opinion on the game?

[Breach Dweller]

So honest opinion for those who have played. How do you find this game? Mostly interested in gibbering hordes and cult of the burning man. My favorite games are malifaux and warmahordes for reference

[retnab]

It's so good... I honestly enjoy it more than Malifaux

[DeleteAccount]

We are still in the early stages of play, we are liking it but also noticing things that raise a few eyebrows. Still not sure if its just having to adapt or stuff that is a legitamate problem. I'd suggest you get a demo or two before jumping in.

[unknownuser65]

Definetely read up on the game and allegiance mechanics. I went full GB and honestly I am slightly regretting the decision. Most of the stuff is rather underwhelming performance wise.

[DeleteAccount]

1 hour ago, unknownuser65 said:

Definetely read up on the game and allegiance mechanics. I went full GB and honestly I am slightly regretting the decision. Most of the stuff is rather underwhelming performance wise.

Funnily enough I'm having a similar impression with King's Empire XD

I was even thinking of proposing a faction swap and I really like how the fish look, but I'm hearing way too much that they are all about the late game.

Though for now I consider that it's more about getting used to the game mechanics and having played most of my games against Cult.

But in this game it's absurdly easy to get cover, at least for the units you want to protect, so ranged isn't as strong as it looks on paper.

[Isefaux]

My impressions of the game rules are very positive. Some slight twists make this game feel different from Malifaux [at least m2e, m3e I did not play yet]. The mechanics how tactic tokens, hand cards and strategems work together feels very smooth, yet still challenging. 

What we are concerned about, is the game balance. Having yet only played kings empire versus cult of burning man, kings empire is performing very bad in comparison. The cult has very strong units and tricks your opponent simply can't defend against. Not by clever play, not by flips. Next week I will have my first match against the gibbering hordes. Let's see, how this works. 

[DeleteAccount]

I really like the core mechanics, and I like how each alligience has a very defined identity. The balance between the Alligiences is where I'm a bit more weary, but I'm too new to the game to make judgement and I still haven't played vs Gibbering, but Cult has raised me a few eyebrows.

I was expecting them to be frailer, but the King's Empire seems frailer in my eyes with the very notable exception of the Borderers, Rhinos are super hard to take down, black ups are a nightmare to finish off and the warped are not made out if tissue either. The Stalking Portals are the only easy kill but since they are a tactical support unit, they tend to chill on the back.

[Isefaux]

1 hour ago, Razhem said:

I really like the core mechanics, and I like how each alligience has a very defined identity. The balance between the Alligiences is where I'm a bit more weary, but I'm too new to the game to make judgement and I still haven't played vs Gibbering, but Cult has raised me a few eyebrows.

I was expecting them to be frailer, but the King's Empire seems frailer in my eyes with the very notable exception of the Borderers, Rhinos are super hard to take down, black ups are a nightmare to finish off and the warped are not made out if tissue either. The Stalking Portals are the only easy kill but since they are a tactical support unit, they tend to chill on the back.

Yes, I also consider the cult being more durable than the empire. Their units in general seem extremely cost efficient. 

But there were two points that had massive influence on our last match and that simply were completely unfun to play against. 

First was, that you can't really defend against the portals mechanic as they can be moved and a new portal can easily be created via stratagem. Put a new portal on the table in a sweet spot and send a rhino with its pulse through. You can't defend against that move and will suffer a huge amount of autohits you can't defend against either. Similar with exploding breachling, no defence possible. You could even chain activate two breachlings or rhinos to do even more damage. Just imagine a 12 inch diameter template autohitting with str 3 or 5 two times. And you can just watch and let it happen. 

Another thing we are concerned about is the chaos fissures strategem. We tried it recently at a dual commander game and it was a complete game changer. At the beginning of the turn it was a bit tricky for my opponent, because he had no hand to defend with and suffered some damage. But then the strategems card draw mechanics began to work and things became terrible, since as soon as he had some hand cards, he could also cheat from his hand to get the high cards he fliped before, while still winning the duels. I. E. he cheated a 9 from his hand and won the duel. Because he flipped the red Joker before cheating, he was allowed to put the red Joker in his hand. At the end of the chaos fissures turn, he had 6 handcards between 11 and 13. That strategem appears to be not that good on the paper, but actually give it a try. 

[DerangedGamer123]

Against cult the only thing I can say is play to the last turn and force them to move portals...

[DeleteAccount]

Chaos Fissure is probably the best strat in the game that I've seen played by a good margin, though haven't played enough to say that as an absolute. It's not just the Bayou Two Card or building a super powerful hand during the turn, it's also not wasting tactics tokens for objectives for the whole turn, on Set Traps it's a total dynamic shify.

As for coverong portals and taking the fight to turn 5... Well, against Cult I'm certainly dying faster than I'm killing in most of my games and having to be constabtly babysitting the portals is a big part of it since you are trapped with 2 bad choices, either be in suboptimal possition but cover portals, or ignore them abd let the burning man do whatever they want. Had a gane where the Borderers just sat all game on portals taking potshots unable to charge due to the desire to not give cult any options. Certainly limited my opponents options, but at the cost of my own.

[DerangedGamer123]

On 2/8/2019 at 11:13 AM, Razhem said:

Chaos Fissure is probably the best strat in the game that I've seen played by a good margin, though haven't played enough to say that as an absolute. It's not just the Bayou Two Card or building a super powerful hand during the turn, it's also not wasting tactics tokens for objectives for the whole turn, on Set Traps it's a total dynamic shify.

As for coverong portals and taking the fight to turn 5... Well, against Cult I'm certainly dying faster than I'm killing in most of my games and having to be constabtly babysitting the portals is a big part of it since you are trapped with 2 bad choices, either be in suboptimal possition but cover portals, or ignore them abd let the burning man do whatever they want. Had a gane where the Borderers just sat all game on portals taking potshots unable to charge due to the desire to not give cult any options. Certainly limited my opponents options, but at the cost of my own.

Then more ranged focused unit need to camp or use cheaper scrip units to do this 🙂

[DeleteAccount]

39 minutes ago, DerangedGamer123 said:

Then more ranged focused unit need to camp or use cheaper scrip units to do this 🙂

You don't get much cheaper than 6 and it was a 1 commander game where infiltraters covered one portal, borderers covered 2 and the rifle corps couldn't activate in time to cover the 4th, that is without counting stalking portals and the 5th portal that came in to play, so yeah, I'd love to know what you would have done in my place.

I do hope two commanders makes it feel less oppressive, but they still heavilly condition your game plan and I'm still not really seeing what the weakness of cult is in exchange for getting their insane mobility. I thought it was ressilience but that certainly isn't the case and their ranged gane certainly isn't as weak as one would think.

[DerangedGamer123]

26 minutes ago, Razhem said:

You don't get much cheaper than 6 and it was a 1 commander game where infiltraters covered one portal, borderers covered 2 and the rifle corps couldn't activate in time to cover the 4th, that is without counting stalking portals and the 5th portal that came in to play, so yeah, I'd love to know what you would have done in my place.

I do hope two commanders makes it feel less oppressive, but they still heavilly condition your game plan and I'm still not really seeing what the weakness of cult is in exchange for getting their insane mobility. I thought it was ressilience but that certainly isn't the case and their ranged gane certainly isn't as weak as one would think.

Ahhhh I have heard that Cult is dumb in 1 commander games and 2 commanders balance it out

[Isefaux]

12 hours ago, DerangedGamer123 said:

Ahhhh I have heard that Cult is dumb in 1 commander games and 2 commanders balance it out 

From my experience it doesn´t - at least not against Kings Empire. Besides the stats problem, the Chaos Fissures stratagem is much better in dual commander, because there are more flips. At a certain point of the Chaos Fissure stratagem, the Cult player will have a decent hand and can improve it from flip to flip - This works simply better, the more actications are on the table.

Also their area damage is even more frightening with more stuff on the table.

[Merchant]

mostly love the game, there are some problem units that i hope get tuned. feel like engineers are too strong and artillery are too week, to name a few things.  Also questioning the strength of rail gunners. Haven't played any Burning man yet and gibbering hordes seems perfectly fine if a bit harder to learn than any other faction. 

 

all in all most likely my favorite game atm, just want to see it get more spot light time.  

[ageofegos]

So we tried our first game last night (yeah I understand only 1 game experience but we've played a lot of mini games over a lot of years as we're old men!).

 

Main concern I had was 'clumping up' seemed like a natural progression of the game due to the size of the bases.  Due to disengagement being so harsh outside of spending a token, it seems like it will become a series of mosh pits.  I'm just not sure if I'm sold on those big chunky bases (GH player with a lot of 40mm groupings to be fair).  What is everyone's experience with that?

And to give a hug as well, main thing I loved was how models were removed/reinforced.  It gives a big battle feel without having a tote full of models and movements to worry about.  Which ironically is due to the base/fireteam system as well :).  So maybe the fleas come with the dog in this case?

[Sharpedge]

Welcome to the other side

I think GH suffer from clumping more than most because they tend to have lots of cheap bases and then have to spam down eggs in between them. What operation where you playing? The only one with mosh pit potential imho is pitched assault. The others naturally cause a better distribution of forces across the board (if you're trying to score the mission and not just kill that is).

Also make sure that you're following the terrain guidance and don't have more than 25% coverage. If you're using lots of blocking/impassable terrain you want good gaps, at least 50mm wide, between each piece.

Finally, spending the tactics token to disengage is well worth it - and commanders facing off against melee heavy forces should budget their tokens accordingly. Remember that one token does a whole unit - so each fireteam can disengage with just one token spent. It's difficult to find tokens in single commander games though, so if that's what you're playing then yeah, could be a struggle.

As for my more general thoughts on this topic - I've played a lot of tabletop wargames over the years, and each game I play of ToS cements my opinion that this may be the best I've ever played. It's sublime - and produces better experiences more consistently than anything I've had on the table before it.