Thank you for the responses! It’s appreciated 
I’ve been trying to decide if I like this. Not sure I like advancing the pulse round randomly, but maybe in Pulse 3 you could check at the end of each turn if the game continues?
Not sure I like that either.
Maybe move peak scoring to pulse 2?
So pulse 1 is 1pt
Pulse 2 is 3pt
Pulse 3 is 2pt?
You can always deploy gates close to your table edge, so tabling is technically not possible
It was an idea shamelessly stolen from a different game system, but I think it fits the dice design really well. On top of that it greatly balances scoring to not favor 1st or second by too much. On average it will favor 2nd, but dice are dice. I don’t have too much fear of an infinite pulse round, because again dice are dice. But can you imagine the ramp up to the end of a round that lasts 2 or 3 turns too long? That sounds like a formula for some fun games to me
Admittedly, it doesn’t solve the game length issue, which I still regard as a bigger issue
Gaming is at it’s best when there’s cross-pollination of ideas. If anything, I’ve noticed that creators are FAR more open minded about what they enjoy and draw from compared to their fans. That’s artists, writers, and musicians plus game developers.
I don’t know if I’d make it integral this edition but it’d be good for some scenarios for sure.
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Ah, is that newer? Back when I had an active wnm meta (pre-thousand worlds), we didn’t play with or weren’t aware of such a rule
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Nope, actually in the original KS1 book. But easy to overlook because its in the very start of the rules “how to play, what is a die?’ part.
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Another suggestion I do like is getting rid of end of pulse scoring, or making it a 2nd way to score (like, always just worth 1). EoP favors. 2nd player super heavily. End of activation, to me, feels far more balanced. Some folks say it slightly favors 1st player, and I think thats fine, because even then everyone seems to agree its slight.
EoA is also easier to determine a quick end in pulse 3, and I think more forgiving for suggestions to make an early lead mercy rule, or randomly end pulse rounds/games.
Just all around I like EoA scoring better.
It’s an interesting time to ask that question for me. With 10th edition 40k coming out I’ve been giving that the pretty hard glance back. However, I’ve never actually played Warcaster, and honestly it seems like a much better game in general, but it’s hard to tell how much attention it’s going to get in the future.
I think my top item for this game is 3d printed models with printed magnet holes. That would push me over to this game faster than anything else.
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I covered this on FB but I think the base game system as a first edition has some real gold in there, and just like Paradox said, this is now easily my favourite game system. However there are some core issues I would dearly love to get addressed:
The game is slow. Every turn requires a 9 step process (not including individual activations) and requires too many decisions. I’m all for freedom of choice, but slows the game to a crawl, where my game with a 7 model army takes longer than my game of Warmachine with ny 50 model army. Each turn needs to be streamlined to make it a faster, snappier game (which the rest of the game seems built around and does well).
If we are going to have lots of ways to increase DEF to ludicrous levels, there needs to be a way to debuff DEF (like Corrosion, but for DEF).
We have wandered into WM MK1 where every model has a dozen ‘special rules’. I would prefer to have a model with maybe 1 special rule tied to the model, and another special rule tied to an achetype (i.e. Vassals) and leave it at that. This would remove some of the ‘gotcha’ moments, and increase the scope for new models coming out.
Heavy warjacks should get looked at. In addition to all the weapon and head options, they all have a ludicrous amount of other special abilities, all increasing their stats to ridiculous levels. When powered up they are crazy, and can quite easily run the table (especially in skirmish). They also completely overshadow the light jacks and dont really give them space to breathe.
My preference would be
Limit their focus to 1 (which would tone down their other stat increases)
A heavy warjack DEF should never get above 3 (they are the size of a building!)
Outside of a cypher they shouldnt be able to remove an activation token - this is too strong on a gun platform like a heavy warjack
The worth of a heavy is the sheer volume of firepower they bring to the table. They dont need to be DEF 5/6/ARM 5/6 as well.
Remove weapons that ignore LOS. Its silly and there is no counter to it. Everything should have a counter to be balanced.
Limit the amount of activation token removal. Honestly, this kind of breaks the game. Warcaster is all about timing your activations, and your enemy activations. If lots of models can arbitrarily ignore this limitation, it takes away a big tactical element in the game IMO.
I know this comes across as a lot of complaining (its not I promise!!!), but I dearly love this game, and would love to see it a bit more streamlined and a bit more balanced.
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Really what I want from them is the equivalent of Mk1 Prime Remix. A relaunch of the base game now that we are out of the pandemic, with new starter boxes that maybe can include a few more minis for the same price by 3D printing them, and a small rebalancing of model entries to make each unit simpler and more equal (specifically looking at the power gap between KS1 stuff and KS3 stuff here).
One more thing. Rewrite skirmish from the ground up.
Put it on a regular 4x4 board and change the scenarios to better enable maneuverability over just ranged power. A guide to placing terrain like WM has could also help this.
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Lots of really good ideas in this thread. Lots of things I would like to see as well!
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36”x36 board.
Change Stealth to 6”
Thats what Id like. Standardize Primary/Skirmish to 1 board size b
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I agree. I just think the game needs to create more counter units and abilities. A few more units or weapons with anti-air, anti-tank (for warjacks and vehicles), and maybe some that can reduce defense power dice to normal dice. I like these ideas.
I cant think of way to make the game faster besides having a time limit on turn length. Or maybe combine players actions in one turn and players rotate who is the first player? Like if each player take turns using cyphers and activations on the same turn.
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I don’t think many things in the core rules actually need to change, personally. New starters, new pendulum and a marketing push would go a long way to helping the game, a minor balance patch to improve internal balance and tone down some of the strongest models would help too.
Main rules change I’d like to see is changing the rule on having multiple ciphers of the same colour on a model from “can’t be targeted with a cipher of the same colour as they’re being affected by” to “immediately discard the cipher of the same colour before applying the new cipher” so there’s more flexibility to pulse round ciphers and less “gotchas” for new players.
For game length, if any change had to be made, I’d say change defense to be a flat number to beat instead of an opposed roll and change any “reroll defense dice” effects to “force your opponent to reroll their attack dice”. That being said getting used to rolling defense dice simultaneously has done wonders for playing quickly locally, our skirmish games are under an hour and a half, and primary under two hours for decently experience players.
The game is in a good spot in general, it’s easy to learn but complex to master, making the starter products more attractive to newcomers would let the game’s strengths shine.
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I forgot when the news was posted but this year is focused on getting Warmachine mk 4 out, but Warcaster is on the table with plans around MonPoc and RQ next.
With PP having a year worth of knocking the dust off of how to do an industrial print run, WC is going to be lit next year.
I had thought there would be a Kickstarter in Q4 this year. Is that not the case?
A concrete date was never provided. It’s commonly assumed that the Warmachine MK IV launch has put things on the back burner.
I suspect that 2024 is a solid bet, though! (Reason for speculation: they’re pretty much back on track with Warmachine releases, so presumably now they have some bandwidth freed up.)
I strongly suspect they’re done with Kickstarter as a company. The winds are kind of shifting away from that as a model in the mini-gaming industry, a few too many bad anecdotes these days. Which a shift back to traditional release model would be good for us! Minis available right on the coat tails of an announcement would be sweet!
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I think the shift to 3d printing is probably a bigger factor. No needing to make molds. That said? Crowdfunding does seem to be more a pre-order system now than “here’s a neat indie idea” so I don’t see why they couldn’t keep doing it since Privateer generally delivers on their projects.
Anyhow: I think some form of solo gaming would not be a bad marketing tool. I don’t know if there’s enough market for it to really be serious feature. And when 2024 comes out? I’d like a big splash for Warcaster if possible. Really, the game needs a relaunch/re-introduction to the gaming public.
Selling terrain STLs might not be a bad idea. Or just flat out link Tinkerhouse’s stuff.
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