Hey guys.
The Grey Knights vs. Khorne Daemons campaign will be available soon as will a few quick missions starring the two. For now, Follow the link below and download the updated rules pack in pdf.
http://spacehulkmissions.blogspot.co...ing-rules.html
Comments, questions and ideas welcomed, considered, tested and probably thrown away. These rules work well. I am looking for valid concerns though. I want these rules to be as tight as possible.
This is great, thank you so much for contributing to the game. Now I gotta get some Daemons!
Yeah you do! I'm intending to do something similar with Slaanesh somewhere down the line.
In the meantime, try out the Grey Knight vs Khorne Daemons mission "Suicide Run" by downloading the rules pack and clicking on the new link to the mission at http://spacehulkmissions.blogspot.co...ing-rules.html
Last edited by zerodemon; 12-09-2011 at 16:45.
I like it but few things should be explained further.
Warp rift tokens. Can you use abilities 4 and 6 multiple times? Do these abilities reduce the amount of warp rift tokens you have?
Herald is very powerful and it is first available ability to use. Shouldn't it come later or is its purpose to give a fighting chance?
Flesh hounds are 25x50mm so how do they move? Are they similar to doom boardgame movement?
Jugger with rider comes with a round 60mm or square 50mm base. Those don't fit in hulk. Whats your solution?
---
I wanted to know the combat odds so I calculated them. More on that later, few other issues came up.
Problem 1a: Marine guard and Bloodletter parry. Which one goes first? If guard first then it is useless because of BL parry.
Problem 1b: Marine boosts his attack with psi points and BL parries. Which one goes first? If marine first boosts 5 to 7 then BL parries that to 1 + 2 = 3?
Proposed solution: Marine always has the advantage so the Bloodletter always parry first then marine uses guard and/or psi boost.
Problem 2: Parry vs parry.
Proposed solution: They cancel each other, no one parries.
---
Combat odds - Sword vs Staff
Term Win - Draw ----- Term Lose
28.082401 24.746200 47.171399 | Sword 2+0
23.510200 18.015200 58.474600 | Staff 2+0, Block, BL Parry
As you can see staff sucks. Maybe give it one extra range like the halberd?
Do you use detonate for the hammer?
See updated rules pack for FAQ on the above concerns.
Last edited by zerodemon; 24-09-2011 at 02:22. Reason: clarification
New version of rules pack with FAQ added.
http://spacehulkmissions.blogspot.com
You still could expand on parry vs parry on the part who parries first? Attacker or defender? If first player decides not to parry he can't change his mind after second player decides his parry.
I had a brief chat with another space hulk cultist and we raised a question will it be better to use only one of the warp rift token trackers. It seems if you divide your tokens you won't be as strong as if you would concentrate on one.
Daemons win if he gets 10 tokens on warp rift tracker. This seems quite easy victory condition and makes me wonder why would I put tokens on the other track considering psi pool max is 15 so losing few hardly makes a difference. To me it would seem GK needs to save his psi points to combat crazy parry daemons so he can't afford to prevent warp rift tokens. Lets assume both players hit a standstill for a few turns and on turn 7 GK player gets moving again with haste and focuses his psi points on one guy trying to get to his objective and rest of his squad is sacrificed so the daemon player gets 3-4 warp rift tokens and wins unless GK player prevents this but he can't afford to lose any psi points because if he does he will surely lose in close combat.
I will be done painting my plastic GKs soon and I will be testing your rules then and see whats what.
You could focus all of your attentions on to one of the two trackers. Building psi points in the early part of the game is crucial. Reducing your reserve is foolish. The point is that the longest that the game can last is 25 turns. It forces haste on to your movement and (trust me) the rules ensure that you will want to keep those psi-points. You will be forced to make the hard choice as to whether you will sacrifice your psi reserves or increase the difficulty of the game.
Dividing your tokens is fundamental to the Gren Knight squads survival. If you focus on only one, you will lose.
None of the Grey Knight missions are short, many of them rely on cooperation and none of them allow you the luxury of focussing your attentions on one guy.. You will see soon enough. They add significant challenges to the existing rules. There are no "six turns and done" missions like Suicide Mission. There is no easy way out. There is no "I'll put all of my eggs in one basket." That wouldn't make a significant tactical challenge.
As I said in the updated document, both players choose if they will parry and roll at the same time. There is no "who rolls first."
Also, I made a mistake above. Parry comes first, then guard.
I understood what you said first time. Both players roll at the same time but before that they will have to choose whether to use parry or not. Who chooses first? They can't just choose at the same time unless you write your answer on paper or something stupid like that.Originally Posted by zerodemon
If you let players dynamically change their parry decision, this kind of thing is bound to happen. Lets pretend there is a tie of 4. PlayerA decides not to parry but playerB wants to parry so A wants now parry too. But then B says if you're gonna parry I'm not going to and then A changes his mind again... this goes on forever. So attacker should choose first and then defender, no changing your decision. Maybe I am overthinking this
Not a problem we've encountered here and we have a 6 person play-testing team. That said, if you imagine it will be an issue I will forward the concern to the team and see what we come out with. You should try playing the mission Suicide Run before any further critique though.
Plastic GKs are almost done so I was converting rules to Tyranids since I don't have any Daemons.
One problem in rules: If the rift tracker is ever filled, then the game ends with a Grey Knight loss.
But there are 3 trackers, 2 of which are called rift trackers, GK psi point tracker, Warp Rift tracker and Khornate Rift tracker so which one is it?
I'm guessing it is the Khornate one but just checking to be sure.
@svr There is only one kind of rift tracker. It is a Khornate Warp Rift Tracker. There are only two trackers. The Grey Knights Psi-point tracker and the Khornate Warp Rift Tracker.
When I refer to the Warp Rift Tracker or the Khornate Rift Tracker or, indeed, the Rift Tracker, I am always referring to the Khornate Warp Rift Tracker. There is one warp rift. Only one. No more than one.
Before responding to this, I had four of my friends read through this thread. They all uniformly agree that while a couple of your questions so far have been valid, in many cases the solutions are already explained or painfully obvious.
I would ask again that you keep critique to yourself unless you are able to playtest the rules as intended (ie Grey Knights vs. Daemons.)
I'm off to talk to a brick wall now.
Last edited by zerodemon; 08-10-2011 at 06:07.
I'm genuinely interested in your ruleset and I'm not trying to bash your work here. But I can't help myself if your rules have a lot of holes. Clearly it is still work in progress but if you release it to public be prepared for good and bad.
I don't know what sort of playtesters you have but usually competitive players will bend every rule to their way if possible like your parry vs parry rule which is ridiculous. Thats why the obvious question(s).
Don't get me wrong, some of your questions have been good. The parry vs. parry concern is an odd situation. The person with the lower roll will always choose to parry, meaning the higher roller then has a choice whether to parry also. Par example, a roll of 6,4 vs a roll of 5,4,2. The daemon player will obviously opt to parry, no matter what. It is then a choice of whether the GK player would opt to also parry the daemon players 5. Of course he would because he only has a 1/6 chance of rolling the 6 again and he'd like to lower the daemon players 5 so that if he rolls badly, he has a 2/3 chance of scoring a draw. Both players are locked in to this decision because they have to roll at the same time. The daemon player wouldn't opt to not parry at this point, since doing so would guarantee his loss as the grey knight player would counter by not forcing the daemon to reroll.
If it helps you, the lower roller must always opt to parry first. In the case of a draw, the daemon player must opt whether to parry first. Once they have opted to parry, they can't change their mind.
We played a game of Suicide Mission+ and we both had mixed feelings. It seems good and fun but getting 10 warp rift tokens and winning instantly is a big downer. Whats your reasoning for this? Why would anyone put any tokens on psi point tracker if you just get 10 on the warp rift tracker and then win while getting powerful units to kill GKs and as a result win even faster. I would remove this instant win BS. Put time limits in missions, not in basic ruleset.
Does psycannon and psilencer have overwatch, sustained fire, move&fire or jam? You listed few options but considering Assault Cannon can do pretty much everything so shouldn't these other heavy weapons be powerful too?
Halberd range was a puzzle. Basically it gives you +1 range. Do you count range using adjacent squares or diagonally?
Can the halberd attack diagonally or just two squares directly in front?
Does guard work for halberd's free attack?
Flesh Hound seemed lackluster, there was one time where the daemon player wanted to use it but then looked at its stats again and said it sucks and made bloodletters instead. We agreed that it is only good for sneaky flanking attacks but since you can only make it from 2 size blips and you only have 4 of those in total of 22 blips. Maybe it should be given parry?
Last edited by svr; 09-10-2011 at 15:33.
1. The Grey Knight Player decides where the tokens go. This is why I state that the token is placed by the Grey Knight player in the manual. You are assuming the Daemon player places the tokens.
2. Flesh Hounds are very tough useful when used properly. Their high speed should be used for outflanking, as you have said. It is a tactical choice in certain circumstances. They will not be given parry.
3. Both the Psilencer and Psycannon may use overwatch. The Psycannon may move and fire. None of these weapons suffer from jamming.
4. The use of the halberd allows the Grey Knight player to attack in his forward arc up to one square away. This is best demonstrated as a diagram, where ^ is the Grey Knight and X represents the squares he can attack inside.
-xxx-
-xxx-
--^--
Guard can be used for these attacks.
Looks like both of us here read the token part wrong. Maybe information overload. But to our defense the written rules could be streamlined a bit. Anyway that changes a lot in my approach but I'm still not convinced of the instant victory condition.
Flesh Hounds are good in that very specific flanking situtation but their playtime is cut considerably by size 2 blips. How about allow to make them from 1 blips once you get that '1 blip=2 bloodletters' upgrade. And allow them from 3 blips and one bloodletter as extra.
We liked the Suicide Mission+ but another thing came up. When you cleanse the rooms it says "use any and all of his remaining AP and 2 psi-points to do so.". Is it possible to use 0 AP? We used 1 as minimum because 0 doesn't sound like space hulk.
Do you consider your rules final or are you still tweaking?
We are tweaking. The rules aren't on their final iteration. We're on a constant rewrite at the moment until we feel it is perfect. Little details are changed every weekend as we playtest the first three missions of the campaign to their breaking points. We won't be making any more changes to the way the daemons operate as types. We're all very happy with each kind of daemon as they are. The Flesh Hounds are meant to be rare for very good reason. Suicide Mission + isn't their forte, but once you play the mission "The Hunt" which will be coming in Mission Pack 1, you'll understand why they are so dangerous.
It is possible to use 0AP for the purposes of this mission. The intention is that once a marine has used his psychic action he is unable to continue his movement in any way.
The instant victory condition is also non-negotiable. The game is meant to be hard and each mission has a 25 turn limit (15 psi-points and 10 Warp Rift points) and that is generous, since you can spend psi-points to extend the game further. Many missions start with the Warp Rift Tracker already some of the way full and/or the psi-tracker depleted to some degree. However, these are house rules. If you feel you'd like to do it a different way, obviously you should feel free.
What you are saying is you are designing these rules around few specific missions and they propably don't work out well with existing missions. Thats a shame if it is going to be this way. Maybe you could make set of compatibility options like 1 extra blip per turn or something like that.
Flesh Hounds are so rare that when you need one you propably can't have one because of low amount of size 2 blips.
We played one game with the right rules and it was very different experience. One more issue came up with the halberd and its free attack. If an enemy steps infront of a halberd GK and he goes into guard, can he still make his free attack? We did it like it is in original rules, if you are on overwatch and can take a shot but you want to on guard instead, in this scenario you can only make one action, not both.
I'm looking forward to finalized rules, got an ETA?
These rules are designed to work with specific missions and not with the existing ones. We found that as long as your are using Grey Knights vs. Daemons and the warp rift tracker, the Grey Knights still work in most of the missions from the Space Hulk Mission Book. Like I said earlier, Genestealers are too comparatively weak to go up against Grey Knights in their existing form without giving them some kind of statistical boost. I'm not a fan of doing this as it is, but for the sake of playtesting we did run it through a few times using different formats.
If you really want to run Grey Knights vs. Genestealers, I suggest using the following options.
One Broodlord is available in every mission (except Suicide Mission)
Beta Strain Genestealers (armoured) give -1 to all shooting attacks (to a maximum of a 6+.) These are available whenever a "2" counter is revealed in every mission.
Ymgarl Genestealers act as command conduits, granting the Genestealer player D3 CP a turn for each Ymgarl Genestealer on the board. May be revealed with any "1" counter. Maximum of 2 per mission.
Gamma Strain Genestealer (scything talons) They roll +1 attack dice and have 7AP a turn. Like Beta Strains, they are available whenever you draw a "2" token.
These are rough and ready rules. They add a little more balance to the game between 'Stealers and knights. Adding +1 token per turn is all well and good, but the majority of the time, the Grey Knights still wipe the floor with the 'Stealers. Even with the above additions, the ball is still very much in the Grey Knight court.
We are working on revised rules for the halberd as it throws up many difficult clashes in terms of what is or isn't allowed. For the purposes of your issue, it is only possible to make one action per movement point the enemy makes. This means that if you want to go on guard at the moment where your enemy reaches the square one space from yourself, you lose your free attack. I'd suggest going on guard earlier.
I take is the issue arises as you want to switch from overwatch to guard at the last possible moment so you have more chance of not getting killed. For the sake of ease, here are the permissible spaces to make this action without losing your free attack.
o represents the permitted spaces while ^ represents the Grey Knight.
o
o
x
o
^
You may EITHER take any action permitted by your use of CP as per the standard rules OR make your free attack. The actions you take instead of your free attack still cost CP.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote