Will this campaign mechanism actually work?

[rippounet]

I have a serious doubt about SW:A's campaign mechanism. I know it's a bit early to question that, but I had some free time today so I gave it some thought...

So you get 100 for recruiting or rearming after each game, right?
If you want you can add 100 by sacrificing a promethium cache.
My question is: why would you not do that after at least the first three games?

This is a game in which your soldiers don't evolve much. You only get one progression for one soldier after each game. And it's not dependent on what happened during the game and you're more likely to get skills than stat increases anyway. So the differences between teams is going to be mainly based on numbers and equipement.
So why would anyone not want to get the strongest team asap, and do their best to stay on top from then on? In Necromunda big gangs eat up a lo of ressources, but this seems conspicuously absent from SW:A.

Of course, it all depends on the gaming group. But say you have 5 guys in yours. Let's say one of the guys starts systematically sacrificing his promethium caches to recruit twice as many members as others after each game. After three games, assuming the other four don't imitate him his team would have at least 3 more members than anyone else, 6 if he's playing a team with cheap guys like chaos cultists or neophyte initiates (taus are a bit special).
So sure, he would have 3 caches less than the others. But what the heck, he should be reasonably certain to win the huge majority of his games from then on. And since the winner usually gets D3 caches, he should be able to catch up with the others quickly and keep up his recruitment rhythm as well.

In a nutshell:
- At the beginning of a campaign one should systematically sacrifice a promethium cache after a game if possible to recruit/rearm.
- This may mean that teams that can recruit two members for 100 (chaos and genestealer cult) may very quickly end up with a huge advantage in numbers.

Now the genestealer cult has a 15 member maximum limit and the taus have a a 10-member maximum, but I haven't seen such a limit for chaos, and I don't believe there'll be one for orks. So I'm already wondering whether the campaign mechanism actually works or whether from the start some teams have the potential for an auto-win...

I'm aware you don't get your whole team for every scenario, but both orks and genestealer cults have an advantage even when they have random numbers so they should be all right. Chaos could always use CSM for missions with limited numbers.

And while we're at it, the teams aren't balanced between one another imho which should make matters worse:
- Because of the above, teams whose basic members are more than 100 points are at a disadvantage because they have to sacrifice a cache to recruit a new member or replace a casualty. I'd say that's pretty bad for grey knights and harlequins. Perhaps less so for 'nids because they're almost unstoppable.
- Dark eldar wyches and tau pathfinders somehow strike me as -slightly- less powerful than other teams. The wyches are too fragile and have no firepower without agents ; the taus are obviously weak in HtH and have only Ld8 on their leader (also, I think being limited to 10 members is bad).

So I dunno... At a glance I'm skeptical about this campaign mechanism. Do you guys think it will work?

 

[AndeeT]

Interesting points and good observations given the limited (main-rulebook) rules we have seen.

I honestly dont know if things will pan out as you described but I think we can say for sure that teams aren't balanced. But as with all the old specialist games, its part of the intrigue .

Just re-reading the post-game section that has been scanned and I am a bit confused now. It says to 'chose one of the following actions', i.e. rearm or recruit. Then goes to say that promethium can be spent on rearm or recruit.

So you either stockpile guns which you could either (a) re-equip old fighters with or (b) keep for the nex post match sequence when you recruit, or you recruit troops that have a knife only. Either way, its taking two post-match sequences to get an effective* fighter? Is that how others read it?

*i.e. not just a dood holding a knife

 

[rippounet]

I honestly dont know if things will pan out as you described but I think we can say for sure that teams aren't balanced. But as with all the old specialist games, its part of the intrigue .

Yeah, I'm not too bothered by a lack of balance. Necromunda was never pefectly balanced and was enough fun for 20 years.
And yet... if some teams have too much of an advantage because of the campaign mechanism... Well, house rules will have to be introduced fairly quickly to deal with that.

Just re-reading the post-game section that has been scanned and I am a bit confused now. It says to 'chose one of the following actions', i.e. rearm or recruit. Then goes to say that promethium can be spent on rearm or recruit.

So you either stockpile guns which you could either (a) re-equip old fighters with or (b) keep for the nex post match sequence when you recruit, or you recruit troops that have a knife only. Either way, its taking two post-match sequences to get an effective* fighter? Is that how others read it?

From what I read, that's almost it:
- If you recruit new members you can also buy weapons for them, providing you have enough points for that, but you can't have them switch weapons with old members.
- If you rearm you can buy weapons for anyone but can't stockpile.

So yeah, there are a number of circumstances where you'll need two post-match sequences to have an effective fighter. For example:
- If you recruit two chaos cultists (2x40) you only have enough points left for a single shotgun. The other cultist will have to wait for the next opportunity.
- If you recruit two neophyte initiates (2x50) you don't have any points left for weapons so they'll have to go with a knife for the next game.
I think the point is to prevent players from doing exactly what I proposed, i.e. recruiting as many cheap recruits as possible as fast as you can.
The problem is, I don't see this as much of a deterrent because we all know that meat shields are useful in Necromunda games. WYSIWYG might be a slight issue but most of us have tons of miniatures so it's not that hard to field some meat shields with only knives.

I guess what this means is that they did realize that it was possible to heavily recruit and tried to address the issue. Not sure they succeeded.

Then again, I'm basing my analysis on several speculations here, so I could be 100% wrong about the whole mechanism anyway.

 

[AndeeT]

WYSIWYG might be a slight issue

Well, I wasnt planning on having ghuys built with just knives, as I dont have access to a lot of minis to be able to do this. Maybe this is why GW is gunning the Kill Team bundles?

In terms of post match rules, the way I am reading it is that you either rearm or recruit; you cant do a bit of both. So in your example above neither chaos cultists would be armed (except for knives they come with). Unless you already bought spare weapons in the previous post match sequence.

As you say, maybe it is to limit the kind of gaming you described in the initial post.

 

[crimsonsun]

I'm not sure I can commit to a stance in regards to this stuff until the rules are in front of me but I do agree they feel light on the ground right now. I am fully convinced however that the factions released in the PDF are about as balanced as 40ks codex creep but I'm more hopeful that the core game itself will be a little bit more in line.

I'd assumed all forces had size limits, just those that aren't listed are of a standard size rather than they lack limits, the fact that the warbands that can have additional personal list as having extras makes me think this is exactly how Orcs will work and that they won't be unlimited at all.

The thing is, if this system gives a solid core it can be expanded upon and developed into something deeper if players so wish it and I doubt it would be too hard in truth. There's lots of stuff I'd love to see, more inq28 style in terms of power and options but the only real limitation is our creativity. I am also fairly sure that what ever is presented will be workable even if it is exploitable for those who don't like to tamper and play with rules, though I imagine more scenarios has got to be on everyone's wishlist as 6 really isn't that many..

 

[rippounet]

In terms of post match rules, the way I am reading it is that you either rearm or recruit; you cant do a bit of both. So in your example above neither chaos cultists would be armed (except for knives they come with). Unless you already bought spare weapons in the previous post match sequence.

Sorry, I think you're making two mistakes:
1) You can buy equipment for new recruits, it's clearly said "with a total cost (including equipment) no greater than 100 points."
On the other hand
2) "Equipement not given to a fighter is lost" so no stockpiling, and "new recruits can't switch at this point" so you can't stockpile weapons on old fighters either.

Cearly if you spend too much on cheap recruits they'll need to spend a game with just a knife.

 

[AndeeT]

Cheers @rippounet ! For some reason, even after re-reading that page, I was skipping the bit in brackets about buying weapons while recruiting.

And this makes it a bit easier to not have models of 'knife-guys' (but you may still want to to squeeze he most out of those 100 points)

 

[Space Truckin]

( big disclaimer as I've not seen the actual rules, only what is posted online. )
To me it's like the campaign rules aren't there for those that want a super long campaign.
Maybe they are intended for a day of 3-6 games?

 

[AndeeT]

Well if the quoted 'win the campaign' condition is true (15 promethium caches), and winners get D3, if you are winning a lot and also getting a few bounties, you could finish the campaign in 5 games I guess (though in general its more likely a few more games than that if you dont win eveything)

 

[rippounet]

I'd assumed all forces had size limits, just those that aren't listed are of a standard size rather than they lack limits, the fact that the warbands that can have additional personal list as having extras makes me think this is exactly how Orcs will work and that they won't be unlimited at all.

I was about to write that you're right and that standard teams probably have a maximum size when I remembered that taus and skitariis are limited to 10. So if the genestealer cult is limited to 15 and the taus and skitariis to 10, I'm left wondering what the "standard maximum" would be.
If it's between 10 and 15, the genestealer cult is very powerful.
If it's more than 15, then it's chaos that's really powerful.
At any rate I think the maximum number of members in a team will matter within that campaign mechanism.
For what it's worth, from the pdf we have, Necrons, Chaos, Craftworld Eldar and Dark Eldar Wyches don't have maximums.

( big disclaimer as I've not seen the actual rules, only what is posted online. )
To me it's like the campaign rules aren't there for those that want a super long campaign.
Maybe they are intended for a day of 3-6 games?

Yeah, the same occurred to me. I think the winner of a campaign will be obvious before he gets 15 promethium caches. Campaigns will likely be rather short, with a clear winner emerging after just 5 or 6 games.

That would explain why there seems to be no reason to hold back on expanding the gang. That's probably the whole point: expanding your team fast enough after the first wins to crush the opposition rather than focusing too much on the caches. The whole mechanism is not designed for fair and balanced games at all, it's about who gets the biggest, meanest team after a handful of games.

 

[AndeeT]

I guess this is why 'Munda had income tax brackets based on size of gang....

 

[athetrichy]

I agree that campaigns will be rather short and sweet. There's also less of an incentive to bring along special operatives because of their expense. However, I do wish there was a "giant killer" mechanic like in 'munda, because it'd be fun to mess with the frontrunner by bringing big guys in and trying to play catch up with your war band.

 

[rippounet]

So news of the day ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B85bX2eTNABScTRFYkNZWFZ4NXc/view )
The scouts are limited to 10 members, the orks to 20. Intriguing. Of course, a 20-men strong ork team should be formidable.

 

[AndeeT]

Ta for this.

Yes, 20 is a bit extreme given no 'high-model-count tax'.

What is even weirder though is that there is no standard kill team size as you alluded to earlier. In which case the Chaos Kill team has no upper limit apparently!
Another strange thing is that it doesn't give you limits on e.g number of specialists.
Unless this comes in on another page we havent seen yet.

To be fair, we have only seen 9 out of 120 pages so it may be a bit early to call it.

 

[rippounet]

Unless this comes in on another page we havent seen yet.

It probably does. It's weird enough not to have a maximum number of models for some gangs, but to have no limits on specialists would be ridiculous. So standard limits no doubt exist somewhere, we just don't have them yet.

 

[rippounet]

Have you seen this one yet? http://imgur.com/a/v8qF4
So guys, am I the only one who sees the yoof at 30 points apiece? Meaning the orks can recruit 6 yoofs per post-match game. That means an ork gang should reach its 20-member maximum in just two games if you're willing to field them with a knife.
That's quite brutal. I guess 20 isn't unbeatable, but still...

 

[trollmeat]

Meat shields galore!

 

[Peroxide Cowboy]

Have you seen this one yet? http://imgur.com/a/v8qF4
So guys, am I the only one who sees the yoof at 30 points apiece? Meaning the orks can recruit 6 yoofs per post-match game. That means an ork gang should reach its 20-member maximum in just two games if you're willing to field them with a knife.
That's quite brutal. I guess 20 isn't unbeatable, but still...

At least for Scouts, "And They Shall Know No Fear" and a Heavy Bolter with Sustained Fire 2 and an ammo roll of 5+ on 2D6 should give some mileage against being outnumbered. Looking at the Heavy Bolter profile again, that weapon is gonna be a good friend when Orks come to play.

 

[Insurgent]

This is agonizing!!!!!! NO STOCKPILING! NO WEAPON TRADES!
That drops the bottom out of the entire inventory! Mark my words this is going to create all kinds of power play problems. People will probably just resolve to choose one combination for fear of losing capital on any promethium they cash in on.

 

[AndeeT]

@rippounet ; I wonder if this will be limited by a team-building rule that hasn't been imgur-ed yet, like the old rule for numbers of juves (i.e yoofs/new recruits can't make up more than 50% of a kill team). Similar to how we speculated rules for number of specialists is also missing so far.

This would also solve the Chaos problem- seen as your non-new-recruits are expensive Chaos marines!