Alright, sharing means caring. Behold, the longest post I’ve ever written, that I thought would go to an inbox somewhere. Be afraid.
Our group was about 6 people all of which played a couple of games with the new rules. 2 of the players were folks that had won/participated in tournaments here in Berlin, the others were more casual players (but all familiar with the game). Our group is pretty relaxed...we're all well aware if we went to a real tournament our theme warbands would get smashed but just for context: We have a house policy that once a particular warband wins brutally or a piece proves to be too useful to not appear in every warband that it doesn't show up unless it's in a major new build. So yeah, Skullcleaves and Eternal Blades aren't in normal rotation, for the sake of fun.
(Oh and our Demonweb shipment here got stupid delayed so nothing from that was used.)
We got together with 4 new rules in mind, one of which is already confirmed. Everyone was to build warbands with the new Dazed, Confused, Dominate, and Blast rules in mind as well as bring along something "they'd brought/won with before." So there you go. We made a number of observations but I'll go through your 1-4 questions as best I can. (I'll also end up talking about the Dazed impressions...I know those are already finalized but I'd be remiss in my friends by not sharing what they noticed about that particular rule. And it was new to the gang, so of course we talked about it a lot.) Not to mention that the issue with Confusion and Dominate are EXTREMELY linked to the new Dazed condition.
So, I had some notes and here’s the best I can do at translating them.
1. Was the rules change confusing or difficult to understand?
No. No one had any problem understanding the new rules and carrying them out. A few questions/complications came out as the day progressed but this question is about the rules change. The Confusion/Dominate/(Dazed) rules were easy to understand right off the bat.
As for the Blast rule: When I announced this there was literally a cheer in the room. The Berlin scene hated the Breath Weapon template....whenever it was time to measure a breath weapon most of us found out that neither player had cut out a copy from the rulebook. Our usual thing was just looking in the book and eyeballing how it lands on the grid if there was a question.
So the Blast change was, for the most part, very well received and was fully implemented without thought almost immediately. And it sped up the game for many of us.
PLAYTEST QUESTION #1: HOW DOES LINE OF EFFECT WORK WITH A BLAST? WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR AN ORIGIN SQUARE? Does the “blast template” have points of origin in its corners? Some of the terrain on the Jungle Temple & Broken Demongate created moment where a cone would have been obviously blocked, but with a Blast 5 square, it wasn’t exactly as cut & dry. Stupid question I know but this was the only “huh” moment that showed up in regard to Blasts. (We tried to use the tabletop rules, but there was some confusion if the “origin square” became the “Origin Squares” when a Large figure used a blast…and if it could use one of its “back squares” to hit itself with its Blast as those squares were “adjacent” to “one of the squares” the figure occupied. Again, I know this sounds goofy but, yeah. It came up.
So yeah: The Rule Changes were not confusing or Hard to Understand. Their impact on the game….a little different.
2. Were any figures that used to be good become less good? Did any figures that used to be less good become more good?
We ended up at the end of the day asking this question (people already had lists to suggest but like you said, we wrote it down after the session ended and not before we actually saw these things work.
Blasts:
Pieces that became better with the Blast rules:
Any piece that used a small cone. Only two got played: The Mephits (all 3 count as 1, shut up) and the Cadaver Collector (me)…both players who fielded those say that they got more use out of their Close attacks (paralyzing breath, elemental cough) than in any game previous. The general consensus was that Small cones were hard to line up…the 3 extra squares the Blast grants seemed to make a difference. My Cadaver Collector was able to Paralyze multiple figures multiple times, something I hadn’t seen very often in previous games.
The only comment we had about large cones (beyond “Eat my Even Larger Poison Breath, Bitches!) was that they seem more like blunt instruments…it’s much harder to strategically place a blast square so it doesn’t hit your own pieces than the large cone. Just an observation, but a observation one of our number was unhappy with. I don’t know if it’s a problem, but I see what he’s saying.
Dazed:
While I’m not going to give a huge list of the pieces impacted by Dazed since it’s off topic here but wasn’t during the playtest, there was some overlap with the new rules and…issues that came up. (For trivia, we determined the Krenshar were now much better figures in the new Dazed rules Olympics, mostly because one player fielded a horde of them and since they were so cheap, auto-dazed, and were teamed with a Hot7w. Other pieces, like the Raksasha Baron and Archvillain Shuluth proved that it was possible to Daze a particular piece for an entire game from Range.)
Pieces that became A LOT better thanks to the Blast rules combined with the new Dazed rules:
MindFlayer Lich. Talk about a single piece that’s perfect for playtesting the new rules…with ranged Confusion, Cones that are now Blasts that Daze…this piece got called the Cadillac of the Playtest. We had a lot to say about the new confusion rule (some of which I actually don’t agree with) but in regards to Blasts & New Daze? The MFL’s unlimited Blast 5 +17 vs Def Dazed (Save Ends) became his new standard attack. I’ve seen this piece played a lot and I’ve played it many times myself…this was the first session where people started thinking the cone was his best combat option. This is more the new Dazed rule than the cone to blast thing, but holy crap, Dazed save ends Blasts brutalized a couple of warbands…and shut them down.
Pointless Dazed rule opinion: We like it because it’s like tabletop but we only hope there aren’t too many more “area effect daze” attacks that come out. The MFL proved that those kind of things can shut down an entire warband and force the player to just sit there with a warband that just plain doesn’t work anymore. That’s good for winning, but twice we had extremely frustrated players who to quote “All I did was roll saving throws and run away from combat for 15 minutes”. Again, we like the Dazed rules (they make many pieces more viable), we just pray we don’t get many more pieces with unlimited Dazing Blasts that are pretty darn accurate.
PLAYTEST QUESTION 2: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PIECE BECOMES DAZED IN THE MIDDLE OF ITS MOVEMENT? We had someone bring a warband with a couple of pieces that Push opponents with its basic attack (Dual Champions of Baphomet), some that benefited from Dazed (Ravenous Ghouls), one that created attacks of opportunity (Shrieking Harpy) and they used the Drow Outpost map for pits to provide the Dazed. When they (the Minotaurs) made opportunity attacks, they were apparently (I didn’t play against them) able to push enemies into pits, which, more often than not, was able to Daze them. Does the victim finish their movement but don’t get any more actions because now they’re Dazed? Do they only get one action from the moment they were dazed? Again, I’m sorry if this is stupid, but it was one of the more annoying debates that stopped play for a while and we never did come up with a solution...we took this warband out of rotation because of it.
Next up: Which figures became worse/better thanks to the Confusion/Dominate Rule:
Which piece became weaker/less good?
The New Confusion rules don’t….necessarily weaken any piece. Our general consensus was that it made those status effects less interesting to play….the Mindflayer Lich gave up on trying to Deathmind since Staggered (Save ends) Blast 5 is almost better than Confusing one target (save ends). We did generally agree that the chance to do something cool with a confused/dominated piece is now almost impossible…since such a piece could only take one action (that’s not a charge) the chances of it already being next to an ally are pretty slim in the current Burst-heavy game at the moment. Since Dominate or Confusion only works the way it used to if the target is next to one of it’s allies, both conditions seem….weaker. his is more something for us to talk about with Question number 3, where you ask how we feel a new rule impacts the overall game.
The New Dominate Rule did make Dominate seem pretty tame. Instead of taking control of your enemy, you cripple the enemy and then take control of the cripple. A Dominated Piece that’s also Dazed (guaranteed with the new rule) just doesn’t feel dominated…those of us who did use Dominate (Succubus, Balor) during the playtest felt it was a wasted action…since most of the time the Dominated target couldn’t do anything but move. Only once did a dominated piece get to make a basic melee attack, sort of souring the status effect for those who used it in sessions previous. (That last bit is important, more on that later.)
Which Pieces became better with the new Confusion/Dominate rules?
Debatably anything with an Immunity to a Status effect.
PLAYTEST QUESTION 3: HOW DO STATUS EFFECT IMMUNITIES WORK WITH THE NEW CONFUSION/DOMINATE RULES? I know I brought this up in the other thread so for the sake of fairness I waited to see if anyone else caught it during the playtest. Round 2 we had a player with a Thrall of Blackrazor (immune to confusion) asking if he can ignore Dazed as it’s now a lesser offshoot of Confusion….as Immune Stun grants Immune Dazed, he came to the same conclusion about the new Confusion. The text is also confusing when you look at it in this light….in the core rulebook, Staggered & Stunned start their description with “As Dazed” while the new rule states “A confused creature is Dazed.” So since it IS Dazed then a piece with Immune Stun should be able to ignore that aspect? But by that logic then the Immune Stun rule that also grants Immune Daze is off kilter, since it says “As Dazed” which implies you’re Dazed but not “really” Dazed. But the errata goes the other direction. Man, I don’t know if I’m making much sense here.
Restarting:
Is a piece with Immune Confusion also Immune to Dazed as it is inclusive of Confusion as is Immune to Stun inclusive of Dazed?
Is a piece with Immune Stun (Dazed) immune to Confusion or Dominate or is it only Half confused, since it can not be affected by the Dazed status effect?
We ruled that the piece was immune in both cases, mostly because the idea of being “half afflicted” by a status effect seemed far too complicated and this ruling made the game consistent. We weren’t sure if this is what was intended by the new rules or not….but since Immunities to Status effects are generally rare, I guess it makes sense? We weren’t sure at all.
3. How did you feel about the overall impact of the change on the game?
Overall Impact:
The New Blast Rules:
They improve the game considerably. No more cone templates, no need to use homemade cut-outs to play the game properly, no more need to stop the game to pull out the rule-book and see how the cone would fit. 5 our of 6 players loved the rule. The 1 who didn’t later admitted it was easier, he just liked cones better for strategy.
The New Confused/Dominate rules:
If you never played Confused/Dominate warbands, you thought it made the game easier…and combat advantage is always good.
If you played Confused/Dominate warbands, you thought it made the game less fun and removed the point of playing Confusion/Dominate warbands.
This was a scandal at the playtest. Why? Because only half of the players who showed up ever regularly field warbands with Confuse and Dominate in them. After taking the votes/opinions, we also asked which players used Confusion/Dominate regularly. The same people who liked the new rules are the same people who NEVER play those warbands (one had never played a piece with dominate/confusion before). So what was the issue? Here it is from both sides since both were incredibly biased: (I’m putting my side last because that way I can pretend to have the last word. :P )
The “We Like the New Rules” consensus:
Confusion & Dominate were the least common status effects, so when it happened to some players, they sometimes had to look up how it worked or be told. Neither condition worked the way consistent with most of the other effects in the game. When a piece was confused, they often thought of it as “stunned”…chances are it would do nothing, and only bad or good luck would have it do anything else. So the new Confused is also Dazed rule didn’t change too much for them.
The problem? These players never ever played Dominate/Confusion-heavy warbands. They liked the idea that a Confused or Dominated piece could be ignored by simply not having an ally stand next to it according to the new rules. Dominate/Confused because less dangerous conditions for those affected by them, even with the new Combat Advantage thing included.
The “We don’t like the new Rules” consensus:
Confused & Dominate are fun effects to slap onto your enemy. They’re a bit random and require a bit of luck for the status effect to really pay off. Those of us who did use Confuse & Dominated, loathed the new rules. Not because they necessarily weakened Confusion (they do weaken Dominate considerably) but because they didn’t feel the same, weren’t fun, and totally removed those “HOLY CRAP I rolled high, your piece is mine to control AWWWW YEAH!” moments. Seriously, old confusion was a gamble. You’d hope your opponent wouldn’t roll high and pray he rolled low so you could control his figure. When either occurrence…err…occurred, one of the players would cheer and the other would moan. I know that doesn’t sound important to rules folks. We understood the new rules, they just made certain effects….boring. Even if you roll well (either player), a confused piece isn’t going to do much besides move unless you’re lucky again. Confused was fun. We hate that that’s almost our entire argument against the new Confusion rules, but yeah.
The TBA gets a lot of play here by a few of us because Confusion + Damage is a gas to play. With the new rule, one player joked that the TBA is now so much more boring a blaster…Daze is good, but it really shaped how confusion felt in the game. We understand how making the rules streamlined is a priority, but making it so that a piece you can control is inherently gimped…none of us could think of a warband where confuse and dominate were so overpowering that preventing a confused/dominated piece from attacking allies was necessary. Well, one piece came to mind mostly from forum reading. I said this before but most of the group agreed: We feel that this might be a powergame meta’s response to not liking the TBA. His confusion was what made this Top Tier piece acceptable in our local scene…he was fun. Something that’s hard to quantify with rules, but really….players using confusion took a while to get used to the idea that the most you could count on doing was moving a piece you won control of.
Maybe we just haven’t figured out how to make the new confusion work yet…it might be us.
As for Dominate:
Um….this….didn’t work for most of us behind a substitute for a "slide" attack. It turned into a control the cripple attack, something that meant almost any other options was better. Dominate was never a viable choice during the playtest…the gamble to try to take control of an important piece became so much less worthwhile when, even if you succeeded, you couldn’t do much besides move if your opponent was smart enough to not place another piece next to the dominated one. Dominate was always a risky move in a warband… after a round or so tactics not using dominate showed up in any warband with Dominate. The Dual Succubus Warband, something I’ve seen work before, had very little impact on the game with Beguile.
The hardest part of this playtest was actually using some of these attacks once you figured out how they worked in the new rules. After the first round, the Succubus player (Mathias I salute your bravery) ended several games never actually using the power except to generate combat advantage to another piece with Sneak Attack.
Half the group was no fan of Confusion/Dominate from before and seemed to not have a problem. The other half hated the new rules because it made both conditions significantly weaker (even this was debated…yes, now such pieces grant combat advantage) as we felt they were intended…and the Dazed condition, a supposed “lesser” effect, overshadowed the status effect’s namesake. If it tells you anything, we asked what people are going to build based off what they learned and NO ONE said they’d give the new Dominate & Confusion a 2nd chance.
I know this all sounds like someone complaining about a nerfed power or something, but we had a long debate in the shop’s basement about this. I hate pointless “I don’t like your rules” comments on forums so…I’m done. Those of us who actual LIKE confusion/dominate warbands hope that our “It used to be Fun” argument isn’t wasted.
4. What warbands did you play, and what specific impact did these changes have on the game’s outcome (if any)?
Oh God. This is the question I’ve been dreading…I only have loose notes but I’ll list the warbands that got noted:
The MFL, Astral Stalker x 2 warband was brutal. While this warband was built with the “confusion now provides combat advantage” rule in mind, this build ended up just Daze Blast 5’ing most things while the Astral Stalkers Slowed/Quick Clawed. Confusion got forgotten, the Blast 5 was awesome and felt normal.
The Dual Champions of Baphomet + Ravenous Ghoul + Shrieking Harpy Warband was memorable…though mostly because we have no clue how Pushing into Pits as an opportunity attack works. After one game of pit-pushing, it got shelved so that the same argument wouldn’t continue.
Others included (and holy crap I’m trying to remember) a Confusion-only warband (Umberhulk, Howler x2, Mindflayer Lich), a TBA/Oni build, a SkullCleave Top Tier someone brought as a joke, a Hot7w warband using Krenshars and all 3 Mephit types…(the Small cones to Blast 3 were impressive), a Balor Immobilize-centric warband, a Wulfgar Warhorse Marut warband, Cadaver Collector + MFL warband, yet another MFL warband with Deathpriest/Degenerate of Orcus, a Dual Succubus warband with Spined Devils, and a Mina Dark Cleric Dragon warband. Remember, we were all about testing the new dazed rules as much as those provided here…so yeah. That list isn’t complete…most of us brought multiple warbands and switched around between rounds. And I remember holding a Shuluth figure, but can’t remember who played it.
How did the new rules change things? Small cones seem to be a lot better and with my Cadaver Collector really had an impact. Confusion & Dominate took a backseat to the new Dazed rule…that really shined and changed the way the game felt, particularly now that all non-speed related status effects also include Dazed.
I hope this has helped…I know my own bias is pretty obvious here but the Confusion/Dominate debate was what dominated the after-session talk/consensus. I’m not going to suggest a solution here beyond the idea that Confusion/Dominate be their own status effects, the way that Immobilized, Slowed, or Weakened is.
And I’m done.
If you finished this whole post: Good job.
And another disclaimer: This is a bit of my opinion, but I’m really just transcribing some note that were taken after the playtest session.
-Jared
“who needs to remember question 4 the next time he playtests”
PS: I'm sure I've written something wrong rule-wise in this. We do know what we're doing (generally) so if I wrote something retarded, please assume it's my trying to transcribe scribble notes and not that we forgot how to play. This was also the first time using Oracle rules, so if there was another change before this beyond official errata, we might have missed it.
