--- In netepic_at_y..., "Peter Ramos" <primarch_at_c...> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Played some Heresy Ii this morning and I have scheduled another this
> afternoon. Here's something's I found:
>
> 1. The battlegroup concept works well. The number of command units
has
> gone down and it gives them a sense of command and control. The
sizes
> however are grossly overestimated. If you make an Ork battlegroup
with
> the minimum amount of troops necessary you'll find you'll need over
100
> stands to fill the battlegroup spots a typical warband commander can
> offer.
Hi Peter
I just read your comments above and that answers one problem we found
with the game - the commands were too big and unwieldy. I'll have
another look at the organisations with the new suggestion.
Using the rules as they stood an Imperial guard company was way too
big to actually deploy everything within the commanders command
radius.
Anyway, we played a game with the Heresy rules last monday. It was
nice to get all the scenery and models out again after a few years
but my opponent and I did have some trouble with the rules. Maybe we
misread things or didn't quite follow the reasoning behind them. here
goes....
1. Dismounting troops from transport. Couldn't find anything on this.
In the end we assumed half a turn for mounting/dismounting.
2. Leader movement. Do leaders have to activate to move? This one
arose when I wanted to move a leader to place him closer to another
unit.
3. Visibility ranges and spotting. At what distance can units be
identified to be fired upon? We are more used to historical games
where target location and visibility are based on the game's ground
scale.
4. Reactive Fire. Why do units have to take both a Morale Test and
and Activation test to issue reactive fire? This appears to add more
dice throws, and doubles the chance of failing, without offering any
advantage to game play. As reactive fire would be initiated at the
unit level and probably not co-ordinated at a higher lever, we
thought a simple Reactive Fire value might be allocated to each troop
type. This would require a single success or fail dice roll.
Incidentally, poor quality troops could have a rating which makes it
compatively easy for them to reactive fire - this would have the
effect of allowing them to fire more easily than moving, representing
the tendency of green troops to simply stay put and blaze away at
long range etc.
5. Close Combat procedure. This was the one that stumped us - we
couldn't figure out the process and gave up after several tries. It
seemed a bit over complicated to us, particularly when it got into
the realsm of column shifts and the various modifiers.
6. Finally, it seemed as though there were too many dice throws -
particularly when firing. For example, two vehicles to fire, each has
a firepower of 2 - throw 4 dice. Penetration factor 2 - throw 8 dice
and so on. We seemed to be throwing ever increasing numbers of dice.
Right, sorry if all that sounds a bit negative - however, it's not
all bad news.
We did like the initiative system. During the game my opponents Space
Marines managed to manouvre like "sh*t off a shiny shovel" (ie
fast!), which is pretty much how we imagined Marines to operate. As a
result they managed to get right onto my flank before my humble PDF
troops could do anything. However, at a crucial point I got the
initiative and managed to redeploy some tanks to counter the marine
attack. The system allows the player with better quality troops to
plan ahead but with just enough of a chance that something may
(probably will) go wrong. Incidentally, in the game the Marine player
was able to activate two battlegroups automatically before the -2
modifier kicked in. This meant that he hit me with a very fast moving
armoured assault before the marines actually got out of their
vehicles to fight. This seemed to reflect the marine doctrine quite
well to us.
The reactive fire system seems to work OK (apart from the comments
above). A detachment of PDF militia managed to ambush a marine Recce
unit with Land Speeders and shot down two in the initial firing.
We liked the concept of the different troop attributes, and in
particular, we felt that the "fire support" attribute, allowing
nearby units to give fire support to troops in close combat, was an
excellent idea (it is very similar in practice to the fire support
tactics used by modern British tank crews when supporting friendly
infantry in the assault). This will reward players who van
effectively apply the "combined arms" process.
Finally, the rules did actually prompt me to dust off my space
marines etc. More interestingly they have even inspired me to start
work on some 6mm science fiction terrain and buildings for TimeCast
(about a year ahead of schedule!). I have several masters on the
workbench representing a recently established colony - lots of bubble
domes, solar power panels, life support units and hydroponic tanks
etc embedded in rock outcrops etc. If all goes well these will be
available in a couple of months.
Best wishes
Barrie
Received on Thu Jun 06 2002 - 12:50:24 UTC