Slitherine

david53 wrote: As you seemed to miss of the end bit were I said these changes had been disscussed for the last 12 months in the Beta section.

Newsflash: the overwhelming majority of FOG players weren't in the beta and that discussion forum was closed to them. But even if it weren't, what do you have to gain by hammering home this kind of reply? If you don't care about the 2.0 changes, is it mandatory to butt into a discussion about the 2.0 changes to tell everyone?

Should I go into every thread I'm not interested in and send an unhelpful "who cares" response? What would be the point?

Jhykronos wrote:
Newsflash: the overwhelming majority of FOG players weren't in the beta

Why not it was free to join.

Three parts to this answer

Moderators keeping us on track
What were the most active moderators on this forum, Nik and Hammy, haven't been intetrested in AM for a while, Slitherine rely mainly on volunteers to do the moderation, the authors have other things to do, so its weapons free across AM.

Rule changes
Changes to table sizes have made many of the rules double in their effect. Shorter range and less time and space to shoot. Less manoeuver with less time and space to move. Swarm armies easier to kill, but less table to hide in.
Things will swing massively in the other direction

Agreeing with ravenflight
The most ridiculously unbelievable thing in this whole debacle.

Having re-read the changes, I quite like them. They should have been produced earlier. Still could have done something about the inequality of the points costs though, better armour and morale will still be a bargain. In any case, no print, no play.

I think it is worth discussing them though - simply so that we have a common basis for change should individuals or clubs wish to produce a set of "in-house" type amendments.

The changes seem positive to me as individual points. As others have said most (perhaps all) had discussion on the beta forums, and it's good to see that no big new crule changes came in after that. But it's only when they get played do you get a feel for the impact as a game as a whole. And also it might be that the actual rule differs from the precis we've been given here.

It's difficult to give more of a reaction than that as without getting a game on the table you can get to the "aha, this means my warbands are a little tougher but still not great" aspects. I suspect though that one of the biggest changes will be the 1HP2B to cause a -1 on the melee test in combination with less ++POAs. That might make "hold them with numbers and work the flanks" viable.

Points changes were considered early on in the process but ruled out by Slitherine as it was felt army list would need reprinting. Of course, had they known then what they plan to do now perhaps they would have changed points anyway!

And we can now fully move on to what we think of the changes as the rules will be produced on paper..... shortly after the ipad and pc/mac.

Obviously the chicken comes before the egg in slitherine. But good news

Very good news indeed.

Still liking most of the changes as I think about them more.

One minor concern is the usefulness of Skilled Sword. What does it actually do now? Assuming I'm reading things correctly, If you are an armoured legionary it only really helps against other armoured foot swordsmen. Sort of useful if playing Roman civil wars to really distinguish between veteran and more ordinary legions but not much to pay a point for in open play. Of course it is slightly more useful if you are a protected (or unprotected) skilled swordsmen but I dont think I have ever faced any. Might have been better to just get rid of it.

Martin

Forgetting, for the moment, changes that effect individual troop types or armies -

The biggest change that I see are the new command limitations. I assume this was beta tested, but it appears to be a change that would either slow down the game (encouraging more defensive play) or one that would require a smaller playing area and/or larger armies.

Delbruck wrote: The biggest change that I see are the new command limitations. I assume this was beta tested, but it appears to be a change that would either slow down the game (encouraging more defensive play) or one that would require a smaller playing area and/or larger armies.

Actually it was one of the two things i noted that we did not extensively beta test.

I think it is likley one of those that appear to slow down the game, but not actually.

What it really does is slow down a large force on a big grand tactical manuver without masses of generals. And thus the whole army.

Practically it may mean it is far harder to swign a force onto a flank than version 1, therefore more stuff gets into contact in the center.

I consider it a positive change, but not dramatic.

I am intrigued by the announced rule changes. I play the armies I have, so improved prospects for xbows is very welcome. I can't say whether I like the changes until I've played them on the table a few times. Gonna have to wait for a print version for that.

Greg Boeser (consumer - HF, unarmored, POOR, undrilled, dice, ruler)

Delbruck wrote:The biggest change that I see are the new command limitations. I assume this was beta tested, but it appears to be a change that would either slow down the game (encouraging more defensive play) or one that would require a smaller playing area and/or larger armies.

AFAIK it was not openly beta tested but smaller reccommended table sizes are their anyway. And people, except me, wanted to make FC a bit better.

I really do like the expand and move being reduced by 2 MU

Skilled swords are more useless than they were.

david53 wrote: Maybe those people that spent 12 months of their time doing that and playing beta games and adding to the changes might just be a little annoyed to now find no show on the hard copy, and that time wasted.

By the way I've been playing tournements since 2008 and loved playing V1, would have played V2 in book form.

Dave

... not so much. The beta rules went through many changes , with all sorts of stuff being tried out. It was widely anticipated that after the writers emerged from purdah, most of what had been tried would be left on the cutting room floor. No bad thing, IMO.

For many of the specific changes that have emerged opinion was quite vigorously divided. They certainly aren't to please everybody.

marty wrote:One minor concern is the usefulness of Skilled Sword. What does it actually do now? Assuming I'm reading things correctly, If you are an armoured legionary it only really helps against other armoured foot swordsmen.

I was thinking the same thing. Makes me wonder of the viability of Roman armies now? I mean, are "Armoured Average" workable? Are "Armoured Superior Skilled Sword" overpriced?

There was talk through the beta process of romans having the option to be skilled sword or not.

This may be part of the changes but not identified in what we have been shown so far.

Rob

ravenflight wrote:

marty wrote:One minor concern is the usefulness of Skilled Sword. What does it actually do now? Assuming I'm reading things correctly, If you are an armoured legionary it only really helps against other armoured foot swordsmen.

I was thinking the same thing. Makes me wonder of the viability of Roman armies now? I mean, are "Armoured Average" workable? Are "Armoured Superior Skilled Sword" overpriced?

The Romans are dead. Clearly, they were just a bunch of imperial wantabee's

PIkes and longbows rule

philqw78 wrote:Skilled swords are more useless than they were.

Or a good and cheaper substitute for historical match ups. It seems that they removed the condition that it is only applicable when steady (so it goes everytime). Thus if fighting Gauls, Romans do not need to be armoured and superior. They can be protected and superior and have the same advantages. The former option had more drama, with the impact for Barbarians and the melee for Romans in certain conditions.

If I recall it well, this version released was not tested in the beta forum.

ravenflight wrote:

marty wrote:One minor concern is the usefulness of Skilled Sword. What does it actually do now? Assuming I'm reading things correctly, If you are an armoured legionary it only really helps against other armoured foot swordsmen.

I was thinking the same thing. Makes me wonder of the viability of Roman armies now? I mean, are "Armoured Average" workable? Are "Armoured Superior Skilled Sword" overpriced?

Sorry I must have missed something. Roman (HF arm, sup) skilled swords were better in melee than several foot opponents in v1. In v2 they still seem better, but not to such a degree. In equal numers they should still beat Dacian falxmen in the open due to the -1 for MF on the cohesion test. But to balance against that, most (but not all) such romans are impact foot. They just got a whole lot better against foot as losing the impact is now a big problem. Say the Romans chanrge the Dacian falxmen and win the impact 6-4. That's a cohesion test on a -4!!!.

If more people take Romans as Armoured Average, rather than immediately jumping for the Superior option I would regard that as a good thing. It may be that Skilled Sword is now slightly overpriced, but that was an unfortunate side effect of rebalancing the Roman/Barbarian interaction that nearly everyone agreed was wrong and needed to be fixed in some way.

From what I've seen, the only change that I don't recall from the Beta versions is the restriction on generals commanding battle lines. Some have said it will slow the game down. I think it makes FCs much more valuable (which was another issue that people had) and means that there are now more choices than 4 TCs or IC + 3 TCs when choosing generals. 2 FCs certainly looks worth considering...