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.