Henchman Hardcore and summoning!

[Toxic4Mosh]

Recently my local scene has had a surge of new players and as someone who has countless crews and models to keep the game simple and quick we have been playing a bit of Henchman Hardcore (2019 gencon rules). We have tweaked some changes to the rules and so far its been a lot of fun. Mainly the biggest tweak to the rules is the Strategy and Schemes to add some more thinking into the mix, however I want to know the opinion of summoning in HH. For those not familiar with the rule, Models cannot be Summoned. If a model would be Summoned, the Summon effect is ignored. This has cut out a few players options for henchman. So I thought of a change to this to allow more options to henchman without breaking the game (IMO), by having all models summoned to attach an new upgrade as seen below.

Currently we play with the Gaining Grounds Schemes and strategies, using Public Enemies (c) as our Strategy and a pool of Vendetta (3), Assassinate (4), Claim Jump (5), Hidden Martyrs (6) and Leave Your Mark (10) for schemes. 

What do you guys think?

[muraki]

Id say yes to the expanded scheme pools and no for the summons / upgrades.

I'm all for making small games of faux more interesting, but not at the expense of the actual game mechanics.  Sure, playing HH and not being able to summon means you're playing a model a way you may never play them in a 50 stone game, but it's easy to mentally parse as 'i don't feel like / have the cards for' x summon action or trigger.

Adding a new upgrade to the game that's never been there before / will be there after means you're not teaching them to expect something that doesn't exist, which doesn't feel quite right from a 'build those malifaux mental pathways' standpt. 

Additionally, while I know the upgrade is basically 'summon, punch without triggers, die' but that does still mean those summoners are getting 1-2 more ap (depending on if it comes in with slow) a round which can easily unbalance such a small game to their favor.

[muraki]

I'd also be leery of playing your flavor of hh too much as you have a killy strat 3 killy schemes and 2 center of the board ones... So to me that means I'm teaching my players to swarm the center and kill everything that moves and that'll score you pts.... Which isn't true for a lot of scheme pools.

It's fine if you're teaching, but that's why I like plant explosives better for hh cause the placement scheme balances the killy ones.  As the original question was 'make summoners a pick in hh', with your setup I could ask back 'why speedy / fragile models?' as there's no benefit for a mobile hench like sidir or minions like torakage, cause if the only pool they'll ever see is highly kill based I'm bringing min 3 models with good df tech and won't worry if they're slow as sin.

All these reasons is why I like 35 stones as the 'youre interested, and have done hh / etc enough to understand what you're doing with your models' size.  It can still take forever with summons / etc but the models / strat pools do work at that size, there's just a bit more low scoring games / table wipes when bad flips happen.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Muraki makes some great points.

Another option for summoning is you can only summon back models that have died this game. That way you still get the grindy feel of summoners without having an 7v4 battle.