Arena Rex Forums

I got to play some real games for the first time last night, and I think there was one thing that mainly stood out to me as being confusing and hard to remember.

When you attack an opposing gladiator, there are various things you can trigger that give you some kind of bonus. As far as I can tell, there are three such things:

Attacking an exhausted model = free result.
Pushing a model into a friendly model = free extra success.
Pushing a model into a hazard = pushed model gains a fatigue.

Remembering what action triggers what bonus was a challenge and seemed unwieldy to me.

Especially the free push was difficult to work with, I thought, because you don't just trigger it, you also have to make a choice about where in your damage tree results you want to insert that free-floating virtual push.

As of right now, I would prefer it if these bonuses were streamlined somehow. The best idea I can come up with for how is to say that all three triggers just give a free extra success.

However, I really like the fact that pushing into hazards gives the defendant one fatigue. Because it's interesting, and there isn't any other default way to increase the fatigue of enemies that I know of. But it annoyed me that this means that it has no effect to push an enemy into a hazard when they are already exhausted. Cos they can't gain any more fatigue beyond that.

So: I think my prefered suggestion would be to say that both attacking an exhausted enemy and pushing an enemy into a friendly model ("ganging up") should both just give an extra free success. Cumulatively. Then say that pushing an enemy into a hazard gives the enemy one fatigue, but if the enemy is already exhausted, you get an extra free success instead.

I feel like that would be simpler and easier to remember. Then attacking an exhausted model and pushing them into something - whether a hazard or a friendly model - would always give a net bonus of two extra successes on the attack. And it would get rid of the annoying floating push result that slows down the action with too much extra pondering.

Thoughts?

_________________
My Arena Rex painting log

I think I'll suggest my friend (who really liked the game and so will probably want to play with me again) that we try this out as a house rule and see how it goes. So that would be:

Attacking an exhausted model = Gain a free extra success.
Pushing a model into a friendly model = Gain a free extra success.
Pushing a model into a hazard = Pushed model gains a fatigue. If it is already at maximum fatigue, i.e. exhausted, instead gain a free extra success.

_________________
My Arena Rex painting log

Personally, I really like the extra gained from successfully attacking an Exhausted model. I think positioning is very important in this game, especially if you use lethal hazards and/or living hazards. That extra often becomes a key part of my attack tactics, so I'd be hesitant to remove it. I also find that many times that second extra success generated from pushing an Exhausted model into a friendly model gets wasted because of the limits of the damage tree size, so I really like that the free extra is applicable no matter what and always gives you that 1 point of damage.
All that being said, I think your proposed changes probably won't impact your game negatively, so if they work for you, I'd say go for it. I'll be interested to hear the results.

_________________
Morituri te salutamus.

I agree with RidiQles. In my opinion, it is absolutely not necessary to streamline it in any other way than it is already handled.
In my opinion, it is also really simple to remember the boni you will get from exhaustion, hazards and pushing into a friendly gladiator.

_________________
Sheijtan's ARENA REX Experience

I guess you probably get used to it after playing for a while. It just seemed unnecessarily complicated to me while trying to wrap my head around the gameplay.

About pushes being important for positioning - I agree, but from what I can tell, most fighters have optional pushes in their damage tree somewhere. So giving extra successes can usually also give you the option for extra pushes if that's what you want.

If we end up trying out this house rule for increased simplicity, I'll let you know how it goes.

_________________
My Arena Rex painting log

I do agree that the "extra success and then extra push if successful" is a bit complicated. I held a Demo Day yesterday and it was one of the things that I constantly had to walk the new players through. I think what I'll do for the next one is make a die with the push symbol on all sides and just have it be added to the roll against an Exhausted model. The die will always count as a success and if it isn't cancelled then you get to apply the .

_________________
Morituri te salutamus.

I have to say that all the people I play with, had no problems adding those when attacking an exhausted gladiator.
Though I come from playing Malifaux - being quite complex - I think, the rules are pretty simple wihtin ARENA REX.

_________________
Sheijtan's ARENA REX Experience

It's not that it is complicated per se. It's just that it sticks out as being something that requires a bit more mental gymnastics to remember and keep straight than the rest of the game, because the rest of the game flows much more intuitively in my opinion.

I have tried Malifaux once, and yeah, that's a really complicated system I think. Nothing wrong with that, but AR is different to me specifically because the gameplay just flows naturally, with very few complex combinations of things to remember.

_________________
My Arena Rex painting log