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So I decided to have a look at your rules again. I'm going to have to recant my statement on synergy. Synergy sometimes takes some work to see and I'm the stay-at-home-dad of a 2yo, so my attention was maybe divided. Sorry about that, it wasn't fair. I still don't think there's a ton, but there's certainly more than I was giving you credit for. 

So lets talk about your character abilities. Most of them directly affect another model exactly as it's supposed to, without really affecting the game beyond doing exactly what it says. An easy way to change this is to give passive abilities that key off of the things your models can do. For example "if this model is moved when it isn't activating, it..." This creates a synergy that your players will want to key off of.  I think objectives besides killing other models will also allow you to create synergies as you choose models because they're good at scoring or moving, or make other models good at doing those things. Even like a King of the Hill thing would elevate the design, I think. And I think if you started considering those narrative keys you might be able to build a functioning mechanic around those questions, too. 

Thanks for the response. I appreciate the dialogue. 

Thanks for the feedback! 

- Not exactly sure what you mean by your first comment. A 'mood board' isn't an official piece of the design, just meant to convey a specific feeling to the reader before they start. 
- Yes, it's not been thoroughly proofed in 48 hours.
- Good catch; it's meant to be the player that doesn't place the markers (and to address another point), to incentivize fair placement from the one doing the placement. 
- I'll look into calling it a whist deck, or at least clarifying the suits and card numbers. 
- Nothing "happens" when a model receives a wound. After they've received 5 they're removed from the game. This is already in the rules. 
- The only time you're told to place Conquest Tokens on markers is during a March Action, so nothing. And I suppose I should create a provision for getting pushed into contact with the board edge. 
- I don't have a shoot action? I suppose you mean the Bow ability. You give the opponent a Wound. That's all. 
- The disputed territory thing is a fair point. Thanks. 
- Oof, yes, this needs cleaning up. Each model can only be involved in one melee, but if you're engaged in a melee you must melee. So you need to determine how many melees there actually are. This is definitely the hardest bit for me to explain in an OPR doc. You apply one card to a melee, and since you can't be part of a second melee, it shouldn't ever be the case that you are part of a second attack. If you've ever played Frostgrave, it's a similar approach to combat, I just muddled the execution. 
- Activations are unrestricted; you just need to play a card for the model you wish to activate. I did catch something I'd missed, though: Sprint should be a double move. 
- In proofing I'll go through the rules for consistent language. Thanks for that, though, I'll need to keep my eye on it. 
- "Anytime I win in melee I put Conquest token in enemy model and remove Conquest token from mine (thus geting 2 wining point at once)". Almost. It says: "The winner gives the chosen losing model a Conquest Token. If the winning model had any Conquest Tokens, they are removed." The only way to get a Conquest Token on a model is by losing a combat. So a model can lose a combat, getting a Conquest Token, and then win a combat later to remove it. You've highlighted that this needs to be given a sprucing-up, though. 
- "In case there is more than One Territory in my Zone of control and push away enemy model by wining melee, ALL dispute markers are removed in consolidation and my conquest placed instead, right?" You have to move over a marker to place a Conquest Token. If that marker is in the ZoC of an enemy, it is disputed, but if you can push that enemy away you'll put the Conquest Token down. 
- "I believe mandatory base size has to be defined" oops. Yeah that's an oversight on my part. 

"There are way to much skills and abilities to my liking" That's fine. But you'll only use (at most) 4 general abilities and up to 3 theme abilities. The rest are just options for crew building.  

"however I dont see any synergies in it." I mean, you discussed some of them, but ok. 

Thanks for the comment! Yes; I feel like my every edit leaves something else to be edited. Models discarding cards when they don't have a hand of cards is from Malifaux, and I totally agree with you and can't believe I let that bleed into these rules. 

So my synergies (effects that are more than the sum of their parts) are actually a little buried in the mechanics. For example, engaging an enemy with two of my models. It means I have an option to play from two suits in a combat, which means the two combatants will be able to withstand more attacks and present a greater threat. The movement creates an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts. The cards are the same, they haven't gotten more powerful. The movement didn't make the cards more powerful. But my hand is stronger nonetheless because I have two of the right models in the combat. So, yes, I do have a set of core rules, and some synergies in the crew building (my favorite I have found is taking Leadership on a Risen crew, I think). But my main synergies are in the mechanics. 

Poor Monster Hunters. I didn't have time to clean them up, unfortunately. My idea is that they only have 4 models, and each gets either additional Armor or Speed, and they each get the Vigilant ability. Vigilant makes them less susceptible to spells. Otherwise they will follow the rules for a crew of 5 with deck creation and for models, they'd just not assign the lowest values. Essentially I think of them like witch hunters, or uh...Dracula's nemesis who's name is escaping me right now. Or the ladies from Claymore.

When I've got some extra time I'm going to clean up the language, make it more consistent and hopefully less confusing. But Territory Markers go on the board and they stay put. Conquest Tokens get put onto Territory markers. You should think of Conquest Tokens like a pile of VP you have to spend, and once you've spent it you've won. Winning combats will let you spend it and losing combats will make you take it back. But the main way is to advance past a Territory Marker and place it. I guess it is kind of a King of the Hill mechanic, but there's tons of hills. The main thing is that you can permanently remove some of that VP if you pull it all off the board. So you start with needing to get rid of 9 VP, right? And you end up placing 6 right away. During consolidation, you pick up all the VP you've put on the board, and then remove 3 VP from the game. So now you'll win if you score 6 VP instead of 9. Does that make sense? You'll consolidate if you think you can earn those VP back again quickly,  or if you notice your opponent scoring quickly (because you remove a marker when you do it), or you know you can't score those 3 VP easily. This is another instance of synergy, too. The synergy between your hand, your models, and the state of the table. 

Thanks for your feedback! 

lol I really do like the bones of this one. I hope you keep working on it. Or at least the elements you've got. 

I 100% missed that they were for the Pit Crew mechanic. I think I read it as the Overdrive dice. In that case it probably matters less that the d12 is part of resolution.

NP!

Yeah, so, synergy should be effects that are more than just the sum of the two things. And relying on your parts for that "synergy" isn't really synergistic, it's just the sum of the parts (literally). 

I could have just read the rules wrong; they're not in front of me atm, but I'll work as best I can from memory. I believe you say something to the effect of "moving in any direction the player wants." Particularly in 1pg, you're going to want to elucidate on any mechanic that is contrary to the expectation of the reader. In this case saying "move any direction you want in a straight line" will clear it all up and make collisions more of a thing--though I still don't know if I'd expect them to happen. 

To clarify about weapons, I don't think you need "ranged" weapons, just weapons with ranges that aren't 0". That will mean that a player really has to get a biiiig bump to speed to get out of attack range. 

Well this is pretty cool. I love the multiple ways to score. I love that this is a fairly complete design. It's great. I like the Overdrive, I think it creates a lot of neat wrinkles and uncertainty. The pit crew is NOT my cup of tea but that's because I'm stupidly clumsy and not because it doesn't seem super fun, haha.  My comments are going to be geared mostly towards the flesh and polish instead of the bones, because I think the bones are pretty good.

- My biggest thing is that there's no synergies at all. It just isn't there. As far as a design goes, that's fine, but in terms of the contest theme: not great. 

-  It seems to favor runners with high speed (first to get the ball and then first to cross finish line). If you luck into a speedster you're going to be favored to win, and if you can choose I think Alloy Frame should almost always be what you take. This is mostly because the majority of weapons require base contact; if you can't make contact (meaning you're slower), you can't use your weapons. AND your weapons can't be used unless you stop moving. So, T1, a dude runs 8", and the dude behind runs 6". Next turn, dude behind has to decide whether to move his full 6" or stop to take a shot at the quick dude. If he misses he's behind 3" and won't be able to take another shot at the fast dude (since he'll run 8"), and if he hits it's probably not going to appreciably affect the game. I know there's a little more texture in the game than what I'm expressing (terrain and overdrive effects, notably), but I still feel this is an issue, and a significant one. 

I think at minimum the +2 Speed alloy needs looked at, but I think it would just feel better and more fast-paced if you could make attacks at any point in your movement. It would also allow heavy hitters to keep pace and provide more smash. 

- Your section on collisions needs work. And could probably be removed. For one, how does one collide with something? I can measure anywhere, right? So why would that ever happen? Also you've used the word when you're defining it, so I don't know what a collision with terrain looks like. If we're being very specific and critical I could argue that droids collide with severe terrain and have to stop, then can move at half speed on their next turn. Since you've currently got weapons only having an effect at the end of the turn, the only reason to collide with something is if you're going to attack it, and that means you're ending your movement anyway. 

- Oh, I'm not sure why you have a requirement for a full set of polyhedral dice when you only need d6s and a d12. That's a small thing. But I'd suggest removing the d12 entirely. If we used a d6 a 3-5 to hit with a 6 to crit would change the percentage to hit from 42% to 50%, and wouldn't change your chances to crit at all. In a game without much rolling, that 8% is not significant. Certainly not significant enough to warrant needing a full set of polyhedral dice. 

Great minds, amiright? 

I really like the inclusion of a narrative "question" that is left open for players to explore. It makes me wish there was more mechanically involved with those questions, and that there was more to your game than simply attacking the opponent, because those questions would be really excellent to explore in a minis game. "How did the land around the character react to their passage?" Are you kidding me? That's RAD. "What was the impact of the characters actions on the world outside this plane?" Killin' me. "What did the character sacrifice to attack an enemy?" Ugh, so juicy. And all of it so disappointingly under-explored. 

There isn't really a lot of spice in your combat as it is, either. A couple of problems: a player with a bad hand is just going to get trounced. Nothing they can do about it. Because there's only one deck, it means a player with a bad hand increases the odds of the other player having a good hand. Very little (or nothing, really) can happen that is unexpected or unprepared for. Maybe if you play a card thinking "oh they can't top this" and then they do, but that's going to be pretty rare. It's a shame that there's so little drama in the combat because that's the only thing the models can do; fight each other. I'm aware of these problems because I worked through the same issues myself in my design.  Another issue is that even though your players will be choosing which card they can play, it still may feel like the player has no control, particularly if the two players have very different hands. 

I don't really see any of synergy in your design. Everything does exactly what it's supposed to and no more comes of it. 

To conclude I think you've got great ideas that are under-utilized. I'd love to see a game where those narrative questions are more the focus and less an after-thought. 

Np. I think if you included a way to "pass" the Talisman you could use the Tree/root/earth (? I can't remember their name atm) to guarantee pickup, then send it to the Wind player to "run" it. I don't think there's a ton of great reasons to take a Root wizard, currently. 

Gonna start by saying that I love that nothing dies. I do. I think it's on-point for the game's theme and it's a bold choice for a minis game. The objective is good, too. Your writing is concise and clear. You did a great job, here.

I think the game would be a lot more interesting with walls. Having a lot of open space makes it feel like an arena, and just having even 3-4 rooms, especially if they're all connected to the central room and each other, is going to deepen the tactical thinking and the usefulness of some spells. 

If you're going to have a grid you have to have rules for diagonal movements. It should be noted that the biggest issue with grids is that diagonal movements allow for models to move much greater distances. This will be an especially exasperated issue in your game, because it's all about movement. 

I love the big monster making things rough for players, but I can imagine situations where a player finds the Talisman early, then the monster keeps the other player at bay. Or, worse, the monster has no effect on the game at all. Your monster behavior could use some tweaking. Punishing the losing player by having the Monster go after the team without the Talisman is going to be a feels bad moment, but also leads to a less interesting game. A way to make the Monster affect things in addition to bashing would be good, too. 

I think the IGO-UGO system you've got is a disservice to your design. Alternating Activations would allow for players to react to one another, would allow players to interrupt the plans of others, and presents a more fluid situation. It also decreases downtime and makes your game feel faster and more chaotic while increasing the tactical depth. 

One last thing before spells. Not a huge fan of the Talisman pick-up being random. At least, not without something mitigating that randomness. I thought for sure I'd see an auto-pick-up option from the students but did not. Adding one would add a nice wrinkle into the design. 

Spells: I dislike that they're once-per-game. Changing it will require some fine-tuning, of course. I think it's perfectly serviceable as is, and this is just preference, but if I'm going to play a game about wizards, I want to do wizarding. 

Some spells are clearly just better than others. Without rooms to funnel pieces into specific places I think Magmatic Rift is going to be kind of pointless, for example. 

I know you wanted me to go over ranges, but I just can't get a sense for that without sitting down to playtest it, and I think you've got bigger fish to fry at the moment without trying to square that away. What I said earlier stands, of course, and I really do think this could wind up being a pretty fun game. 

Thanks for the feedback!

You're actually not allowed to give models more than one Caste. In writing this I realized the confusion, from "Each model has one or more Suits assigned to them." That's explanatory, not a direction. In Step 4 of warband creation, "Assign each model a Caste." I can make that more clear, though. 

My main game is Malifaux! I actually took more inspiration from the boardgame Maria, though my love of 'faux probably bleeds through a little. 

"I've never really liked weapon ranges in the wargames I play. They never fit the scale, like in WH40k a bolter is 24" and a tank cannon might be 36". Especially with how small the scale of the battle can be, it feels wrong that an elite super human soldier just has no chance of hitting a massive alien beast at 25"." 

I'm 100% with you, there. To be clear, I don't think the issue is that the ranges are infinite, only that there's no mitigation outside of cover, and no reason to move.  I think the idea to remove ranges is an excellent design choice and could probably be pursued to a great effect. 

Not OP, but ICE stands for Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics. It's originally from Neuromancer, but I'm guessing OP got the inspiration from Netrunner (which is the greatest game ever made). 

Got to agree with all of your points. I feel like there could be some really interesting decisions, here, if the ICE wasn't just a free-for-all. It should also be noted that Ravens can't exist; they can take 0 damage, and so if they've taken 0 damage they're de-rezzed. I'm a fan of the programs, but I don't think they're all equally good, and I'd rather see a smaller list of programs and units with a greater range of utilities. I also want to see a cost, something to make me think about what I'm spawning. I think spawning 8 (or 4, if diagonally spawning isn't a thing) units a turn is a no-go, especially with 20 RAM being the limit. That's a lot of units, and it'll take a long time to resolve all of it. 

I think making a Movement action compulsory, along with having a phase where they can summon without cost, trivializes the goal of the game and could be more interesting if there's more player agency as well as a cost/reward analysis that needed to be considered. 

What happens when a Hacker is de-rezzed?

I really like the idea, though, and I'd like to see it flushed out a little better.  Big fan of the objective; anything that isn't "kill everybody else" is a big plus to me. 

Nice little game. 

My comments on synergy would be that you've got a lot of things that give bonuses, but they aren't ever more than the bonus itself. There's nothing in your game that produces a benefit if you combine two effects; the result of everything is the sum of the two things acting together, never any more than that. 

I'd also try to find a way to give the player more decisions. Currently the only thing to do is attack, and if you're not doing that the model isn't doing anything else. You've done some interesting things with the Action Points and the Spearmen, but I don't feel it's enough. Currently the game mostly will function with limited player input, and it will devolve into a lot of rolling and very little decision-making once combat starts. 

You also need to work on your math. As it stands, the Elite has a 50% chance of killing the Hero outright (a 7+ on 2d6 is 50%, and in melee the R + 1 of the Hero is 4, which causes 3 damage, which kills the Hero), and the Brute's chances are far better (a 10+ on 3d6 is 50%, so a 7 is considerably better but exact numbers are out of my head atm). This is all frustrated by the fact that there's no maneuverability or decision-making on the player's part; you have to get in there to attack, and there's nothing you can really do about that. There's no mitigation at all. 

Which brings me to the Noise Tokens. As written, there's no reason to use more than one character during a turn. Noise tokens will force monsters to attack that model unless there's other models in contact with them. Since the Hero is the most survivable and the most capable of killing other models, it should be the Archer (with the Handgun), until the Hero is in contact, and then the Hero should just take all actions until he's killed or you win. I guess my point is Noise is super easy to cheese. 

So that's a lot but I think there's a neat little game in here if you can tighten it up. Particularly how Noise and Actions work. 

- When does the game end? 

- What is the objective? 

- What are casualties; you only say "If the result is equal or higher then targets CDIS, the target suffers casualties" and "As units suffer casualties, their discipline decreases" and "CDIS = BDIS – casualties." This seems like your intent is clear when you take it all together, but can and should be elucidated and put into the same section. 

- There is currently no rule for removing units. 

- Bayonet charges are declared during the M&C Step, but there's no rules for how declarations work or when they're resolved.  The only activities allowed during the M&C are declaring charges and marching. 

- OK there's actually a lot of issues with Bayonet Charges. But the biggest thing is that according to the rules you never actually move your models when charging, and the second thing is that base "Charge Distance" is only ever touched on in an example. 

- This is just me, but putting models in column shouldn't make them faster (are they pushing the guys ahead of them, or something?). I understand the intent, because Line formations were slower moving than columns, but giving a bonus for each company in column is off. 

- Your combat essentially guarantees hits; even 2 companies in Line will have a better than 50% chance of scoring a 6+, and a third will mean that against a fresh company, you'll have to roll 3x 1's to miss. Guaranteeing hits is fine, but you shouldn't make us roll for it, that's just time consuming. It almost seems like you'd originally intended each die to be read independently and applied to the model one-at-a-time, then changed your mind and didn't change all the rules. 

- Is the commander a unit? How does he "attach?" 

- Apart from the above, there's a lot of stuff in your rules that just zap player agency. Why would a lone company exist? 

- You've got a battalion-level game, which is great, and I'm assuming that your intent is to create a situation where you're in the middle of a larger fight; this sort of thing would be perfect for an objective system. 

- I don't see much synergy, just advantages for being part of a formation. I don't feel that fits the "theme" of synergy. 

You've got some issues, but I like the gumption and the ideas that exist here, particularly the fact that its a Napoleonics game that eschews the big battles for the little, personal ones. Make it more personal, then, and clean it up a bit. 

I feel like this is a mostly functional set of rules, with a few holes. I do wish you had more for force composition; you've got almost a whole page for it! 

- Where is the synergy? I suppose there's a little with the Infantry, but other than that everything functions on its own and independently. 

- You mention "retreat" but there's no rules for it. 

- Your "example force" seems to have additional rules, and isn't really an example of a force. 

- Vehicles are just clearly better than everything else. With no reason to choose something other than Vehicles, why wouldn't you? 

- Spotting is just not explained clearly at all. What are the limitations? How long is a thing "spotted" for?

- No roll to Hit? You just get damage on the thing? 

- No restriction on activating a unit more than once. 

I think the main issue is that there just isn't a lot of player agency. Roll to move, roll to damage, roll to activate. Everything is "roll to" and there aren't a lot of decisions, particularly when there's no range to any of the weapons. Terrain will help that but because you can't determine where you'll be able to reach before you get there, all it means is that you're locked into what you can target at the start of the game. Without ranges there's no meaningful reason to move. Just use your activations to shoot until something's dead, and move only if you absolutely have to (meaning there's nothing any of your units can shoot at). This is compounded by the fact that cover is the only way to mitigate an enemy's fire, and if you move you will probably be stuck out in the open, since you don't even control how far you go. 

I think this is a serviceable game that needs some attention to really sparkle. 

So this is a very light, simple game. And I think that's fine. 

I'm sure you'd never want to Manually Trigger something (as written you'd roll a d6 and hope you score the number of a unit within 3"). The problem with Manual Trigger is two-fold, as the model that receives an extra action can do everything the original model could do. 

I actually really like the triggering mechanic in general; the automatic one, anyway, even if it is very random and could lead to a runaway leader. But it does give a reason to Push a model. 

I'm not sure you need a 2x2 board for this game. Since it seems your models all want to be within 3" of each other, movements are very small, and your attack distances are very short, you'll have a lot of unused space, and it's going to take a lot of movement to even reach the mid-point.

Speaking of unused space, I'd like to see more creative objectives. For one, your combat is terribly unexciting, though functional and simple, and I can't imagine sitting through a game rolling to hit until four models finally died. Once you were on top of each other you'd essentially be making dice rolls until one of you gave up the ghost or the game finally ended, without any real player input. The other objective is similarly uninspired but at least gives a reason to Push, if only on Turn 4. I really feel that this game, with Objectives that force a players to get into a different headspace, would elevate this simple design. 

Finally, I don't think  your special abilities are impactful enough. Or at all. They're very modest, and I feel they're so modest you'd be better off without them, for simplicity's sake. If the point is to differentiate what the model can do, then it would be best to increase their capabilities. 

- A couple of questions: How many Wounds does an attack do? How do you get "behind" somebody (according to Backstab)? 

Some thoughts. I like the approach; that you want to kill your opponent after a specific round. But I don't think this creates interesting gameplay on its own, as there's nothing else for your models to do! What do you expect models will be doing on Turns 1 & 2? I suspect they'll be attacking, since there's nothing else to do. So you, player, will be keeping track of Favour, but this won't actually affect your decisions or the gameplay, only, perhaps, the outcome. 

Stunning leads to your opponent gaining negative favor, which makes executing them easier, but only if you manage to randomly stun them, which you're less likely to do since you're down a model.  These interconnected systems are a good start but it needs a lot of work; currently it leads to a lot of book-keeping and will not contribute anything to the game, since it isn't going to change the way the players take actions or make players approach the game any differently. 

There's a lot of other nitpicks, but the main one I'll go into is that you've got a lot of steps to resolve combat and a lot of book-keeping, but the end result will be that you won't be making many decisions; once you're in close you're going to roll until the opponent is dead. 

The other thing is that you've got a game that has almost zero focus on synergy. Each model will essentially function on its own, independently of what's going on around it, and they seem to have no control over larger outcomes or a bigger picture. 

I think you've got a good start but you need to zero in on what the player is doing and how they'll be approaching the game.