Rasputina's Freeze Over and Terraclips

[Sybaris]

I was reading the ability of our ice witch, and i was puzzled at its application on terraclip boards.

The description is vague for terraclips, because the "terrain" is often just surfaces, and buildings are quite huge (many floors), so i am not sure of the intent of the rule as if it should freeze over a whole house, a street(!), or simply one 6x6 area. There is often no distinction between one area to the other.

So how have you guys been dealing with this?

Thanks for any ideas.

[Jewomie]

Well, when my fiance and i have come to this issue, we usually just use each 3 or 6 inch virtical segment as a single piece of terrain. we don't count floor tiles, but any walls or railings we count them. and just separate them usually by the actual clip parts. so if you freeze a wall, you just froze it to the next clip, or the end of the wall, which ever is first. It started as a quick fix for sabotage, and just became how we handle it on our tables.

hope this helped!

[Sybaris]

Thanks, that's about as practical as it gets.

[Q'iq'el]

So how have you guys been dealing with this?

Thanks for any ideas.

IMHO the rules are clear: Terrain is something on a base. If there is no base, the "shade" (zenital) is used for a base. This last may be a bit tricky, because if there is a balcony or a walkway between two buildings, there's base under it, even if it hangs over the street (in other words, can be counter-intuitive on Terraclips specifically, becauseof the tiled structure). With Terraclips it is particularly important to use the shade as the base of terrain, because otherwise it gets very confusing, IMHO.

Street tiles, by the rules, are merely decorated table, not terrain. Anything which protrudes out of the ground has a base (even if "virtual") and therefore is terrain. If you build a huge multi-level house, yes she can Freeze it over with all the floors, balconies and other stuff. If you join two houses with a bridge, you now have a two-house big terrain piece.

If you want to play inside such big houses, it probably is better to move to Interior Encounter rules, for that reason.

The most tricky Outdoors situation is with multi-level tables IMHO. I don't have any, but if I had, I'd try to imagine the levels as table (ground) and all the things that look as if they were placed there to be terrain - that would mean I probably wouldn't count sub-terrean walls and rooms as terrain, but I would treat some rocky outcrops as such. Everything above the ground terrain though (trees, houses, walkways etc.) would be terrain though. That's just my interpretation though.

Edited August 9, 2012 by Q'iq'el

[Sybaris]

I play on the trickiest situation then...Multi-level board with multi-level buildings. While the rules are rather clear, the terraclips implementation into the rules often don't translate as well.

I believe that freezing a whole 6x12 double floor building kinds of freezes the game, since nobody is willing to even enter it anymore, while it's supposed to be a center piece of the table.

What about flat elevations that run from side to side of the table (we have a street that way)? I guess they are considered terrain too, since they have a "base" per se.

The 6x6 terrain piece seems to be the best way to go, as far as balance and "fun factor" is concerned, and it is still one heck of an ability.

Edited August 9, 2012 by Sybaris

[Q'iq'el]

Well, that'd be your houserule then.

But there is a myriad of problems if you want to treat each tile as a piece of terrain. Some Schemes would be incredibly trivial to complete, for example.

Also I'm not convinced ability to freeze a big chunk of the board, due to the building being really big, is all that OP for Rasputina. Some other masters would be, for example, able to completely ignore such a huge building on their way to the objective, which is equally powerful.

The simple solution (in-game) is for the opponent to not go there.

As for elevated streets, bridges and such - yes, they all have their virtual bases and are terrain. Everything "above" the ground has.

Personally I think Freeze Over is extremely situational ability, ranging from nearly useless to extremely powerful depending on the table you play on. It sounds to me you've discovered the powerful end of the stick and balked, but is it really unintended? I haven't played against Tina for quite a bit now, but I had a game or two with bigger Terraclips houses (2 floors, roughly 1.5~2 tiles wide) and I simply had to deal with her before I could access objectives inside. In my case it meant Soulstoned Transposition, but even a decent push or a lure can put her out of range of the terrain you're interested in.

[Sybaris]

I am not against powerful abilities, but what i meant by 6x6 terrain is not that it could be used on "floor" tiles, but rather terrain per say.

I.e. Raspi couldn't use it on the ground, even if there's a terraclip tile on it, but if a house is 6x12, then the first half of the house is completely frozen. If a street section is elevated (and has a base) then a 6x6 section is frozen, etc.

It remains situational, and allows for a reasonably big terrain piece to be frozen, but yeah we're into house rule territory. Terraclips need a few house rules to work anyway (flat elevation terrain Ht and shadows, for example)

[Q'iq'el]

Terraclips need a few house rules to work anyway (flat elevation terrain Ht and shadows, for example)

Really? I've never needed to do that... I just count all the walls as Ht2 by default and use Rules Manual basic rules for Shadows, LoS and such.

[Sybaris]

/OTT

That's exactly the problem.

Walls being Ht2 means that most models are as tall as walls. It allows Nekima to reach a model 7" high on a building (She could engage a model in our 6" high church's bell tower!). This looked so ridiculous that we had to house rule that each 0.5" high was equal to 1 Ht unit.

This put back some sense between Model Ht and Terrain Ht.

If you look at them, most Ht1 models are 0.5" high, Ht2 models are approximately 1" high, Ht3 being 1.5" and Ht4 monsters are 2" (without bases, of course).

Shadows would then follow the same ratio in order to keep coherent.

For us, it made the vertical levels much more intuitive. Walls being Ht4 meant that falling from a wall (2" high) could now damage models.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Sybaris

[Q'iq'el]

Well, if we try to put it into human scale, Nekima is about 4 meters tall... and she wields a sword which is 3 or 4 meters long... and then she can also fly.

I have no problem at all with her reaching high. I can also imagine that mere hit of her sword against the tower could send people on the top flying down. The Df duel doesn't have to be, in my imagination, a mere representation of fencing (how do you fight with something that big anyway?) - people try to duck, dodge her swings, catch something to hold on when the entire tower shakes from her angry hits etc.

There are plenty of other drawbacks to her size, so it isn't too much of an advantage. I just try to keep open mind and don't discount rules as unrealistic if they can be explained with all the fantastic stuff we have in Malifaux.

---------- Post added at 01:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:12 AM ----------

Ah, and I like that you can jump down from a single level of walls with no damage. I try to get at least three levels (some "falls" with damage and some without) and I put fences on the edges of some raised tiles - if you fall after walking over a fence, it is Ht3, not 2, so damage appears.

[Kaled]

What I find strange, and am tempted to house-rule, is the fact that you can use the Jump(2) action to move up to half walk from a higher elevation to a lower one without suffering damage - so for most characters that's 2" to 2.5" - yet that same character can fall 3" before they suffer damage anyway without needing to spend 2 AP.

So with Terraclips any character can fall from one level without being hurt, but slow ones with just Wk3 would injure themselves if they tried to jump down that distance...

[Dracomax]

Wait, that's what that means? I thought it meant you could go down the vertical movement unharmed and had a horizontal movement of half walk...

[Q'iq'el]

What I find strange, and am tempted to house-rule, is the fact that you can use the Jump(2) action to move up to half walk from a higher elevation to a lower one without suffering damage - so for most characters that's 2" to 2.5" - yet that same character can fall 3" before they suffer damage anyway without needing to spend 2 AP.

So with Terraclips any character can fall from one level without being hurt, but slow ones with just Wk3 would injure themselves if they tried to jump down that distance...

Again, there's nothing wrong with that, in practice.

From my experience all the walls and (1)Interact doors slow down models considerably already (unless they are spirits and then it is all moot anyway) and then you have to move around all the walls, fences, smaller and bigger buildings - reaching targets is already more problematic for most crews than on a traditional table, even with solid amount of terrain.

Being able to simply fall from Ht2 wall and continue walking is nothing special. Having to spent whole 2 AP to jump down from ht3+ wall to avoid damage slows the model so much, it is a worthy penalty for avoiding taking damage and makes sense fluff-wise too (there's difference between someone just falling and someone taking all the time they have to find a safe spot to jump and do it in the safest possible way).

Obviously we are dealing with certain level of abstraction here and if something seems too weird and makes it difficult to suspend the disbelief, by all means house-rule it. But I feel there's a point where house-ruling does more harm than good - especially when players get nit-picky about very minor details but introduced changes have disproportionally big impact on some crews. Anything that makes models slower or forces them to take longer routes than the basic rules would require falls into that category without any doubt.

[Kaled]

Having to spent whole 2 AP to jump down from ht3+ wall to avoid damage slows the model so much' date=' it is a worthy penalty for avoiding taking damage and makes sense fluff-wise too (there's difference between someone just falling and someone taking all the time they have to find a safe spot to jump and do it in the safest possible way).[/quote']

That makes sense, but I'm still confused so clearly I'm missing something...

The vast majority of models seem to have Wk4 or 5 and so jumping down from a Ht3 wall (assuming Ht3 is 3") would be more than half their Wk. I read Jump as saying a model can move down up to half their Wk without suffering damage, and if the drop is any more than that they do suffer damage. Is that wrong? (So to clarify I read it that a Wk4 model jumping down from a 3" elevation jumps 2", but the distance is more than he can safely jump so instead it counts as a 3" fall and he suffers damage.)

Should I have read it as a model can safely move down half their Wk and then they only fall the remaining distance (so the Wk4 model jumping from a 3" elevation would only count as falling the last 1" as he can jump down the first 2")?

[Q'iq'el]

That makes sense, but I'm still confused so clearly I'm missing something...

The vast majority of models seem to have Wk4 or 5 and so jumping down from a Ht3 wall (assuming Ht3 is 3") would be more than half their Wk. I read Jump as saying a model can move down up to half their Wk without suffering damage, and if the drop is any more than that they do suffer damage. Is that wrong? (So to clarify I read it that a Wk4 model jumping down from a 3" elevation jumps 2", but the distance is more than he can safely jump so instead it counts as a 3" fall and he suffers damage.)

You've got it almost right.

The model suffers damage for each 3" it has fallen. So it is not the Ht of the wall that matters, but the distance of the fall.

If you use jump to move 2" down, then you fall only 1", therefore no damage.

If you are on Ht6 roof and fall down, you'd have to make 2 flips... but if you jump, you effectively fall only 4", so just 1 flip. And the better the Wk stat, the better the model is at avoiding damage when jumping down.

[Kaled]

Thanks for the clarification - that had been bugging me for a while.

(And apologies to Sybaris for taking the thread off it's original topic.)

Edited August 11, 2012 by Kaled