More Early Playtesting

More Early Playtesting

So with some new terrain and a bigger table, I once more set forth to bravely observe small metal combats. 



Cross at your peril

I tried a few more games of CSMs against Guardsmen and some supporting vehicles.  These games were a lot like the ones on the smaller tables -- the CSMs were close to indestructable.  They were also pretty dull games, with the Guardsmen throwing tons of dice, and the CSMs wading through. Eventually I decided I needed to get closer to the basics of the game, with more closely matched forces.

So I put away my CSMs and dug out my Eldar collection.  I then set up a few scenarios of Eldar against Guard -- with one squad of Eldar Guardians against one squad of Imperial Guard.  I gave the Guard a machinegun, and the Eldar one machinegun and one big-ass meltagun.  I set them at the same ratings.  I placed the Guardsmen into cover, and arranged some craters so that the Eldar could advance partly through cover. The forces didn't really reflect any 40k background.  They were just cone heads with guns vs space dudes with guns.

The game became -- could the Eldar successfully push the Imperial Guardsmen out of their crater?

To help them do so, I gave the Eldar a single Doctrine.  On a 3+, the meltagun's hits (if any) had to be assigned to the Guardsmen's machinegun.  I gave it a value of High Explosive 2.

I also decided to test some of my proposed changes:  I fixed the firefight distance at 6" rather than 12".  Rather than require a wound for each model, I set the threshold for Suppression to one Wound for every two models.

The results surprised me -- I expected the Guardsmen to easily Suppress and kill the attacking Eldar.  However, with moderate luck, and good use of terrain, the Eldar could often (but not always) enter Firefight range successfully and even take the objective!

Their success depended largely on their Leadership and Doctrine rolls.  When the Eldar could assassinate the machine-gun, or recover from Suppression, they tended to win.  At least once, the Guardsmen failed to recover from Suppression, hindering their own defense.

I decided these results were promising, as they reflected historical considerations and tactics in such an attack, and the outcome varied depending on both luck and skill employed.

But maybe my biggest realization was about space and scale.  When I was playing with 6 squads of Guardsmen, plus tanks, plus CSMs, my figs lined up from board edge to board edge.  And it was just dull.  Once I focused on only two squads, with room to move, the game got a lot more exciting -- about the opposite of what I'd expect. 

I like to play with as many models as I can, and so I'd planned my game to follow a company or even battallion level of organization.  But on a 4'x 6' this just may not be any fun.  Maybe I need to scale down.