Tuesday 29 July 2014

Basic Rules

I thought I'd give a quick overview of how some of the game works, so people can get an idea of whether or not it's going to be their cup of Kestrel Black before going to the trouble of downloading the fucking thing.

Each player controls 3 Units which are each individual models. I know it's a small number of models compared to most games but I'm terrible for losing interest in painting large groups of models so 3-per side seemed doable. It also means you need less minis to actually play and you can pretty much use anything you've got lying around and stat them up accordingly.

The central mechanism of the game is the Stat Check which is fancy way of saying roll a D10 and compare it to your Unit's (modified) Stat. If it's equal to or under you've passed, if it's over you've failed. Rolling your exact (modified) Stat is a Critical Hit which, for an attack, does 1 extra Wound. The modifiers are important and cover things like range, cover and also some special abilities.

Player turns are based on orders. All players have 5 Order Tokens, 3 of which are number (1 - 3) and the other two are blank "Decoys". At the start of the turn all players place their Tokens face down next to their Units in any sequence they like. All players then reveal their 1st Order and they are resolved. Resolving orders uses the Action Points system. All Units have an AP score and players will take it in turns to spend their Units' AP. This is done sort-of simultaneously so you shouldn't have to sit around for months waiting for your opponent to finish moving his little men around and annihilating your guys before you get a chance to react.

Units are divided into several archetypes; Assault, Brawler, Command, Heavy, Stealth, Support and Survivor and they all do broadly what they say on the tin. Units can also be given Abilities (up to 3 although most will start the game with 2) which either boost a stat, modify certain rolls or otherwise allow them to break the standard rules in some way.
When you put your Faction together you can decide exactly which Unit types you want to include and this is completely open so if you want you can have 3 Units of the same Archetype but with differing abilities. Or even 3 identical Units with the same abilities as some sort of clone army.

One interesting thing is that each Ability has several different names, allowing you to use the name which best fits with your particular Faction/Unit. I've stuck a couple of examples below:

Combat Master (Mook Honour/Never Outnumbered/Repulsor Field) [5]
When fighting Rabble groups in melee the Rabble do not get to apply their usual bonus for superior
numbers to their Combat Stat and DV. This also applies should you be engaged in combat against
multiple Units; they do not provide each other a bonus to the Combat stat.

Combi‐Weapon (Tac Harness/Monkey Grip/Gaffer Tape/Prehensile Cock) [10]
This allows you to carry one extra hand's‐worth of weapons giving 5 in total as opposed to the
normal 4. This can either be used to add a 1‐handed weapon or combined with another to carry a 2‐
handed weapon. With this ability you could equip a Unit with an HMG (2 hands), a GL (2 hands) and a pistol (1 hand). Or, if you want to get crazy, you could give someone 2 MX‐7s and a Jackal...

Anyway, I'll post more stuff up later, probably talking about the Spooooky Cards (also known as the Random Chance of Fate Deck, oh and Rabble, the poor bastards left trapped inside Milton Keynes that your Units will have to gun down mercilessly find a way to deal with.

No comments:

Post a Comment