The Typo Nobody Noticed

I've been too busy with a variety of different things, some game related, some not, to post much lately. But I did want to thank the recent commenter to an old post (can't find it now) who spotted a prominent typo that none of us even noticed for a couple of years. It seems I had left the second "D" out of "Independent" on the game's cover image.

Anyway... Fixed.

There Are Now Explicit Road Rules

I've been busy doing a once-over on the existing rules, mostly to change all the tests from D6 to D10-based ones, as well as stripping out the "section" rules for un-openable buildings. Since they'll all just be impassible terrain now. I've also been making sure all the rules numbers are properly ordered.

But all that editing did free up a bit of space to explicitly describe how Roads and Rivers interact with Area Terrain. It's not a huge thing, but it does clear up something that would have certainly prompted questions about how exactly they interact.

Welcome to WyrmGaming

Well, it's official... As of last Monday we're a company now. Which is something that needed to happen before we formally release any kind of alpha rulebook, which we'll be doing by the end of the summer.

Thoughts?

New Quick Reference Guide & Test Units

I accidentally posted these over to The Back 40K, but here they are on the proper blog for posterity. :)

Question: Do We Even Need Closed-Building Rules?

Some 3D Printed Building Parts, with a Games Workshop™ Space Marine Added For Scale.

In case anyone reading this doesn't also follow my postings on The Back 40K, I've gone and bought a 3D printer. Well, two actually. Though the nicer high-detail one hasn't gotten here yet.

But as I'm getting the hang of printing with the lower-res filament printer, I'm doing what a lot of us probably will be doing a lot of over the next couple of years. Which is printing up some really nice buildings that I bought the 3D files for online. Buildings which, unusually for 40K, have removable roofs, and in some cases even working doors.

Table Setup & Mission Rules: Part 6

After all that talk about Obstacles, Barricades, and Entanglements, here's the rules on when you actually get to use them.

Table Setup & Mission Rules: Part 5 (Revised)

While working on the next section, I got very tired of typing "Cover Fortification" and "Entanglement Fortification" over and over again.

So now they're called "Barricades" and "Entanglements", which I think is much easier on the eyes.

I also had forgotten to mention that both types of Fortification could be placed across roads, or touching other terrain pieces. So I added that in and enhanced the explanation for why Entanglements aren't easier to destroy than Barricades.

Table Setup & Mission Rules: Part 5

Mom's out of the hospital, and the house guests have departed, so I've finally gotten a quiet afternoon to write. This should finish up the rules on Fortifications. Next up is the Mission Types, which will determine, among other things, what combination of Obstacles/Fortifications each side will get to use in a game.

Table Setup & Mission Rules: Part 4

Well, it's been a rough week (had to hospitalize my Mom, which is ongoing), but here's the next two pages of setup/mission rules. These cover player-placed obstacles, and start the introduction of player-placed fortifications. The general idea being that after you set up your major terrain pieces, you'll roll your mission, and then be able to set up some additional scenery. Whether you get to set up Obstacles, Fortifications, or both, will depend on the mission type. We'll cover that in the next couple of pages.

Table Setup & Mission Rules: Part 3

And... Here's two more pages. Covering how to determine who the Attacker/Defender is, Deployment Zones, and Objective size/placement/decoration.

Table Setup & Mission Rules: Part 2

Here's the next two pages of rules for setting up terrain prior to rolling a mission. This time covering Rivers & Roads, which are terribly under-used due to the problems that an inconsiderate placement can cause. These rules seek to lend some structure to their placement so as to avoid some of the more common problems.

Table Setup & Mission Rules: Part 1

And... Just when you think you're close to being done, you realize that you need to write out the universal mission rules properly. Which of course requires you to take a first pass at formally writing out the six missions that you weren't going to include in the first Alpha Release. Because without that  you'll have no idea what those universal rules need to be. And you need to write them out because otherwise the mission descriptions get very long and repetitive.

Project Update & First Introduction/Test Mission

It's been one of those strange weeks where I feel like I've gotten a whole lot done, but haven't had anything very presentable to show off. Here's one page at least. :)

Overview of Play

Got the taxes mostly figured out yesterday, so I spent most of today working on an introductory play overview.

Quick Update

Been kind of busy since my last post with Adepticon, the kids' Spring Break, and doing my parents taxes. But I've gotten the first pass done on about 25 special unit rules.

Weapons Section: Last 2 Pages

Here ya go... The last 2 pages of the Weapons Section.

Right now it's in the Basics chapter, but since a lot of these rules need to override the standard shooting rules, I'll probably move it to a spot between the Action and Melee Phases. While the Observation rules will probably get moved to between the Movement and Action Phases.

As for what's next...

Weapons Section: Part 3

Here's the next page of the weapons section.

Sorry the post is a bit light, but the kids brought home both Strep and the stomach flue from school these last 2 weeks, and I'm still sleeping 10-12 hours a day. Hopefully I'll be completely over it before Adepticon this weekend. :)

I've also been busy (after finally getting an intro game) studying the Infinity rules for the first time.

Weapons Section, Part 2A

Silly me. I forgot to cover the interaction of Blasts with buildings and obstacles. Concussive therefore gets bumped to the next page.

'Flame' and 'Incendiary' are done. Currently working on 'Indirect'.

Weapon Characteristics: Part 2

This finishes up the descriptions of the five basic weapon types. The stats shown, BTW, are not final, so don't put too much importance on them just yet. I'll be coming up with the definitive stats later once the additional weapon rules are done and I can take those into account.

Weapon Characteristics: Part 1

Here's the first 2 pages of the weapons characteristics section. I've been re-working the presentation of these rules a couple of different ways, but in the end I settled on a presentation order (stats, types, attributes) very similar to 5th Edition 40K's.

The Unit Characteristics Section Is Complete

It's a two-fer today, before I take off for a big Flames of War tournament this weekend. 

A Gruin Meets His Vorra

Here's a little illustration I made today of a Gruin happily giving himself to a Vorra. He must have made his master quite happy with his level of submission. :)

The Turn Chapter Is Now Complete

Here's the cover image for the Turn Chapter, and the last two pages of the Action Phase section after the break. So as of now, the Turn rules are complete!

The Last Page of Melee

And here it is finally... The last page of the new Melee Rules. Much of which (as it should) points back to previously defined rules in the Action Phase.

New Melee Phase: Part 3

Here's the next two pages of the Melee Phase. Some of the rules have been edited some more, but mostly it's just the remainder of my previously-finished melee bits spaced out a little more.

Melee Phase: Deux Redux Two

Yeah, it's changed again. For the better though. :)

The thing about wrapping up the last turn phase in a game where you've already written 3 tightly-bound phases (and a couple of intro chapters) already, is that every little change you make to the final one has to be checked and propagated against the first three.

Or more simply put... I keep having to edit stuff in 3-5 other chapters every time I work something out in the Melee Phase. Usually because I want to avoid having 2 only slightly different versions of the same rule in different places.

Melee Phase, Part 2 Redux

Had to make some changes to the last couple of pages I posted on the Melee Phase, as I realized that I'd missed explaining a couple of things. If you ever wonder why I use a lot of large illustrations throughout the book, this is one reason. So I can add new information without having to mess up the layouts of the pages that come after.

Action Phase Tweaks: Part 7

Here's the next section in the tweaked Action Phase. I'm kind of proud of the fact that I was able to condense and simplify 4 pages of armor save rules, and some overly complex examples, into just 2 pages that read very simply. Which means that the total page count for the section remains unchanged. Even though I added a couple of pages of rules on resolving charges.

The corresponding Melee section will be next.

Thoughts?

New Melee Phase: Part 2

Here at last is the next two pages in the Melee Phase. In working on this and the Action Phase in tandem, I've been able to avoid re-writing the same rules in a melee context (makes the section shorter), while I make sure that earlier rules that also apply to the melee section explicitly say so.

You may notice the "ganging up" rules for melee, which were inspired by a commenter here on the blog. While the Heavy Armor rules that I had added to the Action Phase (after the last post) were then moved over to here to avoid a rules precedence issue (later numbered rules always take precedence over earlier numbered ones). Since rule [4.4.6] could have been interpreted as overriding Heavy Armor if the latter didn't appear after it.

Thoughts?

Action Phase Tweaks, Part 6

Here's the next two pages of the Action Phase. Notable changes are the rule which clarifies that each model can only fire one weapon, and the changes to Hit-Stress that clarifies that units will only lose initiative from a salvo if actually hit, and that units that split their fire cannot cause Hit-Stress. While I added another rule, "Heavy Armor", for units that don't care about small arms fire (like tanks). They'll only take Hit-Stress if something hits them that can penetrate their armor.

Action Phase Tweaks, Part 5

Here's the next two pages, which cover the final two sub-sections before we get to rolling attacks. Since this is where the Melee Phase is at the moment, you'll see more parallel Action/Melee Phase posts coming up.

Action Phase Tweaks: Part 4

One page of additional Wall, Obstacle, and Building rules for Charging.

Action Phase Tweaks, Part 3

You'll have seen some of this before, but then I realized that I needed to work out the rules for Charging into/within buildings. So these pages got some new illustrations, and the charging rules will be finished up on the next page.

Last Bit Of The Movement Section

A few wording tweaks here and there, in addition to the graphics optimizations, but nothing much else of note. Except that I'll be moving on to the Action & Melee sections next, which will have a lot more new stuff going on.

Movement Phase Tweaks, Part 5

Today was mostly, apart from our fiber being installed (yay!), a boring morass of nuts & bolts crap like switching domain providers and looking for some good forum software to use in the future. But I did get these two pages updated from the Movement Phase to current layout/image standards. Actual rules changes are minimal apart from the renumbering that was required due to earlier changes in the section.

Action Phase Tweaks, Part 2

Here's another update to the Action Phase section. With the separation of Charging from the Melee Phase, I needed to re-work the available orders a bit, and then define what you can do during a charge move. I'm glad to say that I successfully boiled down 3 pages of detailed charging rules to the bit more than half a page that you see here. While each rule is quite simple, their interactions are quite interesting.

Movement Phase Tweaks: Parts 3 & 4

Here's 3 pages from the Movement section of the rules. The first two, pages 67 and 68, are pretty much the same, as all I did was optimize the graphics to have exactly as many pixels as needed for display on a retina iPad or iPad Air. For the third though, I re-worked the illustration quite a bit and added some flavor text.

Comparing Cameras: Nikon D7100 vs. iPhone 6s

I was in the local camera shop today, looking for a particular kind of fill light, when I struck up a conversation with one of the salesmen. Once I mentioned that I'd given up using my Nikon D50 DSLR in favor of an iPhone 6s (with the 645 Pro app) for studio shots, he was aghast. Maybe... MAYBE... A 6s could do better than the relatively ancient D50, but there was NO WAY that the image quality of an iPhone could compare to a modern DSLR! ESPECIALLY in low-light situations! He pointed to the counter, where they had a nifty little graphic that showed the relative sensor sizes of phones versus those of DLSRs. "I flat-out don't believe you." he told me, when I described the comparisons I'd seen on the web using $1500 Nikons.

Well... Ok, let's put this to the test then.

Dev Tools & Recent Workflow Upgrades

Sorry for the posting hiatus, but I've been pretty busy. Last week was consumed by making Pinewood Derby cars for my 3 boys (who all won trophies), while this week will be mostly taken up by a series of equipment/software/internet upgrades for the project.

If you're interested in the technical end of our development process, read on!

More Than Just A Tweak This Time...

Well here's a couple of hard-thought pages, 80% of which is new, or heavily re-worked rules for how coherency command works in WarStrike. I want players to have the ability to 'drop' models as they move, so that required some explanations for when that can happen, and how those models are allowed to move when they try and get back to their unit.

Tweak For How Pinned Units Can Move

My original intention had been that pinned (initiative zero) units wouldn't be able to move at all, unless they were able to scrounge up an initiative point so that they could charge (normal move distance) in the Action Phase. But...

New Melee Phase - Part 1

And finally... We have the 3rd Phase in our parallel tweaking/finishing of the rules... The Melee Phase. Which is literally going to be *only* about Melee combat, and not charging, consolidation, morale checks, or anything else that you might expect from it. Instead, those things will all happen during the other normal turn phases.

Action Phase Tweaks: Part 1

Like I said yesterday, I'm working on cleaning up the rules for each section in parallel. So since I posted a revision to the beginning of the Movement Phase yesterday, I'm posting the changes to the beginning of the Action Phase today.

Movement Section Tweak, Part 1

Right now I'm bouncing back and forth between the Movement, Action, and Melee sections, as the changes that I make in one often require small tweaks or clarifications in the other two. In this case I needed to properly define what it means to be pinned.

Observation Chapter Tweak: Part 2

Here's the last tweak to the Observation section. Again, I took out the whole 'spotting based on actions thing' (except Gone-To-Ground) and have gone with something simpler.

Observation Chapter Tweak, Part 1

Following the copious notes that I've made over the last few months, but which I didn't have the time or energy to act on, here is the first tweak to the observation chapter. I've taken out the rule that defined a bonus to a unit's spotting distance for being in an elevated position, and added an atmosphere quote to the illustration on that page.

Starting Phase Revamp: Part 2

Here's the last part of the Starting Phase revamp. I added some rules to say that pinned and running units can't capture objectives, condensed the rules and roll chart for reserves, added a rule for un-stunning models (which will be a thing for some armored models), and added a new illustration.