What do you want to see in the future?

[retnab]

Hey all, so I've been wondering what sorts of things we'll be seeing in the future and after seeing the requirements on the Game Designer opening I decided to try and homebrew a character and see how it went. Turns out, it's super fun to do!  So I thought I'd share it here, and see if anyone else has any ideas for what each of the Allegiances could get in the future too  So, my little homebrew experiment is the following:

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Dorothy Wells

• COBM, +25 Scrip, Unique
• Sp 7 / Df 5 / Wp 7 / Ar 8
• Fireteam (50mm), Commander, Champion

Ability

• Spreading Madness: The Burning Man Watches From Above also triggers when a Joker is placed in the discard pile.

Actions

•  Shifting Limbs (7 v Df | 2"): Strength 3, Piercing.  If this Action kills one or more models, the target flips from Glory.
  •  Frighten: Target gains a Shaken Token
• (Morale) Intimidating Pose (6 v 12): Enemy units with one or more Fireteams within 2 of this Fireteam gain a Shaken Token.  This Action may only be taken once per Activation.
  •  "Your Doom Has Come!": Take another Action against one of the affected units.
  •  Polite Applause: Friendly units with one or more Fireteams within 2 of this Fireteam gain a Shaken Token.

Glory

+1 to Sp, Df.  + to Shifting Limbs, + to Intimidating Pose.

Ability

• Hesitation: If this unit would take damage from an enemy unit which has one or more Shaken Tokens, you may reduce the number of Shaken Tokens on the enemy unit who reduce the damage this unit would take by the same amount, to a minimum of 0.

Action

• (Magic) Murderous Rush (8 v Wp | 12"): Place this Fireteam into base contact with target Fireteam's unit.  It then gains a Shaken Token.  This Action may target a friendly Fireteam as if this Action had a TN of 12.  If this unit does so, a model on the targeted friendly Fireteam is killed.
  •  From Out of Nowhere: Take a  Action against the target, if it is in range.

Upgrade: Fragile Minds

2 scrip, Disable 2

Abilities

• Shatter Their Minds: When an enemy Fireteam in LoS of this unit gains a Shaken Token from this unit or from its Company triggering The Burning Man Watches From Above, it also suffers an uncheatable Strength 2 Hit.
• "He's Near, I Can Feel It!": When this Company triggers The Burning Man Watches From Above, if targeting a friendly unit it may instead gain an Inspired Token.

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Pretty much the core thought process behind this character was having a super-badass female Warped who is all about intimidation and fear rather than going Titan hunting or that sort of thing.  I was also trying to think of new ways to use Shaken Tokens as well, since it seems to be the core mechanic behind COBM which doesn't have a Commander for it so far (Adeodatos for portals and Fenton for self deck milling).  The name Dorothy is my grandma's and it seemed semi-appropriate since she was kind of a lone-wolf badass (ex: she actively learned how to use Linux when she was in her 80's for the heck of it).

Spreading Madness is not my own original idea, that was one of the variations to The Burning Man Watches From Above we saw during the Kickstarter.  I figured having it specifically for a Commander would be a pretty decent base ability, though.

I noticed that with the exception of Horomatangi, all Commanders have 3 Abilities/Actions on their base card and up to 5 on the Glory card, so I tried to stick to that here as well.

Shifting Limbs is basically the same as The Warped's Twisted Claws, but I decided that dropping the Strength by 1 and having the Piercing built in, plus de-Glorying units that have a killed model would better show her campaign of fear rather than her skill at blowing up heavily armored things.

I'm most happy with Intimidating Pose (although I changed that name about half a dozen times for various threatening aura sounding things), especially the trigger names because they feel rather in keeping with Wyrd's dark humour  I didn't want to make it effortless for Dorothy to have all COBM units insta-Glory when she activates, so having it be once-per-Activation and have the friendly units only get the Shaken Token on the Polite Applause trigger should work for that.

On the Glory side, I noticed that most of the time models get a max of 7 changes but usually average more like 5, so I capped myself at 6.

Hesitation is the most recent change I made to her.  Originally I had Shatter Their Minds as her Glory Ability but I figured it would be better balanced on the upgrade instead.  I'm still uncertain about Hesitation since she can put out mass Shaken Tokens, but in theory with her low Df and Ar it should even out.

Murderous Rush is just a modified version of The Warped's Echoes of Existence, upgraded a bit to show her Commander status.  Having it allow her to target a friendly at the cost of killing a friendly model seemed fair, and makes it so it isn't always just a get-out-of-jail-free ability.

For her upgrade, I wanted to have the options for flexibility in options for The Burning Man Watches From Above, since early in the game I find I always put the Shaken Tokens on my guys for Glory and later in the game I always put them on enemy models (or Cinnamon).  But giving the option to instead give an Inspired Token to a friendly, balanced with the chance to do uncheatable damage to an enemy model, gives you more choices.

 

So, what do you all think?  Is there anything you'd like to see on future models in the Allegiances?

[spooky_squirrel]

This is an interesting thought experiment, and there are some ideas brewing in my head regarding both Hordes and Abyssinia. However, I'd want to get a few dozen games under the finalized ruleset before committing those ideas to a stat line and set of abilities. As @Aaron and company talked about in #30, one of the things that they have to take into consideration when designing models is what role that model will have--and I'd want to make sure that the role I have in mind is not already taken, is relevant to the table top, and provides an interesting new shift that isn't tilting (beyond "new shiny" syndrome).

 

In broad strokes, some ideas I have for Abyssinia include a "patent enforcer" (single model fire team or adjunct that gets bonuses of some kind against Abyssinia and King's Empire models/units that have upgrades attached) and some kind of jump unit (fire team that has flight in some very limited form like a command-triggered ability but cannot end a jump move in terrain or on another fireteam).
However, application of the first one would be limited (unless it had something for friendly units with attached upgrades, but that leads to serious balance considerations with how Abyssinia can hand out upgrades), and I'd need to run motorcycle and horse cavalry units that already exist alongside the jump troop idea and see what tradeoffs exist--because tradeoffs should exist; these are all rapid maneuver elements and those tradeoffs should be approximately a zero sum for the Allegiance as a whole. That is, there should be no objective reason to always take one over the others. I'd also want to make sure that I don't accidentally create an overly powerful skew (other systems accidentally created a skew where bricking would win most scenarios, or possessed scenario structure that grotesquely favored rapid maneuver forces or alpha strikers, making the game less engaging).

For Hordes I'd have to do more theory-faux and reviewing typical gameplay than I have to identify potential roles before even commenting as much as I did for Abyssinia.

[retnab]

Oh I totally agree, the chances of her becoming a real model are fairly slim  but it is a fun experiment.

I think the Cult and Empire have a ton of versatility of ideas they can rely on, the former consisting of members from all over the world (you could pull insane mages with specific location based magics probably no problem) and the latter controlling a large chunk of the world (a bunch of the UK, Canada, Australia, and India? I'm guessing not the States but that's one of those questions of exactly how much of our history is their history).

The Hordes have basically everything aquatic from Malifaux to pull from (and there's plenty of nasties in the deep that could get used), and Abyssinia are IMO probably the one with the most interesting options since they're so focused on tech and are very willing to throw prototype weaponry into the mix.

I don't have the first clue what's in store for us with the Court besides ghosts and lots of them, and the Guild is the Guild, plenty of canonical stuff that can get borrowed from there.

 

A unit of Lord of War style Abyssinian shock troops would be pretty awesome!

[spooky_squirrel]

The Syndicates are definitely where the most design space exists from what we can determine from the backerkit site and published information. Other factions have units, titans, heroes, etc. to flesh them out.

[Lucidicide]

I have a few years of design space planned out

[spooky_squirrel]

44 minutes ago, Aaron said:

I have a few years of design space planned out

That's awesome news. I'm still (im)patiently waiting for the email that says "TOS is on its way! You have been billed."

[-Loki-]

I'd like to see a land squid/octopus/kraken for Hordes.

[Rathnard]

Random ideas I'd like to see:

A commander so bad, so incompetent that he actually makes your Company worse. On the flip side he gets like 30+ scrip to spend on his units.

More wierd and wacky commanders ala Frenzy and Horo. Like an Abyssinian with a Combined arms mech that follows him around. Or (and I'm not sure how well this'd work within the rules), an Adjunct Commander who is attached to a squad at the beginning of the game. 

More alleigances. Which is pretty likely to happen anyway. 

Something something Australia something.

Models with rules for Malifaux and ToS. Although that's been discussed on another thread. 

[Rannith]

On 7/22/2017 at 5:28 PM, Rathnard said:

Random ideas I'd like to see:

A commander so bad, so incompetent that he actually makes your Company worse. On the flip side he gets like 30+ scrip to spend on his units.

Something something Australia something.

+1

and

+1,000

 

[Merchant]

New releases, alt models, reworks/errata's for problem units like artillery, people playing the game.

 

other than that... idk Spain or Russia as a necromancer theme'd earth army, when your units die summon zombies in etc. so they would be ranged early and melee tar pits later. 

As for a malifaux faction... hmmm maybe like elemental gods faction so golems and gamins rising up or maybe a phantasmal faction about illusions and misdirection

 

[dope_danny]

Plot twist: Collodi isn't dead but working for the court of two instead on earth 😛

[Mike Wallace]

Novels.

*Coughs*

[Merchant]

want novels so bad...

[LeperColony]

I'd like to see more people playing the game...

But I'd settle for a nerf to Rhinos and some more adjuncts.  Adjuncts seem like an easy way to add flavor to units, and having multiple choices would increase variety.  I think a series of multi-faciton adjuncts, especially if they had guild or two court tie-ins, would be neat.

[Champignon]

Just Can't wait for kimon - 3 kingdoms, as most of our local players.

 

Also hope to see Turkey and Russia in the next release.

Turkey (or ottoman empire) possessed by genies and becoming malifaux based faction. 
Russia - good old steampunk with robots, tanks, lots pf chimneys and so on