Thursday 24 July 2014

Making my games work better!

Today's update has two parts. First up is a quick update on my Astra Militarum army list based on my experiences of 7th and the second is a quick list of the changes to the Firefly board game that Will and I will trying out over the weekend to try and bring it up to the fun level of Spartacus and Merchants and Marauders!

Part 1 - Tired of getting my arse kicked!
I have been trying for a while to get the models that I have to work with the new Guard codex and it just isn't working. Between forgetting that my Priests have War Hymns (a huge cock up given it potentially allows me to re-roll to hit and to wound in the first round of combat!) and realising that I need to have a longer range than 24" with the majority of my guns as once I'm in range I get at most two rounds of shooting before my units get pulled apart in combat. With this in mind I've come up with the following list:

Lord Commissar with Carapace Armour, The Blade of Conquest
2 x Priests
6 x Ogryns
7 x Ratlings
Veterans with Carapace Armour, 3 x Melta, Power Fist
Veterans with Carapace Armour, 3 x Plasma
Veterans with Carapace Armour, 3 x Plasma
2 x Scout Sentinels with Multi-laser
2 x Armoured Sentinels with Multi-laser
Vendetta
Wyvern
Leman Russ with Battle cannon, Lascannon
Leman Russ with Eradicator cannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons

My hope is that now that any unit can hold an objective I won't need the fourth unit of Vets that I had and having tried out the Primaris Psyker it just wasn't worth the time trying to get off a power to re-roll some shots when I can pump the points into a battle tank. Also adding in the Ratlings will hopefully give me a unit that can draw away part of the enemy force by going to ground and forcing them to assault (yeah it sucks to be them but there are always more Ratlings!). The Eradicator is for taking out things like Plaguebearers in Terrain and Orks with a Kustom Forcefield. All I need to pick up at the weekend is a Wyvern, a Kromlech Turret and possibly a few more Mantic Forge Fathers.

Part 2 - Aiming to misbehave!
Will and I have enjoyed playing Firefly since I picked it up at Essen last October (I know I keep dropping that in but it was so much fun!) but we have found it doesn't have the same build up of tension that similar games have (Spartacus and Merchants & Marauders both have a build and exploit feel that creates a type of face off or race in the last few turns). So we have been fiddling with the rules to see what we think would make a more interesting end game for us. Here are our initial thoughts:

1 - Reduce the starting money to 1,000 credits
2 - Players may only perform each action once per turn
3 - Players may attempt to board opponents ships without the need for a piracy job (in fact I'm not going to bother with the Piracy deck as it feels redundant) following the normal rules for gaining access to the ship.
4 - If a player successfully boards an opponents ship they choose either Fighting, Negotiation or Mechanic skill for both players to use in the showdown. The winner of the showdown may take either 500 credits or two spaces worth of Fuel, Parts, Cargo, Contraband, Passengers or Fugitives that are not in the losers Stash. In addition, they will have the option of also carrying out the following action dependent on the skill used in the showdown.
Fighting - the winner may kill one crew member on the losers ship.
Negotiation - the winner may recruit one member of the losers crew at no cost.
Mechanic - the winner may damage the engines of the losers ship stopping it from performing a full burn until the player uses one action and two parts to fix it.
The winner may make an Evade move with their ship.
5 - Shuffle the Alliance and Reaver reshuffle cards straight into the deck at the start of the game.

Hopefully this will help to give the payers a better way to interact and create more 'stand up dice roll' moments and stop players from feeling powerless towards the end of the games. 

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