Thoughts/Questions on 3/14/11 units

[Chad_YMG]

I'm all for doing a brute hard-skinned force.  Of course, I don't envision the Amazons as being scantily-clad, either.

[ZiNOS]

Of course, I don't envision the Amazons as being scantily-clad, either.

COME ON!!!

We need to boost the sales of this game..... 

Show the fans of the game some love, show the stereotypes of heroic fantasy with scantily clad women some respect and show us some BOOTY!
 

[Hannibal]

I agree with Niko that it's time in the portfolio for a high-toughness faction.

Yeah I think a high toughness faction is just silly.  Might as well be the amazon women from Futurama.  I think having them be a Def 2/2 baseline is the way to go.  That's why they also have the damage boxes at 4/3/3.  This is a skill faction.  Arete connotes excellence of skill not innate physical attributes. 

Sure you could give them giant Final-Fantasy weapons and twin weapons, but that's some real stripper-ella stuff there.  I was trying to point this faction away from fighting in bathing suits and high heels, and perhaps give them a touch more respect than that.  Most times you see female warriors, they have this "geek-wet dream" outfit that makes women gamers roll their eyes and sigh.  My thought was to have the Amazons in full helmets, metal breastplates, giant fuggin shields, and spears.  They stand in formation and fight just as well as the boys.

And I think that the justification for it is equally silly.  Why weren't the Dark Elves a high toughness faction then?  If it was so necessary?

If the game needs a high toughness faction, I can see that.  This faction as it stands ain't that.  So if high toughness is mandatory, then either start over with this faction or start a new one.  But I really feel it doesn't fit here.

[Niko White]

I like those demigoddesses, Chad.

I also like Choragos fine as (7) 5/5's.  I mean, certainly that works better as a two-tiered setup with Maenads, of which I'm fond, but I don't think it's too good with command cards.  Dwarf Hammermen have exactly the same offensive profile, and go up to ( with Uruz, and I've never found them particularly broken.  They shred through low defense guys, but have trouble with high defense ones, and the command card thing is broadly symmetrical; they benefit more, but also suffer more.  It'd be a worry with some of the older versions of Arete, but I think is fine with this one.

[Niko White]

Yeah I think a high toughness faction is just silly.  Might as well be the amazon women from Futurama.  I think having them be a Def 2/2 baseline is the way to go.  That's why they also have the damage boxes at 4/3/3.  This is a skill faction.  Arete connotes excellence of skill not innate physical attributes. 

Sure you could give them giant Final-Fantasy weapons and twin weapons, but that's some real stripper-ella stuff there.  I was trying to point this faction away from fighting in bathing suits and high heels, and perhaps give them a touch more respect than that.  Most times you see female warriors, they have this "geek-wet dream" outfit that makes women gamers roll their eyes and sigh.  My thought was to have the Amazons in full helmets, metal breastplates, giant fuggin shields, and spears.  They stand in formation and fight just as well as the boys.

And I think that the justification for it is equally silly.  Why weren't the Dark Elves a high toughness faction then?  If it was so necessary?

If the game needs a high toughness faction, I can see that.  This faction as it stands ain't that.  So if high toughness is mandatory, then either start over with this faction or start a new one.  But I really feel it doesn't fit here.

Dude, I still just flat can't figure this one out.  Maybe take a bit of a break and see if you can see where we're coming from here?  All the stuff you're talking about (full helmet, metal armor, etc) are totally compatible with 3 toughness, and being able to fight just as well as the boys is compatible with 3 toughness.  2/3's are fine in a toughness faction.  I think you must have misunderstood me to be saying everyone would fight with great weapons and dual wield and stuff like that - that wasn't my intent at all.  I'm about to post my potential "take" on the unit list and then maybe it'll make more sense?  Or maybe my initial post wasn't clear?  The only "problem" I see with making Amazons a high toughness faction in this vision, and the reason I suggested great weapons and DW, is that if the base units are 2/3, any unit that gets Elite Defense and is equipped in the same way goes to 3/3, which is something we don't want a ton of in a toughness faction, though it'd probably be ok for Demigoddesses or a single powerful tanking elite.  Therefore if we want melee units with elite defense that retain the 2/3 defense profile, we need to not give them shields.  That seems...completely compatible with everything you've said.

I think I've gone on record as saying I'm sad some of the Dark Elf units ended up as scantily clad as they did; I'm not trying to push a "cheesecake faction" here either.  If just giving a girl a greatsword is all it takes to qualify as a wet dream for nerds you know, you know some very different nerds than I do.

[Hannibal]

Yeah I still feel a 2/3 is wrong, but I did misunderstand what you were saying.  Maybe you weren't clear or I wasn't reading correctly, but I had the idea that you were thinking 1/3 as being one of the baseline troops.

Again I still feel that 2/3 is wrong for a "finesse" faction, which my theme clearly was.

If just giving a girl a greatsword is all it takes to qualify as a wet dream for nerds you know, you know some very different nerds than I do.

I'll just cite what I was trying to avoid for this faction:

[Chad_YMG]

Sure you could give them giant Final-Fantasy weapons and twin weapons, but that's some real stripper-ella stuff there.  I was trying to point this faction away from fighting in bathing suits and high heels, and perhaps give them a touch more respect than that.  Most times you see female warriors, they have this "geek-wet dream" outfit that makes women gamers roll their eyes and sigh.  My thought was to have the Amazons in full helmets, metal breastplates, giant fuggin shields, and spears.  They stand in formation and fight just as well as the boys.

I absolutely want to treat this army with respect -- and putting women in serious armor, rather than cheesecake, is a natural part of that.  What you're describing can fit a 2/2 or a 2/3 defensive profile.  What I want to avoid is making the baseline 3/2, and I have a modest preference for 2/3 being more common than 2/2.

I have a few reasons for this.  One is that elite skill should be relatively rare, especially in humans.  At this point we've done three Elf factions, each of which had high defensive skill.  That's appropriate for elves, who live forever and are low in population.  Hawks and Orcs are all very well-trained soldiers and they have a defensive skill of two with very few exceptions.

Another is that alongside printing the Elves we've added a number of low-toughness factions.  The net result of this (along with the fact that Battleground's most common bonus is to power) have made skill better than power.  A (5)4/5 unit is worse against the field than a (5)5/4 and that affects gameplay, faction choice and design space.

[Niko White]

I'm doing a proposed unit/ability list now - see what you think.  I like finesse overall, and think ideally all Battleground factions should have a good bit of it, but that's IMO pretty distinct from the exact stat lines of the troops.  See what you think of the proposal I'm getting together and we should go from there.

Definitely agreed on wanting to avoid the cheesecake amazons, in any case.

[Chad_YMG]

I don't think this needs to be a "finesse" faction.  If anything, I think Battleground has too many finesse factions and could use another one that is happy to win fair fights.

My instinct is that this is a badass faction that meets the boys and the monsters on the battlefield and goes toe-to-toe with them.  I see many of them in full armor and none of them in chainmail bikinis or suggestive poses.

Most of the units would have shields and be defensive skill 2.  I think there's room for one or two with a 1/3 profile -- that would be a natural for a crazed unit, especially one that gets 7 attacks.

[Hannibal]

What you're describing can fit a 2/2 or a 2/3 defensive profile.  What I want to avoid is making the baseline 3/2, and I have a modest preference for 2/3 being more common than 2/2.

And I can respect a 2/3 profile.  But again, the theme as designed is a skill/finesse faction.  That means that if anything it should be a 2/2 with the most common bump being 3/2.  

So what I'm saying is that if you want a baseline of x/3, just change the theme.  Go from "effectiveness due to martial skill borne of training" to "effectiveness due to bravery and sheer bad-@$$edness."  Toss aside spears and shield and go for great weapons & chainmail+toughness (Def 1/3) or sword/shield/chainmail+toughness (Def 2/3) for toughness.

And then if we go down that arc to the more Celtic theme, get really creative.  Give them the cavalry damage + impact on the charge.  Change their faction ability away from a skill-based "win the long fight" to more "bust through the line" ability.

[Hannibal]

What you're describing can fit a 2/2 or a 2/3 defensive profile.  What I want to avoid is making the baseline 3/2, and I have a modest preference for 2/3 being more common than 2/2.

And I can respect a 2/3 profile.  But again, the theme as designed is a skill/finesse faction.  That means that if anything it should be a 2/2 with the most common bump being 3/2.  

So what I'm saying is that if you want a baseline of x/3, just change the theme.  Go from "effectiveness due to martial skill borne of training" to "effectiveness due to bravery and sheer bad-@$$edness."  Toss aside spears and shield and go for great weapons & chainmail+toughness (Def 1/3) or sword/shield/chainmail+toughness (Def 2/3) for toughness.

And then if we go down that arc to the more Celtic theme, get really creative.  Give them the cavalry damage + impact on the charge.  Change their faction ability away from a skill-based "win the long fight" to more "bust through the line" ability.

I don't think this needs to be a "finesse" faction.  If anything, I think Battleground has too many finesse factions and could use another one that is happy to win fair fights.

And as the guy who came up with the idea, then I'd say we toss the existing theme then.  Neat idea, but doesn't jive with the game play direction you want.

[RushAss]

I'll just cite what I was trying to avoid for this faction:

(pic of scantily clad goth chick on her way to a photo shoot)

Agreed, but I wouldn't mind something like that for a Priestess unit or whatever.  For the line troops I'm thinking something along the lines of Xena Warrior Princess, but with heavier armor.

[Niko White]

Yeah I think plate looks really cool.

Also, her throwing disk thingy is ridiculous.

[Kevin]

OK, I'm having a thought here...
 

I agree with Niko that, from an overall game perspective, there are already plenty of 2/1 and 3/1 units.  Even 2/2 is pretty mundane.  A change would be nice.

Niko also makes a good point about Battlesquads.  I retract that suggestion.

A 1/2 defense line would seem most appropriate.  1 defense is easy to justify if they don't use shields.  Maybe make a few more of their units either 6 dice or power 6, since their other hand is either holding a secondary weapon, or helping hit hard with a heavier weapon.

Given their ancient world flavor, 1/3 seems hard to believe--this was pre-awesome steel plate mail.  Sure, some of their most elite units may have been hardened "by the gods" to 1/3, but other than that it seems like 1/2 is the way to go.

The question then becomes how to get around the fact that 1/2 generally sucks.

I have two thoughts on that one.

1)  Make Arete defensive:  Spending a command action marks two boxes.  You may cross out one box to give your unit +1/0  on an attack and it counts as playing a (blue) command card, or cross out both boxes to give them +1/+0 and it doesn't count as playing a command card.

2)  What if we kept the flavor of that "Dead fight on" thing, but did it in a much simpler way:  Let's say the standard unit has 12 boxes:  4 green, 3 yellow, 2 red, 3 purple.

Faction Rule:

When an amazon unit is "in the purple" all of its warriors have been mortally wounded, but they continue to fight on in an all out attempt to vanquish their enemy.  The following rules apply.

Units in the purple do not make fear or rout checks.  (This means that is a unit takes massive damage from a pinch and is knocked from the green straight into the purple, it does not make a rout check, but if it goes into the red it does.)
Units in the purple are at (-2) -0/-0.  (The same penalty as units in the red.)
If, at the end of any turn, a unit in the purple is not engaged with an enemy unit, it is immediately removed from play.

[Niko White]

I don't see any reason to keep an "ancient historical" flavor to them; after all, we want them to be serious soldiers in a world where we know plate mail is all over the place (Hawks, Orcs.)  Maybe I'm wrong, but I was taking the ancient world feel to be societal, not necessarily technological, so I think plate is fine, and probably better as a concept than making them mostly 1/2's.  (This is doubly true because I'm pretty sure 1/2 doesn't really accomplish the goal of increasing the value of 6 strength as opposed to 6 skill - 1/2 is so fragile I don't care much which end I come down on.)