The Howard Street Batrep #7

Consider the fate of X-Wing, a game introduced in 2012....

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Great piece... the review of alternatives is a excellent reference.

I think Spivey's take on larger scale combat is really more realized in Mayhem, not in Havoc.

The heart of this article is the ever-present and eternal struggle of bad rules with plenty of opponents cycling to good rules with no opponents. At some point I realized, more so with minis games and rpgs than board games, you may not need "good rules" to have a good game. Learning what that meant personally when I spend time playing a tabletop game was pretty important.

I have Spivey's "Battlefield", which attempts to distill the EA Battlefield video game series to the table top. I got some 15mm soldiers and even some 15mm zombies, since it has a small bit on zombie rules. I also spent way too much on some Middle Eastern terrain.

Yep.... some day I'm going to play that.

hotseatgames wrote: I have Spivey's "Battlefield", which attempts to distill the EA Battlefield video game series to the table top. I got some 15mm soldiers and even some 15mm zombies, since it has a small bit on zombie rules. I also spent way too much on some Middle Eastern terrain.

Yep.... some day I'm going to play that.

So...how many games did you get it with an opponent?

Da Bid Dabid wrote: I think Spivey's take on larger scale combat is really more realized in Mayhem, not in Havoc.

The heart of this article is the ever-present and eternal struggle of bad rules with plenty of opponents cycling to good rules with no opponents. At some point I realized, more so with minis games and rpgs than board games, you may not need "good rules" to have a good game. Learning what that meant personally when I spend time playing a tabletop game was pretty important.

I’ll have to take look at Battlefield, though of course I have none of the models for it.

Truly, the return to Warhammer in this rambling review of mine is due to the fact of its inescapability, and the fact that the market forces guiding their rules composition makes them not only a chore to play, but close to degrading. I find myself compareing it to other degradations one endures in order to participate in inessential activities, like paying for cable television, or for a smartphone.

Edit: I'll add Mayhem to the list of should-trys. I love the ideas behind Rogue Planet, his pulp SF skirmish ruleset.

GorillaGrody wrote: So...how many games did you get it with an opponent?

That's a big zero. I have soloed the rules one time. I'll get to it one of these days... the backlog of games I've never gotten the chance to explore is deep.

Fantastic writing as ever.

Star Wars: Legion is an amazing set of rules and it's a shame to see the silence with which it's been greeted. There are various reasons behind it, I think, including:

- We're sick of seeing FFG milk the Star Wars licence for every dollar.
- Star Wars is actually a poor IP for a miniatures game. There's not enough detail, not enough variety, only two factions and the ground battle scenes aren't the pivotal bits of the films.
- There's a tendency to see Legion as aping the success of 40k because it "came after". It's the same mindset that would ignore a Terrinoth miniatures game based on Legion and which ignored the actual Terrinoth game because Terrinoth is bland nonsense aping better fantasy settings.

Can someone do a homebrew so we can play a game that uses GW's miniatures and lore but Legion's rules, please?

The whole "good game" vs opponents to play against deal was something I learnt in the CCG glut of the '90s.
It doesn't matter how good your game is, if no one will play it then its just bits in a box...

Matt Thrower wrote:
Can someone do a homebrew so we can play a game that uses GW's miniatures and lore but Legion's rules, please?

I long ago promised my partner a reboot of Battlelore 2nd Edition, using a 6 x 4 Map and rewritten for Age of Sigmar. We were both very disappointed when they stopped that line.

I think, to add to the case against FFG,is that they're far too willing to throw games under the bus when it doesn't look like they're turning a profit. It's understandable behavior, but it really screwed them when it came time to transitioning into a miniature wargame company, for which unprofitable quixocity and game-state transition and lull is just part of the thing.

I agree. I think you're seeing it with legion, grody, I think that it's undermining the buy in on successive products over time. otoh, GW up and abandons new non-core systems suddenly all the time, so...?

I particularly like the Dragon Rampant's combat actually. That it always rolls 6 or 12 dice mean you always have throw a sizeable number of dice. You can reduce enemy combat capabilities, but units never roll dan 6 dice. Even the most damaged unit is still a threat.

For sci-fi one ruleset that I'm interested in is Ivan Sorensen/Nordic Weasel's Squad Hammer. It's a stupid simple system, with units having hit points, rolling 2d6 vs 6 or 8. Units deal d6 damage (with modifiers), with all units having 7 hit points. PDOC solved with changing the dice type to d3 and modifiers (and probably the usual 2d6 but pick highest). Not ideal, but it works.

You activate 1d6 units per turn (2d6 for bigger games). You can also heal your unit pretty easily. The game practically doesn't care about the number of models you have in a unit.

My ideal PDOC solution would be 5-6 game modifiers that are interesting, and truly different (both mathematically and in application). I don't need 45 rules that do the same tings. SOBH and its friends are plagued with special rules. 2 stats, dozens of special rules.

otoh, GW up and abandons new non-core systems suddenly all the time, so...?

But most of it are already established as one off.

SW Legion faction is just... boring. Who wants to paint white all the time? I just wish they would tone down the special rules and surges (one aspect that I dislike from Descent 2, my all time favorite crawler).