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1166: The Lord protects the simple.'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Adherence to the Theme | #7 | 3.517 | 3.625 |
| Overall | #10 | 3.315 | 3.417 |
| Mechanics & Clarity | #12 | 3.092 | 3.188 |
| Concept & Originality | #13 | 3.335 | 3.438 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Great game, the more I read it the better it gets.
This would suit 6mm really well, thematically speaking. And I think, if developed further, integrating the unit types to the special abilities for units, could create a basis for army lists and would bring a stronger setting for players to grasp. At the moment it's very agnostic and although that isn't a bad thing, I think it would really benefit from reining that in a bit. A dark fantasy/steampunk mix would be cool. That's what I pictured when I was reading over the rules. Something like SLUDGE, if you've read or played that game.
It's good to allow for some imagination, but I think telling people what they are playing with helps them get to grips with the game.
I would change it so that the ELAM reduction only occurs for each action performed after the first and the unit doesn't recover a point at the end of their activation. At the moment, a unit loses a point of ELAM, then regains it immediately after. Semantics, but would flow rules wise a little better. Could add a Rest action, that allows a Unit to regain a point of ELAM at the cost of moving or attacking.
The Wizard's ability only having a single use is a little disappointing. I get why, its a big boom, but I'd want my Wizard to be doing more. What if it was changed to costing more ELAM to use? Maybe 2 points? That way a Wizard is expensive ELAM wise due to the inherent costs of using its ability, and also restricted with the number of times it can cast.
Awesome stuff, with lots of further development potential. Good work!
Oh yeah, 6mm skirmish is actually my preferred scale. I'm impressed that you could derive that from this rule-set.
To be honest this is meant to be fairly 'tinkertoy'/setting/miniature agnostic, so the exclusion of theming is a conscious choice, not just trying to save space. There are no units, one to save on space, but also to force players to make their own. I want people to be able to use literally any minis. If I had to pick a setting, think of a sci-fi version of the wars in Zaire/The Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unfortunately that's quite a bit dark 'fantasy' (Note that the wizard is invoking orbital weapons). I feel like given the limited space the rules are working with I do a fairly okay job of creating an (optional) implied setting if that's desired. That said you're not the first to raise that point, so if I do more work with this, I suppose I should add more on that front. And yeah I'm familiar with sludge, but haven't gotten around to buying the ruleset. Not convinced it's better than Turnip28 anyhow.
I seem to have explained the whole activation process a bit poorly, as what you're describing is actually fairly close to the intended function.
The intended meaning is that each unit gets a 'free' action once activated. After acting, a unit may roll for an additional action, and they can do this so long as they have an Elan higher than 1 (Since making that roll would kill the unit).
Taken together, this is intended to make the decision to 'push' for additional actions an actual decision, with the additional action not a sinecure, but something that you might not get, while the cost is always going to come up. At the same time, because the first action a unit gets on their Activation doesn't require a roll, it does not deplete their Elan.
This is meant to make it clear that rolling for additional actions is not required, and allows a Unit to 'regenerate' Elan, by only taking the 'free' action that does not require a roll. This removes the need for a 'rest' action, and allows for Elan to regenerate passively throughout the game. Do note that any attacks against a unit it survives will also reduce Elan, so Unit effectiveness should continually degrade, forcing a relatively quick resolution of the game.
If you have suggestions for how the above can be made clearer and more effectively communicated, I'd welcome them, as clearly I've already failed on that front once.
The restriction on the Wizard power being a one shot is so I can borrow existing mechanics, which A) The whole purity of design/design by subtraction thing, and B) Let's me save space. In an expanded game, there's clearly a ton that can be done with powers like this I agree.
Side note: We're both wrong, technically it's "élan", not elam or elan. Broadly it's a stolen french word meaning eagerness to charge to the sound of the guns, seen often in discussion of Napoleonic armies.
Expansion on the wizard thing:
It might be less than obvious in the current version of the rules, but the idea is that the wizard gets one attempt to activate the orbital weapon. If they roll over their Elan, it doesn't go off, and they can't do it again, so you actually do want them to have a relatively high Elan anyhow.
Wow. Now that you've spelled it out for me, I feel like an idiot as it is perfectly clear in the ruleset. I don't know why I thought all units lost a point of ELAN per turn.
If you want to make it clearer, maybe just add the word free to that first activation description. As in:
"Each Unit may take a single free action when activated.
A unit may roll against their own Elan to take an additional action, so long as their Elan is above 1."
Also I dont know why I spelled it ELAM. Apologies. And its origins make it very cool, I would never have known.
Don't sell your feedback (or yourself) too short. It's clear once it's explicitly laid out, but in the original wording you had issues, and I can confirm other people I've had read the rules have similar complaints. Part of the issue is I have multiple 'things' per sentence, going to bullet point it out and then re-condense to see if I can make things clearer.
For the "Energetic" special rule, it references exploding dice, but I don't see that term anywhere else in the rules. What is meant by that?
Pretty common terminology for rolling another die and adding it to the roll value. In this case it'd be you roll another die or the same die again and add it to the total when you roll a 5 or 6.
Got it. The wording was "explodes on a 5 in addtion to a 6", so I was wondering if i missed where the dice usually explode on a 6.
Basically they explode once, it's actually the first sentence of the actual rules: 1d6 system. On a roll of 6, roll the die a second time and add it to the total.
However the most recent version of the game (waiting for reviewing to end) does change the language on Energetic to not use the term exploding, and better resemble other rule descriptions.