Monday, February 10, 2014

A Challenge to "Competitive" List-Builders Out There - Break These

This applies to everyone, but I especially want to see those of you who think you excel at busting a new Codex taking a swing at this.

http://www.novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/Narrative-Supplements-31Jan14.pdf

Please use the blog comments function.

There are already several LGS groups using the Narrative Supplements for regular play. The Narrative Team wants as much rapid feedback as we can get to engage any tweaks or changes we may want to make.

The purpose of this exercise is to make sure the rules and tweaks haven't broken the game in some unforseen way.

Keep in mind also - due to the existence of the supplements, the game being "Broken" must apply to an environment in which the supplements themselves exist. Saying that we've made Blood Angels "really powerful" may be true; if everything else is also powerful, however, then ... well ... "Challenge Completed."

Take a crack at it - seriously - I don't usually ask the viewing community of this blog to do any work other than perusing and using the blogroll, but please do in this case - take your best crack at crafting some truly broken lists out of the Narrative Supplements, and let's see what they look like.

IN a perfect world, these lists will all look quite balanced against each other, and also will reflect a more characterful representation of the fluff than we typically see. So, let's see :)

http://www.novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/Narrative-Supplements-31Jan14.pdf

We're also commissioning a freelance artist to bring the Virtue and our version of Humanity to visual life beyond the written word. Some of the finalists ...
http://jamesfinlaysonconcepts.weebly.com/
http://cargocollective.com/CedriCDebleD
http://alicebessoni.com/

19 comments:

  1. OMG, I love the Adepta Sororitas ones. :)

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  2. I think grey knights with their supercharged dreadknights that reroll everything (2+ rerollable armour) and entire armies that gate turn 1 without scatter might be a little too much. Draigo can also have a 2+/3++ with rerolls and teleport to the enemy's doorstep turn 1 without scatter

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    1. Interesting point about Precognition...

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    2. While I'm not sure it is all that gamebreaking when you actually play it out, it sounds really mean at face value.

      We may want to look at precog for this one :) ... or possibly creating a GK tree that harvests useful and key but not gamebreaking powers from places like div/tel.

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    3. Imagine a (scoring) 10 man unit of Paladins with precog having a rerollable 2+ armor, 3++ once per game and a constant rerollable 4++ from another unit casting forewarning on them. They then reroll all to hits and to wounds on units debuffed by three or four strike squads with misfortune. Grey Knights seem way busted with these rules. Not even the dominant seer council scores. Even without a precog deathstar, msu strike marines with misfortune, perfect timing or forewarning seem way too good. I think the swapping for psychic powers is cool, but they shouldn't be able to just pick them.

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  3. My expertise, such as it is, concerns Sisters, and I don't see anything troubling on that count. That said, it doesn't seem to change either the inter or intra-codex balance much.

    Out of curiosity, what is the reason to not allow allies to use the optional rules? I don't think that's a bad choice; I'm just wondering.

    -Banosby

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    1. I realized this morning that making faith once per turn makes Celestine very hard to put down permanently. I'm not sure this makes her broken, but it does make her obnoxious.

      -Banosby

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    2. Yeah - does that make her functionally invincible? May need to tweak it for her.

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    3. She'd die permanently once every two games or so, assuming she died every turn and wasn't the subject of leadership reduction (i.e. deathleaper), remove-from-play effects (i.e. Old Zogwart) or deepstrike mishaps.

      She still wouldn't do much on the table and would still be in a pretty sub-par codex, but she's be pretty frustrating in objective missions. Maybe a cumulative -1 penalty for every time she came back after the first?

      -Banosby

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    4. It would make her like she used to be. Which was too good, frankly.

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    5. Too good in the context of the rest of the codex and the new narrative options?

      -Banosby

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    6. Too good in any context. I am aware that you do not agree.

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    7. It may be a little gamey for her to just constantly res and contest every game, as opposed to making her better and worth taking but still fairly attuned to the actual game. We'll look at little tweaks here and there as a general rule.

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  4. Grey knights. Units are brotherhood of psykers which say treat the unit as a psyker. Precognition says the psyker can reroll to hit to wound and failed saves. So the psyker, the unit, gains this ability?

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    1. I think Precog may be problematic in general; we'll have to take a look at a tweak there I think.

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  5. If Jokaero can choose their power, can they choose the option where you roll twice?

    DO GK replacing whatever power for a BRB power, also replace hammerhand (current system is Librarians retain hammerhand when selecting book powers, and all GK have hammerhand)

    Vespids already have move through cover.

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    1. Good points on the Jokaero and Vespid. Those should be easy fixes.

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  6. I know it's not the point to bolster EVERY neglected unit, but if this continue to evolve, some help for Necron Destroyers and C'Tan shards would be in order.

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  7. The Daemon supplement is a brilliant concept... Is Tzeentch weaker on purpose b/c Tzeentch stuff is already seen as strong? You still need to actually provide some sort of motivation to run a mono-tzeentch army. Auto-passing psychic tests (instead of failing 1 in 12) is kind of not enough to make someone be like "Oh yes!!! mono tzeentch, watch out world!"

    Khorne and Slaanesh are perfect. Slaanesh units will still fold like a cheap card table under fire, but if they reach you, it's going to hurt really a lot.

    Nurgle is powerful enough of a boon, but it seems to make them actually less Nurgley. Not sure if I have a better idea though, the speed issue is what would make a mono-nurgle army not so fun to play and this does take it away. Maybe some other sort of movement shenanigans we can give them? Like, any nurgle unit can teleport within 6" of a unit of Nurglings without scattering once per game, or something like that?

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