Guard Towers are here to stay I love terrain you can interact with. But I want to discuss how difficult they are to remove. They can’t be charged removing the boosted due in melee, and they get +4 arm from range. Arm 20 with 40 boxes it’s just too much. You have to send two heaves that can’t charge to remove a 6-8 point unit that’s going to snipe all your stuff and then your heavies are sitting ducks. I can see them being durable for battle forged and narrative games but steam roller I think they are too oppressive. Arm 18, 30 boxes seem fair and they can have a “reinforced tower” rule for narrative play that gives +2 arm and 10 boxes
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I would rather the tower be durable, but the models in it less so.
I think that allowing melee combat into and out of the first floor would be good, and I would love to see Bar the Door be removed, to allow troops to fight over the tower.
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I think that is a really cool idea. Even just running your melee units into the tower to engage people on the top from being able to shoot. Things that worry me the most are like shock gunners with spray 14 pow 13 dual shots just chillin
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I haven’t played with the Guard Tower yet but on paper at least the rules are pretty eye-popping. Especially since it can’t be charged and the models inside can’t be sprayed. Snipers inside are immune to almost everything.
I feel like weapons with the Siege Weapon rule should deal an extra die of damage to buildings. I don’t think they do as written, because they say “huge-based model or structure”. But it would be balancing and very thematic.
Unlike a model belonging to one player, the power of the Guard Tower is highly dependent on its exact location on the board, something which both players should have input into. The closer it is to scenario scoring elements, the more powerful it is. Conversely the farther it is out on a flank, the harder the choice to occupy it or not. So we have options to balance it ourselves even absent any rules adjustments.
I think a recent Tried&True podcast had some good suggestions about where to put it: never put it IN a zone because it makes that zone almost un-scoreable, and never put it where the second player can easily run to occupy it on their first turn.
Anyway, I agree occupyable and destroyable terrain is definitely a really cool addition to the game. I hope we see more rules for more kinds of buildings.
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I haven’t gotten to play with them yet so i can’t really say anything about their relative strength. I do want to say that i LOVE that there are occupyable buildings now. Once we get armor and HP for average houses then i hope to see them on more tables than not.
I also want to second the suggestion that siege weapons should work on them.
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Having played with the Guard Towers at AdeptiCon, I can tell you that Orgoth heavies with Redline can obliterate towers. ARM 20 and 40 boxes sounds pretty sturdy on paper, but they can be destroyed more quickly than you’d think. Also, Cover and Elevation combine to give +6 DEF, but aiming and boosting can make that Guard Tower a death trap, as my Wolf with No Name quickly discovered.
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