New Army idea: Chi'in Empire

[Karasu]

Having come up with the idea and seen and heard a number of comments on it, I've tried putting together the bare bones of an entire new army.  Below I have put together 12 units, with special rules, and an army ability together with a brief introduction.  I would welcome feedback on whether the concept is good, whether I've accurately represented it with the stats and whether anyone would be willing to help refine it (or put points on them .  Without any more ado: The Chi'in Empire.

The small nation of Chi'in rules an empire many times larger than one would expect, under normal circumstances.  To compensate for the relative lack of manpower, skilled mages, called Animators, control units of human-sized Terracotta Warriors and larger golems in combat.  Cheap and expendable, yet stronger and tougher than a man, the only drawback is these Constructs' lack of initiative and predictability.

Terracotta Swordsmen
Order: H*  Offense: (5)4/6  Defense: 1/3  Range: -  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 4 Yellow, 3 Red
Core, Construct
When Controlled has same orders as nearest Control unit, otherwise has Hold order.  Passes all Courage Checks.
Equipment: Sword & Shield
The basic warriors are easy to construct and control and thus form the mainstay of the army

Terracotta Spearmen
Order: H*  Offense: (6*)4*/6*  Defense: 1*/3  Range: -  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 4 Yellow, 3 Red
Core, Construct
When Controlled has same orders as nearest Control unit, otherwise has Hold order.  Passes all Courage Checks.
(-1)0/0 when charging.  (0)+1/0 +1/0 v Cavalry/Large.  (0)0/+2 v charging Cavalry/Large.
Equipment: Spear & Shield

Terracotta Archers
Order: H*  Offense: (4)4*/6*  Defense: 1/3  Range: 14"  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 3 Yellow, 3 Red
Core, Construct
When Controlled has same orders as nearest Control unit, otherwise has Hold order.  Passes all Courage Checks. 
(0)-2/-2 when engaged.
Equipment: Bow & Shortsword
Individual Archers are less effective than their living equivalents but their unity of movement and purpose makes volley firing incredibly dangerous.

Terracotta Crossbowmen
Order: H*  Offense: (5*)4*/5*  Defense: 1/3  Range: 10.5"  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 4 Yellow, 3 Red
Construct
When Controlled has same orders as nearest Control unit, otherwise has Hold order.  Passes all Courage Checks.
Ranged Attack is Line-of-Sight.
(-1)-2/-1 when engaged.
Equipment: Repeating Crossbow & Shortsword
The Repeating Crossbows of the Chi'in can throw out a tremendous volume of fire, but the light Bamboo quarrells are somewhat less effective than normal ones.

Golem Swordsmen
Order: H*  Offense: (5)4/7  Defense: 1/3  Range: -  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 5 Green, 0 Yellow, 5 Red
Elite, Construct, Fearsome, Large
When Controlled has same orders as nearest Control unit, otherwise has Hold order.  Passes all Courage Checks.
Equipment: Large Sword & Shield
Only the most skilled of Artificers can create and enchant these 12' tall warriors

Golem Spearmen
Order: H*  Offense: (6*)4*/7*  Defense: 1/3*  Range: -  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 5 Green, 0 Yellow, 5 Red
Elite, Construct, Fearsome, Large
When Controlled has same orders as nearest Control unit, otherwise has Hold order.  Passes all Courage Checks.
(-1)0/0 when charging.  (0)+1/0 +1/0 v Cavalry/Large.  (0)0/+2 v charging Cavalry/Large.
Equipment: Large Spear & Shield
Only one thing is more dangerous than a pair of 12' statues wielding swords: a pair of 12' statues wielding spears!

Terracotta Miscasts
Order: C  Offense: (5)5*/6  Defense: 2/3  Range: -  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 4 Yellow, 3 Red
Construct
Always has Close Standing Order.  Passes all Courage Checks.  Command Cards may not be played while this unit is in combat.
(0)-1/0 -1/0 when controlled
Equipment: Hand Weapon & Shield
Sometimes a warrior is damaged during creation or battle and doesn't respond to normal control.  These unpredictable units can be programmed to recognise friends and are then unleashed to sow confusion in the enemy ranks.

Chi-in Animators
Offense: (3)4/3  Defense: 1/1  Range: -  Morale: 11  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 3 Yellow, 2 Red
Core
Control 6.  Friendly Constructs within Control inches are Controlled.  May be issued R and S orders.
Equipment: Dagger
Unlike Necromancers, who can order their magical creations from afar, Animators need to be close to the troops to power them.

Chi-in Master Animators
Offense: (3)4/3  Defense: 1/2  Range: -  Morale: 12  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 3 Yellow, 3 Red
Elite
Control 7.  Friendly Constructs within Control inches are Controlled and get +1/0.  May be issued R and S orders.
Equipment: Enchanted Robes, Dagger
The best Animators can command their warriors to protect themselves.

Chi-in Warrior Animators
Offense: (5)5/5  Defense: 2/2  Range: -  Morale: 13  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 4 Green, 3 Yellow, 3 Red
Elite
Control 4.  Friendly Constructs within Control inches are Controlled and get (0)+1/0.  May be issued R and S orders.
Equipment: Lacquered Armour & Shield, Scholar's Sword
Some Animators show a talent for combat and lead their troops from the front rank

Chi-in Rocket Battery
Offense: (3)4/7  Defense: 1/2  Range: 21"  Morale: 11  Move: 2.5"  Hits: 2 Green, 2 Yellow, 2 Red
Elite
(0)0/-2
Equipment:  Lacquered Armour, Shortsword

Tribal Horsemen
Offense: (5)5/5  Defense: 2/2  Range: -  Morale: 13  Move: 6"  Hits: 2 Green, 2 Yellow, 2 Red
(0)0/+1 +1/0 when Charging.
Equipment:  Lacquered Armour, Shield, Spear & Horse
The Animators haven't found a way to create animated horses yet, and so employ conquered tribesmen as scouts and pickets.


Army Ability:  Ward of Stone:  Spend a command action to place a mark in the box on any unit card.  Any unit with a mark in the box gets Defense 0/+1.  Erase the mark when the unit takes one or more points of damage to force your opponent to re-roll those dice.


I haven't figured out any command cards yet.


So there you go. A whole fan-designed army.  Any comments?

[ApokalypseTest]

I like it, I like it actually a lot.

One problem I see so: The army ability is slightly to strong. +1 Toughness AND a force to reroll is preventing more then one wound per CA on average and therefore stronger than other abilities. Much stronger.

And: Your overall Skill of 5 at best is a problem. Every army has usually at least one or two units that have skill 6. Against Elves the Army would be eaten alive. Just because they never get better then a two on the  to-hit.

Also: Why don't your Crossbowmen follow the common paradigm that crossbowmen sacrifice ranged firepower for better close range performance?

Apart from that - very nice work. As soon as you have point costs and evtl. command cards (need only the ten factiondependent ones) I am going to give it a try.

If you had more time and energy - what is the tactical specialty of this army? Where are the strong points, where the weak points?

[andrewgr]

Fantastic work.  I'll try to get more detailed feedback to you soon, but I'm not sure when that will be.

In the meantime, I will echo what ApokalypseTest said: the army special ability is too strong.  Forcing a reroll is incredibly powerful.  An army relies on the uneven distribution of rolls to get its breakthroughs and consequent pinching attacks.  If you can make someone re-roll every time they get their lucky roll, it's just brutal.

Thanks for putting in so much effort and sharing it with us!

[Chad_YMG]

Wow, very cool.

I've been playing around with a Golem army idea and one thing I wasn't satisfied with was command and control, which definitely felt like it should be different (more awkward) than for a regular army.  Your 'control unit' theme is very cool.  Regarding the control units, should 'S' be 'C'?  Moreover, why should the control units be limited in their orders at all?

What happens if a Terracotta unit is within control range of two different units?  Which order applies?

[Wildman]

Wow, impessive work, even though I don't even care much for golems your work in making the stats, descriptions, and fluff made me rather interested to play that army.

[kostasdhm]

I concur, really impressive. Nice fluff (enough and not too much - just as it should be and very thematic).

May I just very hastily add another idea:

How about this army having "stoning" as unique ability: Put a marker onto a unit and permanently turn that unit into an impregnable stone barrier or a bridge (having in both cases the exact same dimensions). I imagine using a marker for that: one side is a stone wall (with blades sticking out), the other side a flat slab of rock that can be used to permanently ford a river). Could see this ability used on units that are close to collapse or to some other inexpensive unit that can be used to strategically block a route or bridge a river. The stoned unit becomes part of the landscape and is counted as dead of course.

As a by-product of that thought, how about an army with the unique ability to explode friendly units (with the strength of the blast directly proportional to the number of health squares left on that unit). Could allow for some interesting tactics.

[wegotjoy]

Stoning would be quite a powerful ability as it would mostly stop the enemy from pinching if you correctly guess when your unit is going to die and stone them just before so that they don't become the break-point in the line.  Of course making it cost 2 CA or similar might balance that out.

[Karasu]

Hi there, all

Thankyou muchly for the encouraging feedback and comments.  I'll try to address a few of the comments put forward here.

I have to admit to having swithered somewhat about the army ability: it's the part I'm least happy with.  My first thought was to have the Ward effective until the first time the unit is attacked.  Then I realised that it would lead to people "plinking" at units using long-range archery to just take it off again.  I toyed with the idea of it staying permanently but that is obviously too strong.  Maybe the trigger for erasing the mark should be taking a point of damage.  How would that fit?

The Crossbow unit was based on these weapons: http://www.atarn.org/chinese/rept_xbow.htm and was supposed to be a unit that produced more dice of ranged attack than normal, but slightly less powerful.  I'm possibly tempted to up them to 6 dice: exactly double standard Crossbowmen.  I would have actually called them Terracotta Repeating Crossbowmen, but that's a bit of a mouthful  .

Well spotted on the lack of a skill 6, I hadn't spotted that.  Who would you recommend to get the boost?  Cavalry, the warrior animists?  I'm not sure which one would be better flavour and gameplay-wise.

The reason I have given the Control units specific access to R (Ranged) and S (Short Ranged) orders is so that they can control groups of Bowmen and Crossbowmen.  I'm not sure whether it's an actual rule, or just an inferrance, that you can't give these Ranged Attack style orders to units that don't actually have a Range.

If you have multiple Animators in Control range, the nearest should take priority.  If there's more than exactly the same distance apart, I'd say the player get's to choose, with the caveat that the unit must end up closer to the unit whose order it followed

Tactically I'd say the strength of this army is its immunity to morale and general hardiness of the units in any case.  I can imagine it being very difficult to control things.  I'm not sure whether it would absolutely crippling to remove direct control from Constructs entirely, which is why I left that rule off at the moment.  The weak points are obviously the Animators themselves.  If you kill all of those, your enemy is left with a bunch of statues, and some men on horses: not the best thing in the world to attack with  .

I have this idea for a command card that replaces rolling the dice at one point, instead you get an exact spread of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.  Inspired by kostasdhm's idea, I now have an idea for a card that turns a Construct into a obstacle.  That's just 3 or 4 more concepts to come up with.

Again, thankyou.  I hope you all enjoy this.

Roderick

[Niko White]

First: thanks for this!  You did a great job, and now I'm tempted to make some factions of my own...

Second: I like the idea of the repeating crossbows.  I sort of agree that having them get weaker in melee is a bit odd, given how other crossbows work.  Perhaps a cool compromise would be to give them six ranged dice and (-3) 0/0 when engaged so that it's kind of like a reverse of the normal crossbowmen who gain (mostly) dice when engaged?  You'd have to up the cost a bit, but this seems ok, especially as you seem (reasonably) not to have settled on costs yet.

Third: Agreed on the attack skill issue.  I'd say an obvious point to add skill would be the humans.  The Warrior Animators are an obvious point because it'd make sense that front line animators like that would become veteran pretty quickly; if you have a shortage of human troops, any that fight on the front line would have excellent training.  Ditto the horsemen: cavalry in this time period were almost always skilled warriors anyway because of the expense of horses, and in terms of real-world history, you border some of the best riders in the world in the various steppe peoples, so skillful auxiliary units seems pretty reasonable.

Fourth: That rocket battery seems a bit lackluster to me.  4 accuracy and so few dice in a 21" range artillery piece means it will chronically miss.  I think it's reasonable to say that it should be that inaccurate, but perhaps it'd make sense to somehow reflect the disruptive effect even a miss would have, in terms of giant explosions going off all around you.  Something like: "A unit that suffers a ranged attack from this, even if the attack misses, must pass a courage check or be unable to move during its controllers next movement and command phase."  Or perhaps give them Fear, so that it'd disrupt ranged guys a bit?  Anyway just a thought, because as it is the thing will be useless at range against the vast majority of armies, which seems odd, as something explosive like that would be, I'd expect, quite useful against massed troops.  You could alternately give it something like "-1 to hit Large or Colossal units, +3 to hit non-cavalry small units" to reflect the utility when you can just spray fire in a large area.

[boltana]

Terracotta Miscasts
Order: C  Offense: (5)5*/6  Defense: 2/3  Range: -  Morale: -  Move: 3.5"  Hits: 3 Green, 4 Yellow, 3 Red
Construct
Always has Close Standing Order.  Passes all Courage Checks.  Command Cards may not be played while this unit is in combat.
(0)-1/0 -1/0 when controlled
Equipment: Hand Weapon & Shield
Sometimes a warrior is damaged during creation or battle and doesn't respond to normal control.  These unpredictable units can be programmed to recognise friends and are then unleashed to sow confusion in the enemy ranks.

Quick question for you.  All the other Terracotta units revert to a hold order when not in control range of another unit.  So why do these "miscasts" exhibit independent behavor?  I think it might make more sense to have them also revert to a hold order unless in the area of a control unit and then always be on a Close standing order.  It does give the controlling player some more control over them, but keeps the common theme of the army intact.

[Karasu]

Hi there again,

I see a couple of other queries here and I've been thinking about command cards.

If I upgrade the warrior-magi and horseman to Skill 6 that would make their base Stat lines as follows

Warrior-magi (5)6/5 2/2 13 3.5 4G 3Y 3R
Horsemen  (5)6/5 2/2 12 6 2G 2Y 2R

I think I like the idea of upping the crossbowmen to 6 dice, but giving them (-3)0/0 when engaged, though this does give them more dice than any other (not short) ranged unit.

How about this ability for the Rocket Battery:  "Any non-routing unit targetted by Rocket Launchers' Ranged Attack must take a Courage Check"  This will have the effect of disrupting the line without being able to destroy units while doing no damage.

Flavour-wise the Miscasts are Terracotta Warriors that no longer respond with accuracy to control by animators, either because of irreperable battle damage or just because the became flawed during construction, but still have enough empowerment to be dangerous.  So, rather than waste this manpower, the enchanters have the ability to 'hard-code' a basic "Charge!" instruction over the previous programmable part of their memory.  Think of it like re-formatting a corrupted hard drive and then finding that you've only got enough working memory left of it to run "Hello World!"  Also, gamewise, it gives the possibility of a unit that can function offensively if all the animators get killed (they really are the weak link).

Here's some Command Card ideas:

Mechanical Precision
Play during an attack, before rolling to hit.
Instead of rolling the dice, your Construct unit gets the following results: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.  That set of dice may not be re-rolled.
Roll to Damage normally.

Fine Control
Play during the Movement and command Phase.
Choose a Control unit.  That unit and all Constructs within its control range get (0)+1/0.  These units may not be affected by friendly Command cards for the rest of the turn.

Improved Defense
Play during the Movement and command Phase.
Choose a Control unit.  That unit and all Constructs within its control range get +1/0.  These units may not be affected by friendly Command cards for the rest of the turn.

Solidification (Please, Help me with a better name!)
Play during the Movement and command Phase.
Choose a Construct Unit [that isn't in the red?] turn the card over, or replace it with one from an army not involved in the game.  Treat this card as a an area of Forest.
For the purposes of Victory, treat this card as destroyed.

Made of Stone
Play during an attack, before your opponent rolls to damage a Construct unit.
Your opponent rolls 2 less dice, minimum 1.

Roderick

[Niko White]

Those all look cool, but I'd hesitate to make command cards that can only be used on some units (constructs.)  It is kind of cool, but I could see it being intensely frustrating to play with, as well.  Maybe one or two, but I can see why Your Move hasn't done it in general.

Edit:  Obviously the one that turns a construct into a forest is very sensibly an exception, but I meant for the standard "buff/debuff" cards.  I like Fine Control and Improved defense, but you could easily, for example, instead have them just let you pick any unit, rather than requiring you to pick a Control unit, like some of the Umenzi ones do.

[ZiNOS]

I like fine control and improved defense too. However, why not allow to play more command cards on them? IIRC the orc card that gives (+1) dice to all the orc units does not say anything about not playing attack cards on the affected units.

[Chad_YMG]

One option to bear in mind for highly-restrictive command cards is to give them a weaker generic alternative.

For example:

Fine Control
Play during the Movement and command Phase.
Choose a unit.  It gets (+0)+1/+0.  If it is a Control unit, all Constructs within its control range also get (0)+1/0.  (Plus text limiting future card use.)

This way you can always make the card a weak Strike so it's never completely dead.

[lego_army_man]

How about this ability for the Rocket Battery:  "Any non-routing unit targetted by Rocket Launchers' Ranged Attack must take a Courage Check"  This will have the effect of disrupting the line without being able to destroy units while doing no damage.

Flavor-wise (and perhaps for mechanic's sake as well) it seems to me this would want to effect non-routing, unengaged units. When a unit is rushing into battle and sees an enormous rocket coming their way, taking a Courage Check makes sense. But when they're fighting for their life, it seems to me they wouldn't even notice the rocket careening vaguely towards them.

I also worry about the animators. While I love the idea, they don't seem powerful enough to me (This could be because I'm new to the game, so feel free to disregard this analysis.) The Core Animators have a 1/1 defense line, relatively few hits, and a Morale of 11. It's the morale that really seems out of place. As the leaders of the army, shouldn't they have a higher Morale? Even the Master Animators only have a 12. As the backbone of the army, it seems to me that they either need to be powerful enough to withstand an initial ranged assault (i.e. they shouldn't crumble and fail their rout check consistently against any sort of ranged... it seems like the Core Animators would be likely to do this a lot) or they need to be aggressively costed enough that you can field enough of them to keep your army moving when some begin to rout. I like the first option better... flavor wise, it seems that you would want to field a large number of Golems and a comparatively smaller number of Animators. If the Animators are likely to rout early on, the faction wouldn't be very difficult to defeat with a bunch of archers.