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First Games, and a Couple of House Rules


WestRider

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I got a couple of Games in at my local group this afternoon. I've been getting really excited about this Game over the last few weeks, and once I finally got on the table, it did not disappoint. I got one Game with my Chaos Marines against Necrons. Since it was our first Game, we decided to go with Kill Team Fight, and it mostly turned into a shootout. Combined with losing my Aspiring Champion to the first shot of the Game that didn't roll a 1 to Hit (I think it was like the 5th or 6th shot overall :P ), it did not go well for the Alpha Legion, and I ended up bottling out after my Gunner Charged a Deathmark and just got taken down like some cultie punk.

The second Game was Scouts on both sides, mine being converted as Alpha Legion special ops Cultists, versus NatoSicarius's Ultramarines. This was a weird Game. We were playing The Raid, and he chose to put the Bunker Entrance over near one side of the board. Which naturally ended up being the side of the board my Attackers Deployed on. But on the other hand, I hadn't thought to buy even Krak Grenades for anyone on my KT, and once I realized how hard it going to be to inflict 3 T6 Wounds using 4 dudes with just Bolters or Bolt Pistols, it basically devolved into another bunch of vicious firefights and HtH. Pretty quickly, we were both taking Bottle Tests every Turn, and Nato ended up failing his before I did, giving me the win.

Talking about it during and after the Game, we decided to make a few modifications. First, we're going with a Treasury system instead of just 100 Point "use it or lose it" blocks, so you get to keep any leftover Points for your next Recruit/Rearm action. I suspect we'll have to tweak the system further, because I can see this being much more efficient for expanding Teams, so we might have to reduce how many Points you get each Game, or add Loot counters to every Mission, and make it dependent on those or something.

We also opened up the Armoury system a bit, letting anyone with the option for a Power Sword take a Power Axe or Maul at the same price. Shouldn't be game-breaking or anything, and it allows for the use of a wider variety of Models. Specifically, it makes more of the Dark Vengeance CSM usable, which makes for the possibility of much cooler-looking CSM Kill Teams.

Finally, we're thinking about a couple of tweaks to the CSM list. Possibly letting the actual CSM take the Burly skill for 25 Points when first Recruited, since the Bolter/Bolt Pistol/CCW loadout has kind of been a signature thing of theirs for a while, and also letting Cultists count as half a Model for all purposes except Reinforcements Rolls in The Raid. Having a restriction where there can never be more Culties than CSM feels wrong, so with this, they could comprise up to 2/3 of the force, and the team would max out at 15 "actual" Models, 5 CSM and 10 Culties. Unlike most other Factions, Culties don't get a Trooper Statline when they make it through their third Game, they just get to start earning Skills, so the usual reason for restricting the number of Recruits isn't nearly as much of a factor. They still count as the full number of Models for Reinforcements because they're more disorganized and harder to get into action than most others ;)

The whole thing, including writing up lists, setup, looking stuff up constantly during both Games, cleanup, and talking about the results and our modifications, took about 3 hours. Should be very doable to get Games down to well under an hour once we have even a rough idea of what we're doing.

No gaming group next weekend, unfortunately, since too many people are out of town or otherwise unavailable, but we should have much better-looking Terrain by the time we get back together in 2 weeks. I hope to have my Tyranid Warriors ready to try out by then, too :)

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I do find it weird that SW:A doesn't allow for Kill Teams to have any sort of "storage." I mean, we're not playing underhive scum... We're all playing scouting elements of large established military forces. Even the Genestealer Cultists, fluff-wise, should have hidden headquarters and secret caches of gear! 

This is definitely an area that needs tweaking.

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As for the Chaos Marine to Cultists ratio, this is something that I would like to see addressed on a Legion by Legion basis.

Alpha Legion and Word Bearers are almost always depicted in the setting materials (and sometimes in the rules) as having loads of Cultists. Heck, oftentimes the Alpha Legion has been said to consist of a single Chaos Marine leading Cultist warbands the size of Imperial Guard regiments!

Thousand Sons, Death Guard, and  Black Legion work with Cultists, but not as much...

Emperor's Children, Iron Warriors, Night Lords, and World Eaters don't seem to work with Cultists very much. If at all.

So, basically, give Alpharius and Lorgar's kids access to more Cultists; Reduce the Cultists access of Emperor's Children, Iron Warriors, Night Lords, and World Eaters; and keep everyone else the same.

 

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26 minutes ago, savion47 said:

Ya, I am concerned about growing my kill team at all from game to game with GK. It seems like it is going to be a struggle not being able to save any points. Coming up with a system where you can save up seems like a great idea to me.

I feel like the system in the book could work reasonably well for the three Factions that are also in the book, since they all have fairly cheap Models, and plenty of options to fill out the last few Points in a chunk. But for several other Factions, it gets kind of sketchy. Necrons don't fit nicely into 100 or 200 Point chunks, and have few options they can use to take up the rest of the Points. For GK, it's literally impossible to Recruit a Gunner after initial Team Creation unless you have someone with the Scavenger skill or roll a 6 on the Hunt table. GK also have essentially nothing they can do without spending a Promethium Cache, which is going to majorly hurt either their advancement or their growth, since they're basically either spending a Cache or just giving up 100 Points after each Mission. Tyranid Warriors are in the same boat, maybe even slightly worse off. A Gun-Beast is 250, absolute minimum, and even a New-Spawn is 200 Points at the cheapest.

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Well, you're looking at 200 Points to Recruit, if you spend a cache and you earn at least one in every mission... So it is possible for even Grey Knights and Tyranids to make new hires. My space-elf-ninja-clowns are in a similar position, a Mime costs 125 Points before you add any equipment. The "standard" Kiss and Shuriken Pistol loadout is 60 Points.

But what I find most bothersome is that unused equipment is just lost. If my Gunner starts with a basic gun, then I use my first cache to buy them a heavy weapon, why can't I just put his starting rifle in storage for later? 

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They can pick up New Recruits, but like I said, without quite a bit of luck, the Specialists and even the Nid Troopers are literally impossible to Recruit after initial team generation, because their minimum cost is over 200 Points, and you can only trade in one Promethium Cache per Mission. For others, they can do it, but they're going to end up with tons of wasted Points. A Necron Warrior with Gauss Flayer, for instance, is 130, and they don't have much in the way of worthwhile gear to spend the other 70 Points on.

Scouts, Guard, Orks, Stealer Cult, Inquisition, and CSM can all do pretty well under the standard system, rarely wasting more than 5-10 Points at a time, but for many of the others, growing the Team means a lot of waste and/or a lot of Promethium Caches spent, both of which are going to leave them behind the other Factions pretty quickly.

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