Hey guys, I was just thinking about some minor quality-of-life changes in the three games I have had in the last week (against different opponents!).
Recall: I think you should be able to recall a unit during the deployment phase without sacrificing deployment. I can’t think of a downside to this, nor would it give anyone any
advantage. If anything it makes the game more dynamic, gives the player slightly more control of their activation tokens, allows players to cycle units faster in smaller games, and gives the player greater agency. I think it also balances out the factions that have minimal opportunity to reactivate units, so they arent punished for having more units on the table.
Solo’s The limitation where one of every two activations must be a solo stifles choice, and slows the game down, IMO. It leaves other options languishing and dictates your list composition. I realise this is a balancing factor to stop people from spamming squads or jacks or whatever (for the record, I hate spam).
My suggestion is this:
You can play anything but you can’t play two of the same unit ‘type’ other than solos in the same turn. i.e. you can’t play two squads or two jacks or two vehicles. You can play two solos.
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Change at least 50% of the scenarios to require one or more objectives so they can only be scored by a solo. Thematically, this is your engineer/hacker/alien-tech expert doing their thing. Whereas the guard or retrieval objectives should be limited to squads.
This opens up list building, however, if a player runs a low solo count, it becomes a real weakness that your opponent can exploit.
I’m honestly not sure what you mean. I’ll give my reply to the two interpretations of your suggestion, because the answer is the same in either case. If your intent is “Your list can only include one copy of any particular unit, except for solos” , or if the intent is “you can have 1 squad, 1 warjack, 1 vehicle, and any number of solos in your list”, then either way, this suggestion would be cripplingly detrimental to the game.
That breaks just about everything in the game: Rack card composition and ratios, list building, list building flexibility, the whole purpose of warjack loadouts, people’s model collections, scoring, the whole attack/defense dice curve and opposed roll system, model power curves, actual game pacing, all of it.
I would love to be able to recall for free without affecting my ability to deploy, but that’s about my only wishlist item at the moment.
I agree with your assessment for the two interpretations you provide. However, I interpret @Noridaii as follows: “4. Activation Phase: Activate any two units. The units may not be of the same type (squad, warjack, vehicle, …) unless they are both solos. […]”
I have yet to play more games to see the effect of this change. Did you already play your three games with adjusted rules, @Noridaii? How did it go?
I have not yet played a primary mission, so every unit was able to score our objectives. I liked it, however I don’t yet know if it scales to a full table.
From their body count alone, solos are easier to remove from an objective than squads. So if I really wanted to score an objective, I would put more than a single solo on it. Putting an additional ranged solo should be fine, since it could still attack from range. But putting an additional melee solo could waste its attack if no enemy is in melee range at the objective.
So I wonder: Wouldn’t that change favour ranged solos over melee solos?
I have realised that I explained myself poorly & have amended my original post. I meant you cant activate two of the same unit in the same turn. You can have as many as you wish in your list. i.e. you can have 4 jacks, you just cant activate a 2x jacks in the same turn. But you can activate a jack and a squad for example.
Thats a great point, and one I hadnt considered. However, I don’t necessarily think so. Warcaster is such a dynamic game, it isn’t often points are completely ignored, as the game is all about scenarios.
Also, many solos are support focussed or have other value, such as weavers, and can afford to sit on a point and still add value. Other solos are tanky or have stealth (or other resilient features), and are great for holding a point, especially when supported by a bodyguard of some nature.
The rationale for adding more scenarios to allow solos to score is to give them more intrinsic value if their value was reduced by my suggestion (of not mandating their inclusion every turn).
It would also mean as squads gain value (of being able to be activated more often) then they should have their scenario scoring value reduced a little (not completely).
I have done something I should have done earlier: Look at all currently available non-hero solos. Turns out, only two solos in all factions are pure melee, the Grafter and the Faktotum. The Grafter adds value by handing out its +1 ARM buff while the Faktotum has Jump Start.
So I would like to revise my earlier point. You are correct, those solos that only have melee have other value.
I was kinda thinking about allowing more activations during the activation phase. My idea was to have a new activation mechanic in which each turn a player gets 5 activation points a round to spend on units. Unit activation cost is the same as their DC, you can only activate the same kind of unit twice a round (like you said). This gives the options of:
1 Light Jack/Vehicle, 2 Solos
2 Squads, 1 Solo
I liked this idea because it gets more units moving around the board, and it opens the game to potential new levels of strategies. There could be cypher, effects, and rules that can be played around with. I haven’t tested this, but its just an idea. But I do agree the single unit type per round does feel restricting.
I also like the idea of a free recall (after deployment). This would prevent the scenario of being stuck with one unit during an activation phase, having a single survivor in a squad trying to be annoying enough just to get snuffed out.
If your intent is “Your list can only include one copy of any particular unit, except for solos” , or if the intent is “you can have 1 squad, 1 warjack, 1 vehicle, and any number of solos in your list”, then either way, this suggestion would be cripplingly detrimental to the game.