BoSS Battlefront - Brainstorming Phase

[Porkins]

I liked the Battlefront rules too. I have a bunch of comments about the Mygeeto map that I'll post in that thread...hopefully I'll have a chance to type that up tonight. Here are my comments about the Battlefront rules:

- I realize that we are using a working draft right now, but I think the rules will need a fairly significant rewrite to make things clear. For example, the rules say that control points are captured "At the end of a round." The rules also say that the Wannok wounding happens "At the end of each round." I think we all know instinctively that the control points change hands and then the wounding, but the rules will need to be clear.

- I liked the 5 control points; it didn't feel like too many. You'll usually be split 3/2 for one wound or 4/1 for three wounds. On a map with 3 CP's, you'll be split 2/1 for one wound or 3/0 for three wounds. I don't think it's likely to be 5/0 on a 5 CP map. On a map with an even number, say four CP's, you'll either be 2/2 or jump to 3/1 for two wounds, with no granularity between zero and two wounds. In fact, having even more CP's should actually increase the granularity. Say there are 7 CP's: now you have 4/3, 5/2, 6/1 but also more likely to have uncaptured CP's because you'd have to risk spreading thin. So you might have 2/3, 3/1, 4/2, etc. One thing we could do to prevent runaway victories is to limit the wounding to a maximum of 2 wounds per round.

- I like the teleporting mechanic a lot. It speeds up the game, especially on big maps, by getting figures to the front lines. One thing I would change: the rules allow the person who won initiative to place first. I think this is too powerful because it gives the person too much information to use for placing figures. Imagine on an initiative switch: one player attacks at the end of the round, then gets to attack first in the next round knowing exactly where he should teleport the figures to do maximum damage. I think that, like placing OM's, the teleportation should happen before rolling for initiative. This adds uncertainty to it and forces you to plan with contingency in mind like you would for OM's where you don't know who you will get to use first. Maybe have the person who went first in the previous round teleport first.


I think this Game Mode is great. It's still Heroscape, but with an interesting focus on area control that normal Heroscape tournament style games doesn't have. I give it

 

[TREX]

Glad you like it as much as I do @Porkins. Its simple. Its heroscape. Its battlefront. The turrets make it super fun right? I love the turret placement on mygeeto.

 

[Porkins]

The turrets are good, but that middle section needs more cover and less water.

 

[White Knight]

Reading about the auto-wounding gap with control points, I'm wondering if it would work better to have each person roll an attack dice for each control point they control. Skulls from one team would cancel skulls from the other team, and then any extra skulls would be placed as wounds.

On average:
1:0 --> .5 wounds
2:0 --> 1 wound
2:1 --> .5 wounds
3:0 --> 1.5 wounds
3:1 --> 1 wound
3:2 --> .5 wounds
4:0 --> 2 wounds
4:1 --> 1.5 wounds
5:0 --> 2.5 wounds

It's not as predictable, but it prevents one team from completely dominating with wounds.

Just a thought...

 

[TREX]

@White Knight, I like the idea, but you have to really work to control the glyphs( On mygeeto anyways) On the battlefront game if you capture the control point the enemies forces dwindle. Say you have horrible luck and cant roll any skulls yet you are dominating all the control points? I think that would be a fail for theme. If you can dominate the control points the wound is well rewarded. In the game we played on it was very rare that we got to wound more than 2 times. Most of it was 1 time. It was a very gradual decline with the wounds, just fighting for the glyphs is where most of the casualties were awarded.

 

[Yodaking]

I also prefer the auto wound approach over the gamble. In the early and middle rounds the control points captured is usually even or an advantage of 1. You would really have to pull off some good bit of tactics and luck to get an advantage of 2. It is only at the end of the game when one team may be running out of figures that the advantage can start to grow, but that too I suppose is accurate to how the video game played.

 

[japes]

I liked the Battlefront rules too. I have a bunch of comments about the Mygeeto map that I'll post in that thread...hopefully I'll have a chance to type that up tonight. Here are my comments about the Battlefront rules:

- I realize that we are using a working draft right now, but I think the rules will need a fairly significant rewrite to make things clear. For example, the rules say that control points are captured "At the end of a round." The rules also say that the Wannok wounding happens "At the end of each round." I think we all know instinctively that the control points change hands and then the wounding, but the rules will need to be clear.

- I liked the 5 control points; it didn't feel like too many. You'll usually be split 3/2 for one wound or 4/1 for three wounds. On a map with 3 CP's, you'll be split 2/1 for one wound or 3/0 for three wounds. I don't think it's likely to be 5/0 on a 5 CP map. On a map with an even number, say four CP's, you'll either be 2/2 or jump to 3/1 for two wounds, with no granularity between zero and two wounds. In fact, having even more CP's should actually increase the granularity. Say there are 7 CP's: now you have 4/3, 5/2, 6/1 but also more likely to have uncaptured CP's because you'd have to risk spreading thin. So you might have 2/3, 3/1, 4/2, etc. One thing we could do to prevent runaway victories is to limit the wounding to a maximum of 2 wounds per round.

- I like the teleporting mechanic a lot. It speeds up the game, especially on big maps, by getting figures to the front lines. One thing I would change: the rules allow the person who won initiative to place first. I think this is too powerful because it gives the person too much information to use for placing figures. Imagine on an initiative switch: one player attacks at the end of the round, then gets to attack first in the next round knowing exactly where he should teleport the figures to do maximum damage. I think that, like placing OM's, the teleportation should happen before rolling for initiative. This adds uncertainty to it and forces you to plan with contingency in mind like you would for OM's where you don't know who you will get to use first. Maybe have the person who went first in the previous round teleport first.


I think this Game Mode is great. It's still Heroscape, but with an interesting focus on area control that normal Heroscape tournament style games doesn't have. I give it

The cap of two wounds seems like a good idea to me. My goal is to prevent too much of the runaway winner syndrome and capping it at two seems like it works. You already have an advantage in having more spaces to teleport to.

Maximizing the CP's seems cool too since you do have that added strategy of trying not to spread yourself too thin.

 

[TREX]

When you play a scenario how we have it currently youll find its quite hard to wound more than twice in a round end. With 5 control points each team will grab the closer on to their sz and then take the next closer one and fight for whats left. By the time you might get 4 out of 5 to wound 3 times the game should be close to being over anyways.

 

[Porkins]

First draft at a rules re-write:


Battlefront Rules

Setup:

- Place Glyphs Symbol side up as shown on the map build directions.
- Each player brings or drafts an army of equal point value.
- Unless specified otherwise on a figure's Army Card, place all figures in the Start Zone. Any figures that do not fit in the Start Zone are placed to the side in the player's Army Reserve.


Gameplay:

The Glyphs on the map represent Control Points. Control Points are not like normal Glyphs. When a figure moves onto a Control Point, the Glyph is not flipped to Power side up. Instead, the figure may capture the Control Point. At the beginning of the game, all Control Points are neutral. When a figure is on the Control Point at the end of a round, that figure's army captures the Control Point. Place a marker (such as a Rebel or Imperial symbol) on the Control Point to indicate which player's army has captured that Control Point.

Control Points are only captured at the end of a round. If a figure moves onto a Control Point that has been captured by the opposing army, remove the marker. The Control Point becomes neutral. It cannot be captured by that figure until the end of the round.

At the end of each round, after capturing Control Points, count up the number of Control Points that each army has captured and subtract to find the difference. The army with the most control Points causes wounds to the opposing army equal to the difference between the number of captured Control Points, up to a maximum of two wounds. The player controlling the army that is receiving the wounds decides to which figure or figures the wounds will be applied.


Army Reserve:

Figures in the Army Reserve are not destroyed. At the end of each round, after Control Points have been captured and any wounds applied, each player must move as many figures as possible from their Army Reserve to their Start Zone. If at any time a player has no more figures on the battlefield while figures remain in that player's Army Reserve, that player must immediately move as many figures as possible into the Start Zone.


Advancing Units:

After capturing Control Points, applying wounds, and moving any figures from the Army Reserve to the Start Zone, each player may advance up to three figures. A player advances units by choosing up to three unengaged figures from the player's Start Zone or Army Reserve. The player then moves the chosen figures to any empty spaces adjacent to a Control Point that has been captured by that player. The player who won initiative for the round places any advancing units first, followed by the other player. After advancing any units, place Order Markers and roll for Initiative for the next round.

 

[TREX]

I seen two things that need clarified. Otherwise it looks well said. First. Id like to discuss the 2 wound cap. Second. We do need to clarify that the figures advanced to the cps are unengaged figures from either the startzone or the reserve. If you leave the max wounds at two then the player will turtle instead of go for more cps. My brother took 4 out of 5 of the cps but at that point I had been beaten by then anyway. It makes you constantly try to dominate the map if there isnt a cap.

 

[Porkins]

I reworded a bit in the post above to make the unengaged part clearer on Advancing Units.

As for the wound cap, I thought that's the path we were going down. Perhaps a vote?

 

[TREX]

Looks good @Porkins. I wouldn't be opposed to a vote on the wound cap. I stated before that it is pretty hard to get more than two wounds until really late game. The way I figure is if the player can manage to move and hold those control points they should be able to do the damage. Really late game on the game I played last night was when my brother was able to take 4 of the 5. At that point it just made the game not drag out further. If your getting whipped really bad it just keeps it from dragging on. If its evened out back and forth you rarely even get the extra wound. I know there were some concerns on the game running away with victory for 1 side if they capture enough points. This could be somewhat valid but is somewhat fitting from the game perspective. If I'm the minority on this one its not a deal breaker for me. If the majority wants to cap it I'll go along with it. It really doesn't happen until late game anyways unless one of the players has absolutely horrible luck and/or has no sense at all.

 

[Porkins]

That's a good point: that if you manage to capture that many more CP's, you deserve to win.

 

[Yodaking]

I was the one that brought up the idea of a cap but I have since backed away from that idea. In the game you could run away with the score when dominating so I actually like the idea of a run away victory occurring. Plus as mentioned by Trex, it will just end the game quicker if things are really going that badly for you so you can start the next game sooner and try it again.

I see you moved the 'teleport units' up event to the end of the round, thus before initiative is rolled. I don't have a strong preference to whether is should happen before or after initiative is rolled so that is fine with me.

 

[Porkins]

Yeah, I felt like it was too powerful after rolling initiative. We should try it before releasing the rules though.

 

[japes]

I was the one that brought up the idea of a cap but I have since backed away from that idea. In the game you could run away with the score when dominating so I actually like the idea of a run away victory occurring. Plus as mentioned by Trex, it will just end the game quicker if things are really going that badly for you so you can start the next game sooner and try it again.

Not sure if I posted or not but I agreed with the cap as well but Trex makes a good point. I was more worried about the advantage that could occur early with a more mobile army being able to create a situation that the other army has no chance to come back from. Late game runaway's that would otherwise be drawn out affairs is another issue so both have advantages and disadvantages.

 

[Yodaking]

The game system itself lends itself to large swarming armies. Only way the system would be competitive for smaller armies is if both players agree to the same sized army ahead of time.

 

[TREX]

The game system itself lends itself to large swarming armies. Only way the system would be competitive for smaller armies is if both players agree to the same sized army ahead of time.

Don't under estimate the staying power of a hero. Having a multi life hero on a glyph to take control of it and survive and barrage of attacks and still take the glyph is a real plus you don't generally get out of a one life squad figure. Also, your more heavy hitting heroes can kill things such as turrets easier than smaller attacks from squads. My brother did great things with Drake alexander on our last battle in which we used pretty much all original heroscape figures. For all the folks watching this thread that don't have hoss figures, you can play this game mode with original heroscape figures. It still has a Battlefront play style but can be used by original scape as well. HOSS armies still fit theme better though.

 

[Yodaking]

Yeah, heroes are certainly good but then the best heroes are those that bond with squads. I'm sure Vader would be awesome for taking and holding one glyph, but you better surround him with some Stormtroopers or he will only hold one glyph while your opponent takes the other 4.

 

[Porkins]

I removed the wound cap and reworded a couple sentences about Advancing Figures for clarity. We need to make a decision about the timing of Advancing figures soon, like by noon on Wednesday in order to be ready in time. Has anybody tried the timing the way it is written here? What did you think?

Battlefront Rules

Setup:

- Place Glyphs Symbol side up as shown on the map build directions.
- Each player brings or drafts an army of equal point value.
- Unless specified otherwise on a figure's Army Card, place all figures in the Start Zone. Any figures that do not fit in the Start Zone are placed to the side in the player's Army Reserve.


Gameplay:

The Glyphs on the map represent Control Points. Control Points are not like normal Glyphs. When a figure moves onto a Control Point, the Glyph is not flipped to Power side up. Instead, the figure may capture the Control Point. At the beginning of the game, all Control Points are neutral. When a figure is on the Control Point at the end of a round, that figure's army captures the Control Point. Place a marker (such as a Rebel or Imperial symbol) on the Control Point to indicate which player's army has captured that Control Point.

Control Points are only captured at the end of a round. If a figure moves onto a Control Point that has been captured by the opposing army, remove the marker. The Control Point becomes neutral. It cannot be captured by that figure until the end of the round.

At the end of each round, after capturing Control Points, count up the number of Control Points that each army has captured and subtract to find the difference. The army that has captured the most Control Points causes wounds to the opposing army equal to the difference between the number of captured Control Points. The player controlling the army that is receiving the wounds decides which figure or figures will receive the wounds.


Army Reserve:

Figures in the Army Reserve are not destroyed. At the end of each round, after Control Points have been captured and any wounds applied, each player must move as many figures as possible from their Army Reserve to their Start Zone. If at any time a player has no more figures on the battlefield while figures remain in that player's Army Reserve, that player must immediately move as many figures as possible into the Start Zone.


Advancing Figures:

After capturing Control Points, applying wounds, and moving any figures from the Army Reserve to the Start Zone, each player may advance up to three figures. A player advances figures by choosing up to three unengaged figures from the player's Start Zone or Army Reserve. The player then moves the chosen figures to any empty spaces adjacent to a Control Point that has been captured by that player. The player who won initiative for the round that was just completed places any advancing figures first, followed by the other player. After advancing figures, place Order Markers and roll for Initiative for the next round.

 

[Yodaking]

I honestly think either way will work fine and be balanced. Both going first and going second with the free figure move ups has it's advantages.

 

[japes]

I removed the wound cap and reworded a couple sentences about Advancing Figures for clarity. We need to make a decision about the timing of Advancing figures soon, like by noon on Wednesday in order to be ready in time. Has anybody tried the timing the way it is written here? What did you think?

I saw your post in the index thread and got excited about a release tomorrow and then realized you were talking about these rules.

Still exciting and my son and I are making paper standees as fill-ins since we haven't had an opportunity to start collecting Star Wars minis. These rules will probably be exactly what we needed to put us over the top and deciding to save our heroscape money on Star Wars Minis. We both are huge fans of the first two Battlefront PS2 games.

 

[mac122]

I removed the wound cap and reworded a couple sentences about Advancing Figures for clarity. We need to make a decision about the timing of Advancing figures soon, like by noon on Wednesday in order to be ready in time. Has anybody tried the timing the way it is written here? What did you think?

I saw your post in the index thread and got excited about a release tomorrow and then realized you were talking about these rules.

Still exciting and my son and I are making paper standees as fill-ins since we haven't had an opportunity to start collecting Star Wars minis. These rules will probably be exactly what we needed to put us over the top and deciding to save our heroscape money on Star Wars Minis. We both are huge fans of the first two Battlefront PS2 games.

There will be a little more to the release than just the new maps and rules...

 

[Yodaking]

I'm going to build the Throne Room map again this afternoon to double check my changes and also check out how the art work for the voids mac made work out. So if you are pressed on time today TREX, focus on the other two maps you are working on.

 

[TREX]

I'm off work today, and I have cleaned my shop enough to get back to the computer. I've made the fixes for Mygeeto just now and will post those and get started on its pdf after I finish fixing the jedi temple. If you want to finish the throne room using the version we discussed that will be great.