A muppets reading of the victory and defeat conditions.

[cordas]

I am totaly dissacocating myself from this post before I make it as its just wrong. One of my mates has come round and read the V & D terms and has raised some arguements that I find totally spurious but can't just ignore.

Quote:
Once an army has been reduced to a quarter of the models it started with.

Interpretation 1:

The starting army on the field is the number of models that count.
If this is the case then it is easy to cheat starting with as few units as possible on the field to reduce this target to as small a number as possible and then on your first turn deploy as many units as possible.

Interpretation 2:

The starting army on and off the field is the number of models that count.
If this is the case then it is possible to construct armies that have lost as soon as they are initially deployed and thus battle need not be fought. This seems some what bizarre.

Me again

Utter garbage I know, but I can't argue against this reading with anything more than if you try and play those rules here you will be beaten to a bloody pulp. Which honestly isn't a fair answer, even if its the only reasonable one.

 

[Mr Evil]

rip his arm of and hit him with the soggy end

 

[cordas]

rip his arm of and hit him with the soggy end

My feelings exactly, but as I said it ain't really any better answer than believe in god... why because I tell you too.....

To be honest I don't know how MGP could have it better with out making it far worse to read, or taking half a page to write.

Basicaly it just needs something to say that when you deploy off board units you recalculate the break point using the total number of models you have put on the board during the game.

i.e. You have a bug force of 40, which includes 2 lots of 10 warriors which are waiting in tunnels. So you setup your 20 other bugs giving you a starting BP of 5. When the 1st lot of Warriors tunnel up you now have a "potential" force of 30 models, giving you a BP of 7 (rounding down), then when your 2nd lot of tunnelers appear your "potential" force size increases to 40, giving you a BP of 10.

 

[Hiromoon]

Almost tempted to go with a literal interpretation of this..

If you start out with Four, then deploy Eight, I'd say if you loose Three, leaving you with One, then you're shattered.

 

[Xorrandor]

Interpretation 2:

The starting army on and off the field is the number of models that count.
If this is the case then it is possible to construct armies that have lost as soon as they are initially deployed and thus battle need not be fought. This seems some what bizarre.

Actually, I think this one is correct. So, like, don't make armies like that, or you'll lose a lot of games... (A Valley Girl emoticon probably wouldn't see much use, but there are times...)

 

[cordas]

Interpretation 2:

The starting army on and off the field is the number of models that count.
If this is the case then it is possible to construct armies that have lost as soon as they are initially deployed and thus battle need not be fought. This seems some what bizarre.

Actually, I think this one is correct. So, like, don't make armies like that, or you'll lose a lot of games... (A Valley Girl emoticon probably wouldn't see much use, but there are times...)

No thats wrong the V & D conditions make that clear. You don't count models that aren't deployed towards your breaking point, unless you mean that if you have 10 raiders in ambush those raiders are counted as destroyed until they deployed.... This just doesn't make any sense at all, even by Big Rich's logic.

 

[The Legend]

Interpretation 2:

The starting army on and off the field is the number of models that count.
If this is the case then it is possible to construct armies that have lost as soon as they are initially deployed and thus battle need not be fought. This seems some what bizarre.

Actually, I think this one is correct. So, like, don't make armies like that, or you'll lose a lot of games... (A Valley Girl emoticon probably wouldn't see much use, but there are times...)

No thats wrong the V & D conditions make that clear. You don't count models that aren't deployed towards your breaking point, unless you mean that if you have 10 raiders in ambush those raiders are counted as destroyed until they deployed.... This just doesn't make any sense at all, even by Big Rich's logic.

:shock: :shock: Hear Hear Bro!!!!

 

[Hiromoon]

Technically they don't count at all untill they deploy...so..yeah. If you have Four units (A, B, C, D) on the table and One in Ambush (E), and you suddenly loose Three Units (B,C,D), you're sunk, even though you have Units A and E left...because Unit E isn't on the table.

 

[MaxSteiner]

Thats true, but the wording does say 'starting with'... without a concrete definition of how thats determined. And it seems as though every army except possibly the Forth is going to be affected by this to some degree.. this is why rules should be written with proper notation so theres no room for ambiguity at all.
I.E:
1.0 When reduced to 25% of starting army blah blah blah
1.1 Starting is defined as 'whatever its defined as'
1.2 etc etc

Obviously not very fun to read, looks unbelivably old school, and isn't the sort of thing that would fit on two sheets, but it stops the long tedious arguments which can occur otherwise.

Actually thinking about it the total number of models on the board really could fluctuatte dramatically durring the course of a game, throw in some things like endless tide, air units, drop caps and skinny advisors and you could end up with 3 times as much as you started with... how would you determine the 25% then?

 

[Hiromoon]

Beginning of a Turn?

 

[MaxSteiner]

It should just say that then
'Once an army has been reduced to a quarter of the models it started the turn with.'
Is far clearer!
I'd imagine its far to late to change anything like the wording of the basic rules by this point though isnt it?

 

[Xorrandor]

No thats wrong the V & D conditions make that clear. You don't count models that aren't deployed towards your breaking point, unless you mean that if you have 10 raiders in ambush those raiders are counted as destroyed until they deployed.... This just doesn't make any sense at all, even by Big Rich's logic.

Well, lets break it down:

Once an army has been reduced to a quarter of the number of models it started with (rounding down to a minimum of one), it is immediately Shattered. When working out whether your army has been Shattered, you may only count models that are actually on the table - models that have not yet been deployed (normally because of special rules that apply only to them) are not counted. Models carried by other models that are on the table [(]such as in transport vehicles) are counted as normal.

How many models does an army start with? The number of models you pulled out of your case at the beginning of the game. The language about deployed models refers to when you hit the Shatter limit, not how you determine the Shatter limit.

 

[Galatea]

Shattering has one gameplay problem - mass armies profit from it.
So any smart Bug Player would field 200 Workers and I wanna see the army shattering them (and btw this army becomes EXTREMELY lethal if you deploy one half of your army in cover and the other half under your opponents deployment zone. There you have 100 Bugs to kill and another 100 will pop up between your units.)

 

[cordas]

Shattering has one gameplay problem - mass armies profit from it.
So any smart Bug Player would field 200 Workers and I wanna see the army shattering them (and btw this army becomes EXTREMELY lethal if you deploy one half of your army in cover and the other half under your opponents deployment zone. There you have 100 Bugs to kill and another 100 will pop up between your units.)

Workers aren't in SST Evo yet, and maybe because of the issues you raise they won't be.

Has just had one thought..... maybe once the advanced rules come out shattered will be dropped from V & D conditions..... It could just be a simple way (?) of giving a game end other than wipe out your opponent, and puts a degree of game balance into a game that will have no more than a handfull of units per faction / race.

I also like to think my example works it out fairly nicely and simply....

Basicaly it just needs something to say that when you deploy off board units you recalculate the break point using the total number of models you have put on the board during the game.

i.e. You have a bug force of 40, which includes 2 lots of 10 warriors which are waiting in tunnels. So you setup your 20 other bugs giving you a starting BP of 5. When the 1st lot of Warriors tunnel up you now have a "potential" force of 30 models, giving you a BP of 7 (rounding down), then when your 2nd lot of tunnelers appear your "potential" force size increases to 40, giving you a BP of 10.

Potential force is the total number of models deployed upto that point in the game. Trying to work out numbers at the "start" or "end" of the turn makes Ambush and tunnel into an issue that it isn't using my example.

 

[Turtle]

So, what's wrong with the 200 workers and warriors army then? I mean, honestly, what's all that wrong with it?

It's just a lot of warrior bugs with even lower target saves. A pure swarm army. All they have is two tactics, which the enemy player knows is coming. Half the army moves forward, or hangs back on land, half the army. And as mentioned before, warriors tend to get mowed down anyway.

And that bug player is assuming that the MI haven't taken support assets that can kill swarms easy. A tac fighter or UAV could come in every air phase and kill enough bugs to open a hole for the MI to jump in to. And in general, anyone taking a swarm army, in any game whether it's 40k, SST, or world war 2 russian conscripts is making a trade-off, just like any other player goes while creating his army. He's trading off flexibility and weaponry for hordes of less capable troops. Despite thier numbers, those warriors are still just warriors. They still have to get into close combat

And any MI player always has weaponry able to deal with swarms on hand. If he's too focused on singular powerful weapons he'll lose because he focused his army too much on fighting Forth than bugs. But even then he can use tactics to stay on the bounce, using reactions and such to keeps the bugs away while constantly calling in support.

Also, any bugs coming up from tunnels only have 1 action on their turn.

So the game described above sounds not like a one sided affair against the MI. Instead, it sounds like a very fun game to play against and would love to play such a scenario as either MI or bugs.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Workers aren't in SST Evo yet, and maybe because of the issues you raise they won't be.

Workers are an option on the Bug Warriors stat card.

 

[Aniyn]

Jesus, I thought the whole point of EVO was to simplify the game, we can't even figure out how to win/lose anymore.

 

[MaxSteiner]

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Ruthless

Hopefully by August we'll all have a better idea of how Shatter and ambushing (... And possibly tunneling and drop capsules) interact with each other.

 

[JoseDominguez]

The shatter point is calculated from the deployed models to stop bug players from hiding a full army off board and MI players from starting everyone in space isn't it?
Yeah, you can still risk doing it, but one plasma/nuke strike could lose you the game in turn one.
It's a mechanism to discourage those pure cheese armies you could use (in a highly boring manner) in SST.

 

[Poko]

huh?
there's aproblem with it?
the number of models the ARMY started with=total number of models in the army list. after all that's what you start with, there isn't "on table" in that sentecne.so if you have an army of 50 models, but only deploy 12 models, you are automaticly shattered. that's all there is imo.

"Warmachine-how i learned to love the RAW" :wink: