Game Design: Part 6; Balance

Balance is very important to a game as without it, the game collapses as it is one-sided.  There are two important types of balance to consider when making a game, the first is game wide balance and the second is internal army balance.
Both of these are very important in making a good game without players having to field one particular list to be competitive or have dead ground within the game for example a unit that's good but there's another available that does just as good a job or better for the same cost of resources or less in game.

There are several different types of balance that can be applied to these but I am going to focus on perfect balance and perfect imbalance and what they mean in the context of whole game balance and internal army balance.
Perfect balance refers to a situation where all pieces of the game are of an identical power level where the restrictions placed on the more powerful abilities bring them to be equal to the least powerful.  This kind of balance generally leads to a symmetric game like chess as part of the perfect balance system means that the armies are pre-chosen and often randomness is removed from the game.  This creates a game in which no player can break the game through choosing certain pieces repeatedly and where skill is the overriding factor to who wins but this can have downsides, taking chess as an example both players have an identical set of pieces that move in controlled ways.  This is a game that can't be broken but as players improve they stop just being able to play the game and have to start memorising loads of different plays, move combinations etc and it becomes more of a memory game than the abstract wargame that it is, with players not getting to develop new plays untill they reach the top tiers of the game.

Perfect imbalance is very different to perfect balance, this method balances the game by having pieces of varying power levels and ability sets providing players with choices of what to take to solve problems they may come up against.  This method is the most common in tabletop wargames as it allows designers to do more with their game.  Perfect imbalance works by giving players multiple choices for problem solving within the game mechanics and piece selection rather than having problem X only being solvable by solution Y.  The balancing for this is done by assigning each piece a score based on its power and utility for players to create a force with equal totals of this score, this is the points system common to many wargames.

Game wide balance means that all the army lists you can pick from are if equal power with options to deal with any type of threat in game. This allows players to pick the army they like best for any reason, such as play style or ascetic, and always be able to be competitive with it.
Internal army balance means that all choices in an army list should be equally viable, which normally means that each has its own niche in the army so there's no instance of unit A is good at tank hunting but unit B is even better for the same points.
To get these two into the game is hard as it will come through play testing which will give a small number of data points to balance with whereas when it's release there could be 1000s of players trying to break the balance.

My thoughts would be to get as much information as possible even if it's after release of the game as then when/if it comes to updating to a new version then your players will have found a lot of the imbalances in the system.

All Hail Mars! Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarii Rangers and Vanguard Kit

On the 5/4/15 I got my first wave of skitarii for my army, which was three boxes of the infantry.  These models are great and really easy to put together coming in 7 pieces, legs, torso front, torso back, two arms, head and backpack.  There are 5 different poses of leg, torso, arms that could be put together in combination to give lots of different overall poses.  There are two different sets of heads to make either hooded rangers or helmeted vanguard plus the two sets of guns for them and one of each special weapon.  The squad leader has all the options for pistols and melee weapon plus some special heads.  The only thing I think the box is missing is more of the special weapons as a squad of 10 can take three, which can be three of the same.

Painting-wise they are very nice models with loads of nice details all over.  The standard martian paint scheme of red and silver really looks good on these models and the martian ironearth paint makes for an excellent base.  My first squad of rangers are below to show how they look painted.

I also recently had a chance to play a small 750 point maelstrom game with them as well and these new units are good, I was only using the rules from the white dwarf as it was before the codex release so I wasn't able to use the doctrine imperatives.  The rangers work really well as back field units with their extra range over most standard units and their ability to pick you special weapons and characters being very useful, while the vanguard proved their worth as a support unit for dragoons, allowing them to take down a chaos lord easier by lowering toughness.  The additional rules available for the codex allows you to improve either BS or WS (sometimes to the detriment of the other) and if using the special formations and battle-forged force organisation chart gives them crusader and scout (without outflank).

This is just a little look at them, I'll do a more in-depth tactica and review when I've played more games with larger forces.  I will also do posts on the other types of units when I have made them and had a chance to play a game with them.

All Hail Mars!: Adeptus Mechanicus: First Look

This week sees Games Workshop releasing the first waves of releases for a new factions for 40k, the Adeptus Mechanicus, which are one of my favourite in the fluff and something I've been looking forward too since their were rumours about this release several months back. The Mechanicus are a part of the Imperium of Mankind, basically being scientists and engineers who are responsible for the production of all technology, regulation of technology and seeking out lost technology but are very much not like modern scientists and engineers.  The members of the Mechanicus worship the Machine God and the Emperor as the Omnissiah (its physical manifestation), and believe that a small part of it lives in each piece of technology called a machine spirit.

The Mechanicus have been missing from Warhammer 40k for a long time, despite their reasonably regular appearance in the background material and novels.  This weeks sees two kits up for pre-order with their rules in White Dwarf, one infantry box and one walker box which both contain two different choices of what to make with it.  With the rules out in White Dwarf yesterday, I though I'd have a quick look at the rules for the infantry and give my opinion on what they're like.

The first unit is the Skitarii Rangers, they are consummate hunters who stalk their prey until its destruction has been achieved.  Squads start at 5 and can go up to 10. They have a profile similar to scions with 4+ armour, a 6+ feel no pain, relentless and move through cover.  Their weapons are 30" range S4 ap4 rapid fire with precision shot, so they're very good at picking out things like heavy weapons etc.  The can also take special weapons, 2 normally or 3 if the squad is ten models.  The special weapons they can take is an arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver, which I'll have a look at later as they're shared with the other squad.  The rangers look like your back field objective holders who are very good at taking the teeth from guard veteran squads etc or killing anything space marine scout or lower.

The other unit the infantry box makes is the Skitarii Vanguard, who are rad-troopers equipped to fight in the worst environments using radiation as their weaponry.  They have the same profile as the rangers but swap move through cover for Rad-Saturation, which reduces the toughness of models locked in combat with the vanguard (to a min of 1).  This helps to make up for their strength 3 in combat but you'll still need to watch out as you're ws 3, t 3 and i 1 so you're outclassed by space marines in a one on one fight.  The vanguard have radium carbines as their weapon which is a 18" s3 ap5 assault 3 weapon with another interesting rule called rad poisoning which means that on to wound rolls 6s auto wound and cause 2 wounds rather than 1.  They can also take the same special weapons as the rangers in the same proportions.  My take on the vanguard is they're your assault/close shooting troops who are good anti-horde and can have a go at high toughness monstrous creatures with their auto wound on 6s causing two wounds.  The special weapons can really help with squad more than the rangers as they have to get closer so get more use out of the arc rifle and plasma caliver.

The special weapons these guys have access to are interesting and unique to their faction and they are the arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver.  The arc rifle is where the majority of these guys anti-tank will come from its a 24" range s 6 ap5 rapid fire weapon but the best part it is haywire so will easily strip hull points from any vehicle especially if you get within 12" for two shots.  The transuranic arquesbus is a 60" ap 3 heavy 1 sniper with armour bane so my thoughts are that it fits best with the rangers, improving their ability to hurt models with a better save and give them some anti-tank capability plus with reltenless you don't have to worry about moving with it.  The plasma caliver is your terminator killer as an 18" s7 ap 2 assault 3 gets hot weapon so it can do some tank busting too but you need to be careful as three shots give more chance of killing yourself with it.  The way I'm thinking of using the special weapons would be mostly in smaller squads so not to make them too expensive as the arquesbus and the caliver are equivalent to ~3 and ~4 vanguards in price so quickly stack up and bring your model count down.

These are my current thoughts on the new skitarii infantry, I should have a smilar post on the walkers coming soon.  What do you think of them? Post in the comments below.

Dropzone Commander: Jump-Off Point

Hi all, recently I have been looking at dropzone commander which is a game that i have glanced at in the past and even bought the starter set for but never done anything with this.  I have been motivated by the pictures that have started to appear of the next wave of released coming out of  Hawk wargames, so I'm going to start to actually build-up a force and play some games so I thought I'd start a series on this.  This first post will give an overview the game world and the factions currently available.

The setting for the game is a "hard sci-fi" one, so theres no space wizards rather lots of cool future-tech.  Its set in the year 2670 where mankind has colonies the stars initially with the help of an alien race called the shaltari, who showed them a set of earth-like habitable worlds and discovered on their own a set of more hostile world with large amounts of resources.  The humans and shaltari fall out after it comes to light that the shaltari want to use humans in foot soldiers in their war against another shaltari faction.
Some time after this an alien device falls to Earth, a White Sphere made of unknown material that seems to defy measurement.  This alien device disappear, seemingly liberating itself after being connected to the internet and broadcasts a warning that something is coming and that humanity should run.  In the message a date and place are given where all those who wish to should meet it and on that date a large rag-tag fleet of ex-military and civilian vessels assembles to do what the White Sphere told them to.  The military opposes them and after a destructive battle the military fleet is left battered and the others leave eventually forming the Post Human Republic (PHR).  Two days later the Scourge, an advanced aggressive alein race, show up over humanity's best world and invade them shattering humanity's defences, though the majority are captured or killed, some people are able to flee to the frontier worlds and proceed to make sure they can't be followed.  The survivors form a new government the United Colonies of Man (UCM) and rebuild and prepare for retribution.
The game picks up on the opening day of Mankind's reconquest letting you take any of the factions and fight to decide the fate of humanity's future.

Currently there are five playable factions, the UCM, the Scourge, the PHR, the Shaltari, and the Resistance.

The UCM are a faction that has no particular weaknesses with units to cover all bases without being to expensive but their units are never as effective as other faction's specialists.  The area in which the UCM do excel is their fast moving aircraft, they have access to two different fast movers with one being a dedicated interceptor and the other a heavy bomber.

The Scourge are the primary antagonists in the Dropzone story and are a parasitic alien race that invade humanity's world in search of hosts.  In game scourge are a very fast, short ranged, high powered army but they lack long ranged fire-power on a large scale and are in general quite lightly armoured.

The PHR are cyborg who descended from the humans who left before the Scourge invasion, in game they have lots of hard-hitting and heavily armoured units as well as lots of specialist units but they are also the slowest faction, going no where fast on the battlefield without using drop-ship relying on them more than any other faction to get around the battlefield.

Th Shaltari are an alien race who showed humanity the majority of its best world and are the most advanced race in the game.  They employ anti-gravity tanks as well as massive war-walkers to dominate the battlefield.  They are also the only faction not to use drop-ships per say, rather they use teleportation gates and this allows them to move across the battlefield in a unique manner going from one gate to another and therefore moving across the battlefield the fastest of all.  On the battlefield their units are either fast with weak armour or slower with high armour but all have energy shields which give them usually a 5+ save against all damage, this movement capability and saves makes they a tricksy race with lots of movement shenanigans to pull.

The last faction, the human Resistance are a rag-tag bunch of survivors of the Scourge invasion who use a mix of old military equipment and converted civilian tech.  They are the only faction that don't have passive countermeasures on all their vehicles and are often more fragile than the other races but these vehicles are cheap, very cheap so if you wanted to run a horde of vehicles then this is the faction for you.  While their civilian technicals are cheap and flimsy, the old military tech is very survivable with high armour and good damage points.  Resistance are also unique in that there are two sub-factions, allied and feral, where the allied are those that help the UCM and get special praetorians and archangels to add to the army while the feral are those that oppose and get berserker infantry and the barrel bombers.


I hope this overview is helpful, I may do more in-depth faction reviews as I play the game more and also as I play I'll do things like review the game mechanics and some tactics that I learn.

Marshalling a Legion: Part 1; Starting off

Hi all, I recently attended the Horus Heresy Weekender and have started off a new project to build up a new Space Marine Legion army.  For my Legion I've picked Imperial Fists as they're going to be a nice challenge to paint plus their rules are good for playing them in game.  So I thought as I progress this force I'd post up a series to link with that.

This first one I'm going to talk a little about starting off a Horus Heresy (or 30k) army using the Forge World books available, so this first one I'll discuss a bit about picking your army and then show you the first mini that I painted for my force.

The first step in starting 30k is to pick your legion, which has three major ways to choose from what I've done and from hearing how other people have chosen.  The first is to go with one that has captured your imagination in the novels and background fluff, which is how I chose my original legion which was Iron Hands following reading novels and short stories like Fulgrim, Riven etc.  The second is to look at the colour schemes and chose one which you'd like to paint, either because you like the colour or want a challenge such as painting white or yellow.  The final way is to look at the rules and playstyles of the legion and pick one that suits your tastes.

I picked Imperial Fists as my legion for the project because I wanted to paint yellow as it can be a hard colour to paint and I was planning to make a zone mortalis themed force of infantry and dreads suited to corridor fighting which the Imperial Fist rules and units do well at.  So as my army progresses I will post updates on my painting, how it plays gaming-wise etc and as such below is the first model I did for the army which is Captain Alexis Polux.

Hope you've enjoyed this little blog post about a personal project and keep your eye out for more updates on the Imperial Fists.

Horus Heresy Weekender 2015

This weekend just gone (7-8th Feb) was the Horus Heresy Weekender and I was lucky enough to go so I though I'd share some photos of what I saw and some notes on what I heard.

So for the seminars I went to the Book 4: Conquest seminar, which though its been out a while it was still good to got to and listen.

The book focuses on Horus' initial consolidation of a power base following Istavaan having lost the element of surprise with a lot of the brunt of the fighting for the loyalists falling on the non space marine forces such as the solar auxillia and mechanicum though fragments of the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Imperial Fists also appear.  For the traitors the Sons of Horus and Deathguard are leading what was dubbed "Dark Compliances".

In the book there is a full campaign system for use in the Horus Heresy for 2+ players, which is very customisable with character progression and relics of the Dark Age of Technology.

Also in the book is the Solar Auxillia army list, who are the elite of the Imperial Army and formed in an exploratory fashion ready to fight in hostile environments and in the void. Additionally a knight household army list is included where the force organization slots for the knights are defined by the pilot then you give them a suit of knight armour most suited to his role.

In the Q&A after there where a couple of interesting ones which area as follows:

The first was the the Legio Tempestus (who are loyalists in Mechanicum) are trator in this book?

The Answer was that this was always in the fluff and the titans in the book are more loyal to Horus having been at the front of the crusade, and ot was laos said that they are the Tzeenchian titans when it comes to Terra.

The New Models seminar was the next one I attended, where the new models shown off are hoping to be released by or at the Warhammer World Grand Opening in May.  I wasnt in a good position for this seminar ( I was having to stand at the back) so for photos from this you'll need to look elsewhere but if they were in the cabinets there will be pic of the real models rather than of the slide show.

The first shown was the new Solar Auxillia command section, which seemed to have both the command squad and the Lord commander models as part of it.

Next us was the Magos-Enginseer, which I'd think is for both mechanicum and solar auxillia and then a new version of the Tanator called the calix which has a weapon called a gravity hammer as well as a dark lance style massive cannon.

The largest model shown was in the 3D CAD drawing stage which is a new mechanicum lord of war, an Ordinatus which is a massive track mounted cannon with inbuilt void shields.
There are also two new tiles coming out, one called the Primus Redoubt, which mounts what looked like a warhound weapon and a Thunderhawk landing pad, which are just about to go into production.

There are also some new upgrade packs, a raven guard accessories pack, a mk6 command upgrade pack and a ultramarines accessories pack on the way.

Dynat, an alpha legion character from Extermination was also shown along with Samus who will be appearing in book 5.

A new space marine flyer, the Xiphon Interceptor is coming in the new book too, which I got to look at the rules and it looks to be very nasty against other flyers, and also previewed was a new weapon option for the Deredeo, a plasma carronade.

The biggest reveal of the session was the Solar Pattern Stormbird, which is still a work in progress but it larger than a Thunderhawk being able to fit a rhino in the internal area of the model and down the back ramp.

The final seminar I attended was on Book 5: Tempest, which is planned for Spring 2015 and hoping to have some advance copies at the Warhammer World Grand Opening.
In the book are going to be the Ultramarines, Word Bearers, Mechanicum, Imperial Militia, Warp Cults, Knights and Titans.
It focuses on the Word Bearer's assault on Calth, not including the underworld war or the shadow crusade and it contains the background on the Ultramarine Legion, more for the Word Bearers and for the Knight households and Titan legion at Calth.  It also contains a campaign to play out the final hours of Calth.
In the book are army lists for the Imperial Militia and War cults which are the normal human troops of the imperial army and the word bearers hangers-on who will rely on numbers above all else.
There will also be new legion units in the book for all legions plus specific units for Ultramarines and Word Bearers, with new characters being Telemarcus, the dreadnought who fell from the sky, Ventanus plus updates for the word bearers characters and potential one new character as yet unmentioned.
They also previewed the next primarch in this seminar, who is Robute Guilliman I think sculpted by Simon Egan (but I may be wrong).

They also said briefly that the next book will detail the Shadow Crusade and maybe the Underworld war on Calth, then the following book will hopefully be Calth.

So this is my brief summary of the Heresy Weekender, hope it was informative.  If you have questions put them in the comment and I may be able to answer them.

Game Design: A Quick Update on My Game Design

Hi all, I hope you've been enjoying my musings and theorising on game design.  I haven't got another topic for the normal posts at the moment but I'm trying to think up a good topic to discuss so in the mean time I thought I'd say something about the game I'm designing.

I have in previous post mentioned that I was going to do a 1:72 scale, battle sized WW2 game but recently I've decided to make some significant changes to this.  My game is now going to be a fantasy game as I've been having lots of good ideas to populate my "world" with another reason being that I lack sufficient knowledge about the second world war to make the game fit the background.  For my new setting I am fully designing the "world" which gives me scope to fit any rules that I think are particularly good or if i have a good background idea to work it into the rules rather than trying to fit into a pre-defined framework.

Alongside this change in setting I am going to change the size of the game so not to over extend myself and thinking a bit towards if I were to publish and produce the game to something more realistically achievable, so rather than be a battle sized game it will be scale down to a skirmish/large skirmish game that has the potential to be made to upscale to a larger size.

I've chosen a fantasy setting as I find writing for a fantasy setting easier than a sci-fi one despite (or perhaps because of) being a scientist myself.  The more "medieval" style of fighting will also allow for some characterful rules for fighting in different formations as well as the use of some common fantasy races with some personalised twists to their usual background and feel.  This means there will be the usual elves and dwarves but perhaps not as you'd expect.

So this is a little bit about my game, I am currently in the process of writing both the rules and background for it so I will hopefully be able to put some some previews for you all to read.