House Rules thoughts

[u/Gutterman2010]

So my playgroup has been working on some house rules based on our experiences with our learning campaign, I'm curious what the community's thoughts are on the potential balance implications of them:

1. When doing a coup de grace check, if the attacking model has a higher attacks characteristic than the defending model, they may reroll the die they rolled for the check (this includes modifiers, so the +1A on the charge counts). This is to improve the chances of taking enemy fighters out of action, and prevent you from having to box in high strength fighters or brutes who just won't die. Also rewards melee gangs a bit more for taking elites.

2. Brutes cannot be purchased until after the downtime cycle. They are just too strong early game where no one has access to the high damage and strength weapons to kill them, and they can rack up an absurd amount of xp and become crazy imbalanced. Locking them to the second half makes them feel more special as well.

3. Brutes must roll their skills randomly, even if their promotion lets them pick. This is mostly because certain skills are just way too powerful on a brute, such as rain of blows or spring up. So while the player can still select the skill set they roll on, it must be rolled to prevent power-gaming.

4. When founding a gang, you may not include more than one of each specialist type. This is to encourage variation in gang composition, and to prevent power gaming by taking all gunners or gunslingers.

5. Each player may remove one card from the scenario setup deck prior to generating a scenario. So if a player really hates the ambush deployment, or has done too many hold nothing back crew selections and is getting worn out by long games, they can withhold that card.

[u/Previous-Table-2852]

The only one I don't like at all is #5 because having a full gang of 9+ has no reward if you never get to deploy the whole gang. I think the player with the lower gang rating might remove one, but definitely not something I would want in a campaign.

I try to make 8 fighters my minimum, so an opponent running in with 5 monsters would be that much more likely to tear me apart if they could influence crew selection.

[u/Calious]

1. Is a bit much with 2 already limiting them.

2. This sounds like it'll allow ppl to skirt having gang members unavailable as a intended punishment in games needing a big crew.

[u/Available-Trust4426 → u/Calious]

i agree with 3, especially since there's only two post cycles to advance them

[u/Axton_Grit]

All of these are terrible.

1. Literally taking away the use of a skill in the brawn tree.

2. Brutes are incredibly expensive and start with high xp already.

3. You need to read the journals.

4. This is just bad. The book says to make your own if you want. Do that but make sure you are thinking about everyone's strengths.

[u/fonzmc → u/Axton_Grit]

100% agree. 1) It also increases the value of attacks without increasing the rating of the fighter. 2) Spot on, they were available after the first game in the last edition(N17), and were no problem then. If they have been bought at outset along with a leader and a champ then you are looking at a fairly hefty outlay for 3 fighters. Focus on the few softer gangers and force bottle checks, then out ready marker them. Just sounds like poor tactics to me. 3) Spot on. 4) It's not powergaming if people pick the same specialist, it weakens them. The point of specialists is that they have supporting specialisms. Again, tactics. Play the objectives. Gunners are less useful being static, sitting on a contested objective wastes their skills etc. Look at each skill and see it's strengths and weaknesses and how the different specialisms complement a gang and how if many are ignored it opens up gaps. 5) Just woeful. I can understand letting an underdog do one card. But no. The whole point of random scenarios is that they are random. Players shouldn't be able to reduce that because some scenarios suit them less... that lets in powergaming etc.

You are right, these are just hortific house rules.

[u/Axton_Grit → u/fonzmc]

My main issue with many house rules is see is people arent reading the rules entirely. I will admit I make mistakes as well but many things people house rule are not reading all the tools at their disposal.

Even the flesh wound rule I see. Well now rad phase has no positive....

[u/fonzmc → u/Axton_Grit]

Yup. That and usually based around wanting to play a gang a certain way and someone has figured out how to stop it.

Basically just bad tactics. The objectives tend to balance stuff out now. Gunline gangs have to get to those objectives, if you are a melee gang, you can get there quicker, but you also no that they have to get there. Shooting you won't be enough now, more often than not.

[u/Axton_Grit → u/fonzmc]

I know. Im playing unborn and didnt realize how good unwieldy knockback are for my leader with servo medical. I now can charge in take a hit knock them back and heal back the wound. Before testing I lost 2 matches not fully understanding how to play my gang. But goliaths are all about knockback and concussion

[u/Balmong7]

As far as number 5 goes. This could probably be alleviated by the arbitrator just stepping in and informing players which cards to include in the deck each cycle. Or even just specifying exactly which scenarios will be played. Rather than risking individual players trying to game the system

[u/The_Forgemaster]

This is my draft ones currently.

Re your rules:

1. I think I prefer my version
2. Brutes, if you say after cycle 2 onwards, people just can’t start with them and credits are a lot rarer now
3. Not sure this is needed with rule 2
4. I would suggest no more than 2 gangers starting of each specialist if you are doing this, gives a bit of choice, and maybe max 3 over the campaign?

5. The cards - I like the idea, of this, might need a bit of play testing, otherwise people might just remove the smallest gang size or the most annoying deployment etc.

   - maybe the lowest ranked player may pick one of the cards drawn for a redraw in that type? Eg crew selection, say they didn’t want the 10gang card that was drawn, shuffle that crew card back in and redraw?

[u/Previous-Table-2852 → u/The_Forgemaster]

You have excellent house rules here, but as someone with pretty awful nerve damage who can't paint well for medical reasons... Would you accept a substitute for building terrain? That XP is really juicy, but I have to pay for someone to paint my models and it can take a long time.

[u/The_Forgemaster → u/Previous-Table-2852]

Well, happy to include painted to GW’s ‘Battle Ready’ standard, or similar, and I think I have decided to cut it down to 2XP as well (I just hadn’t saved a picture of that one)

The main idea of that one is so people are not playing grey plastic

Personally wouldn’t accept terrain building, mainly because I have access to a bunch of terrain, but speak to your arbitrator and they might go for something similar

[u/Previous-Table-2852 → u/The_Forgemaster]

The only thing I paint myself is a base-coat black primer and Rub n' Buff pewter for an AmBot. Everything else is beyond me, but then again my group doesn't offer this anyway. 😔 Going to send them a screenshot of your rules anyway and see what they think.