonial forces into doomed charges at Gallipoli's cliffs in 1915 and Reginal Dyer wielded it in 1919 as he screamed for his men to fire another volley into protestors in British India.

It was accidently given to an Australian officer after the Dunkirk evacuation, as their rifles were taken for more valuable British soldiers and replaced with whatever trash could be found in local British museums.

That said: It's not all me taking a shot at colonial violence and how god damn terrible the SASR are.

Test Cricketer

The height of Australian sporting achievement, test cricketers are considered gods among men down under. Much like gods, they spend most of their time partying, starting stupid fights and abusing bystanders caught in the wake of their messy scandals. This prestige buys them a level of leeway with conscription, many of them finding themselves in leadership positions as it’s the way they’re most likely to avoid getting shot. Despite that, most find it impossible to avoid showboating and demonstrating that you can bowl a sticky grenade into the treads of most tanks if you put the spin on it just right.

I also take some light potshots at our sporting history.

[twin mountain]

Excellent

[echo marten]

Anti-War has some art and is more sympathetic than any of the actual armies.

It also lets me draw on one of my other big weird knowledges - Random Christian Stuff. As there was notable anti-war actions taken during the Vietnam war by several religious groups.

Like America had Billy Graham, a protestant preacher, telling the president of the united states he should bomb the vietnamese dams to unelash a 'new flood of judgement'

And Nixon Considered It

Meanwhile the Catonsville Nine was a group of nuns and priests who broke into a draft office and burned the papers there with home-made napalm.

Counterculture HQ - Burnout

Even for those who return, the wars are rarely over. Crushed under the weight of all they’ve seen and done, many veterans find themselves spiraling or self-medicating with shots of liquor. Some of the luckier ones find themselves among the counterculture movement, which despite the claims of right-wing firebrands have sympathy for the poor bastards who were sent to die. Some of these veterans, fiercely loyal to the people trying to help them in any way, are not about to stand by as machine guns rip apart a second family.

Also I get to make some music jokes.

Counterculture Elite Stealth Unit - Road Crew

Legend tells of black-clad figures, serving in the shadows. Working without honour or glory, they take on the hardest and most gruelling tasks for those who barely even know they exist. It is through their service that others are free to stand in the spotlight and live glorious lives. One, of course, speaks of Roadies.

[tawny sandal]

You better include something about the Yippies attempting to levitate the Pentagon (and according to a long-standing joke, did but rotated it just by one face so nobody really noticed)

[sleek trail]

What a series of convos

Delightful

[sand sonnet]

Tight crunchy rules abstraction very board-gamey while still being a minis game:

https://www.atomicmassgames.com/swp-rules/

Alternating activation skirmish game.

[sleek trail]

FFG style, baby

Be interesting to see an indie take on this sometime

[potent wyvern]

Ffg?

[twin mountain]

oh no atomic mass games.

you've said a lot of lovely stuff I really like - I love board gamey quantized space alternating activation games

but atomic mass gaames

😬

I played x-wing once

once upon a time

not anymore

[left moss]

fantasy flight games

game designer

[tawny sandal]

And publisher

[potent wyvern]

Ah right

[sleek trail]

fantasy flight

[sleek trail]

space isnt quantized for shatterpoint, iirc

its measure and move but with widgets (hell)

[stable pelican]

whats wrong with atomic mass games? (clueless other than horrible minis for MCP)

[sleek trail]

theres a specific style to the games from AMG (the former fantasy flight minis games)

which involves a lot of bespoke components to reference rules text and build your list

[sand sonnet]

In their defense they didn’t make that one their corporate overlords assigned it.

[sudden halo]

FFG games (and now AMG games) were all miniatures games by way of modern board game design, which is really cool and makes them pretty accessible but isn't without its pitfalls.

[sand sonnet]

AMG designed Shatterpoint and Crisis Protocol. Everything else they took over when Asmodee bought them and FFG

Most of their design team is old Privateer Press folks.

[twin mountain]

Fair enough

But the design decisions they made with x wing were like

Damn

I'm not sure I've ever seen a worse balance patch in a game in my life

I thought it had to be a mistake

[sudden halo]

I have to assume the other AMG games are better but it didn't inspire any confidence and I haven't gotten into any of them.

[twin mountain]

Yeah it made me immediately put every amg game into my no thanks bin

[sudden halo]

Also Shatterpoint coming out with different scale minis from Legion was a big red flag to me.

[twin mountain]

... Wait is shatter point a star wars thing

[sudden halo]

Like they already had a Star Wars game in "full character" scale. Making a different scale so there was no cross compatibility felt really greedy and unfriendly to existing players.

[sudden halo]

Yep

[sand sonnet]

Thematically I don’t know if you’d like it, but I think you would enjoy the rules abstraction

[sand sonnet]

It’s not trying to be the Kill Team of Legion but I get the frustration.

Shatterpoint is and continues to be well balanced

[native portal]

As an veteran wargamer yeah I followed it

[sudden halo]

Agreed, its its own game. But both games do feature the big name characters of the universe, so it would still be somewhere that you could play two very different games with the same models.

[sand sonnet]

Honestly nothing stops you from putting a Legion model on a 40mm base and playing it casually.

You’d have to print the cards I suppose.

[sudden halo]

My shouting at clouds take is that all companies should standardize around

28-32mm - warband/gang games (infinity, kill team, shatterpoint, warcry etc)
15mm - skirmish games (40k, aos, legion, anything where you might expect to see more than one vehicle or more than 20 models)
6-10mm - mass battle games, mech games

[twin mountain]

Oh. No thanks then. No star wars for me

X Wing was a big exception cause of how much I loved the design

[twin mountain]

Do tell

Speaking of, I know I want to play more godtear

Love godtear

[sudden halo]

I need to try Wings of Glory, to see how the xwing formula plays out in different settings

[sand sonnet]

When I am not running a Shatterpoint event I will put some time into an interesting rules callout

[twin mountain]

Also @native portal just finished sleeving battalion

It looks so good

Can't wait to play it

The true abstract alternating activation wargame of champions

I want someone to make battalion with fantasy armies and put it on tts and I'll be happy forever

[sleek trail]

I want more template move games

Its such a good paradigm

[sudden halo]

how does it play? this looks really cool

[twin mountain]

https://youtu.be/vT__9Cjj1aw

Alternating activation flank based combat where units can be chain activated for increasing amounts of a limited order resource, which is also used to soak damage without vaporizing

[sudden halo]

speaking of rank-n-flank games, i wrote one and playtested it the other day. haven't had time to revise based on that (and there are a lot of revisions needed), but here's the sloppy first take

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L2dDaMbt04C7YqrYI-_1GNL_NzKSdE4UAvNd0qT1lIE/edit?usp=sharing

[twin mountain]

It's about carefully managing your leadership resources and trying to hit one of the checkmate wincons

[sudden halo]

sounds 100% up my alley, thanks for the quick breakdown and video link!

[echo marten]

That's one if the counter-culture spells!

[native portal]

With the nice feature that you can overextend and get blown the fuck out

Glad you're enjoying it, I'll see if I can teach more 6th graders this year

[next pilot]

Aren’t legion and shatterpoint different companies?

[native portal]

15mm star wars game when

[sleek trail]

atomic mass publishes both now

[native portal]

(never because we love special characters)

[sleek trail]

but legion started under FFG

[native portal]

Legion already got shit for being 32mm

so randomly doing 40mm isn't gonna be popular to fans of legion

[sleek trail]

traditionally under the GW model your skirmish guys are the same scale as your army guys so you can use your army guys in skirmish

[compact leaf]

Oh
@twin mountain I finally got news on when new Aristeia drops, if that's a thing that matters?
It's gonna be in August next year.

[tawny sandal]

Excellent, wouldn’t want it any other way

[tawny sandal]

Also people like all the detail and cool looking stuff to paint, which can’t be overlooked as a selling point even if it impacts the game scale stuff

I will say having been printing up some 15mm stuff, it is a nice scale

[digital bay]

Ah, an excellent spot for Situationist Intelligence

to be fair I wrote up the Situationist Cold War CIA but they're my SSC intelligence/black ops wing for Lancer

[tawny sandal]

Still big enough to do very small unit tactics, but also not so big that it’s unreasonable to be able to play at a company-ish scale if you have a slightly large table and probably some friends to split it up a little

[digital bay]

simultaneously me shamelessly smashing Atomic Blonde and The Matrix into each other and me attempting to write SSC doing something that isn't "boring mad science"

[tawny sandal]

Also, multiplayer (as in multiple on each side lol) games can be a load of fun generally, though obviously I understand why they’re less common since it’s hard enough getting one opponent to show up on time

[digital bay]

I have had some fun playing Forever Winter: Kill Team

where there are a bunch of big stompy tanks and patrols of space marines and so on fighting each other according to a simple NPC flowchart and your shitty little necromunda gangs are running around stabbing each other for loot while trying to avoid attracting a Vindicator shell

[tawny sandal]

Oh that’s fun

[digital bay]

two actual players, way more chaos

[tawny sandal]

Oh, on multiplayer games, I had a great time at a museum’s wargame day where I took part in a three vs three WWII game

[echo marten]

I had a lot of fun with one of the anti-war HQs being an Anti-Franco Anarchist with:

Really More Of An Autonomous Collective: At the start of each round, if you do not have a Commanding Officer, an Anarchist of your choice can become the Commanding Officer.

In Fulda Rift, losing your army's Commanding Officer is very bad.

[digital bay]

did it once with scrappy packs of undersupplied Space Marines and Mechanicum, as an Istvaan III game, and once with many nurgle zombies as the NPC force, with Necromunda gangs

[digital bay]

please tell me they have situationists

they are such good sources for strange organisations with strange geographies, and also a bunch of 1960s anti-war protesters

[tawny sandal]

We lost, but it was a really cool experience to be part of group planning and to be kinda taking orders (while also having some of my own initiative), and also having to mostly just focus on my area of operations but then be glancing over like “…oh dear, the main assault on the town seems to be going rather poorly”

[digital bay]

average situationist map

oddly, would be quite recognisable to a modern Soulsborne player

[tawny sandal]

However I was then very distracted by “OH NO THATS A LOT OF PANZERS AND TIGERS COMING FROM THE FLANK”

[digital bay]

a favourite TV show as a kid was Time Commanders

[tawny sandal]

However, I’m very proud that, as mentioned even though we lost, I did hold the flank and retreat in good order (even though we got mauled to hell)

[echo marten]

I'll need to research them a little more, as I'm not super familiar with them. XD

[digital bay]

which was (slightly modded) Rome Total War, except they had a small team show up, two of which could only see a map table with blocks on it and two of which could relay information from the two NPCs actually moving units on the computer

[tawny sandal]

It was very cool to have blocked the main bridge over the river with dead panzers 🫡

Sorry to ramble about this game lol

[digital bay]

the communications relays could not give orders and the people who could give orders could not look at the actual game, it was very funny

[tawny sandal]

Oh shit I watched that on YouTube a while back

Some people did a shockingly good jobs, others uh, not

[digital bay]

yeah

image for ants, but it shows the basic setup

the thing is that it's Total War, so occasionally you can see one of TW's gamisms show up and totally bamboozle the actual historians who had to quickly gloss over it

great popcorn viewing, though

[digital bay]

they're cool, and a lot of their stuff later went into the CCRU, who were several degrees more insane and wrote these incredibly strange essays about cyborg insurgent insect wars and cyberpunk fiction as philosophy

about 20% of it makes any sense at all but it has cool vibes

[tawny sandal]

Hey, since I rambled about my Cool Wargame Experience, what’s y’all’s favorite wargame experience?

[echo marten]

I do have a unit that is designed to have quite a lot of 'various philosophies' in the options/adding more options to them is always fun. The Orator, a okay officer who does various buffs/debuffs based on his Particular Bugbear Of A Philosophy.

[digital bay]

oh yeah, if you want weirdo european philosophies, are you familiar with the original French Surrealists?

[echo marten]

One of the options is to make him a Democracy Advocate he can give enemy units 'Tyranny of the Majority', where their units use the Most Common Init/Bravery/Discipline instead of the game normally using the highest in a squad. XD

[digital bay]

their actual tendency had largely evolved into the Situationist International by the time of the Cold War but they had very funky art and tended to end up in the French Resistance

China Mieville wrote a Weird War 2 novella about them that I quite liked

Last Days of New Paris

[tawny sandal]

Were these different from the kinda post-WWI Dadaists?

[digital bay]

where you get to see an Exquisite Corpse absolutely body an animated Nazi heroic marble statue

and yes, somewhat

to be fair, I wouldn't know how to engage this thing in melee either

[tawny sandal]

Kick it in the balls

[digital bay]

also something slightly wrong has happened to the Eiffel Tower as part of the strange reality-altering art bomb that moved Paris out of phase with the rest of the universe and brought all the art to life

that's not a plane, either

[echo marten]

This could be fun yeah. The only three I have there so far (As they're very much a work in progress unit-wise) are 'Anarchists', 'Plowshares Preachers' and 'Democracy Advocates'. XD

[tawny sandal]

If Wolfman’s got nards, maybe the surreal sculpture man’s got em too

[digital bay]

the dogfights over New Paris are Italian Futurist Aeropittura and their Mussolini Anima Banner vs Surrealist abstract geometric planes, it's very fun

[tawny sandal]

I know it’s almost certainly not what’s intended but PROJECT PLOWSHARE ACTIVATED

Love me some project plowshare, let’s make some nuclear canals!

Maybe blow a freeway tunnel through the Appalachians!

[digital bay]

the fascist planes

the resistance "planes"

just a very fun novella, it's all like this

[echo marten]

Hahahah. Nah, Plowshares Preachers was a term for various anti-cold-war religious groups who argued that it was stupid and immoral.

[digital bay]

the "final boss" is an incredible flex on the traditional format of a Magic WW2 story

[tawny sandal]

Yeah I knew that was almost certainly what you were referring to

But hey! If we end the war, we gotta find something to do with these nukes, maybe we could make a few new harbors

(All of these were real suggestions)

[digital bay]

because the gimmick is "art comes to life", so the most powerful Nazi manifestation is ||Adolf Hitler's Self-Portrait, which wanders around as a brown-clothed man with no face and turns the world around it into lifeless pastel landscapes||

[echo marten]

...that's very creepy/fun.

[digital bay]

great novella, if you read it I recommend following along with this post where someone has collated all the art mentioned in the footnotes

https://medium.com/@Nicky_Martin/graphic-annotations-of-china-miévilles-the-last-days-of-new-paris-fb2abe8fc578

[tawny sandal]

Kinda getting off topic, but have you read Declare, Misc?

[digital bay]

not sure I know of it

[tawny sandal]

I feel like it’d be your thing

It’s a WWII/Cold War spy thriller meets sorta biblical/islamic/Lovecraftian magic

And a lot of references to odd real-world events, like a lot of the strange stuff that went on with Kim Philby

[digital bay]

oh yeah while I'm posting surrealism - the actual surrealists had an absolutely banger deck of playing cards and I would happily pick up a recreation of them

[echo marten]

Anti-War has 3 subfactions. Their 'normal' one is Protest. Which is various well...protest and revolutionary groups. They've got Counterculture which is various artistic and hippie movements and Divine, which is well...various heavenly forces/the anti-war religious groups like the Catonsville Nine and how there was serious concerns that the pope speaking out against the vietnam war at the UN was going to get him shot by an angry american. XD

Also because one of the big US subfactions is the CIA, who have Literal Demons From Hell in their list (They heard that satan shook stalin's hand when he turned up, decided hell was getting too pro-USSR and couped the place).

[digital bay]

that's very fun

can I recommend you another Thing that I think you would find fun to read

it's not long, will only take fifteen minutes and is an... interesting golem story

This mournful chorus threatened to make the entire network unusable, so CIA began to deliberately station more reliable assets within the world of the dead. Candidates for this placement would have to fit a very narrow profile: childless, unmarried, fiercely patriotic, and boundlessly ambitious. Successful entrants would be given a significant promotion and a commensurate bump in wages, along with a list of KL-7 authentication codes to memorise, and a small cyanide pill.

[echo marten]

Divine also sorta helped me square a bit of a mechanical circle in that Anti-War didn't have much in the way of 'This is a basic soldier who does basic soldier things'. 😛

But adding the Palatine and Swiss guard to the lineup gave them a bit of a 'Yeah, you have something that can serve that General Soldier Role, if you need one'.

[digital bay]

hang on, I'll dig up a link to Cacophony and send it to you

[twin mountain]

Fuck yeah

Any news on new warcrow PDFs? Was looking the other day

[echo marten]

Also lets me drag up in the writing the very funny story that the Swiss Guard had to do actual REDFOR plans about 'hey so what if the US tries to kidnap or assassinate the pope while he's speaking at the UN? They've killed a lot of prominant anti-war advocates and Billy Graham is actively advocating for it on his talk show and in his private meetings with the President of the United States'

[compact leaf]

Ah.. I still got nothing. But I could ask around in a place with actual staff to see what's happening

[twin mountain]

@native portal Suki Suki we played some battalion and hoooly shit what a tight game

[native portal]

It's good!

[twin mountain]

I had to figure out how to squeeze two turns out of zero order tokens

And I won

You can do wild checkmate stuff

[twin mountain]

If you do keep me posted!

Battalion got me fiending for chain activation at quadratic cost

So good

[compact leaf]

We shall!
At this point we're the indie chat Corvus belli news poster anyways aha

[native portal]

How did you manage this

[twin mountain]

An excellent person to be

[echo marten]

Billy Graham is just this absolutely fucking unhinged character in the history of the cold war. A fire and brimstone prosperity gospel preacher who had the ear of the president of the US and kept advocating for shooting, nuking or otherwise killing everything.

[twin mountain]

I was playing Carthage, I used a card to return one disorder as order and another card to reduce activation cost by 1

Letting me activate for 0, 1

And I won

Every other card became bonus dice for the final charge

[native portal]

niiiiice

I knew it was some card combo

'Whilst historical accuracy has been an important
value in the development of this game, it has consistently given way to the demands of creating a better
play experience. For example, displaying information in consistent ways and creating distinctive visual
identities for each unit.'

shout out to the devs

[tawny sandal]

Multiple presidents!

[echo marten]

In Fulda Rift, Billy Graham is the new Antipope 😛

[tawny sandal]

…that raises multiple questions, mainly related to him not being a Catholic in the first place

[sudden halo]

i do really like games that allow some type of chain activating, especially as a representation of command resources. warmaster almost does it really well. also infinity. not that many AA games allow it which seems pretty unique to battalion.

[tawny sandal]

Warmaster is the WHFB 10mm wargame, yeah?

[twin mountain]

I do wish melee and ranged attacks were depicted clearer than black and white numbers

[sudden halo]

i'm very into the idea of chunked alternating activations. a little more than just one activation each, so you can do a bit more complex things

[twin mountain]

But that's my only complaint

[native portal]

Yes me too

for a game with such good design language

it's a serious annoyance

[twin mountain]

Yeah it's a baffling choice

[fast glade]

I cheated a little because of that

With more experience I obviously wouldn't have

[echo marten]

So, this actually goes to a real life near schism during the cold war in American Catholicism. Where pro-vietnam war catholics declared that pro-vietnam war protestants were 'more catholic' than anti-vietnam war catholics.

[twin mountain]

Yeah it's definitely a style for veterans thing

[fast glade]

But it's a small thing to trip over when you're new

[twin mountain]

Yeah

The rules are very very clean

Nice to see such a good rulebook and good rule design

[echo marten]

A lot of pro-vietnam war priests basicly cut contact with rome during the cold war.

Shit gets weird and stupid in the cold war.

[tawny sandal]

Oh yeah absolutely

[sudden halo]

yeah, sadly its IGYG but it is easily swapped to alternating activations of characters. Units can be ordered up to three times but if you fail an order that character is done issuing orders. after all the characters are done issuing orders, then it has a pretty normal shooting and melee phase.

[twin mountain]

OH

Pro-"Vietnam war" priests

Iki.

I thought you were talking about war priests

[tawny sandal]

Yeah not pro-Vietnam

[native portal]

Rush Limbaugh?

[twin mountain]

Priests of war

[tawny sandal]

Lmao

[echo marten]

Hahah, nah. I mean people who basicly spent their time screaming about 'GODLESS COMMUNISTS' and such.

[twin mountain]

War Catholics???

[fast glade]

Yeah lmao the ambiguity of English

[twin mountain]

Pro Vietnam war Catholics???

[tawny sandal]

Yeah

[sudden halo]

so movement is very interesting and dynamic, and makes you feel like your a general having to herd all the cats with a limited amount of messengers and subcommanders, but units in the right place perform pretty consistently without overhead

[native portal]

wow, that's a bad ass-car

[tawny sandal]

The perils of hyphens

[echo marten]

snrk

[twin mountain]

I need to play more godtear

Godtear: igyg winged actually likes

That's the biggest compliment I can give it

[native portal]

In General D'armee, you get to assign ADC's to different units and group up brigades to make like, larger units at the risk of giving them dumber orders

it's a fairly neat idea but surrounded by a lot of Napoleonic Minutia Cruft

[echo marten]

So like a big unit can only be told 'march' or 'shoot' rather than anything too fiddly?

[tawny sandal]

Literal grognards 🫡

[native portal]

@twin mountain Don't forget to add any French Modifiers

I hope you know what year it's supposed to be

[twin mountain]

@latent rover LOLLL

[tawny sandal]

Also there has never been a more appropriate name for both old soldiers and old wargamers than “grumblers”

But it’s in French, so it’s fancy

[twin mountain]

I love it thank you

[tawny sandal]

I understand what they’re going for here, having listened to a whole long history of the French Revolution, but that definitely is some fiddlieness lol

[twin mountain]

That's insanely funny to me

[tawny sandal]

Since France need a bit to get its shit together

[latent rover]

lmao

[native portal]

Kindof, you basically write them a simple order

[tawny sandal]

And also to stop killing generals for being “counter revolutionary” whenever they lost a battle

[echo marten]

Ah yes, French Modifiers.

[native portal]

and they have to follow it until it's either obviously not workable or they do it

or you tell them to stop

[tawny sandal]

Which doesn’t help with the morale and ability to learn

[native portal]

So if you're really light on ADC, your left wing might continue to attack a hill while you save orders for the more complicated center and right

but at the same time, if you find out the hill is very heavily defended, you're gonna have to send them new orders

[tawny sandal]

Interesting

[native portal]

also there are blind cards, so sometimes you'll attack a target and it will be

N o t h i n g

[twin mountain]

That's really cool and I love it

[tawny sandal]

Oh, as a wrinkle in multiplayer games, it can be fun to have a thing where you can only give orders/messages to other players with a limited word count or size of the piece of paper

[native portal]

It's fiddly but I love the blind cards. You can't put them too far from like, actual units to prevent cheese, and if you can spot the unit, you reveal the card

BUT that means that you can use a line of skirmishers, who block spotting

and have a line of skirmishers feint with no actual Line behind them

[tawny sandal]

Which can result in the classic “well he says “if practicable” the fuck does that mean? It looks tough so I think I’ll sit back? I guess?”

[native portal]

or it could be two companies of Guards and your opponent has Fucked Up

[sudden halo]

its pretty neat. warmaster does something similar where units can act on their own initiative at the start of the turn, but they have limited options (charge or fall straight back), and if they do so they can't get ordered at all during the orders phase.

[tawny sandal]

When the other guy meant “do this unless it seems impossible”

[sudden halo]

extra limits on things like Undead, that have to receive orders, they don't have any initiative

[tawny sandal]

Little things like that can be a lot of fun

[native portal]

'British units apocryphally not being reinforced due to british understatement'.jpg

[sudden halo]

also love a good camo marker

[native portal]

'Situation is not ideal'
Translation: We are fucked

[tawny sandal]

This is why multiplayer games, while complicated to get scheduled, can be so much fun

[native portal]

'We are experiencing a reversal of fortunes'
Translation: I am currently engaging germans with my revolver while my adjutant clubs a man to death with the field telephone

[tawny sandal]

Especially if you play with communication a little or have multiple boards that you can potentially send off troops to reinforce other people (but also means you have less dudes of your own)

[native portal]

Oh I've found the actual one

[tawny sandal]

Or just the factor of making a plan with three people and then only really focusing on your section and not really paying as much attention to the complete other flank and not realizing that while you’re doing well they’re collapsing

Or slightly misinterpreting the plan or being bolder than the other people expected

It’s all so much fun if you can do it

[native portal]

In 1951, 650 soldiers of
the Gloucestershire Regiment were surrounded by an entire Chinese division on the Imjin River in Korea.
Their commander, Brigadier Thomas Brodie, told the Americans that "things are pretty sticky", a
statement that sounded reassuring to American ears but was as close to a scream for help as British
understatement would allow.

[sudden halo]

anything messing with troop logistics like that is fun. i want to run a space game campaign based around a defender that has lots more overall troops but most are non-ftl capable, so getting the ftl ships into the right place to answer the attackers is pretty key

[native portal]

They eventually tried to break out, and only about 50 survived

[tawny sandal]

I know I’ve posted videos from them before, but LittleWarsTV has some super great videos on neat historical battles, often multiplayer, and sometimes with some fun communication fuckery elements

They’ve made me aware of some neat systems, and it’s just pretty fun to see

[sudden halo]

are they associated with the store in Baton Rouge with that name?

[native portal]

Hellbrute did you ever see that old british TV show?

Time Commanders or whatever

the one that used Rome Total War's beta engine?

[tawny sandal]

I don’t think so, they’re in the north east I think

Or eastern seaboard

[tawny sandal]

Yeah, we actually talked about it earlier

[native portal]

Oh ha

[tawny sandal]

I’ve watched some of it on YouTube, shit is great

[native portal]

Specifically the divide between the Strategy side and the Tactics side

is great for fuckery

[tawny sandal]

So many fun miscommunications

Turns out commanding a battle is hard

[native portal]

It's so hard to tell when to use initiative

like, do you trust command has factored this

or do you use your real time knowledge to change the plan

[tawny sandal]

A few of the games LittleWars has done have had the players receive orders via text message from the “generals” after describing the situation

Leading to the “generals” sometimes really not understanding how mauled certain units are or how weak an enemy position might be

[sudden halo]

gotcha. i know the store Little Wars is also really historical gaming focused, so i wondered if these guys were my dad's old gaming crew.

it does look like their podcast is why he's been hitting me up about Warmaster lately.

[digital bay]

there was a funny Time Commanders episode where the players were fairly competent historian types, they used their time-out-and-get-GM-advice button and then basically went "actually we've got this, we just want five minutes to get the plan straight because they have a big box of spear dudes"

[tawny sandal]

Man I should try to watch more time commanders lol

[tawny sandal]

Couldn’t say, but it’d be funny if there was a connection

I’ve really enjoyed their stuff over the years

Oh they also do have a cool video going over the history of Warmaster

(After they did a helms deep game using the rules)

https://youtu.be/t0wY9RSsTyk
https://youtu.be/KBYhsVVuL14

They don’t usually do non-historicals, but it happens on occasion

[sudden halo]

Warmaster also has an ancients version

[native portal]

I think the ancients came first?

I don't remember

[tawny sandal]

Also I love how lately they’ve been trying to do stuff at museums, including one really fun video where there was a staff member really interested in it but had never played wargames before, and they’re just so nice and encouraging about having her come in and give it a try

[native portal]

nvm no it wasn't

[sudden halo]

Looks like they are based in the northeast but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a connection, as my dad isn't exactly out there looking for YouTube videos about stuff and I know he's been watching their stuff.

[sudden halo]

Ancients was second, and made some big rules improvements. The current community ruleset backported a lot of them to fantasy.

[native portal]

I was thinking of Warhammer Ancient Battles

which was 28mm scale

[sleek trail]

15mm hella underrated s tier scale all timer

[echo marten]

The surrealist imagery of planes kinda inspired me to make a homage to that story (As man, I enjoyed reading that/it really fits the counterculture vibe). That said: Man, I really needed that page that lists most of the art referenced as I'm not that familiar with various surrealist art pieces. XD

Le Drapeau Noir
Counterculture Fire Support

The fight against oppression is not merely a war for bodies but for the minds and dreams of humanity. Surrealism warred with the fascist sensibilities of Novecento Italiano. The dreams of Russian Futurism were murdered on the altar of Agitprop. Even now, the rising voices of the counterculture movement clash with Soviet Realism and American Corporate Art.

The black flag that fought against Leni Riefenstahl's cult of death over the skies of Paris fly again; impossible planes that form a primal symbol soaring to aid those who would fight against unnatural men with machine minds and machine souls. They pit the power of illogicality and imagination against the banality of cold iron and hatred in desperate hope that tomorrow will not lose its ability to dream of a better world.

[trail fulcrum]

Is it a new engine or Memoir 44?

It's a good game Ma'am

I look into it.

It's memoir 44

[teal cloud]

looks nervous how bad is it doc

[autumn sun]

https://mummylaundering.itch.io/brimstone-and-lead-arena

[autumn sun]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T4PeyMWJiA

[compact leaf]

:(

Man

[twin mountain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-zih85MOs

[twin mountain]

Oooh the TTS mod for ember obsidian protocol updated

[compact leaf]

It did!

And more parts are coming out soon..

I, for one, cannot wait for infantry

[umbral prawn]

Are any pilot net folks going to Strategicon in Los Angeles next weekend?

[compact leaf]

More new infinity stuff

Also more Rock troll stuff

[twin mountain]

Hrrrngh looks like ember obsidian protocol is still weirdly incomplete

[twin mountain]

There are discrepancies in different languages of the rulebook too

I think I'll leave ember to cook for another few months

[orchid tulip]

So the embers are not ready for the hotdogs?

[compact leaf]

...you want updates on that too?

Cause uh

Yeah

The very last faction should be out around December is the plan

UN (second faction) is going up for pre-order in my area soon though :3

I just hope the rules catch up-

[twin mountain]

Yeah please do keep me posted

I've followed ember for years

[compact leaf]

I'm just happy it's out and making good progress haha

Our LGS owner got convinced by one of the local players to jump in on it and we've had a little scene ever since

But will do!

You'll probably hear about it around October-November at the latest

Oh!
And the new warcrow rules booklet that comes with the starter is allegedly integrating the FAQs, but I'll be checking next week when I get my copy of it in.

Nothing on an update to the PDF just yet

[orchid tulip]

Are the 3 factions of Obsidian Protocol UniNet, RDL and GoF?

[twin mountain]

Yeah I went looking for new PDFs yesterday

I know they're making new tutorial videos

[compact leaf]

At least they got the 1.0 PDF out for English

Just needs to be gone over again

But it's much prettier than it used to be

[compact leaf]

Mhm!
English RDL is out, UN is out for Kickstarter backers and retail is coming within 1-2 months, and then GoF is supposed to be somewhere around the end of this year

[orchid tulip]

Have they shown renders of GoF mechs yet, or are RDL and UN the only ones so far?

[compact leaf]

We got renders of the new GoF stuff! They redid it all because it's gonna be coloured sprue now

[orchid tulip]

RDLs design is still my fave I think

[compact leaf]

Infantry are also gonna be a thing

[orchid tulip]

Which faction are these?

[compact leaf]

Afaik these are RDL or universal (useable in any faction)

[orchid tulip]

Something about the RDL Cavalry mechs just tickles my fancy

Are LAB universal or UN?

[compact leaf]

These are resin conversion kits for RDL, actually

UN doesn't have any LAB stuff (yet?) unless you're counting the special resin sculpts

Oh!
And all the other resin stuff is universal

[orchid tulip]

https://www.queti-tectonics.com/collections/frontpage this is the page I am going of atm

[compact leaf]

Ohh

Yeah

All the reapers are universal, octopus is a UN model, and the geiji/mallard stuff is the RDL conversion kit

[orchid tulip]

Is the Dune a "unique" or just an additional upgrade pack?

[compact leaf]

It's got the same stuff as what comes in the core set for RDL, but it does contain a new pilot variant

Which is new art and rules for Keyhole(?)

And then they're putting hammerhead in a maid outfit for the 2-player starter that's coming but that's all I know

[orchid tulip]

Based on visuals, my faves atm are Anser & Misty from RDL and Onyx from UN

[compact leaf]

I think Onyx is also getting a variant?

Yea they are

Rules are out for them too

Here's art

[orchid tulip]

I do wanmna try this out some time

[compact leaf]

Well the TTS mod did just get an update...

[velvet badge]

I couldn't follow that convo at all but those mechs fuck

[compact leaf]

Sorry, we speak complete nonsense a lot of the time 😅
We'd be happy to clarify anything if you're curious

[velvet badge]

I mean I saw a shitload of acronyms and keywords and can't make sense of any of them

I'm guessing obsidian protocol is the name of the game but ember and onyx popped up a bunch

[compact leaf]

• RDL, UN, and GoF are actually the real names of all the factions in the game haha.
• Ember is the first word of the name of the game, so the full name is Ember: Obsidian Protocol
• Onyx is a named character pilot that the UN faction has

[velvet badge]

Gotcha

UN is united Nations?

[compact leaf]

United Network iirc

[velvet badge]

Alright so complete SciFi factions then

[compact leaf]

The first two are corporations, and the last one is... Sort of a cult?

[velvet badge]

Are the above character standees related to the game?

[compact leaf]

Ye

New pilots they're putting in, it's just art for them

[velvet badge]

So we've got anime ass pilots and some AC looking mechs

Well shit guess I gotta keep an eye on this game then

Out of curiosity what's the business model?

[orchid tulip]

From what I can tell, boxes of 1-6 mechs, and everything to use said mechs besides the dice and field. Some of the things, like pilots, can be used with other mechs while parts kinda look kinda chassi/type locked. Till probs know more as they seem to have a local scene

[compact leaf]

All the arms, legs, torsos, and backpacks are separate, interchangeable parts actually. All of them are compatible with everything else in their faction

You get enough torsos and legs for 5 mechs in the RDL core set, and I think it's 3-4 for the UN one? But they get more drones.

All the tokens come in those sets, but yeah..
Dice, terrain and board are separate

[twin mountain]

do we have a reliable 1.0 rulebook yet?

[compact leaf]

Haven't gone over it myself sadly, but my locals say they haven't had any issues so far

Sorry we can't really answer the question definitively :(

[twin mountain]

okay it looks like the 1.0 english rulebook is like. solid. maybe some errata after but that's normal

[compact leaf]

Oh, yes I see the convo

[twin mountain]

And right after that someone said use any rulebooks it's fine

Hrrmm

Maybe I'll wait

[compact leaf]

It was.. definitely a little confusing at the end there

But I think you stick with the 1.0 one, and "wherever rulebook" probably just refers to the difference languages?

[twin mountain]

proobably?

[sudden halo]

Two other things, these sectorials confirmed returning.

And theres something planned for Tohaa in the future but Bostria said he wasn't allowed to spoil the surprise.

Very excited to have Starco back.

[velvet badge]

Ooh sounds like I'll be eating good as a Pano and tohaa player this edition

Shame my Forco is now awkwardly half a Qalpu Qalqi army now tho

[sudden halo]

They're apparently merging with Whiteco, which is why they're on the image.

[velvet badge]

Forco and whiteco merger?

So whiteco is gonna be trifaction now?

Unless you count laxmee and Kaplan's as haqq in which case quad faction

[sudden halo]

There weren't really any details beyond that, so hard to say but it'll be interesting.

[velvet badge]

At least we can assume the soldiers of fortune will be playable in it then

Because otherwise whiteco would have a massive unit pool

I'll take a guess and say Kaplan's (for laxmee, Avicenna and bill) and maybe the kriza will make it in

But the kriza does have overlap with the boyg

Wait I just opened the app and the soldiers of fortune are already in the whiteco list?

[compact leaf]

Yeah I saw!
We all found it very funny that they removed spiral from the original list..
But I suppose if they have some plans, then it's probably okay?

[velvet badge]

They can't run the all Star team, but hey they're in there!

[velvet badge]

I mean spiral is essentially defunct as a faction now right?

[sudden halo]

Spiral confirmed actually all the way dead, the question was asked.

[compact leaf]

Ah, I see

Well

Tohaa are still there

Guess we wait and see

[sudden halo]

Which is a shame from a gameplay perspective, I liked them a lot, but works for the setting.

[compact leaf]

It does make a lot of sense, yeah

And given the mysteriousness of all of their stuff, it's probably building up to a new faction release or something

And then they'll get JSA'd in N6 or something maybe

[sudden halo]

From the QnA I get the feeling there's a little push and pull internally at CB around the old sectorials.

[compact leaf]

I'll bet, yeah.

A lot of them probably don't want to have to deal with the balancing headache

[sudden halo]

The design team and Bostria are pretty into the idea of slimming it down and keeping with the 3 sectorials per faction plan.

[compact leaf]

And not making any money

I am too, tbh

[sudden halo]

Marketing wants to make sure no one has any reason to complain or not play infinity, so they're for bringing back rules for every sectorial.

Sounds like Spiral Corps was where design drew the line

[compact leaf]

No stinky Tohaa allowed

[sudden halo]

cries in artichoke

[compact leaf]

I do kinda hope they stick to that 3 sectorial rule though, in the future

It's better for the game in the long term I feel

At least in terms of balancing and keeping stuff fresh

[sudden halo]

Yeah. At the least the "current catalogue" is going to be 3 sectorials per faction as far as I can tell.

[compact leaf]

Mhm

Which feels very reasonable

[sudden halo]

They're not bringing those factions back into production, just porting them up to N5.

Probably Onyx leaving CA's current catalog when Next Wave drops.

[compact leaf]

I do think the OOP stuff can probably stick around but like.. it's never getting a balance pass and I don't think anyone is going to expect that

[sudden halo]

Yeah, the only place I wish they would spend a little time is on Tohaa, because it is a full-on faction.

Which would be just a few changes. A pass on Kamaels so they aren't terrible. A "Triumvirate" or "Sabotage" fireteam that uses the Kiel-san. Un-nerfing Endgame to what it was at N5 launch

[tepid steeple]

Laxmee is so cool

Wish I didnt have to buy a bunch of other ppl to get her 😔

Less than a week to song of the dormant 😱

[compact leaf]

It's sooooo closeeee

[sudden halo]

The models are so cool

I got a Warcrow demo using song of the dormant and now I'm very Warcurious

[velvet badge]

I can only hope the tohaa overhaul is substantial. It'd be cool to see a more militarized tohaa going all in on the combat biotech. Just some absolute freak show symbio armour

[sudden halo]

Seeing the Scions in Warcrow CB might be about it.

[compact leaf]

Guh

You too huh

(not me, elves are yucky gross)

But like..

Almost my entire scene is here for scions specifically..

[velvet badge]

Just nah, we ain't even trying to look like something humans want to talk to anymore. You're buddying up with our arch enemy? Time to grow some absolute warcrimes

[compact leaf]

Warcrow is a great game though, the rulebook just needs to be recompiled with all the FAQs it's got

[velvet badge]

They do be the most visually interesting faction. And easy to get into for those of us that backed the boardgame lol

[sudden halo]

See I want the opposite approach for Tohaa, though the diplomacy makes it questionable.

[compact leaf]

(also please be mindful about warcrime jokes here, it is in da rules)

[velvet badge]

Tohaa swinging back into the sphere as the new big bad now that the EI is trying to clean up its image would be great

[compact leaf]

Eh...
That's a matter of taste, but they do definitely have the most stuff going out of the gate, yea

[velvet badge]

Apologies, just not sure what else to call the army that weaponizes viruses on the regular

[tepid steeple]

its kinda abt flippancy

[sudden halo]

Id wanna see Tohaa as like three things.

The Errant Fleet that was left behind the gate, as a hybrid human Tohaa sectorial, like reverse spiral corps. The combat parts of Tohaa instead of the sneaky parts.

The Sygmaa

And then the Trident proper, whatever form they take.

But at this point I'd take even 1 of the three

[tepid steeple]

my partner is really into scions. like their problem with 40k daemons is aside from some of the tzeentch range is that its very generic and there's just so much fucked up variety in scions

[velvet badge]

The sygmaa do feel pretty underserved

[tepid steeple]

I like every faction honestly but feudom coming out alongside them makes the choice for me :)

I'm excited for pretty princess knights

And the giant eagle inexplicably called a griffon

[sudden halo]

Not particularly. Some scions stuff looks awesome but they gave me a faction of Moon Ladies and Dark Souls Knights

Which is very cool.

[compact leaf]

Oh thank the gods you have good taste/s

[sudden halo]

But Scions being what they are means body horror Tohaa is possible, if not necessarily likely. We know now CB has the design chops for it.

[compact leaf]

(You're fine. We just weren't sure if you were aware or not)

[compact leaf]

We still find it exceptionally funny that that got a sculpt before the war rig did

[velvet badge]

I'm all about body horror design space, that being said my other aesthetic taste is basically summarized as Elden rings Carians so "moon ladies and dark souls knights" at least has my attention

[compact leaf]

That Magister is

So pretty

Genevieve is too

[tepid steeple]

Yeaaah 🥰

[sudden halo]

I'm normally anti skull-helmet because it think it's very played out, but I really like the Guardians of the Mounds.

There's something very Lord of the Rings about them maybe.

[compact leaf]

They are very LoTR yea

I'm still a little miffed on just how massive and goofy the heads look in the renders, but the concept art is super solid so..
I'm hoping the actual thing is fine

And it should be, they wouldn't make it otherwise

[velvet badge]

In curious to see how feudom develops as they get more units

It's bretonnia vibes but more interesting so far lol

[compact leaf]

They're very much just bretonnia but way way cooler

[velvet badge]

Morgane specifically is hitting a lot of the right buttons for me

Song of the dormant is feudom and scions yeah?

Might have to pick it up

I'll have to check and see if I already have the Scion stuff from adventures tho

[sudden halo]

Shouldnt be any overlap I think.

[velvet badge]

Perfect

[compact leaf]

There's a little bit of overlap iirc actually, but all of the cards are going to be different from the ones in the original card box from earlier this year.

Anointed, needle, intacts..

I think those are also in adventures?
At least one of them

[velvet badge]

Breath and uruk look new

Breath I think I have tho

Definitely have annointed but don't know if I've got intacts

[compact leaf]

Uruk is new, breath probably isn't

All of the minis are new sculpts though, if that matters

The First Anointed is also completely new

[velvet badge]

I'm not seeing anointed on the contents list at all

[tepid steeple]

Breath and needle exist in adventures I think

[compact leaf]

For?

I should clarify that they're not in the base box, but the beyond expansion

Cause uh..
They do exist

That beyond box is so good tbh..

You get Amaury and Anointed..

Top notch faction sellers

[velvet badge]

Didn't even realise they're doing beyond boxes for these

Didn't see it because it was under the coming soon section

Those anointed are sweet

The feudom side is just straight souls npcs

... How long do these stay in catalog for? I don't intend to pick up a new game soon but eventually when I've cleared out my backlog I might

[sudden halo]

The two player boxes stay around for a year, then get repacked into separate Action Packs that are the main box and beyond for each faction.

[velvet badge]

Ooh I may just wait for the action packs then

Since I already have most of the scions stuff

[twin mountain]

Thanks for the speed bumps everyone, please no war crimes humor yeah

[velvet badge]

Gives me time to tackle my backlog and for the game to get it's rules finalized and app out

[twin mountain]

It brings in the fash

[compact leaf]

Speaking of, I'm starting to wonder when we'll see Sandtrap get repackaged..

They're really slowing down the operations boxes to make room for the warcrow starters

[velvet badge]

Reeeaally slowing it down lol. My copy of sandtrap was on back order for 9 months

[compact leaf]

Asmodee also took over distribution in Canada, which really hurt it over here

Like we can't even get infinity stuff in our stores anymore, it's really upsetting

[velvet badge]

Yuuup my lgs went months unable to get a lot of different products

We can still get infinity stuff here but delivery times are all over the place

[compact leaf]

I think we probably still can too, but our LGS is kinda just.. refusing to deal with all the bullshit delays that arise from it

What's weird is that a couple stores get everything on time

Consistently
And they're the biggest ones in Canada

So

[velvet badge]

Must be big spenders

[compact leaf]

I'm under the assumption that they're being prioritized

[velvet badge]

I know 401 games out in Toronto gets their stuff on time still

[compact leaf]

Yeah that's one of the two

[velvet badge]

But they're one of the biggest in Ontario

[compact leaf]

The other is tisaminis

[velvet badge]

Makes sense

Kill team has basically replaced infinity locally so hardly anything gets ordered from my local place

[compact leaf]

Ah man..

It's the opposite here

Ember, Infinity and Warcrow are eating all the other skirmish games alive

[velvet badge]

Me and a couple buddy's still dust off the infinity stuff every once in a while when we want something crunchy but kill team has admittedly been very convenient to just pick up and play

And sell new players on given most teams are one box and you're good to go

[compact leaf]

You really just gotta play what's being played locally most of the time

[velvet badge]

Yup, getting a new game going is hard

Only reason we've got a decent sized trench crusade community is because of how omnipresent it is online

[compact leaf]

It's just

Yeah

Everywhere

We were thinking of getting heavy gear going but.. probably waiting for the next edition of blitz before that

[velvet badge]

But trying to get anyone into any other game is pulling teeth because brand power does so much of the subconscious work

[compact leaf]

I'm screwed if all the non-GW games suddenly dry up :b

[velvet badge]

At least locally just about everything is dying outside of blood and plunder and trench crusade

GW not withstanding

We're in a mesbg renaissance locally

[compact leaf]

A small one is happening here, too

We don't know if it'll last though

Warmachine is picking up steam again though

[velvet badge]

We're starting a league next month to try to keep the momentum up

[compact leaf]

Oh, best of luck!

[velvet badge]

Warmachine had like a blip of potential to come back here but only two people actually invested and they play in a basement so nobody actually gets exposed to it

[sudden halo]

It really seems to matter most of a game has really solid volunteers or organizers pushing it along.

[velvet badge]

Shoutout to my local warcom dragging me into infinity by the throat back in N3

Shame magic has since consumed him

Dude threw the old military orders box at me and said "don't you wish space marines were cool?"

[compact leaf]

Goddamn

[velvet badge]

And I was a commited Joan bus player ever since

[compact leaf]

I hear a lot of folks give a tournament pack to newbies

[velvet badge]

That'd be cool

Don't know how much tournament packs cost tho

I know GW ones aren't cheap

Or easy to get

Because heaven forbid we get them on time for any event I'm running

Does mordheim still count as a GW game? We've actually got a decent amount of guys playing it locally

[compact leaf]

Eh like 50 bucks?

[velvet badge]

That's pretty reasonable

[compact leaf]

You get a limited edition mini and a bunch of little goodies

And then there's the deluxe tournament packs they release later in the year, they usually have a couple extra models in them

One of which is a TAG

[modern snow]

the pack for this year has one of the best sculpts/profiles, I love the Sencha so much

[compact leaf]

A shame we probably won't be able to acquire one easily..

The sculpts in general this year have been phenomenal though

Basically no misses

[tepid steeple]

I want herrrr

winning one would be awesome but my current goal is just winning a round 2 game haha

[compact leaf]

I wanna take home a tournament someday

There's this undefeated menace in my area that my dice just hate to cooperate with

[sudden halo]

I won one but it was misreported at first so on the day I thought I got 2nd, which makes it feel like I haven't won a tourney.

[sudden halo]

Also I haven't beaten the person who initially won that in an event, kind of a similar local menace.

[compact leaf]

Closest I've gotten is 2nd place..

But I haven't done as well since

[twin mountain]

hrngh

the ember rulebook is still kind of a mess

the ember rules are still kind of a mess

well fair enough I guess.

[modern snow]

it's like they know

[twin mountain]

I know lmao

Like I guess I appreciate them giving up vs saying something stupid

[modern snow]

It's also fair to say "hey we don't have the bandwidth to figure this out right now but we trust the community to hash it out" and then just adopt whatever seems to work for the community as standard

[twin mountain]

Yeah

[modern snow]

not a practice I personally enjoy but hey- it works?

[twin mountain]

Like I'm making fun of them for this bit but I do appreciate it

It's okay to say "look. We made a 1v1 game. We're sorry"

[tawny sandal]

Yeah it’s perfectly reasonable to go “you can try but we do not make any guarantees”

[potent wyvern]

hey folks who have ran wargame campaigns for more than 2 players, how do you approach assigning who fights who?

[sand sonnet]

Depends, are you more narrative or more mechanically minded for your league?

I've seen it be functionally a drawn out swiss event, or map based, or sometimes you just let the lowest scoring folks challenge whoever, kinda depends on the vibe and goals of your event.

[potent wyvern]

im interesting in hearing both perspectives on it

[sand sonnet]

I mean it's about finding the right tool for the kind of thing you want to do.

So what do you want to do?

[potent wyvern]

well it would probably be something narrative but its not happening any time soon.
Im just asking for examples of what people have done because i cant seem to much guidelines for running 4+ games in campaigns rules i have checked out.
its usually just "roll scenarios and do you post battle resolutions" and such, which the assumption that this is between 2 players

[sand sonnet]

Fair, I'd crib ideas from things like Necromunda or Mordheim that are built as campaign games.

But depends on your system too.

Also worth thinking about what to do if people drop/don't show/can't figure a time to meet.