Arthadan

Today's update:

- Warriors of Doom tile finished.

- Fangs of set foot tile: I've changed the Skill, now they got 

- Equipment and campaign cards file updated in the Download section (current version is 2.2). Changes are hHelmet loses the special rule and weight one less point and the Pit Trap is simplified.

Next thing it's going to be updating the tiles file in the Download section. After that:

- Map update (@Florentin are you still available for his project?)

- Scenario update.

And we're good to go!

Today's update if the illustration for the Warriors of Doom. It needs some filters, but other than that is done. Slowly but surely getting there.

11 hours ago, Vincent255 said:

Coming along well.  

 

So what's next?  

Create the missing foot tile, update Thorgrim foot tile with increased damage, update helmet tile, do a couple zoning modifications on the map and update the scenario.

Being realistic I do hope to have it ready by the end of the month.

After watching the video about the new Versus mode in the Batman campaign, I suggest 4 modular tiles to expand the castle map making a "frame" so it can be used to play scenarios attacking the castle.

Got mine in Spain yesterday, all perfect.

Thanks!

I agree with @Iesthir. When getting a new boardgame, try a new and exciting game system is always important. Personally, it would be hard for me to buy a game that is a "reskin" of another one I own.

That said, all the different versions of Zombicide seems to work well enough.

Working on foot tiles:

I'll probably replace the Sacrifice skill with the Reach one for the Fangs, as Thorgrim and Rexor are tough enough and they don't need  minions taking the blows for them. 

Remaining foot tile would be the Warriors of Doom (foot tile for the Riders of Doom).

On 23/2/2018 at 12:26 PM, silfus ciornan said:

- Si como Overlord activo una loseta de cazadores pictos a coste de 1 gema, coloco dicha loseta al final del río, en el siguiente turno si quiero seguir atacando con los cazadores pictos que había activado en el turno anterior ¿debo volver a pagar 8 gemas para seguir atacando con ellos? o ¿al estar ya activados no hay que pagar más por ellos? 

 

Gracias. 

 

P. D. Al final me quedé sin el compendio de aventuras, me despisté y se me pasó el plazo. Esas aventuras están en la página web de Monolith? 

La activación de "losetas" (lo siento pero no me gusta nada la traducción) sólo dura el turno en curso del Overlord. En tu ejemplo, el Overlord debería volver a pagar el coste de activación (8 gemas si están al final del Río) de los cazadores pictos para volver a usarlos en su segundo turno.

Los escenarios del compendio no están en la página de Monolith, están aquí en el foro en la sección de Descargas. Son escenarios hechos por aficionados al juego, compilados y distribuidos por Monolith.

Habrá Kickstarter nuevo de Conan en 2019, que incorporará las mejoras al sistema de juego que podrás ver en el nuevo juego de Batman de Monolith cuyo Kickstarter empieza mañana.

10 minutes ago, Footballzs said:

Wow, he is very tough!

That's the idea!

Conan is heavily armored in this scenario (plus he has a special rule which makes Valeria come back from Death to save him from the first fatal blow), and one of the OL victory conditions is making him lose at least half of his gems.

But don't worry, Conan can use the Spike Trap against him..

New deadlier version of Thorgim.

 

Mounted Combat rules updated as well, now units can Dismount.

In the campaign heroes can level up gaining new skills, they also can use their experience points to get gems for a common pool and they retain the equipment gained or lost during previous scenarios.

I'd say is possible to play the scenarios as standalone but you'll need to consider beforehand which campaign upgrades should the heroes and the Overlord get to simulate campaign progression up to the point when that particular scenario is supposed to happen.

Some corrections afer reading the draft of the rules in the French forum:

- Overlord Tiles: they get a category (Liutenants, elites and minions).  Besides Movement, Ranged Attack and Melé Attack, OL tiles may get more actions (same as Heroes, they may get Manipulation for example) and they may be able to perform these actions more than once per turn.

-Command Skill does not disappear. In fact it's splitted in Command (minions) and Command (elite), but gems are placed in the new Mind action.

So, next steps are:

- Modify Mounted Combat rules to allow minions to dismount.

- Make new tiles for dismounted OL units.

- Adjustments to some existing cards (mounted Thorgrim with increased damage, Helmet).

- Some small adjustments to the map (divide two big areas in the monolith field).

- Incorporate last changes in the scenario, aimed to a quicker setup (less items/traps tokens to place, as some have been removed and others have a fixed location), simpler rules (two special rules removed, other simplified and one crow effect removed) and hopefully a more balanced game (victory conditions tweaked).

I'll be working on this over the weekend.

I've just watched the Batman gameplay videos posted by  @SentMa and I'll try to summarize all the game System Upgrades I've notice, so we can have them all in one place. Needless to day, I'm pretty excited about them!

MAPS

New icons in zones indicating:

- Maximum number of miniatures allowed in that area (miniatures now have size, so a single miniature may count as more than one).

- Height level: the size of the circle denoting the center of the area will indicate if the zone is at ground level or above.

- Difficult ground: this icon indicates there is a penalty of one extra movement points to exit the zone.

Line of Sight

Rooms have no center to determine the Los, instead they have a green line in the entrance. This means there is always LoS only between the room and the zone adyacent to the green line.

Line of Sight between zones in different height levels: these are noted by letters near the zone center icon. If the letters in the target and origin zone match, there is LoS.

HEROES

New Action: Mind. It's used to solve riddles, hack computers (no much use in Conan, I know) and activate allies. So it replaces the Command skill, and has a limit of gems per turn.

Adrenaline: not exactly an action, it allows to go beyond the exertion limit of an Action, but the gems used for this purpose go directly to the Wounded box. It has a limit per turn.

New characteristics :

-Size: space occupied the heroe when determining zone exertion limit.

-Menace: Hindering value of the miniature (some miniatures are more dangerous than others).

Skills change:

-Some skills now have levels, for example Sacrifice level 2 means you can absorb up to 2 points of damage caused to an ally in your zone, or Evasive level 2 means you can ignore up to 2 Hindering penalty points when moving.

Special Trait: Unique for each character. For Batman is he can't use lethal weapons. I wonder what will they come up with for Conan heroes.

OVERLORD

The Overlord benefits now have a limit of gems per turn. Up to 4 gems for Movement and Reroll and up to 3 for Armour.

Tiles now have 2 new characteristics: Size and Menace (same as Heroes).

And I think this is all. I have to say I love each and every upgrade to the system. Now we'll have more Hero diversity with the skill levels and special traits, and maps will be easier to use.

On 1/2/2018 at 11:08 PM, Sir Kelsag said:

Conan

I'd say the version 2 of the rules is pretty straightforward, but if you want a good (but unofficial) how to play video , I recommend this one :

https://youtu.be/MKFV-ywF130

I've got the French compendium. Since I'm more fluent in English, I'm getting this one as well and sticking to English editions only from now on.

I'll gladly pass along my French compendium to anybody not getting this one, as long as language is not an issue.

On 12/2/2018 at 3:50 PM, Neil Amswych said:

Since the new hero or heroes may not be canon (see Shentu and Ikhmet), can we please have a female hero who isn’t half-naked? I understand the genre and its motifs but another Valeria-type might be nice, if possible.

That's a good point, my female players usually complaint about that.

Well, Conan himself is half naked. I'd say the classic image of barbarians doesn't include much clothes.

Besides, there are women of more civilised kingdoms wearing more clothes, like Valeria who is Aquilonian:

Perhaps some of them could be included as well in the website.

On 20/1/2018 at 12:38 AM, Epaka said:

Finish off the canon characters and creatures, since there are a fair number not yet represented as minis. More game-boards/locations; in particular we need jungles/swamps, forested border settlements, western Hyborian and near-eastern cities, ancient abandoned temple-cities/pyramids, bloody battlefields with unique terrain formations, and a proper demon haunted dungeon.

i know it’s not really feasible, but as long as we are making a wishlist I’d pay plenty for 3-D game-boards and/or modular terrain and scenery. 

+1 to 3D Scenery. They add nothing to the gameplay but  they are much more immersive. I'd gladly pay por pict huts, pallisades, trees...

Also modular gameboards could be a great addition. And mounted warriors!

I think I'll remove the special rule with the skeletons. It doesn't add much to the gameplay and the scenario is a bit complex.

Worth it keeping it?

Hi guys!

Is anybody here backing Hate Kickstarter? I mean this one:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/hate?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=hate

Thing is I'm not interested enough in the game to get it, but I'd love to get the plastic huts add-on they offer (hint for Monolith's next Conan Kickstarter: people like plastic scenery). So if somebody would kindly allow me to join his/her pledge for just that add-on it would be great. By the way, I live in Spain so the closer the better 

Thanks in advance!

And it seems Boris is working his magic again:

Some more ideas I'll test this weekend:

- Conan starts with the helmet and the heavy axe, in addition to his current equipment.

- The first turn is for the OL.

Advantage: less item tokens for the heroes to place during the set-up, more movie-like.  No 'silly' heroes first turn picking up items.

- Conan (or both heroes) will drop the weapon he has used more recently when he loses 6 wounds. It will be placed in any adjacent area by the OL.

Advantage: balance the fact Conan starts with a very powerful weapon. More movie-like (Conan will need his Atlantean Sword now).

- New trap activations:
- stakes will be placed in a fixed position, roll for activation. Once activated, remains in game giving a movement penalty.

- Spike Trap: now its used with the hidden movement rules  within the monolith field.  I'll elaborate later, but basically when an OL unit attacks the "hidden Conan" counter and that counter is placed in the Spike Trap area, the trap is sprung and Conan loses the helmet (the reason is it's used as bait for the trap, like in the movie).

Thoughts on these?

8 hours ago, Vincent255 said:

Read it through...

 

Revisions to the OL Victory Condition does make sense to me, seeing as it adds more to/toughens their requirements, so the Heroes have more of a chance - I think I recall you stating that that was an issue before.  

 

Though forcing Conan to leave behind the Heavy Axe and Helmet does make me wonder as to why.  I'm sure in the movie, he had both of them the moment the Battle of the Mounds began, though Doom's 'Army' was already approaching when he picked them up and selected his first point to fight - just as he made his One and Only Prayer to Crom.  

 

As for Thorgrim?  Don't you mean 'increasing his chance to kill'?  Because as you worded it, it's, rather confusing.  

 

Still.  It's a good update, and it's good to hear that this scenario is getting closer to completion. 

Conan equipment is tricky, because he uses up to 4 weapons in the movie (2 axes, the Atlantean sword and a spear), and most of them are used for a couple blows only. To avoid having him heavily overloaded from the start, we decided to create the token system.

Regarding Thorgrim, I meant both, he is more dangerous with his increased damage thus it's more likely the heroes will need to neutralize him.

Thanks for your comments!

Time for an update!

I've been playing around with some new ideas and I've playtested them this weekend. I wanted to know if they work before presenting them. So I came back with a bunch of new suggestions to hopefully improve the scenario:

VICTORY CONDITIONS

This is the major change. Our problem was that all the action was centered around Princess Hill and the monolith field saw little action. It felt wrong to play in a huge map and use just a corner of it. So I've changed a bit the OL victory conditions:

- Take the Princess out of the board AND hit hard the Heroes (in game terms cause at least 6 wounds to Conan and 5 to Subotai).

- When Rexor or Thorgrim are dead, the OL can win just killing the Princess with Thulsa Doom. If she's out of the board already when this conditions are met, it's also a OL victory.

Effect: since Conan starts within the monolith and he is heavily armoured, the OL must send troops to attack him, specially the heavy hitters Rexor and Thorgrim. Also is a good idea to try to get one of them killed, since that would make victory much easier later when TD appears. Also it makes sense for Conan to stay within the monolith field because the smaller zones there makes more difficult for the enemies to reach him in great number.

MOUNTED COMBAT

Any Mounted miniature can be dismounted. You can now have Dismounted and Mounted units in the same tile. Just place the dismounted tile below the Skelos Book, next to the corresponding Mounted tile and move it alongside it. 

Effect: This gives more flexibility to the OL when attacking Conan in the monolith field or climbing up Princess Hill. However, Dismounted Units have worse attack dice and reduce movement, so in my games it's seldom used.

THULSA DOOM

He is available to join the fray from the start of turn 6 onwards (OL's choice), the OL replaces any two tiles from the River (dead tiles first) when he comes with the purple Riders of Doom. The biggest change here is that his spell has a cost of only 2 and can be used as normal (instead of being  and event card effect).

Effect: we get rid of one special rule (even card "crow" effect) and we give Thulsa a bit more prominent role. Also, Now is possible to have TD, Rexor and Thorgrim at the same time in game.

ITEM TOKENS

Some weapons tokens start in fixed positions:

- The Heavy Axe is the more powerful weapon in this scenario. It is placed around the center of the monolith field.

- The Helmet starts near Conan, forcing him to lose part of his free movement in the first turn if he wants to pick it up.

- The Ancient  Shield starts on Princess Hill: Heroes have parrying weapons from the start and its only real use is to parry Thulsa Doom spell if used against the Princess. Besides it is placed there in the movie as well.

Pit Traps:

Pit trap is slighthy changed. First effect is the same, remains in game as before, but it now reduces 1 movement point from Mounted units. Also instead of 2 pit traps, there is just one.

Effect: Speed up game a bit, since the heroes have less tokens to decide where to place at the start, also Conan is hinted to remain in the monolith field / delayed there, since two very useful tokens are there.

SUBOTAI

He gets his weight allowance changed. It felt wrong he could carry as much weight as Conan before suffering movement penalties. Now is 7/9.

THORGRIM

He gets his damage increases to . Heavy hammer!

Effect: It makes him more of a threat, increasing his chance to be killed.

CONCLUSION

This changes work well enough to divide the action between the monolith field and Princess Hill, but the two biggest zones of the monolith fild need to be smaller, because the whole idea is that heroes will prefer to remain there because they are saffer than out in the open.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas.