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| Shamelessly stolen from Alex's blog, Epitude Rusk |
ONE WEEK PEOPLE, IT'S ONLY ONE WEEK AWAY! ARE WE READY?!? WHERE'S ALEX, HE HAS ALL THE SCENERY!! CAN I PANIC? NO, DON'T PANIC!! MAYBE A HEALTHY LEVEL OF PANIC IS GOOD?? LIKE WHEN THE GOONIES SEE THE FRATELLIS ON ONE EYED WILLIE'S PIRATE SHIP!! NO, THATS TOO MUCH PANIC!! UH, UH, OKAY, MORE LIKE WHEN SOMEONE ALMOST DISCOVERS THAT HANNAH MONTANA IS HANNAH MONTANA IN THE ORIGINAL DISNEY SERIES, OKAY, COOL, THAT MUCH PANIC!!
It's almost time for us to stop banging on, and on, and on about Critical Engagement; however, that said, it is not quite time, so before I get to the meat of this post, I just have to say...
If you have no plans on Saturday 8th July, come down to London and play some Dropzone Commander with us at Critical Engagement! If you do have plans, cancel them, and make new ones with us!
Right I'm done, thanks for waiting. Ages ago I posted about some scatter terrain I had been working on for the event. Return readers may have noticed that I have absolutely not followed up on my promise to post updates to that article (life is full of broken promises and disappointments, use this as a lesson for the future) as, frankly, I haven't done any work on them due to life, commissions and straight up lazy/forgetfulness.
But, but, but!! I'm happy to say that our Quartermaster Alex has been feverishly working away in the War Vault to produce a seemingly endless line of scatter terrain for us to use at the tournament! With an abundance of based, rusty vehicles it only seems right that I wrote some rules so that they can players can interact with the terrain pieces.
Going into designing these rules I wanted scatter terrain to be important enough to affect the battlefield and cause interaction from players, but not become entirely game changing as a result. I'm happy with the way the rules have come out, which are a blend of building and special movement rules, with some notable exceptions (focus fire works, for instance). They are fragile enough for a player to sneeze at and remove, but also if terrain is not taken into consideration it could hamper an activation; for me, that's perfect.
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| Example of large, impassable Scatter Terrain |
tables with the rules specific to that scatter terrain, in order to make it easier and fairer for the participants of the game. I will also probably cap the amount used per table to around six pieces, so that the battlefields have a taste of the terrain and don't end up 'bloated'.
In a casual game I would toss all sizes of scatter terrain on a board and simply agree with my opponent before any dice were rolled what each piece qualified as. Easy!
With the introduction of board altering pieces like these I would also like to encourage players who have added scatter terrain to their battlefields to make them uneven, and actually make picking a deployment edge or zone relevant. Picking an edge or zone could be added to the first activation roll in missions;
- Player who wins dice-off chooses either a deployment edge or zone or chooses which player activates a battlegroup first.
- The player who lost the dice-off chooses the option which was not selected by the winner.
Now, I'm not saying that if you're playing against a Resistance player you should pack every road with scatter terrain so that their Thunderstorm can't drive anywhere, but at the same time I'm not saying that those giant stupid mobile football pitches shouldn't be gummed up a little if you decide to pick a board edge rather than choose first activation. It's thought provoking, and that's the point.
Let me know what you think and if you would change anything, and even better, if you used them in a game and how they played!
I like them. You thought of interactions we never have, though. Nice work.
ReplyDeleteCameron Blume and I played with scatter a couple of weeks ago and we did this:
Scatter is ignored by vehicle movement, but halves troop movement.
Provides Soft and Body cover
An LZ cannot touch it while landing units
At least, that's how I remember us using them.
Pretty similar to ours then, just with the movement the other way round. The original draft of thr rules were actually bigget than this (I have a habbit of over-explaining in design) and my editor, Mike, chopped then down a bit.
DeleteNice.
ReplyDeleteYou could make the scatter terrain count as Tough to vehicles instead. I believe walkers ignore that penalty so it gives walkers some benefit.
In that vein, it would be nice to add some terrain to each table where skimmers can use their ability also. I think skimmers should be able to overfly scatter terrain without any penalty as they boost to lift up over it.
Also, infantry should be able to go through terrain at no penalty. Most games model infantry as being able to enter and hold dense terrain and it makes sense.
I like the skimmer idea, but as a first try at a tournament we wanted to keep it relatively simple.
DeleteInfantry have no penalty to movement in scatter terrain and gain soft and body cover.
Shooting rules - Can a corrupter fire worms into scatter terrain?
ReplyDeleteIt's not a building, so no. It was silly questions like this that stopped me using the term building as a description for shooting in the first place, bloody Mike suggesting I change it.
DeleteThanks for organising the tournament guys. The different missions played well; good turnout and actually got to articulated rule with the scatter terrain.
ReplyDeleteNo probbers, I'm glad the ST allowed for some interaction!
DeleteThanks, Dan. Interesting rules; I downloaded a copy.
ReplyDeleteWhat you describe for choosing sides OR going first or second is what we've always done here. We try to set up boards that represent a conscious choice that should be considered (or, at least, I do). Not all the time and not drastically different, but for a time I was doing some pretty "different" stuff for tournament tables.
Looking forward to your after action reports from Critical Engagement!
8^D