Sunday 13 September 2015

Middleheim - Simple Playtest

I'm wanting to get out the "kinks" of the token pool/reaction activation system, so this game was kept very simple; only 8 per side (2 x men at arms, 3 billmen, 3 missile troops)

*For this test, we have no heroes (no wounds, fatigue, magic) keeps the focus on the basics.

*Both sides shared similar stat lines. There were no special rules/traits (except for "Leader.")
*There are no special attacks (power attacks, quick attacks, block/parry).

So a lot of chrome is missing, while I look at the basics.  Here's the troops I'm using:

Troop Types
Spd
Agil
Power
Def
Shoot
Melee
Will
Mana
Extra
Men at Arms
4"
3
5
6
-
5
5
-
Leader
Infantry
5"
4
4
5
-
4
4
-

Archers
6"
5
4
4
4
3
4
-


Weapons
Type
WS bonus
Damage Bonus to STR
Extra
Sword
+1
+1
Parry
Polearm
+1
+2
Reach
Bow
12(+1)-24-36" (-2)
(+1 close, -2 far)


A quick blow by blow of key actions:

A blue archer shoots at a red archer, who successfully reacts by ducking back into cover.

Drawing an activation token, the red player elects to step out of cover and shoot back - he hits and rolls a '9' for damage, shooting the hapless blue archer through the eye socket

On the top side of the map, the blue forces ready themselves to attack the outnumbered reds. You can see the red side have white "readiness" tokens (which act like a flexible overwatch, allowing shooting, movement or counter-charges)

Both archers hit the lead men at arms with overwatch shots, but his plate deflects both arrows.

The blue archer dodges a red archer shot as the melee becomes general - since he dodged behind an ally; maybe the ally should have tested to be hit too? Maybe a rule for this?

At the top of the board, the red men at arms has just killed a billmen but got forced back by his opposite number.  At the bottom, red forces prepare to storm across the bridge to attack the outnumbered blue men at arms and his sidekick billman.

A red archer is "knocked down". Both this and "push back" add a few damage/effect variations without record keeping.   On the far side of the bridge, the red men at arms kills the other blue men at arms, leaving his billmen sidekick outnumbered 3:1....

However the lone blue billmen kills the men at arms; shocked at the messy decapitation of their leader, the red billmen flee back across the bridge; while on the right, the red men at arms is killed by his opposite number, and the lone red archer retreats away towards his fellows...

Blue wins the scenario, having collected 3 loot counters to 1 when I ended the game....

Observations:

Complex Problems:
*More troops = more tokens in pool = greater initiative (i.e. horde armies get bonus)  Not good
*When you activate a group, you might remove 4-5 tokens from the pool; this effectively hands initiative to your opponent for the rest of the turn...  Need to look into this more

Simple Fixes:
*I needed a "overwatch/readiness" token to show stored activation - ugh more tokens
*Need to nerf leaders a bit (pass a "leadership" test to give a group command)
*A lot of arrows were "dodged" by the dodge reaction; make it a bit harder to do?
* Need to decide what stat is used for reactions (i.e attempting to charge home on archers before they shoot - do you use "Speed" or "Melee")
*I omitted to mention in my rules what to do in certain situations (i.e. you are pushed back but have nowhere to retreat; how do you roll for damage vs a "knocked down" figure - answer for both: double damage dice rolled)

Worked Well:
*Archery was quite balanced (men at arms' plate deflected 4 point blank shots; lighter armoured billmen and archers were the two kills)... within the close confines of my typically crowded map; how would archery fare on an open "40K"esque board?
*Having a maximum of 1 shot per turn (whether in reaction or when active) is a sound idea


*General combat worked OK again; my guesstimates for stats etc were reasonably balanced
 *There was lots of activity in the ~5 turns played; lots of engagement for both sides

Annoyances:
*Remembering to remove tokens from the token cup is  annoying/a bit fiddly
*At one stage I forgot who had already activated (out of 8 men - how will I track my intended ~25 a side?); placing activation tokens next to each mini would mess up the board big time

Critical thought:
Was all the complication by dice tokens/reactions worthwhile? Was there enough improvement over LOTR:SBG (my "benchmark")?

Can my rules handle the intended number of minis? Possibly reduce maximum forces to a single 12-man lance?

Conclusion:
The basics are sound enough. Perhaps I should do a similar simple "playtest" version to share with the google group with all the unnecessary stuff stripped out like what I used.  

I can probably label Middleheim as a playable beta, albeit a bit rough and buggy. 

14 comments:

  1. This Looks like a mix of SAGA and Infinity :-)

    How about stat cards for tracking activations and other record keeping?

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    Replies
    1. Considered stat cards, but I intended to use more minis (20-25) than that is practical for. I may change my mind and downgrade to 8-12 a side, in which case I'll revisit that idea.

      Not particularly like either SAGA or Infinity; besides reactions of latter which are a lot more limited.

      If I had to define its ancestry: Random dice-pool activation of Bolt Action, changed beyond recognition to addresource management and make leaders matter; d10+stat mechanics akin to Warmachine but can be opposed by d10+stat, rebadged Might-Will-Fate of LOTR:SBG mixed in with ideas from PC RPGs. Add in (eventually) magic (in the usual D&D/WoW schools) and a campaign that attempts to be balanced.

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    2. Oh, and also the cinematic combat and "gruesome kills" concept from SoBH.

      So it's a bit of a mixed bag. Not necessarily my ideal mechanics, but it was more an experiment to see if I could link ideas put forward in blog posts and make it into a game. Since Frostgrave isn't going to do it for me, I decided to put a bit more effort into it and make them playable, pushing them beyond a bunch of design concepts.

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  2. So what was the goal of the game? What were the two sides attempting to accomplish?

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    Replies
    1. "....Blue wins the scenario, having collected 3 loot counters to 1 when I ended the game...."

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    2. Yes. Though it wasn't important as it was not the aspect of the game (the activation) that was being tested.

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    3. Okay, so you were testing out a pool of activation tokens. I believe 7TV does this, with each player getting one token for every two models, and additional tokens for models with the Leader rule (who can give them to nearby models). Might be something to look into it.

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    4. In the playtest thread on the group, we've discussed this. Although units not moving adds friction in a simple way, I'm not keen on units "doing nothing" - it isn't fun. It's fantasy, not historical.

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  3. So the goal of the game was to collect a certain ratio of portable objectives?

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  4. How big a disadvantage did the lone billman get by being outnumbered? Just curious if that was a one-in-a-million die roll or if he had a pretty good chance to pull off killing his opponents.

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    Replies
    1. At the moment I'm simply adding +1 if outnumbered - but I'm considering making it +2 (or allowing a second dice roll/attack).

      The ability for polearms to "reach" from a 2nd rank was very useful. I noticed I was deliberately resolving combats in a particular order to maximise the +1 modifier.

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  5. A loot game! How did you solve the problem of making getting the loot more important than just killing the enemy?

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    Replies
    1. :-/ I didn't.... ....this is a play test of activation mechanics, not balancing forces and victory conditions. I simply added in transportable loot to make things interesting.

      That said, I should do a post on "victory conditions" sometime and explore the subject.

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    2. I think that would be an interesting post. I believe you have touched on the importance of integrated scenarios in the past. I would love to read more on the subject.

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