Tuesday, October 11, 2016

A correction and thoughts on a changing game state


              It has been brought to my attention that I made a significant oversight in my list construction commentary regarding my last journeyman league session.  It turns out that Man-o-War demolition corps do not in fact have combined melee attack.  My apologies to anyone I may have misled.  Credit to Esper for the catch.

              This highlights one of the personal challenges I face dealing with the edition shift and dynamic updates.  This being my third iteration of warmahordes, I have a lot of outdated model profiles rattling around en la cabesa.  For example, MAT 8 was a lot more prevalent in MKI than now a days.  I have to constantly pulse check not only what has changed between MKII and MKIII but what has changed since MKI as well.  Add to this the fact that my first impressions of 3rd Ed came from the unofficial official spoilers and—well—Fury maybe not so smart as he think he is.

              This particular mistake points out how easy it is to screw up a game—even when you have the cards for reference.  My opponents were holding my cards and did not notice the error either—which is no mark against them—it is not their job to fact check my assumptions.  Apparently I assumed that since bombardiers have CRA and shock troopers have CMA, demolition corps get CMA too…right?  This was entirely my fault and does not seem to have arisen from any source material—I just got this one dead wrong.

From my limited experience on the field of honor and reading multiple forums, honest misunderstandings are a bigger issue than in previous editions—partly for the reasons I have mentioned—and partly because war room, battle college, dynamically updated text, and the physical cards do not always agree.  I cannot “read” my cards or war room (which does not work with the iPhone’s voice over function.)  So I end up defaulting to Battle College when I need to reference unit abilities.  This is an imperfect solution but one that generally gets the job done.

              While PP has said that they will make every effort not to muck with published material unless absolutely necessary, I worry that this sort of floating oversight problem may become more of an issue as theme forces alter balance levels and PP seeks to correct the game state.  A certain amount of post-release-editing was bound to happen what with the sheer number of models and rules requiring consideration.  I have been happy with this edition’s design choices in broad strokes—so I am inclined to cut Privateer press some slack—Skorne’s

 upcoming rewrite notwithstanding.  That being said, when I hear people asking if a physical card differs from war room it makes me wonder how much dynamic updating is going to take place every six months and how that frequency will affect the community.

              A final thought regarding demolition corps.  If I have this right, Hammer boys are P+S 16 with critical freeze.  Apparently an increase of one point, the loss of critical freeze and -2 power nets shock troopers combined melee attack, shield wall, higher armor, and a limited ranged option.  This does not feel equitable—doubly so since apparently demolition corps are the only Man-o-War unit not to have a combined attack skill.  I am going to continue playing them—if nothing else the models are awesome—but I am unimpressed.

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