252 replies to this topic

[Louveteau]

Couldn't agree more that this is a fantastic idea. I am a huge Card game fan as I played Magic the Gathering forever. I stopped playing because the game took a different direction than I wanted and I felt it was no longer for me.. (also vampires and werewolves? really?!) but in any case, I can see myself getting into this one. I can't believe the stellar work you have done. consider me a fan!

[Odanan]

Added the terrain tiles, fixed the size of the mech minis...

I'm just waiting for the last Assault Mech so I can publish the complete game.

[Odanan]

OK, 11 more mech cards. I added almost all possible variants. Waiting for the Cyclops* now.

*or Banshee, or Victor, or Zeus, or Charger.

[Odanan]

Well, I'm not waiting for the next assault mech. Here is the version 1.4. The game is finished - but some feedback would help polishing it.

Thanks to DarthMolen for hosting the file.

[Odanan]

OK, my first playtest.



I found several rules that need a change. I'll be uploading an updated version soon.

[Odanan]

BTW, that picture gave me some ideas for a Demotivational Poster

[Odanan]

Something like this:

[FaithfulDemise]

Very nice! It brings back memories of the CCG verison of Battletech with a twist.

[Atlas3060]

okay I read through v1.4 and I have some thoughts.
Overall this sounds like a fun fan made game of blitz Battletech Chess which only encourages more people into the Universe. So kudos to you and I hope this keeps going.

However in the rules it is stated there needs to be 10 terrain pieces on the board. I think this should be adapted to say that 10 is the maximum but players can agree to use less. This would allow certain "maps" to be less cluttered and allow people more ways to enhance the game.
Also a slight erratta for one of your maps.
Caustic Valley

: 3x High Ground, 1x Obstacle, 1x Water, 4x Hot Spot
That makes 9 terrain instead of 10.

Though I love the High Cover terrain I can't completely agree with the Cover rules.

There should either be some consideration about size or long range capabilities.

I could have a Catapult hit someone from long range even if a friendly or enemy is nearby.
I propose either changing the cover rules to incorporate that bigger Mechs can see over smaller ones or give those Mechs with Long range weapons the ability to fire over a Mech covering another one with a risk involved. Let's say a D6 roll: 1-3 you hit the intended target, 4-6 you hit an adjacent target the other player gets to choose. This still gives people some shots but they could also accidentally friendly fire.

Also I'm not totally accepting the rule that there can be only one Awesome on the board. Variants should be allowed, maybe focus the rule on just one variant on the board per side.

Quote

A player may choose only one variant of each mech type. For instance, if the player chooses an Awesome, he can’t choose another Awesome, even of a different variant.

Which the rules confused me a bit, or maybe it is late at night and I read it wrong.
I guess when you said Mech type you meant tonnage class: Assault/Heavy/Medium/Light.
I literally read this as: "You can have different variants of Mechs but only one variant. You can choose the Awesome, but not another variant. Which conflicts with what I just said."

So is initiative determined after each turn? Is weapons fire simultaneous? Or is this a case of "I can kill you before you do damage"?
Although I've been brought up on the table top and the CCG where splitting fire is possible, I'm willing to agree with your ruling that it isn't possible in this game. You don't want to bog down the play time, which is good.

Overall this seems kind of fun. I'll try to test with friend later, but after reading the rules I had a moment where this reminds me of Catalyst Games' latest creation The Duke
http://www.catalystg...games/the-duke/

They have free rules to try out, maybe get some inspiration as well? It works off a similar structure to your game.

Keep at it, update with your playtests, and good work.

Edited by Atlas3060, 15 August 2012 - 12:34 AM.

[FaustianQ]

Will be trying out this with my friend. Thanks free high quality college printer which uses nice stiff paper!

Just want to ask a few questions
1. Can you reconsider the periphery as a faction? Instead, make the current periphery "Pirates", and truly introduce periphery nations? Considering doing this on my own, but my artwork would definitely be of much lower quality

Ex:
Marian Hegemony
Color: Orange(#FF6600)
Favored Mechs: Commando, Centurion, Stalker
Special: Germanium Stockpiles - "Event and Commander" cards cost 1 less.

2. Can you consider "event and commander" cards? Say a total of 20-30 that allow further metagaming that mechs themselves cannot accomplish, such as terrain changes, bringing more mechs to the table, giving mechs temporary abilities, causing a forced shutdown on an enemy mech, etc. You could have these cost points as well, so a player would have to choose between trying to metagame or playing straight during set up.

Ex:
Urbie Swarm
Cost: 8
Effect: Place 4 Urbies into play after playing this card anywhere in your starting line. If you have less then 4 open spaces in your starting line, place Urbies until your starting line is full. All Urbies come into play shutdown.

Flash Freeze
Cost: 4
Effect: Untap all shutdown mechs.

3. Have you considered releasing a template for your cards, so others can make more if you decide to stop (say for unseen, new mech concepts, etc)

4. As to PGI, I would love for you guys too make a deal so this could be a truly legit piece of merchandise I could buy from the PGI store. Are you averse to this?

Edited by FaustianQ, 15 August 2012 - 02:10 AM.

[SouthernRex]

It isn't like he's selling it for money. You can play a copyrighted song on your guitar at home, and you can draw pictures of mechs on paper at home and play them with your little brother.

Where does the line get drawn though? I always thought it was when money was involved, but Blizzard shut down a 3D mod for StarCraft (which my guess would be they were developing the top secret StarCraft II, this was years before it was announced though) that was going to be free. Then again, I think the law suit spooked them enough to comply, they didn't necessarily win it in court.

That said, awesome work, man.

[abriael]

Boy, this is actually quite awesome. You sure gave it a lot of thought too...

[Odanan]

Atlas3060, on 15 August 2012 - 12:26 AM, said:

However in the rules it is stated there needs to be 10 terrain pieces on the board. I think this should be adapted to say that 10 is the maximum but players can agree to use less. This would allow certain "maps" to be less cluttered and allow people more ways to enhance the game.

Also a slight erratta for one of your maps.
Caustic Valley

: 3x High Ground, 1x Obstacle, 1x Water, 4x Hot Spot
That makes 9 terrain instead of 10.

Also I'm not totally accepting the rule that there can be only one Awesome on the board. Variants should be allowed, maybe focus the rule on just one variant on the board per side.

So is initiative determined after each turn? Is weapons fire simultaneous? Or is this a case of "I can kill you before you do damage"?
Although I've been brought up on the table top and the CCG where splitting fire is possible, I'm willing to agree with your ruling that it isn't possible in this game. You don't want to bog down the play time, which is good.

Overall this seems kind of fun. I'll try to test with friend later, but after reading the rules I had a moment where this reminds me of Catalyst Games' latest creation The Duke
http://www.catalystg...games/the-duke/

They have free rules to try out, maybe get some inspiration as well? It works off a similar structure to your game.

Keep at it, update with your playtests, and good work.

1- Less than 10 terrain tiles? Well, in the playtest I found terrains very important: without them, mechs are too vulnerable to long range weapons. But I guess the players could agree to use less...

2- Fixed the Caustic Valley terrain count. Thanks!

3- There can be only 1 variant of a mech for each player. That's because each player has only 1 miniature of each mech. Even if the players print several copies of the same mech for the faction, it will be hard to track in the board which mini is which variant (mech card).

4- The players rotate their turns, always starting with the first player. But I changed a lot how the playing sequence is. Will be uploading it soon.

5- I will be looking into the The Duke game you told.

[Odanan]

FaustianQ, on 15 August 2012 - 02:09 AM, said:

Will be trying out this with my friend. Thanks free high quality college printer which uses nice stiff paper!

Just want to ask a few questions
1. Can you reconsider the periphery as a faction? Instead, make the current periphery "Pirates", and truly introduce periphery nations? Considering doing this on my own, but my artwork would definitely be of much lower quality

Ex:
Marian Hegemony
Color: Orange(#FF6600)
Favored Mechs: Commando, Centurion, Stalker
Special: Germanium Stockpiles - "Event and Commander" cards cost 1 less.

2. Can you consider "event and commander" cards? Say a total of 20-30 that allow further metagaming that mechs themselves cannot accomplish, such as terrain changes, bringing more mechs to the table, giving mechs temporary abilities, causing a forced shutdown on an enemy mech, etc. You could have these cost points as well, so a player would have to choose between trying to metagame or playing straight during set up.

Ex:
Urbie Swarm
Cost: 8
Effect: Place 4 Urbies into play after playing this card anywhere in your starting line. If you have less then 4 open spaces in your starting line, place Urbies until your starting line is full. All Urbies come into play shutdown.

Flash Freeze
Cost: 4
Effect: Untap all shutdown mechs.

3. Have you considered releasing a template for your cards, so others can make more if you decide to stop (say for unseen, new mech concepts, etc)

4. As to PGI, I would love for you guys too make a deal so this could be a truly legit piece of merchandise I could buy from the PGI store. Are you averse to this?

1- You can't deny that there are pirates in the Periphery. Anyway, I made it a single faction because it's hard to make faction abilities for all these small nations, specially if you consider that we will be some crusading Clans showing up soon.

2- Event cards... oh boy. I confess I considered it before, but tried to compile some effects in the Faction cards, to make the game simpler. Well, I will playtest the game a little more. If I find the need of spicing the things a little more, I can rethink this.

3- Actually, yes. The plans include a small program that calculate the unit stats.

4- Averse of making this hard worked game enjoyable by more people? Off course no! It would be a dream to see an actual game box for this game, with MWO miniatures and stuff...

[Odanan]

BTW, talking about PGI, I just made this (looks like it's original):

[FaustianQ]

Hmm - if you're unwilling to do the Periphery factions, can you PM me how you did the other factions artwork and I could try my hand at it?

[Odanan]

FaustianQ, on 15 August 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

Hmm - if you're unwilling to do the Periphery factions, can you PM me how you did the other factions artwork and I could try my hand at it?

I made a template for you with all the major periphery states and one generic "Pirates". I included the names so you don't need to try to emulate the title's yellow style. Now you just need to write the Abilities in Eurostile font and fix an image for the faction in the black square.



Let us know your progresses.

Edited by Odanan, 15 August 2012 - 04:56 PM.

[BlackWidow]

Garth Erlam, on 12 July 2012 - 11:47 AM, said:

My name is Community Manager Erlam, and I approve of this game

you guys and the OP are so full of awesome

[Deceptor]

Ya I hope whoever creates this gives MWO a good licensing deal, cuz it's looking like they could use the help.

[Atlas3060]

Odanan, on 15 August 2012 - 08:50 AM, said:

3- There can be only 1 variant of a mech for each player. That's because each player has only 1 miniature of each mech. Even if the players print several copies of the same mech for the faction, it will be hard to track in the board which mini is which variant (mech card).

So we won't get the ability to pick up another variant, say the AWS-8V versus the AWS-8R? Well poo

Quote

4- The players rotate their turns, always starting with the first player. But I changed a lot how the playing sequence is. Will be uploading it soon.

Glad to hear it and I await happily to see the changes.

Quote

5- I will be looking into the The Duke game you told.

Good to know!