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[Cthulhu]

I gotta admit I've been seeing this game as a poor decision on my part but you're starting to sell me on it.

[nenjin]

It might be hard to tell with the current "maxxed warband" testing setup, as everyone will be pretty good, but it may also be even more noticeable.

There is exactly that problem, and it's true of most things in game that correlate to point cost. You don't yet know how much you make, you don't yet know what anything is worth (sure troops cost a gold value to buy, but they give you like 1 million gold in EA) and there's no shop yet, they just give you x99 of every item already in your inventory. There's no sense of how fast you level either.

So here's what I've seen.

At Rank 0, Skaven on average have fewer HPs, and their starting stats are in line with table top. Low strength, low toughness (i.e fewer HPs), higher "agi" skills and movement, crappy leadership. They effectively get to field scaled down Storm Vermin as a base line troop if they want (and by Storm Vermin, I mean "can wear heavy armor.") Regular ass Skaven Heavy Armor brings their movement down to comparable levels for humans. You can field 5 heroes and 5 fighters, so, a player can conceivably run 1 Leader, 4 ranged heroes and 5 ranged scrubs. At Rank 0 with just the basic equipment, everyone can take 2 or 3 decent hits at least.

At Max Rank, Skaven have, compared to crapsack AI built teams, competitive HP (by Rank 10 even your regular dudes have ~250 to 350hp. It all depends on whether you spent on their toughness so they got more.) They retain their movement advantage except compared to Heroes. Everyone is generally tougher by a couple hits, or greatly tougher due to dodges, parries, defensive stances, quality gear, etc...

Initiative is now only for combat. All their movement and agility stuff is given over to the Agi stat, and they racially trend toward those at start. If a player chose to build classically Skaven troops with a high focus on Agi, they'd have a high dodge, good chances to climb and jump (they have passive skills that play directly to this stuff.)

Their ranged is not like table top though, currently. Other races get bows (lower damage, lower action point cost), Skaven only get Warplock Pistols (higher damage, higher action point cost.) Higher action point cost to reload and shoot translates to fewer shots per round and fewer options for moving and shooting. Again, it's unknown what a Warplock pistol costs next to a bow. Forum people (I can't seem to get an activation email sent to me from their forums) are calling for cheaper, less action point intensive ranged weapons for Skaven like slings and throwing stars. Anyways, the net effect right now is that Skaven ranged hits harder (although with range and armor coming into play for damage totals, harder is relative) and they get to shoot less.

As far as melee gear, Skaven don't seem to get access to big two handed weapons. The best they get in that department is a halberd. Their armor options are restricted by class (Warpguard and Black Skaven heroes seem to get access to heavy armor. Assassins, Verminkin, Night Runners, Sorcerers, light armor.) 

Skaven do get dedicated wyrdstone hunting units, in the form of Warpguard. The Warpguard's starting passive skill makes them immune to the effects of picking up wyrdstone. So you can buy a lot of them, put them in no armor for max movement speed and send them sprinting out across the map, and they won't suffer the chance at Warp Effects like other Skaven units or warbands.

As for fielding heavies and "no downsides"...

This point goes to the post basically; the stat and skill differences between warbands are minimal, at the end of the day. Everyone starts low, can go high and buy almost all the same skills as other races. At least that's my sense, I should take the time to look at human mercenaries or something. There are racial skills that make up the smallest amount of skills per "type" in the game. Other than that, and where a race's stats start (which generally reflects the TT sensibilities), what really matters is where their stats can end. Every race has Stat maximums. These aren't just important for the passive benefits they give (better accuracy, better damage, better dodge, better initiative, better resists, etc..), they limit which skills fighters can or can't use. The best skills, or at least most extreme, in each group require stats pretty much at or near your cap, regardless of which race you're playing.

And for the most part, everyone is going to get access to the first 1 or 2 skills in just about every group with average stats you didn't spend a lot of points on. So what really matters is where your stats end, and what you chose to invest in. Skaven max strength caps out lower than I think all the other races, meaning for the strength skill group, there's some top-tier strength skills they might not get. (You can find tomes to raise the max stat threshold for an individual fighter, and Skaven have a Rat Ogre whose strength cap is quite high.)

Bear in mind too, there's no roll to see what you get when you level up. It's a points spending system. So it's hard to generalize about how things could play out, because they can play out a lot of different ways. You can easily make a Skaven Warband of high HP, high Strength, melee focused rats in heavy armor and shields. OR you can run an entire band of lightly or no armored archers for harrassing the enemy and finding Wyrdstone.

The determinative nature of Mordheim's mechanics isn't present here, things are both more flexible and more granular in the video game. It's just as easy for Human Mercenaries to even The Cult of the Possessed to make fast moving ranged groups that are actually good at what they do. Because there's no racial preferences or restrictions to the bulk of the skills and no real restrictions or randomness on how you raise stats. When you get to make your guys exactly what you want, you're less at the mercy of traditional warband strengths and weaknesses than you are the in the table top.

So TLDR: Skaven move faster, are a little weaker, have crappier morale and a smaller morale pool to start with, on average they climb better and for now their ranged is slow but maybe marginally harder hitting. They have units especially for transporting wyrdstone. Having not tried the other warbands, I don't know what makes them stand out versus the Skaven, other than their magic, racial skills and gear restrictions.

I gotta admit I've been seeing this game as a poor decision on my part but you're starting to sell me on it.

I won't say it brought me stampeding to its awesomeness. But it is doing a lot of things right and it's coming together. If you can make peace with the UI and control scheme, then there's fun to be had.

[sambojin]

Thanks. Great writeup. I understand now

[Majestic7]

I bought this from discount, but the campaign is break-it-or-make-it for me. If it turns out to be interesting and dynamic, I will love the game. If it is dull and imbalanced, I'll be very disappointed.

[nenjin]

Update 9 has dropped with all the things I've been waiting for.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hello Everyone,

Rogue Factor and Focus Home Interactive are very proud and excited to provide you with this eight update of the Early Access. Like we did before, we want to present you a list of all the updates that come with this version, but also the known issues and limitations of this Early Access version.

Updates

Our eighth content update is 0.22.4.1 and it provides the following new features:

- Single Player Campaign Mode: Act 1 (Mission 1 to 4) for all 4 warbands is available, offering a new dimension to the game.

- Veteran System: Perform tasks to gain Veteran Ranks which unlock unique out of combat abilities. This progression is kept and shared for all Warbands.

- Warband and Warriors Progression: Warbands must be started from Rank 0 and all saves, from previous Early Access updates, will be deleted. Warband and Warriors will be able to progress up to Rank 5

- Time System: Only one battle per (in-game) day can be performed. If a Warrior is learning a new spell/skill, is treated after an injury, or is waiting for its upkeep, it won't be available for missions.

- Smuggler System: Gather wyrdstones during your mission, ship them and increase your reputation, with factions, to unlock rewards. Beware, if you're too late on a shipment.

- Permadeath and Injuries: Fighting within the streets of Mordheim won't be without consequences anymore. Warriors might lose limb or worse.

- Fully accessible Hideout and revamp of the Main Menu: You will be guided by a tutorial through a now complete and fully accessible Hideout. Oh, and we change the Main Menu screen as well, hope you'll like it!

- Graphic Options: You will now be able to tweak the visual of Mordheim yourself directly from the Options Menu.


General Changes

- The Idol now have an icon on the Strategy View and will always be visible no matter where it is

- Carrying an Idol will make the bearer always visible on the Strategy View

- Suffering from the spell curses Wyrdlight and Lightbearer will make the victim always visible on the Strategy view

- Modified multiple deployment layouts to increase distance between enemies

- Modified multiple deployment layouts to make sure search/wyrdstone points would remain between enemies on start up positions (never behind and going away from the intended battlefield)

- Added new Trap Effects for all trap types (some beneficial, most detrimental)

- Combat Melee Hit base chances have been lowered to 80%

- When failing an All Alone test, the amount of Strategy Points lost has been increased from 1 to 5

- 8 new "slideshow" tutorials to explain the different parts of the Hideout

- Updated Combat Tutorials

- New warrior customization options (beard, hair, etc...)

- New Ambiant sounds which play randomly during missions (with separate volume in the options)

- A lot of new animations with emote system before an attack, when using a skill, and faster athletic sequences.

- Improved AI with matching rank

- Improved lighting and more grime on walls, roof, etc...


Items

- Shuriken has been added for the Skaven warband. Every Skaven except the Rat Ogre can use them

- Verminkin lost the right to use Warplock Pistols

- Assassin Adept now start with Shuriken as alternate weapon

- Warlock have access to Bow again


Runes

- Rune of Escape: the mastery version has been increased to 3 meters

- Rune of Celerity: the initiative bonus have been increased to 10 for the normal version and 20 for the mastery version

- Rune of the Senses: the bonus has been increased to 25% for the normal version and 50% for the mastery version


Skills

- The Alertness requirement to train Combat Movement have been reduced to 9 for the normal version and 12 for the mastery version

- The Alertness requirement to train Awareness have been increased to 12 for the normal version and 15 for the mastery version

- The melee resistance provided by the debuff of Kidney Strike has been increased to -15% for the regular version and -30% for the mastery version

- The melee resistance bonus of Combat Savvy has been reduced to 5% for the regular version and 10% for the mastery version

- The Intelligence requirement to train Combat Savvy has been reduced to 6 Intelligence for the normal version and 9 for the mastery version

- The Intelligence requirement to train Study has been increased to 9 Intelligence for the normal version and 12 for the mastery version

- The debuff provided by the skill Quick Incision saw its melee resistance penalty increase to -3% for the regular version and -6% for the mastery version

- The debuff provided by the skill Defensive Stance saw its melee resistance bonus remains at to 10% for the regular version and 20% for the mastery version

I only briefly dove into one game, and was promptly defeated, so my impressions are pretty brief. But I'll be giving the game more time soon.

All the testing buffs to warbands are gone. Now you have to build a gang from the ground up. You get no starting equipment other than weapons pretty much, and have to make due with a budget. There's a shop to buy gear at that rotates inventory about once a week, and sometimes they are sales or special shop events that happen.

A few new things on the warband front. You can rename your warband and all its members now. There are loads of customization options for the models now (head, torso, each arm independently, legs, capes and other accessories) and color selection for all of them. By far some of the nicest customization flexibility I've seen in a game like this for a while, even if there aren't any extravagant choices or a wide selection of models per section yet. Maybe that comes later in game at some point, or as DLC.

Your warband has a level now, which controls how many "on mission" slots you have unlocked to put guys in for missions, and probably some other stuff too. (I didn't seem to start with the option to buy a Sorcerer. Maybe that's only at higher ranks.)

Permadeath is now a thing since your post game data is saved. There's the OOA report, which can involve injuries resulting in permanent debuffs of various kinds (one guy lost an eye and got his vision fucked up AND made a harrowing return to the base which earned him some post-game XP. The best part? His model had a milky white eye too!) After a battle the game scrolls through each one of your guys and shows what happened to them (if they went OOA), how much XP they earned, and eventually what items your warband brought back and how much XP and Wyrdstone and stuff you earned. You have to pay to treat their wounds as well, which is not cheap, and they're still out of action for 3 to 7 days. Yeowch.

The campaign is a randomly generated map/battle, one per day, with a chance for it to occur on one of the unique map tilesets. You get a little map of mordheim showing you the different potential missions. You can spend a scout point and spend a little money to try and reveal a different mission, which causes the mission node to rise up on the map. It's a really cool view, and exactly what I've always imagined a mordheim campaign map would look like.

You also have to send shipments of wydstone to the homeland on a regular basis. Your warband expects to get paid too. Upkeep is now a thing. Warband members expect to be paid, individual, at the end of every mission. If you don't pay them, they refuse to go on another mission until you do. Wyrdstone shipments, meanwhile, are your failure state. Fail to ship wyrdstone home when asked 4 times in a row and it's game over. There are usually a few days at least between shipments, I'd guess. I only played one game. I'm sure higher level warbands are expected to deliver bigger shipments of wyrdstone.

There is also a set of meta perks you earn by playing, called the Veteran system. You complete bog standard achievements for the most part (hire a guy, upgrade a guy, kill a guy, win as each of the factions, etc....) and earn Veteran Points to spend on meta-perks that work between different warbands. So, new warbands start with +25 gold, % chance to get x y or z kind of a equipment per day, buy for cheaper and sell for higher, see more sale events at the shop, more scout points, stuff of that nature. There are also, according to the tutorial screen, warband specific perks? I dunno.

The one game I played, I got my ass whooped. I ran with 5 guys, which is the most a new warband can bring. It started off well enough. I scooped up a bunch of wyrdstone, seriously started dog piling one guy, had two other guys watching each other's back on the trail of other wyrdstone. And then things just started going south for me, in a hurry. The other warband, also Skaven, just started dodging most of my attacks so the one guy I was ganging up on got relief long before he was going to die. The reinforcements outnumbered us, and ganged up on my leader doing a ton of damage. Then on the other side of the field their assassin leader took my two guys, a warpguard and verminkin, to the cleaners. My team bottled after my leader and another guy went OOA.

The losers seem to get the following:

-The warband earns 1 xp in defeat.
-The warband keeps whatever non-OOA characters looted and had on their person, or was stored at the wagon, when the warband bottles.
-Each warband member who did not go OOA gets 2xp.
-The MVP on your side earns 1 xp.
-Any XP OOA people earn from their travails is all they get.

The winner meanwhile seems to get more than that across the board.

Sooo....all in all, I'm pretty excited. As with other features they've implemented before, there's a lot to take in with the persistence and campaign update. But my one main concern: the after-action report on OOA characters, seems like it's been handled well. There's a variety of things that can happen. I'll have to actually win a game to see what if any exploration roll there is ><

If I have one complaint about this version, it's that a lot of sfx are missing or bugged. While they spiced up the look of combat a little, it's still feeling and sounding a little flat.

If you're wondering whether to try it now, I'd say maybe wait for one more big content update, then dive in. Once I've gotten my feet under me I'll do another battle report.

[nenjin]

Double post but I'll make it worth it.

Here's what the campaign map looks like:



Scum Lords vs. Hammer Keepers, at the Nobles Quarter, Mission: Wyrd Stone Rush. They're spread out ahead of my team while I started grouped up by my wagon.

The layout and deployment is straight forward. There's a crap ton of wyrdstone ahead of me, likely the same direction the enemy is coming from. Rather than fan out I decide to keep my warband moving as a pack.



Mordheim, lovely as always:



Skittar Verminhide gets up to the next street quickly and starts loading up on wyrdstone. Got bills to pay foo!



There's side effects though. Wyrdstone hunting is not for the weak of mind or body. Warp effects are usually penalties to some group of your base stats for a few turns, and the effects can stack.



By the end of my turn I've moved my whole crew up. Scum Lords rule! I ignore the wyrdstone up in the tower, as I felt it would take too many turns to have someone reach it and rejoin the pack.



Whilst I wait for the enemy turn.



With the street cleared of wyrdstone, we move on to the buildings, some covering the doorways whilst the looters get in and get out, so no one gets jumped inside a house.



End of turn 2, still no sign of the enemy. The map is actually far larger than the small area we're playing in. That whole precinct to the up and left is playable, although there's no loot in it.



Enemy spotted! The Sanctimonious Sigmar botherers, the Sisters of Sigmar.



End of turn 3. A warp guard and verminkin have pressed through the building to secure more wyrdstone. But everyone's packs are starting to fill up on the stuff, so there's mistakes made and opportunities lost. So they prepare to ambush the doorway to the house in case the SoS try to flank.



Another enemy appears.



We spend a whole turn looking at each other. After my last game I'm going to let them get ambushed good and proper. Finally they charge in, and the AI paths in such a way to set off three clean ambushes. A straight up team fight with no pre-ranged softening isn't exactly a smart play for the Skaven, but no one except my leader has ranged weapons at this point. Anyhow, the battle is joined!



At the start, things do not look good. The SoS hit on average much harder than my skaven. A couple dodges, a couple failed dodges on my part, a crit and it could go poorly for me, outnumbering them or not.



But things start going my way after that first initial exchange. My warp guard and verminkin rush in from the rear and a crit gets dealt out to the SoS. While it's not the Leader, I'll take what I can get. Their support has yet to arrive, but I've got to make quick work of these before they do.



Sure enough, another unit shows up. However there appears to be some bum pathing up there for the AI, because they only move a short distance before going on Ambush Stance. This ends up buying me a couple extra rounds of uninterrupted backstabbing.



The battle still isn't decided yet, but some timely dodges are tilting it in my favor. Two of their units are about to go down soon, but their leader (on the far left) hasn't been wounded much and is capable of putting out plenty of hurt. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm going to win. But an OOA and a bad wound role would sour the victory.



The SoS on the end goes down and I start rolling up the flank, targeting the leader first. Skitar Verminhide has been on a roll so far. Pockets full of wyrdstone, one enemy down and his pick of his next victim. He will, however, get dodged on this attack.



Wholly out numbered their leader is federally fucked. There isn't enough room for all my rats to gang up on her. So far I'm doing really well. No one has gone down yet and they're all still at about half life.



Their last unit finally arrives. The pathing or AI bug continues to work in my favor, as you can see here, because the other unengaged unit has barely moved while half their team is getting slaughtered. Still, I think I could have won out even with other adds.



Skitar Verminhide deals out a crit on their leader and brings her to her knees, stunned.



There's so little room to fight that my leader Deathmaster Snitch withdraws and tries to throw shurikens to finish off their leader. But he misses both times.



Gorzun Skarn breaks away from the pack since he can't attack either, and tries to scoop up some warpstone. Unfortunately, he walks into Grisella Joshuasohn's ambush and she finally, belatedly, gets into the fight.



The honor of the leader kill kill goes to Draktwitch Creep, a warp guard.



Their will is broken and we have won! All hail Deathmaster Snitch! Long live Murderlord Snikkit, may he have a million young! All hail the Horned Rat!



Post game stats. Skittar Verminhide brings home the bacon.



Everyone's XP for the battle.







The Warband's XP and loot.



So far as I can see, there is NO EXPLORATION ROLL. I really hope that's an addition coming later. That really add some flavor and spice to the post game and I hope they haven't discarded it. Lord knows they have seemingly plenty of events for OOA.


Gotta get PAYED! You can't just put fighters on ice until you're ready to pay them either. Not only will they leave after a certain amount of days, their payment owed accrues interest! Despite the ruthless grmdrknss of the WH Fantasy universe, it appears pro union.



This is what the Smuggler's Den looks like. The pic explains the rules. Remember when I said these developers drop a ton of stuff on you? Well, here you go.



And here's roughly what the starting upkeep looks like. There are three levels of Warpstone: Fragments, Shards and Clusters. Clusters weigh the most. So in one game I made 43% of what I need in 10 days to meet my quota. It seems like a decent amount of time to either make headway (and sell wyrdstone for cash money) or recover from catastrophes (which seem like they're plenty possible.)

[nenjin]

Well I've got a Rank 3 warband now, with 2, 3 and 4th ranked guys. The Scum Lords have made much murder-stab and Murderlord Snikkit is getting his shipments.

The campaign's random battles have been engaging. I've been playing it all night in lieu of doing other stuff I should be, so I must be enjoying myself.

The difficulty is seemingly high, yet because of how the AI works it's very beatable.

The reason it feels difficult is that all the enemy warbands you fight are tougher than your's. They get a flat boost to their HP to make up for their AI, and with me playing Skaven, I'm fighting warbands that have a combined 200 or 300 more HP than I do. It also level scales with your warband so as soon as you have more dudes, they have more dudes.

The AI is beatable as long as you don't let it engage all its fighters. Sometimes it does this for you by having someone way, way off the main battle, doing god knows what. Sometimes they rarely glitch on a piece of terrain and get stuck. Other times they can't decide where they want to go, and do the ol' climb up and climb down thing, or just camp a spot on ambush stance because, I guess, they can't find a way to go.

So there are a lot of reasons why you're not facing the combined strength of the AI warband. This means you're usually trying to ambush one or two fighters with as many of your fighters as you can. No matter how hard you hit, they have more HP than you, and as soon as you run into one of their heavy hitters...they will waste one of your dudes in only two or three attacks. So you gotta be catty with the AI, and pick your battles carefully. Going all in gets very dangerous as soon as you're fighting even numbers against the AI.

As an example, in my last match I'd carefully teased a few enemy fighters at a time into battle, grossly outnumbering them. (Or more likely they wandered into my path from where ever they got spawned at deployment.) Even then, some of my front rank fighters got pretty beat up from just a few rounds of combat. It's what happens when you get charged by someone using a two handed weapon, you take half your life in a couple swings. After clearing out two guys I moved ahead vacuuming up wyrdstone, and hit a nice juice patch right by the enemy wagon (I'd basically circled around one side of the battlefield with my whole warband, hitting very rich wyrdstone deposits.) I got greedy, spread out some guys to collect wyrdstone and approached the enemy wagon to loot it. And I shortly went from fighting one guy to fighting 4, in 4 separate battles. And two of those were a hero and a leader. It was on a knife edge for several rounds it and only went that long because i'd managed to block a couple of them from engaging for a while. But then they start cutting into my previously damaged guys and they start going OOA or preparing to. And then my leader, more or less fresh at this point, takes two nasty crits, meaning he'll have injuries even if he doesn't go down. And then one more unit charges into the fight and I threw in the towel.

So, some general observations from all that:

-Playing as Skaven you have way, way fewer HPs than most AI warbands you face, including other Skaven warbands. You really have to play the overwhelming game when it comes to combat, and never fight with evenly matched sides. Swarm is a great Skaven passive for playing this way because it lets you crit your way through those extra HPs when you're ganging up on guys. Basically, fair one-on-one fights are a losing proposition with anyone but your leader or heroes, so you have to fight dirty and in depth.

-You usually have to shuffle guys out of combat to avoid risking an OOA. When you only have 120 HP and the enemy can hit you for 60 to 70 in one turn sometimes, you have to rotate out guys who can't take the abuse anymore.

-Bottlenecking the AI in the terrain is by far the best way to fight them. It works best if you set up around a corner, say a doorway or alleyway, and let them step out so you can put as many guys on them as possible, while making their sphere of influence block any of their guys from following up behind. If you pick the right spot to do this at, you can block up their whole team and carve them down one at at time. You still have to be on your toes though. Crits, stuns, them disengaging combat. All can disrupt a well organized defense. And if you mistakenly leave them an opening to maneuver by say disengaging combat, they can sometimes surprise you by moving to a different part of your line you thought you had under control, and change the equation. Positioning in combat is everything.

-Luring the AI through dense terrain is the best way to get it separated. Sometimes it will stop to pick up wyrdstone or other loot. Other times it will just get confused. As Skaven, running up into missile weapon range and then running away around a couple corners is a great way to keep the AI off balance. You can also use it as a stalling tactic to try and prevent AIs from grouping up. It seems to remember the last place it saw one of your guys, so if you can double break LOS you can sometimes lose it altogether.

-Wyrdstone is not worth the life or well-being of your warband. It just isn't. At the start of every match there's at least some wyrdstone you can grab en route to where ever you're going to fight. But it's not worth splitting your warband up. It's not worth losing swarming or having extra guys to force All Alone Checks on your enemies. It's not worth the loss of damage. And it's certainly not worth stirring up a hornet's nest of extra enemies. If trying to get at some wyrdstone forces you to divide your forces, or makes you fight on multiple fronts, it's probably not worth it.

-The secondary objectives can be hard. With Wyrdstone rush, you can usually get 50% of what you need in the opening few turns of the battle. But you either have to get lucky with the spawn pattern and move to each set of spawns as a group, or split up, which tends to be a very bad idea. You're also at the mercy of the other team's bottle test. Killing enemies is a count down timer on the match. Once they hit 40% of their morale pool, they'll almost always blow their bottle test. Secondary objective rewards tend to be higher quality weapons and gear, sometimes consumables, so they're not required to survive at all.

-You generally don't have the inventory space to bother with the non-wyrdstone loot points. Sometimes they have money in them, which I guess is alright for an inventory slot if you don't need the wyrdstone to fulfill a shipment. Sometimes they have consumables or common weapons and armor, and very rarely a rare version of these. As Skaven you get a lot of crap you can't use, which you just end up selling at the merchant for small change. And because time is of the essence and everybody in the warband is useful if for nothing else than another warm body to throw into a fight, you tend to only loot containers when you happen to be passing by them, and only half the time is anything worth taking. Useful when your warband is starting out, but not so useful later on.

-Some wounds are represented on the model. If your guy loses an arm, it's gone off the model. If they lose a leg, they get a fucking peg leg to hobble around on. If they lose an eye, one of their eyes goes milky white. It's a nice little touch. (Unfortunately for fighters with only one leg, it's kind fo a death sentence. They lose the ability to jump down or climb, and those are two skills that are pretty much required on some level to get around the map.)

The game seems kind hard, even with the broken AI. You have to play pretty conservatively not to get fucked and have guys OOA every battle. It's not hard to do so, but it may be a little time intensive, waiting for the AI to walk into your traps instead of you walking into theirs. But I can't imagine how hard the game would be if the AI was really on point. Maybe they could dial back their HPs to sane levels if they did that.

Still, I've found it pretty engaging, and I've had many close fights where tactics really made the difference.

[Majestic7]

Hey, thanks for the report. I spent my whole Friday night playing this. Despite being unfinished, the game is weirdly addictive.

As a Chaos warband, I reached maximum rank (5) for my leader and first mutant hero. I guess this is a temporary cap, we are suppsoed to reach ten, right? Anyway, I feel like the game difficulty assumes you reach optional objective every game, getting that extra +3 xp per troop. The difficulty raps up pretty quick even as Chaos. When I tried playing humies, I felt like it was a lot harder than playing the cult. Incidentally I hate going against Skaven the most (as chaos) since they tend to swarm and kill my henchmen.

I did the first story mission for Chaos - desecrating a temple of Sigmar - and while the mission itself was fun, the ending was lackluster. I lost three guys in the fight and one of them lost a leg, making him useless. For that price I got the grand reward of...nothing. Nothing at all, just the usual experience and the loot I got from the temple chests.

That was quite disappointing.

In general, I agree that there really should be an exploration roll in the end. I think the veteran benefits like the scout point towards it being in the works, maybe?

[nenjin]

Weirdly addictive is right. I didn't think the leveling system would keep me all that hooked, but advancement is metered enough to be enjoyable.

And yeah, I don't recall getting a reward for the first Skaven mission either. I cheesed the mission in two places though. For one I kept the last dude alive so no more would respawn, which basically gave me the run of the map. And for two, the ogre NPC boss of the mission got stuck on some stairs and stopped moving, allowing me to plink him to death with shurikens and pistols at no risk to me. Which is great, because he had 382 goddamn HP and hit in the 60s for damage sometimes. I only had one OOA that was my own fault so the mission was great for XP, at least.

And yeah, I can see the Skaven objectively being one of the worst to fight. Their movement allows more of their units to get involved quicker, which is the kiss of death right now. My personal grudge is against the Sisters of Sigmar though. Craploads of HP, hard hitting, all in armor, all three things that suck to go up against in melee for Skaven. The only advantage I have is that they're slow and I tend to outnumber them. They're the only warband so far that routinely manages to give me close fights and put my fighters OOA.

I really hope they get the AI sorted out, because the extra HPs on enemies is a real drag.

[Majestic7]

Yeah, I'd actually prefer a system more like in Bloodbowl (the computer game) and closer to the original to the whole HP debacle anyway. Just a few hits per guy, then they start being stunned, knocked around and so forth, not just getting automatically out of action at the end of an arbitrary hit point meter. Oh well, can't have everything.

Another thing that would be great, in addition to the exploration roll, would be random events in combat that affect the whole map. Like a huge chaos spawn suddenly rampaging through the map, attacking anything or a sudden rain of blood lowering morale for everyone. Stuff like that, it is supposed to be a damned city. Those random little traps don't matter that much and half of them seem to give boosts anyway. (Just like picking up warpstone can give your dudes boosts instead of hindrances. I don't know if Skaven/Chaos have a better chance of boosts as opposed to hindrances compared to the other guys.)

[nenjin]

Yeah, I'd actually prefer a system more like in Bloodbowl (the computer game) and closer to the original to the whole HP debacle anyway. Just a few hits per guy, then they start being stunned, knocked around and so forth, not just getting automatically out of action at the end of an arbitrary hit point meter. Oh well, can't have everything.

Another thing that would be great, in addition to the exploration roll, would be random events in combat that affect the whole map. Like a huge chaos spawn suddenly rampaging through the map, attacking anything or a sudden rain of blood lowering morale for everyone. Stuff like that, it is supposed to be a damned city. Those random little traps don't matter that much and half of them seem to give boosts anyway. (Just like picking up warpstone can give your dudes boosts instead of hindrances. I don't know if Skaven/Chaos have a better chance of boosts as opposed to hindrances compared to the other guys.)

There's the battle modifiers for skirmish that global change stuff about it, like everyone's damage or resistances or w/e. But no scripted events, which would be cool. There were neutral monsters at some point early on EA, not sure where they went.

And while traps aren't deadly, they can fuck you. Charging or ambushing and having a trap sprung on you automatically cancels the charge. I've had the AI charge me, I counter-charge and hit a trap so my charge stops, then they complete their charge and hit me. Some of those buffs, though short-lived, can screw you over, like doing reduced damage or losing damage reduction. I doubt the buffs are more likely for Chaos or Skaven, though I haven't tried Mercs or SoS yet.

[Stuebi]

I'm very, very unimpressed.

I've played around 10 missions now, with every Warband except Sisters. Mostly with Skaven and the Possessed. From all these missions, I've won exactly one.

After loosing the first couple missions, I just thought to myself that yeah, it's just harder than regular games, no problem. But after a couple more I started checking out some of the hp values and the damage dealt. Only to discover that every Warband you fight is flat out better than you.

This isnt helped by the random missions setups. Why there isnt a deployment phase or some such, is beyond me. Because some of the scenarios are just flat out stacked against you. There was one mission stating that we had sourrounded a Warband, who had scattered moments before. So my Warband had appearantly created 3 Patrols to "flank the enemy".

This translated to two of my guys, the Hero and one of my fighters, starting out at the very edge of the map, while my 3 other guys stood next to the wagon, basically sourrunded by Skaven after 1 Turn. So it was 5vs3. The two seperated guys arrived at the scene 3 or 4 turns later, only for me to miss my leadership test. Defeat. No loot, 3 of 5 people wounded, no gold and no wyrdstone.

Restarted right afterwards. This time my people actually started next to each other. I set up a couple ambushes in houses and one of the narrow streets, and managed to kill 2 enemies by sourrunding them. Finally, something going my way, after around 2-3 hours of playing. Next turn, the enemy hero walks up to my leader, crits him twice. Dead.

Enemy leader follows right afterwards, stuns my Hero and puts him at half health. Let me remind you that I need around 5-6 attacks for a kill on regular enemies. While other Warbands comfortably bash my people down in 2-4. 2 Turns later another rout. Only minor wounds, so I take another mission.

Again my guys start scattered everywhere. By the time i can regroup, I allready have one dead and one wounded. Get slaughtered afterwards.

The optional objectives are mostly laughable, with the possible exception of stealing the other teams Idol, because that actually helps you. But how you're supposed to gather 55% of Wyrdstone and check out 9 Points of interest WHILE NOT GETTING OBLITERATED BY CHEATING AI WARBANDS, is beyond me.

All in all, I seriously regret buying this now. Making enemy soldiers stronger because the AI is dumb is just lazy, and straight up not fun. Especially combined with the fact that scenarios will often straight up put you at a disadvantage, stacking the odds against you even further. It's also just laughably dumb that the Warbands are supposed to have strengths and weaknesses, which falls completely flat due to them cheating up their stats compared to yours. Skaven are supposd to have less health, which makes up for their high dodge. Except not really, because AI Skaven have equal if not MORE health than my own guys.

I know this is ranty, but I was looking forward to the Campaign. And it turning out to be an ai cheatfest is just really upsetting.

[Majestic7]

This is the first iteration of the campaign; if you find it hard, give feedback on Steam forums or the like so the designers have a chance to actually see and read it. I agree that AI cheating is...unimpressive. It would be nicer to have the enemies just more experienced or the like if they need the boost instead of having bonus HP etc. Plus those random happenings I mentioned in my previous post.

However, regarding difficulty, I have a stupid question - have you checked the description on the campaign map? You know, when selecting mission, it says "normal", "hard", "brutal", "deadly". Basically anything over hard is usually unwinnable and in the beginning you should always choose normal. Sometimes the game only offers you brutal missions, but that is when you use scouts to find something easier for yourself.

[TempAcc]

This game started out slow, but now it seems to be finally becoming what I expected it to. I'll get it and check it out this week, thanks for the detailed reports nenjin.

[Sirus]

Hmm. Sounds like the game still needs some work. Guess I'll hold off on purchasing for a while longer.

Glad to see it's making progress though.