New tester initial impression
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 5:39 am
I just received the 6.0 version of the beta rules, and am about half way through them.
First some of my gaming background:
I am a long time gamer (started figure gaming close to 27 years ago) who's more of a "breadth" player of rule sets rather than "depth" (i.e. I tend to try out many different set of rules and never really settle on playing just one set). Rules I have tried in the past are WRG 6th, DBA, DBM, Tactica, Armati, Medieval Warfare, & Warmaster Ancients (this is just in the Ancient/Medieval period).
From my background, you can probably deduce that I am not a competition gamer, and I am interested in games that can be used for casual multi-player play.
Now, some high level impression:
1. The rules is definitely a lot more pages than I was expecting.
2. It is clearly written (much more so than the DBx family of rules).
3. Although clearly written, there are just A LOT of rules there, probably requires a level of investment in getting to understand the rules (thus not suitable for casual club/convention play since once can't really just explain the rules in 20 min and expect people to be having fun).
4. I really like the distinction between shock combat & melee combat.
5. I am not sure about the rationale of having 15mm & 25mm troops all having the same move/shoot distance.
6. I really like the CMT concept.
7. Modern cav figures REALLY do not fit on a 60mmx40mm base anymore.
SUGGESTION:
I noticed that distances are expressed in MU. The rules then go ahead and define MU as 1" or 25mm. One suggestion I have is to adopt an innovation I read from some recent rules to express all distances as BASE WIDTH or BASE DEPTH. I think it would be an improvement to have a standard MU to be defined as 1 Base Width (in case of 15mm that would be 40mm), it's a bit larger than the current 1", but I think it promotes more manuevering, and makes the rules playable with those mounted with other systems (such as WAB or other none-standard base sizes).
First some of my gaming background:
I am a long time gamer (started figure gaming close to 27 years ago) who's more of a "breadth" player of rule sets rather than "depth" (i.e. I tend to try out many different set of rules and never really settle on playing just one set). Rules I have tried in the past are WRG 6th, DBA, DBM, Tactica, Armati, Medieval Warfare, & Warmaster Ancients (this is just in the Ancient/Medieval period).
From my background, you can probably deduce that I am not a competition gamer, and I am interested in games that can be used for casual multi-player play.
Now, some high level impression:
1. The rules is definitely a lot more pages than I was expecting.
2. It is clearly written (much more so than the DBx family of rules).
3. Although clearly written, there are just A LOT of rules there, probably requires a level of investment in getting to understand the rules (thus not suitable for casual club/convention play since once can't really just explain the rules in 20 min and expect people to be having fun).
4. I really like the distinction between shock combat & melee combat.
5. I am not sure about the rationale of having 15mm & 25mm troops all having the same move/shoot distance.
6. I really like the CMT concept.
7. Modern cav figures REALLY do not fit on a 60mmx40mm base anymore.
SUGGESTION:
I noticed that distances are expressed in MU. The rules then go ahead and define MU as 1" or 25mm. One suggestion I have is to adopt an innovation I read from some recent rules to express all distances as BASE WIDTH or BASE DEPTH. I think it would be an improvement to have a standard MU to be defined as 1 Base Width (in case of 15mm that would be 40mm), it's a bit larger than the current 1", but I think it promotes more manuevering, and makes the rules playable with those mounted with other systems (such as WAB or other none-standard base sizes).