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 Post subject: First Test Run
PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:04 pm 
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Noxius
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Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2013 9:43 pm
Posts: 73
Location: GTA, Ontario, Canada
Well, I finally got a chance to set up a quick 3vs3 with me controlling both sides (yay no friends!)

The matchup was Legio vs BB: Aquila, Aemelia & Ban-Luca vs Sven, Frigge & Vargr

I set up a 30 inch arena using a phone cable and tape (This Caesar is apparently ghetto like that), with 2x 1.5"x2.5" pits, 6x 1"x1" columns, and 4x 2"x1.5" spike walls. The pits were equidistant running along the midline of the arena, with 3 sets of columns also evenly spaced, between the gladiators on each side and the midline. The spikes were put diagonally across from each other, but were never at risk of being dangerous. (I would upload a pic but its giving me grief)

The end result was close, with BanLuca being the last gladiator standing with 6 Vitality left. However, quite early on in the match I felt this would be a likely conclusion.

My observations:

1) The game runs pretty smoothly, even for someone with zero prior tabletop gaming experience. It took me about 2 hours, but that was a lot of reading and writing notes and strategizing.

2) I felt that I interpreted (and utilized) the rules quite correctly, though I did miss a few possible Actions, Tactics, and Special Abilities... This should become second nature after a few games. After reading the Vitality Track entry again, I realized that I did not add the 1 damage to a successful attack completely mitigated by Arm value. Ban Luca would probably lost another 2 or 3 damage, but not much else...

3) I definitely see why people feel terrain is important. Even with my 12 pieces, there was really little risk of any terrain being important to the outcome. I did try a few pushing strategies, but it amounted to nothing. Someone like Micon however, could be very dangerous if you get your successes up.

4) The Reaction: Opportunity Attack is brutal. I did not risk moving my gladiators once in melee range due to it being silly overpowered. Considering the moving gladiator can't react to this reaction, and other friendlies can't assist this reaction, it really limited my mobility options. I do agree that a gladiator leaving combat near a "ready" opponent should be penalized, but to have to suffer through an Opportunity Attack as written in the rules never makes it a good option. If anything, the additional success gained for the Opportunist should be removed, or if kept, it should be an Atk+1 vs Atk, not Atk+1 vs Def. Alternately, make it a straight up -2 or -3 vitality, ignoring any favour bonus possibly gained from the retreating gladiators Vitality track.
Basically, anything but as written...

5) ...the reason for this is that my game ended up being a grappling fest in the centre of the arena. I thought there would be a lot more maneuvering.

6) Favour is really good. I felt the mechanic worked really well, and allowed for some really strong damage tree resolutions, but this came at a fair price and put your gladiators at risk of being overpowered by favour the next turn. I can see this making Hermes and Otho (and the combination) really powerful.

7) Power attack is almost mandatory vs some gladiator match-ups. I ended up relying on it significantly to do any sort of damage. My 3vs3 lasted 15 or 16 rounds (each round being a turn from both players), and I feel the only reason it didn't go on any longer was because of Power attacks + Favour dice additions.

Regarding the gladiators themselves:

1) Ban Luca - a beast. Her plus Gaius would likely create a tanking deathstar that may need to be adjusted for balance. Add in Aemelia with her higher Def and you have huge damage soaking potential. Additionally, her Stall ability is super useful in damage mitigation as well.

2) Aquila - kind of meh. I love the model, but considering all models cost 1pt, Urien seems infinitely more useful. Maybe with some good pushing attacks his Coordinated Strike would be more useful, but this did not materialize. His Valour ability was somewhat useful, but Hot-Blooded would have served me much more and would have made quick work of BB flesh.

3) Aemelia - decent, although 4 on Atk was somewhat useless, her high Def partially made up for it. Intercept seems decent, but with such a low attack it'd be better served using the favour die to boost your successes

4) Sven - he died early, but was much more useful than Vargr. His Swift ability is awesome, and definitely make him useful.

5) Vargr - meh. His main advantage is his movement, which became useless in such a tight game, and his potential damage output was the highest of the 6, but with 4 Atk you really had to pile on favour and a Power attack to make his attacks stick.

6) Frigge - her high Def makes her an asset in BB, and her Retaliate, though not used in my game, can be quite useful as there were many times I achieved zero net successes in my test game.

Questions I came up with:

1) Most models have a 1" melee range, but when pushing an enemy model into one of your friendlies, does it have to be base-to-base in order for the bonus success, or within 1" of your friendly?

2) Aquila's Valor: I am reading it as 1 bonus favour per attack, even if the attack causes the enemy to gain 2 or more favours. Correct?

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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:15 pm 
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Noxius

Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2013 3:36 pm
Posts: 51
Location: Hampshire UK
I believe ...
1: Base to base required for pushes.
2: 1 favour per attack.

But I could be wrong on both counts.


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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 2:26 pm 
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Noxius
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Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:58 pm
Posts: 79
Location: Olathe, Kansas
Good stuff!

So you liked power attacks? It always felt to me that I was better off just making a 2nd attack instead, given that if I power attacked a reaction: counterattack almost always nullified my roll to a certain extent.

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"He vows to endure, to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword." -The gladiator's oath

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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 2:39 pm 
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Noxius
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Posts: 73
Location: GTA, Ontario, Canada
In my very limited experience, I relied on them often. I think the first few times I laid off and did regular attacks but that got me nowhere, esp against BanLuca, where for some attackers you need at least 3 successes to register a point of damage... I guess if I have favour die, simply regular attacking first and saving them up for my second attack may yield better results.

I will test this theory it next time...

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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 12:36 am 
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Noxius
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Posts: 79
Location: Olathe, Kansas
In my last game, I stuck to using power attacks over just making a standard 2nd attack as I previously had... and it seemed to work better than I thought it would. Maybe it's not such a bad option afterall! :D

_________________
"He vows to endure, to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword." -The gladiator's oath

http://www.nerdsvsninjas.blogspot.com - a humble blog about gaming and other nerdy stuff...


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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 6:19 am 
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Noxius
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Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2013 9:43 pm
Posts: 73
Location: GTA, Ontario, Canada
WuhSawBe wrote:
In my last game, I stuck to using power attacks over just making a standard 2nd attack as I previously had... and it seemed to work better than I thought it would. Maybe it's not such a bad option afterall! :D


I think the key is ARM - esp with BanLuca, with 2 successful regular attacks you have to get over an 8 wound barrier vs just a 4 wound one with a power attack.

I think the equation is basically, ARM 0 & 1 = 2 regular attacks; ARM 2 = split (depends on damage tree, defenders vitality, etc); ARM 3+ = power attack

Not that this is 100% the case, but in most instances, and from a pure damage perspective, I would say that sums it up pretty nicely

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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 3:43 pm 
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Founder of the Republic
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Joined: Fri May 17, 2013 9:07 am
Posts: 48
Answers-

1)When you push an enemy model into a friendly model you need to push the enemy into base with the friendly to get the bonus success.

2)Aquila only generates 1 Favor regardless of how much Favor the enemy model generated.

Additional thoughts/clarification-

3) The power attack reroll lets you reroll all the attack dice (which includes any Favor dice).

4) A Reaction: Counterattack must be declared before an attack is upgraded to a power attack and before an attacker declares how much Favor is spent on attack roll. Reaction: Counterattack triggers upon declaration of an attack. Upgrading to a power attack and spending Favor dice both trigger/occur after declaration of an attack but before dice are rolled.

5) The decision on whether to power attack vs make 2 normal attacks really varies from situation to situation. Defender's armor stat, defender defense stat, breakdown of attacker's damage tree (effects early vs late in tree), defender exhausted, opposing player's reactions, model rules, etc. can all factor into the decision. In general, however, the higher the static defense and armor of a defender, the better a power attack becomes.

6) There is still internal disagreement on whether Ban-Luca should have 3 armor or 4 armor, but in general we tended to err on the side of more powerful for playtest.

7) Things do tend to cluster up around the main fight as players tend to commit further activations and pile in more gladiators. This isn't necessarily what will happen, but it's sort of the tendency of players to continue commiting forces and resources into the first fight they start. There are some objective rules that help to break up this tendency that will be in the 2nd playtest rule release.


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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:26 pm 
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Noxius
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Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2013 9:43 pm
Posts: 73
Location: GTA, Ontario, Canada
OBJECTIVE RULES!!!

... I didn't want to say it first in case I jinxed it.

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 Post subject: Re: First Test Run
PostPosted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 7:32 pm 
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Noxius
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Joined: Mon Jun 17, 2013 7:02 pm
Posts: 60
Location: Portland, OR
Good to hear about objectives, and that's an interesting tactic- putting the more powerful rules out there for the test...

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