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Arena Setup:



The dark squares are pits. The bright circles are pillars. Total diameter is 28".

Game 1:
Morituri
Toth
Tiet-Kebi
Ur-Kek

Ludus Magnus
Micon
Infelix
Iason

Both close in on each other. Infelix exhausts himself for a double walk+Attack agains Ur-Kek. Ur-Kek takes 4 damage.

In the following Tiet walks and attacks twice to kill Infelix.

A few close in moves and clear turns later Toth is heavily injured by Iason and Ur-Kek wants to move to engage both enemy models gets attacked of opportunity by Micon and thrown into a pit via Atlas Throw.

Then its Ludus Magnus turn and Iason kills Toth.

Morituri are down to 1 model so clear turn and Tiet-Kebi runs away a couple of turns then Iason is close to a pit and fatigued so she attacks him repositions and pushes into the pit.

Micon tries to do the same with her. Thanks to 2 favour on the defense she survives.

In return Tiet-Kebi uses tactic Bleed to gain 2 favour and pushes Micon into the pit, too.


Game 2:
Morituri
Tiet-Kebi
Zahra
Ur-Kek

Ludus Magnus
Hermes
Lupa
Marcus Furius

All close in. Lupa is a bit closer than 3“ to a pit and fatigued. So Zahra Walks to engage her from a bit more than 4“ away. As a reaction Hermes moves towards Zahra and has now the same distance to the pit as Lupa. Since he is 1 Def lower Zahra pays the additional Favour to attack him, with an additional Favour and a Power attack she manages to get 4 Net Successes and pushes him into the pit. She repositions herself during that in a way that she engages Lupa no more and gets a Fatigue removed so she is only Fatigued not Exhausted.

Lupa readies and Marcus walks to Ur-Kek without engaging Sahra, because she had Re-positioned more than 7“ away from him.

Zahra readies and Tiet Fatigues to make a double movement to close in on Marcuse but stays a bit further than 1“ away from him.

Lupa moves and Power attacks on Tiet, Zahra makes a Reaction: Assist but thanks to favour dice Tiet dies never the less. Due to Innervate Zahra readies again.

Ur-Kek readies. Zahra then moves into position and with 1 attack thanks to favour dice pushes Lupa into a pit and exhausts herself to push Marcus a bit to the second pit. She is something around 3“ away from Marcus.

Marcus needs to clear turn.

Ur-Kek attacks and pushes Marcus the last 2“ into another pit.


Resume:
Pits are way too dangerous. OK one could argument that moving closer than 3“ to a pit is over exposing ones self. Therefore I made the picture below. Both gladiators are 3“ from the pit away. So if you would want to stand safer you only had that small corridor to move in. Total diameter of the arena is 28".



Zahras Lash is in combination with Pits is way too dangerous. The missing damage doesn't make a difference on an instant kill.

One proposal would be to make pits that exhaust you instantly if thrown in, cause 4 additional damage and it does cost an additional 3" movement to get out of a pit again, or something like that.

We have the same Playmobil Arena that we use for test games.

Regarding pits. Personally I like pits as instant death. It's clean and easy to resolve as you either die or you don't. There are ways to keep yourself relatively safe around pits, but none of them are guaranteed and mostly open up at around 5 gladiators a side. Pits are definitely less interesting in a 3v3.

There will be more terrain effects in the 2nd Playtest release. We have discussed doing deep/spiked pits (instant death) along with shallow pits (lesser penalty) so that players can choose their preferred type of pit. Just one thing to note, however, is that the game is based around having enough terrain to push people into and have that terrain cause negative effects. Too little terrain and the push and reposition results on the damage tree become undervalued as compared to straight damage. My recommendation on terrain is just to keep that point in mind and go with what feels right to you and your gaming group.

Re: terrain, I've played 2 games, and definitely felt the one with more terrain and more move effects was way more fun...

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hmm... maybe good old frontarc/backarc would make pushing/reposition more difficult and interesting. but thats only my 2 cents

I feel like this might be important. The rules say 3 is a good number for learning the basics, but that most games are suggested to be at 5 or 8 per side.

I've only gotten in a few solo test games thus far, but I did try one with 5v5 and there were some more interesting possibilities, with some figures moving between my other figure and a looming pit, so that a push would just go into my friendly figure, not instant death. I could see even crazier scenarios in 8v8 games where I clump up my guys so you can't push them into a pit, but you push my front guy out of the way to get at my second guy who is on the edge of the pit, etc.

I'll be interested to see what other crazy terrain effects get added with the rest of the rules, but it definitely already has put a huge emphasis on positioning and movement that makes it much different from any other game I've played.

Also, I'm digging that gladiator arena.

I bought one of the Playmobil arenas just for this too. They can be very hard to find in the States, but I was able to order one from the UK Amazon shop for a reasonable price. For those interested here is the link.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000EMFAUO/r ... _M3T1_dp_1

I will be doing some priming and painting to try and replicate the one here;

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=7751.15

As to the pit effects, I am still not sure about the instant deaths either. It just seems too powerful if more than half the gladiators die by pits instead of by a weapon or other hazard type. I will likely still use them, but try moving them away from the center of the arena.

In my games, I have been using 2 small pits, usually put on either side.... And my last game, pits resulted in the deaths of 4 out of 6 gladiators.

Yeah, pits are rough...

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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

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

We use waaay less terrain. On a 30" arena we had 2 pillars 2 spike walls and a pit in the middle. Also, I don't think whip lady can push you into terrain, can she? I though she "shifted"

I like the pits being instant death. I'd worry about the usefulness of pieces like micon otherwise. After losing 2 of 3 gladiators in one game to the pit, I learned to keep a wide birth and use it to my advantage.

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A haiku, by Deadpool:
I hate broccoli
And think it totally sucks
Why is it not meat?

The whip lady can push you into terrain with the Lash - but not with her Death-Ability, because the Death-Ability says "shift".

Aaah, makes sense now! That's how we were using her when we played, then I read about her in the models forum, haha. Sometimes skim reading steers you wrong!

_________________
A haiku, by Deadpool:
I hate broccoli
And think it totally sucks
Why is it not meat?