IMO the game gets bogged down a lot with so few models on the table. I’d love to start a discussion on how PP might streamline play when they come to review the core rules.
I don’t want to come across in a negative fashion so thought I would start with some positives:
- squad movement is amazing. It’s fast, cinematic and elegant - more of this please!
- Love the dice mechanic where a better quality hit proportionally increases the potential for damage
- spell casting is fast and easy
- deck building is fun and has more depth the longer you use it
What could we do to make the game faster? Here are just some ideas to get the ball rolling
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remove the solo limitation for each activation. Give solos value by letting them score scenarios. The same model cannot activate twice under any circumstances.
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You can play only one cypher and discard a card once a turn but at any point during your turn.
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I think one delay is the deployment/gate positioning phase but I’m not sure how to improve this process
These may not be the right answers but am just looking to start the conversation
I agree with all the things you like.
I’m not convinced removing the solo limitation speeds things up. Generally solos have shorter activations than other units (generally they’re about half a full activation).
Reducing Cyphers could speed things up, but would change the game balance. Personally I find the Cypher phase goes by pretty fast.
Deployment tends to take time because there are decisions to be made … I don’t think it’s a structural problem, I think it’s a “relatively new game” problem in that I imagine none of us are playing as much as we want!
The biggest issue I see is with the opposed roll mechanic. Yes, we could both roll at the same time, do we(?) … not so much. And even when we are on the ball, we then have to count up two sets of strikes and compare them, instead of saying X hits, great that the same for all these attacks. Having a single threshold for an action makes play much faster.
My “fix” remains to replace rolling defence with having a fixed number which is close to the current average of the roll.
Roughly:
DEF1,2 = 1
DEF3,4 = 2
DEF5,6 = 3
etc
Anything that gives bonus action dice, use the DEF scaling above.
Anything that gives bonus power dice, gives +1 per power die.
This should leave the balance where it is and just remove a time consuming mechanic that doesn’t do much. The alternative that I have considered would be to have an additional dice set (blue and purple say which count as negative strikes) with the attacker managing the full dice pool, negating the tendency to alternate. (Optimally, have a dice rolling app that you can put the appropriate colours into and it spits out the result!)
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I like it.
That was something I had intended to mention. Removing the defensive rolls would make a difference. Really everyone just has a DEF stat to roll against. It also means where you are timing turns, it can’t be negatively affected by the other player.
Regarding timed turns, absolutely!
This does decrease the overall variance in the attack-defence roll off, since a large dice pool produces higher variance. Personally I don’t mind that … it’s plenty swingy as is. However, this effect is the reason for the alternative single dice pool with positive and negative strikes option.
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