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Several Skeletons

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A member registered Nov 04, 2023 · View creator page →

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What rules repeated from the core rules do you mean?
Also, I stumbled over the lack of Defense as well initially, but I think the idea might be that you have to weigh attacking the titan (which can theoretically hurt both sides equally) against attacking your opponents. Any action invested in attacking the titan is an activation you don't spend trying to get ahead of your opponent.

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Regarding the titan's stats—

  • The example for the titan's starting Tough value doesn't make sense math-wise.
  • Maybe it would make more sense to go for a smaller increment for the starting Tough? The default size for AoF is 1500pts, so the titan size going up by some amount every 500pts instead of every 1000 might be more fitting. This would also remove the issue that atm if you played with 750pts armies the titan would technically have Tough(0).

Agreed, I've enjoyed reading both of your submissions to that end. I was actually contemplating a Quest mission myself, but the concept I had in mind didn't fit the theme very well so I defaulted to Skirmish instead.

Overall I really like this one! I just have one minor concern: since the special rules for enemy spawning seem to be incompatible with the regular wave generation rules and place enemies based on unit count instead of point cost, I'm not sure how to determine which specific enemies would appear.

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I think the problem with that setup is that the player who chooses to attack the other would be at a disadvantage since their own way to safety will be longer and might be blocked by enemy units. If the only way to avoid a draw is to make victory for your opponent more likely than for yourself, most strategically-minded people will probably prefer the draw.

That's true — if I'd had more space I might totally have considered adding a mechanic for finding the relics ingame, but with the one-page format I just couldn't fit it in. Perhaps I could go and add a second page with optional extra rules after the jam concludes? The initial concept for the mission also included a system for magical traps that Casters could spend spell tokens to try and disarm, as well as a risk that if the players collectively delved too deep into the Keep's lore they'd eventually awaken the Sorcerer's Shade — but both of these elements ultimately had to be removed to keep word count and complexity within acceptable levels.

Haha, I didn't even realize how the Conjuration spell fit the theme until you pointed it out — I mainly just added it because I enjoy summoning mechanics, and I like when missions give you opportunities to use special models specific to the scenario.

Fair point on the complexity part; that's definitely an easy trap for me to fall into when writing this kind of thing (I just have too many ideas, and sometimes find it difficult to accept that it might be better not to use all of them XD). I do think the amount of stuff here should be manageable, but as the mission's author I might obviously be biased in that regard — if anyone else is reading this, I'd appreciate some more opinions on this matter :D

Just got around to reading this one; here's some initial observations:

  • I'm a bit confused about the narrative role of the defenders in this scenario — are they the "nightmares" that exist in the barrier, or the people who inhabit the land that the nightmares shield? Their initial deployment zone suggests the latter but the respawning rule would make more sense for the former.
  • I agree that the scenario seems skewed in the defender's favor for the reasons Pluisjen pointed out below.
  • "If possible, both halves of the Zone grow in the same manner." — this reads to me like you must choose a direction in which both halves can grow as long as such a direction exists. This would mean that the two halves of the Nightmare Zone can't grow towards each other; is that intended? Also, as a sidenote, this effect should specify how the direction is chosen — I presume it's not the attacker's choice, but can the defender choose or is it random?
  • This is a very minor thing but giving the map a solid outline might have made it easier to parse visually.

Yeah I'm pretty sure there's no rule requiring line of sight to the target of a Charge.

Issue is, the fact that the VP you can earn are limited by your unit count is probably going to result in both players aiming for maximum activations when building their lists. Not to mention players using Scout and Ambush to deploy some or all of their units closer to the table edge, making a pursuit mostly unfeasible.

Some thoughts:

  • Since the tremor area's radius never expands beyond 24", you should be able to mostly avoid the effect by deploying your units to the far left and right of your deployment zones.
  • The morale penalty for Flying and similar units feels weird. Fleeing is the goal of the mission, so why are these units punished for having access to a more efficient way to do that?

Some notes:

  • Phrasing and structure generally feel a bit messy; especially the Objectives section reads more like a casual verbal explanation than a concise set of rules.
  • Needing to pass a die roll to place the plant seems thematically strange as well as suboptimal in terms of gameplay: you only have one unit that can attempt this roll, so a streak of bad luck (with a 50/50 chance it's not that unlikely!) could result in one or both players simply being unable to earn any VP for several rounds or even the entire game.
  • That the mission relies on referring to the Advanced Rulebook (mislabeled as "full rulebook") means that you technically can't play this mission if you don't have that book. This goes against OPR's principle of keeping all non-free content fully optional. Also, accessibility aside, simply telling players to use a prewritten rule from the Advanced Rulebook instead of designing a scenario-specific rule feels a bit half-hearted.

Looking forward to it!

The mission seems overall unique and interesting to play, and the rule-writing is pretty clear. I'm just a little disappointed that the cloning rules don't really feel like, well, cloning — then again, I don't really know how else it could've been done without requiring players to bring duplicates of units (which might be bothersome to accomplish in practice).

Some thoughts; I hope you don't mind—

  • I'm not quite feeling the 'growth' theme here — since any growth is tied to another objective effectively disappearing, it feels more like you're just moving stuff around that's already there. I'm also not sure about what it means on the thematic side that some objectives are disappearing.
  • While I appreciate the underlying mindset, I think the comments about reflavoring the scenario and what the objectives could look like are a bit unhelpful where they are. I would prefer the Objectives section to be a concise definition of how objectives work in the game; interrupting the rules for the sake of extensive commentary on flavor only disrupts the train of thoughts as you're trying to understand how the mission is played. If you want to include such suggestions, it may be more appropriate to bring it up under Mission Background or at the end of Objectives, although I think most players who care about this kind of thing wouldn't need you to point it out to them anyway.
  • The Objectives section leaves unclear whether objectives remain seized after leaving (normally I would assume yes since that's how the default mission does it, though usually missions point this out explicitly and this one doesn't, so I could see people reading either interpretation into that).

While it is true that missions can expect players to build a list fine-tuned for the purpose, I'm not sure the list-building requirements this situation imposes are particularly conductive to a fun experience. You can basically throw out any melee units that don't have Ambush or at least Scout, which might leave you with little actual choices depending on your faction.

I suppose there is an element of strategy to deciding which objective to harvest, since you can only use the tools once. Do you quickly grab one that's convenient to you, or do you try to deprive your opponent of an objective closer to their side, at the risk of the tool-bearing unit being taken out before it can complete the job?

I'm not sure if limiting the factions would be helpful (almost every faction has Ambush, for example) or in the spirit of OPR mission design. Since Ambush is probably the biggest issue, perhaps a fix might be to add a rule along the lines of, units that aren't on the table by the end of like round 2 or so don't count towards the total? Or alternatively, adding some kind of additional objective that the Seekers need units on the table to achieve, such as finding and/or securing an exit.

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I like this one. Evocative setting and narrative, and the special mechanics sound fun. In particular, the Stories seem like a neat opportunity to kitbash some funky models (or finally find a purpose for that one thing you painted for no reason ages ago).

The 'growth' theme is definitely there on the narrative side, but it isn't really supported by any concrete mechanics (mind, this is only relevant in the context of the jam; it wouldn't actually make me enjoy the mission any less if I went and played it).

My only balance concern is that the objectives centered around model survival might cause some issues, since OPR unit design is balanced around the assumption that surviving isn't the end goal — for example, you can keep Ambush models safe by only deploying them on the last round, and activation count becomes much less important when listbuilding (at least for the Seekers) so you can dump a lot of points into expensive but very powerful models.

Removing Immobile and instead requiring it to stay within 3" of its objective might be more elegant, yeah. Then you could also clearly specify that the attack is a Charge, which would also get rid of the ambiguity whether or not the target is allowed to strike back.

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I feel like this mission is probably best suited for small game sizes; as soon as each group contains multiple units it might become a bit of a hassle to track which ones belong together.

This mission read very cleanly, not finding any major issues, overall pretty neat! Just some minor notes:

  • It should probably say somewhere that the Signal Tower doesn't get activations (as it is a unit, it normally would, but I assume the intent isn't for the tower to start running around)
  • "If the “Signal Tower” is destroyed or if all of the Defender units are destroyed, Attacker wins." — since the Signal Tower is also a unit and belongs to the Defender, the second clause is redundant (or should say something like "all of the Defender's other units")
  • Veteran Tactics leaves ambiguous whether you need to choose one option for your whole army of if you choose for each unit individually

Yea, Frostgrave was definitely an inspiration here! The relics are mostly to provide players with a baseline source of more spell tokens that doesn't get stronger with number of casters fielded and is a bit more interesting/interactive than just giving out free spell tokens to casters directly. It probably wouldn't have been strictly necessary, but I recalled a bunch of official missions giving out seemingly random equipment like that and I liked the idea. It also gives you an opportunity to kitbash a silly "wizard's assistant" model if you want :3

Some thoughts:

  • If the deployment zones are 24" deep, is it even necessary to have such a big board? Not much is going to happen in the back half of either deployment zone, so you might as well just make it a 4'x4' board with normal 12" deployment zones.
  • The Corrupted Planets rule confuses me. As Pluisjen pointed out there's no reason to ever use it, and it also feels a bit random thematically.
  • Teleport Shaft doesn't specify who decides where the unit is placed — depending on that, this could be either a positive or a negative effect.
  • Overall there doesn't seem to be much reason to stick around in the deployment zones long enough for the Wormhole Effects rule to become relevant.

I'm getting a warning when trying to dowload this



When you say "core units", do you mean that in the sense as the term is used in Army Forge? If so, the Great Leader benefit doesn't work since Hero is a separate category from Core Units so a hero on their own would never be able to claim an objective that is "accessible to core units" only. Either way, I don't quite see the point of limiting which units can claim objectives here.

Some general feedback —

  • "each containing one unit combined with a hero" — is the intent here that each army contains only that one unit? If so, that could be explained more clearly; I only realized this might be the intent upon reading the rules for the Abomination (up until then I thought this either meant only one of your units may have a hero attached, or at least one unit must have a hero attached).
  • If the above is true, then I'm worried that players simply taking turns activating their one unit might easily devolve into a somewhat boring case of "rolling attacks until something dies". Which, by the way, might happen very quickly — whoever first fights the Abomination in melee is likely going to get like 50 attacks in their face which is at least gonna put them at risk of routing, if not an immediate wipe-out. Since most models it kills are probably going to get added to it, this would almost certainly lead to an exponential power increase that will make it effectively impossible to destroy the Abomination.

Also some minor notes —

  • "All the players must collectively decide on a single starting location. And must be deployed within 6 inches of each other" — how large an area should this "starting location" be? Also, if all players share a deployment zone, the note that they must deploy within 6 inches of each other seems redundant (as well as somewhat unspecific).
  • For the core of the abomination, I think it may have been more elegant to define the unit's stats in the mission itself instead of referring to an existing unit from an army book. Getting to pick a unit also means a lot of possible variance with the challenge: a Tough(6) Bat Beast or a Tough(12) Giant God-Statue will come with very different difficulties, and some such units might come with special rules such as Caster that the mission doesn't tell you how to handle.
  • The Part of the Core rule doesn't account for the fact that the unit might have Tough(3); should probably trigger when a model would be removed, rather than when taking a wound.

Some thoughts:

  • It seems a bit problematic to make the uneven point values optional, as it leaves unclear whether the rest of the mission was balanced with or without the bonus points for the attacker in mind (though my initial assumption would be the latter). I also think that additional points are too abstract to be interesting on the thematic level as the option suggests; I expect this option to mostly go unused for the sake of fairness unless the defender specifically desires a handicap for some reason.
  • Does a unit being deployed via They are in the Walls! count as having just entered a building? RAW I would suppose so, but it feels weird on a thematic level since the idea is that they've been hiding there all along.
  • Table # 1 — the entry references an "Entangled" condition but this isn't defined anywhere.
  • Table # 5 — the Swarm is missing a Quality value and model count (though the latter may be assumed to be [1]). Also, placing the Swarm in base contact with the unit even though likely neither of them is currently doing a Charge violates a core game rule for no apparent reason.

Found a few oversights:

  • The caption still says "GAME - MISSION TITLE by Designer's Name"
  • The table's header still says "Example Table", and the final item is numbered 3 instead of 6

I just realized I made a miscalculation and the Heal spell is probably a bit OP; gonna adjust it from D3 + 1 wounds to just 1 wound after the jam concludes.

I'm getting a warning when trying to download the mission; might wanna look into that.


Some notes from reading the mission—

  • Very cool cover artwork! Did you draw it?
  • Outright banning Flying units seems a bit heavy-handed; it may have been more elegant to discourage taking them by nerfing them somehow (for example, there's a few official missions that take place indoors; those replace Flying with Strider). Anyway, what was the motivation behind this restriction?
  • 1 VP per two bundles has the downside of one bundle potentially being rendered irrelevant, which could cause a draw despite one player being more successful than the other. Instead giving 1 VP for each bundle and also doubling the other sources of VPs would've avoided this.
  • The Forest Guardians mechanic is cool; I love when missions involve NPCs like that. Their behavior pattern seems straightforward and unambiguous, and I like that their positioning affects spawning locations for Sprouts.
  • The Harsh Magics special rule seems a bit unnecessary considering how incredibly few ways to heal wounds exist in AoF. If this is going to have an effect at all, it's quite likely that it would only inhibit one player.

"Deployment zones to be set up as spearhead with objective marker in the centre and line of sight blocking terrain from the top of the deployment zone." What does that last part mean?

What's the motivation for the objectives being placed after deployment? This stuck out to me as it's usually done before picking sides so as to avoid players trying to gain an advantage from their placement choices.

As written, only one unit from each player's Reinforcements is ever deployed (unless, perhaps, the others have Ambush); that doesn't seem right. Also, units taking an action right upon being deployed leaves unclear whether that will count as their activation for the round.

I feel like the theme of this mission might've worked better for AoF:S than AoF; the image of whole armies tromping around in the forest gathering herbs and stuff seems a little far-fetched.

We're missing a lot of information here, like— How do you set up the table and deployment zones? How many objectives are there and where are they placed? etc.

Also, as a sidenote, the last Optional Rule seems not great; since the rules this refers to aren't very common it's quite likely to just disadvantage one player without adding anything interesting to the game. I see little chance for players actually agreeing to use this option.

Thank you, glad to hear that :D

  • "No more than 4 units may be  deployed on round one" — so two units per player?
  • "Spot-Light: At the beginning after the ALARM! is raised you may target 1 enemy unit within 9” of a friendly unit to have a Spot-Light token." — at the beginning of what? Also, who does "you" refer to? I'm getting the feeling it might mean the defender, but as this isn't a PvE game that should be written out.
  • As a general note, it might be a problem that the reserve rules do not scale with game size. In a small game like 1000pts, the full armies might be on the table very quickly, while in larger games (like over 2000pts) you'll probably end up having a bunch of units stuck in reserves until round 4.
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Hi, I've got a few questions about the victory conditions:

  1. "If defenders win, count how many VP each defender has." — as far as I can tell, the counting you're doing here isn't relevant for anything afterward; am I missing something?
  2. "Share the rewards each defender is awarded 3 VPs" — what's the point of awarding more VP when the winners are already determined?
  3. If the defenders end up fighting each other, how is the winner determined? Objective control? If so, what happens if both control the same number of objectives after the extra round? Also, what happens to the attacker in this case? Do their units remain on the table? Could they, theoretically, use this extra round to wrest victory back from the defenders?