+ Inload: High Noon on Acheron Highway +
+ Playtesting commences on Bloodsong v0.7, with the awesome Bob Hunk graciously agreeing to beat the snot (green) out of my Salamanders. +
+ I'm aiming to create a sort of 'board game' experience, with two set armies, a set board and clear mission, in order to provide a clear route into the game for new players. +
+ The armies are thus aiming to be thematic rather than tournament-style (Legions Imperialis is very open to abuse in army list terms), and to gradually introduce extra rules concepts as the missions go on; so this first mission involves Infantry, Cavalry and Vehicle units types and introduces capturing objectives; while the next one introduces Flyers and new rules like reserves etc. +
+ It'll doubtless take some refining, but I'm pleased to say that the basic ork rules seem to hold up. +
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+ The game +
+ The board for this mission is 3ft x 2¾ft (as an aside, Bob Hunk commented on how disorientating it was to play Epic in Imperial measurements again!), and depicts a key junction on the highway to Acheron hive. +
+ The mission covers a meeting engagement, where a Salamanders company is responding to a request for aid from a company of the 7th Steel Legion Army. Alas, by the time the Space Marines arrive, the Steel Legion have been scattered and the orks are pressing on toward the hive. We thus fight a straightforward battle, with each sides forces made up by a single formation (minimising complexity at deployment and tracking casualties) that must all be deployed. +
+ Two area – a critical refuelling depot and a 7th Army Group banner – form the take and hold objectives. As you can see, the armies are fairly small (~1,200–1,500pts) and not quite finished yet. +
+ Teaching games always take a little longer than a normal game, and in any case we wanted to hang out and chat, so we called the game at the top of turn 2 – by which time the orks had claimed the objectives and wiped out the Salamanders forces on the western flank; but had been surrounded by the Rhino-transported forces in the east. +
+ Turn 2 saw some heavy combat, which left the board looking as above. Due to events in the game, I'll be making some tweaks to v0.8 of the ork rules:
- Stormboys need a note that jump packs increase their movement from 5" to 7", and an increase in CAF (probably to +2).
- The inclusion of the anti-air Tarantulas here was a bit weird – and in any case, the Automated Sentry rules are probably best saved for a later mission.
+ Otherwise, things seems to perform as you might expect. It was notable that ork boyz don't have any recourse to anti-armour... I'm in two minds as to whether to allow attachments, or keep this as an important distinguishing point; and get the players to rely on crumping things in combat. Any thoughts are welcome. +
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| + Work-in-progress orks – the skins and guns are done; now to pick out some brighter colours for clothes, to contrast with the green opposition + |
+ From these showt, you'll see it's quite tricky to pick out green and black Space Marines from black and green orks – so I'll be doing a bit more to help the orks stand out while painting. No more drabs for them! +
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