On Friday we ran a large game of our Weird World War II setting, to test out the final adjustments and see if it balances out. We had two 300 pt armies of Germans on one side, being Hydra and the Werewolf force against 300 pts of the BLA and 225 pts of Polish. This would be a more urban battle.
The Polish, at left, had a great deal of captured gear: a KV-85 & T34 tank, three Panzer 38-T's and a couple German transports. The Belgians brought their newest device: an allied British Firefly outfitted to be a walker. And of course, plenty of monkeys and apes!
The wolf troops set up in the graveyard, probably hoping to dig for bones before the conflict erupted...
That jagdpanzer was going to be trouble. And further back in the field the forces of Hydra were arrayed.
That jagdpanzer was going to be trouble. And further back in the field the forces of Hydra were arrayed.
The jagdpanzer & panzer IV make short work of the thinnly armored 38-T's. But not before a Hydra transport was destroyed.
The Polish advance and take up position in cover of a ruined building and a wall.
The Panzer IV is destroyed from a long shot by the KV. meanwhile the wolves advance.
The Firefly rounds the corner and gets one shot on the Jagdpanzer: fails to penetrate it's armor, and will be destroyed for waking the sleeping cat next turn.
The Alpha werewolf leaps from the ruined building onto the T-34 and rips it apart.
He's a dangerous fellow, so don't tease him about his lederhosen.
His mommy dresses him this way. Says he's a good boy.
Who's a good boy? You are! Oh yes you are!
This was before Europe had leash laws.
What we learned: Regeneration was too good and too inexpensive. It would effectively make immortal super heroes for any who took it. That is all fixed now. Still might be a bargain, but since there are ways around it, it might be just about right now. We made the cost dependent on the mitigation of the character, rather than a straight value. Reasonable since a character with 1 hit point won't benefit from regeneration as much as a character with 5 hit points.
This is a problem in a lot of wargames that try to have modular or build them yourself characters.
A classic example of this problem is Warhammer Fantasy Battle. For as long as I can remember there has been the Frostblade magic sword: 100 points for a sword that is completely normal except for the attribute that a single unsaved wound will kill anything. '100 points' is a fixed value, but the sword isn't the same value in the hands of all characters. Give it to a goblin hero and you'll still have a poor chance of killing a dwarf hero. But give that same sword to a chaos lord and you can reasonably expect to be killing dragons. So why does it cost the same points? A 3+ ward save is worth a lot less on a skaven hero than a vampire lord, etc.
One of the reasons such games are hopelessly unbalanced.
I'm glad we've been trying to aim for a real balance. It isn't easy, but the results are worth it.
5 comments:
Great work, points systems are very hard to get right. I like the idea of limited options for a character type rather than points. This way you get to customize your models but it doesn't get either broken or bland.
Thanks Spacejacker!
That is pretty much what we've been aiming for: options limited by tier of the character, with most abilities being single-use abilities that you can buy multiples of, limited in number by the tier of the character. Points values for traits and skills are assigned so that someone doesn't feel they must max out every character.. they can make them more limited or weaker if it fits the character concept and then the extra points saved can be put into more conventional army.
Some great stuff there! I'm looking fwd to getting back into my Weird WW2 Armies once we finis our Dark Ages diversion. That should be about Feb!
Who won?
Should be fun to see what you do with weird wwII Paul! Your SAGA games have only made me want to play that even more.. have to find a way to convince people around here to play it.
Bill: hard to say. discussing regeneration delayed us a long time, so we had to stop since the store was closing soon. Most vehicles were destroyed but only a couple infantry squads out of action. Could have gone either way really. These big multi-player games take a long time to play out, but I expect they'll speed up once the rules are second nature.
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