Vikings of Stormbläd

[RushAss]

Fresh out of the oven, it's my first (and perhaps only) fantasy faction!  I always thought that Battleground could use a Viking faction, but others here had mentioned to me that a historical Viking faction would be tough to pull off because there simply wasn't enough variation in the units historically.  So why not create a fantasy Viking faction instead?  Problem solved.

Design Notes
Many of the newer factions have a lot of funkiness going on in their design.  Monsters & Mercs introduced flying units.  Historicals have Skirmishers and Pila rules.  Dark Elves have got all kinds of oddball stuff going on.  These are good things for the game IMO, but I wanted to take more of a purist approach with this faction and create something straight up and simple.  I have a few hurdles here and chief among them is that no evidence exists that Vikings ever used cavalry in combat.  While this is a fantasy faction, putting Vikings on horseback just feels downright goofy.  I have 2 workarounds here.  1 is the Viking Skirmishers which are a lightly armored, fast moving foot unit not unlike High Elven Rangers.  Since Vikings are raiders by nature I figured a unit like this wouldn't be much of a stretch.  The other workaround was the Polar Bear Knights.  I originally wanted a straight up unit like the Ravenwood Bear Packs, but the Polar Bears came out almost identical to them.  So why not mount guys on them and make them a combo cavalry-monster unit?  This is even more far fetched than Vikings as standard cavalry (not to mention Polar Bears didn't exist in Viking lands), but it seems to fit the flavor in a strange sense.  I also wanted to include a unit of Mountain Yetis.  Mountain Yetis are normally solitary creatures, but they will band together and go to war if their homes are threatened!  Or if they are convinced that sailing to foreign lands stuffed into a boat will keep their homes safe  Conceptually this unit has a lot in common with Ogres.  If anybody has any ideas how to further separate them from Ogres, please don't be bashful.

On Wave-Dasher: Viking Warriors spent a good amount of time running from their longboats to shore and I wanted to reflect that experience with this ability. It lasts for 1 turn only because it is a short term sprint and I want to avoid rare instances where a player can have Viking units sprint up and down a shallow river for a reduced movement penalty. The non-Viking foot units (Yetis, Polar Bears) are Large, so they still receive the same -1 MC penalty anyways.

Faction Ability: Focus of Týr
You May spend 1 Command Action to mark the Focus of TÝR box on ths unit.  During an engaged attack you may erase the mark to give that unit (+1) +1/+0 for the turn before rolling to hit.  This counts as playing a command card.
Historical Note: Týr was the Germanic and Viking God of War and Justice.  Hence the name of the faction ability.

Faction Ability: Wave-Dasher  The first turn a Viking unit spends in shallow water, it receives a -1 MC movement penalty instead of the standard -2 MC penalty.  This does not cost a command action.

Units

Viking Warriors (Core) (5) 5/5 2/2 R- C-12 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 4/4/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher)

Viking Spearmen (Core) (6*) 5*/5* 2/2 R- C-12 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 4/4/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher)
Typical Spearmen bonuses

Viking Battle Axemen (Core) (5) 5/6 1/3 R- C-12 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 4/4/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher)

Yearlings (Core) (5) 4/5 1/2 R- C-11 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 4/3/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher)

Viking Bowmen (Core) (4) 5/5 1/1 R-14" C-12 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 3/3/2
(-0) -2/-2 and while Engaged.

Viking Axe Hurlers (5) 5/5 2/2 R-3.5" C-12 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 4/4/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher)
Hurled axes use javelin rule*.
*There should be some sort of reload rule like it taking an additional CA to throw additional axes.

Viking Light Raiders (5) 5/5 2*/1 R- C-12 M-5"
Stat Bar 4/3/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher)
D +1/+0 Vs. ranged units
*Note that this is NOT a "Skirmisher" unit, I just thought this to be a suitable name for them.  Other suggestions welcome.

Huscarls (5) 5/5 2/3 R- C-13 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 4/4/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher)

Battle Maidens (5) 6/5 2/2 R- C-13 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 4/3/2 (No Focus of Týr or Wave-Dasher)

Sons of Odin (Elite) (5) 6/6 2/3 R- C-14 M-3.5"
Stat Bar 5/3/2 (Focus of Týr, Wave-Dasher) Passes all Fear Checks. (This ability does not apply to Rout Checks.)

Mountain Yetis (Elite) (5) 5/6 2/3 R- C-13 M-5"
Stat Bar 4/4/3
Large, Fearsome
To play a Command Card on this unit you must first discard one Command Card.

Polar Bear Knights (Elite) (6) 5/6 2*/3 R- C-13 M-5"
Stat Bar 3/2/2
Large, Fearsome, (Focus of Týr)
Cavalry. (+0) +0/+1 and D +1/+0 while Charging (This is in addition to the normal Charging Bonus.)
To play a Command Card on this unit you must first discard one Command Card.

Command Cards

Ice in your veins (2)
Select up to 2 units during any courage phase.  These units receive a +3 courage bonus for the turn.

Will of the North (1)
Play during an attack, before your opponent rolls to hit.  Your unit gets D +0/+1 this attack.  The attacking unit
gets (-1) -0/-0 this attack.
Your unit recieves +1 Courage for the turn if that unit's Focus of Týr box is checked.

Swiftness of the North (1)
Play during an attack, before your opponent rolls to hit.  Your unit gets D +1/+0 this attack.  The attacking unit
gets (-1) -0/-0 this attack.
Your unit receives +1 Courage for the turn if that unit's Focus of Týr box is checked.

Roots of the North (2)
Play during an attack, before your opponent rolls to hit.  Your unit gets D +0/+2 this attack.  
Your unit receives +1 Courage for the turn if that unit's Focus of Týr box is checked.

Blow of The North (1)
Play during an attack, before you roll to hit.  Your unit gets (+1) +0/+1 this attack.  
Your unit receives +1 Courage for the turn if that unit's Focus of Týr box is checked.

Skill of The North (1)
Play during an attack, before you roll to hit.  Your unit gets (+1) +1/+0 this attack.
Your unit receives +1 Courage for the turn if that unit's Focus of Týr box is checked.

Strength of The North (1)
Play during an attack, before you roll to hit.  Your unit gets +0/+2 this attack.
Your unit receives +1 Courage for the turn if that unit's Focus of Týr box is checked.

Eye of The North (1)
Play during an attack, before you roll to hit.  Your unit gets +2/+0 this attack.
Your unit receives +1 Courage for the turn if that unit's Focus of Týr box is checked.

Edit (4/13/2012): Made a few name edits based on Seth's suggestions

[leemie]

yetis and polar bear knights = awesome

[gull2112]

Like the faction cards!

Me thinks you've got them over armored, I don't generally think of vikings as heavy armor wearers. Maybe a few units, but not that many.

[Uriel Doombringer]

I like this idea.

A few thoughts for flavor at the moment, and then I'll come back with mechanics.
The junior raiders I'd rename Yearlings, or something like that and go to a 3/4/3 box profile to make them feel more like young vikings on their first raid.

Shallow water sprint could be something like "wave-dasher" or "amphibious"

The skirmishers could be renamed "raider" or the like

The viking armored guard could be renamed "Hauskarls" or the like, meaning house guards

I like the axe hurler idea (it's one I have for a faction that overlaps with this one somewhat), I think you might consider making the attack like pila so it's +1 strength. Just a thought, definitely don't have to go that direction.

One last thought on the polar bear knights is that at skill 5 instead of 6 they won't be in the 400 pt heavy cavalry range which feels sort of right for these beasts. It might be interesting if they were heavy cav with more hit points at least 3/3/2 or possible 4/3/2 to make them more of a hybrid knight/monster.

The yeti's seem great.

Army ability is certainly solid, but I'm not sure it feels right. I'm not sure what the right feel for this army is actually - are they raiders with an emphasis on heroic deeds, are they just really aggressive? I like the emphasis on solid line infantry.

[RushAss]

Thanks for the observations guys!

Mike, many Vikings where actually reasonably armored.  In fact, many of the Huscarls where pretty well outfitted.  In Battleground terms, no armor is represented by a defensive toughness of 1.  Umenzi line troops just have Shields and are all 2/1.  So I don't think a base defense of 2/2 is too far off.  Here's a short but sweet overview:
http://www.vikingsonline.org.uk/resources/articles/combat.htm

Seth's thoughts:

The junior raiders I'd rename Yearlings, or something like that and go to a 3/4/3 box profile to make them feel more like young vikings on their first raid.

Yearlings sounds good to me.  I prefer the 4/3/2 health bar because 3/4/3 is identical to Shorbeards and having a unit with 1/2 defense, 11 courage, and only 3 green hits is a recipe for a unit nobody would want to take.  If you've seen any of my rants about Shortbeards, you'd know how much I hate that unit and I wanted these guys to be different

Shallow water sprint could be something like "wave-dasher" or "amphibious"

I like Wave Dasher.  Much nicer than my admittedly clunky Shallow Water Sprint.

The skirmishers could be renamed "raider" or the like

I was actually wanting to call them Raiders, but I already had the Junior Raiders and these units are nothing alike.  But now that you suggested Yearlings I can call them what they should have been called in the first place.  Thanks!

The viking armored guard could be renamed "Hauskarls" or the like, meaning house guards

Its funny you mention that because both the Armored Guard and Sons of Odin where based on Huscarls, I just divided them up into 2 seperate units.  The Armored Guard where suppossed to be a a mid-priced tank unit while the Sons of Odin where to be the super elite breakthrough/hard to kill unit.  We certainly can't go wrong changing the Armored Guard (which admittedly sounds a bit off with Vikings) to Huscarls here.

I like the axe hurler idea (it's one I have for a faction that overlaps with this one somewhat), I think you might consider making the attack like pila so it's +1 strength. Just a thought, definitely don't have to go that direction.

I just figured that with the Pila rules being in constant flux, the Javelin rule would be the way to go.  If the Pila rules are nailed down soon as we all hope then I can see a strong case for switching to that type of attack.

One last thought on the polar bear knights is that at skill 5 instead of 6 they won't be in the 400 pt heavy cavalry range which feels sort of right for these beasts. It might be interesting if they were heavy cav with more hit points at least 3/3/2 or possible 4/3/2 to make them more of a hybrid knight/monster.

You know, I'm still struggling with this unit.  I like the Bear Pack attack profile of (6) 5/6 and it synergizes well with the army ability.  If the army ability is altered and the +1 offensive skill is lost, I'll consider raising the offensive skill to a 6.  3/3/2 is a good idea for the health bar.  I wonder how many points that extra yellow hit box is worth?

Army ability is certainly solid, but I'm not sure it feels right. I'm not sure what the right feel for this army is actually - are they raiders with an emphasis on heroic deeds, are they just really aggressive?

I love the army ability mechanically, but I agree that it may not feel right.  I'm still picking my brain on that one.  And BTW I'm going for heroic deeds done aggressively

[wariorpoet]

Why don't  Viking Spearmen have A (6)/5/5 and the spear bonus? The only difference between Viking Spearmen and Viking Warriors is the name.

[RushAss]

Because I can't type.  It should be a (6) 5/5 with typical Spearmen bonuses.  It's been corrected, and thanks! 

I've been intending to fiddle with these guys a bit.  I'm trying to cook up either a modification to the faction ability or a complete overhaul.

[gull2112]

Faction ability

 Immigrant Song - Vikings Final Rush at +1MC