VOIDHEIST - Implementation

Last time I spoke about the two systems that inspired VOIDHEIST. Now I wanted to dig deeper into the actual mechanics that I've included in the game, some pulling from those sources and some of my own.

This isn't a full system rundown (you can see the game as it stands here), just the bits I think are interesting to examine closer. 

GAUGES 

These are a pretty direct pull from Blades, which uses Clocks to count down to success/failure in a particular area. I use dice that count up from 1 to 6 mainly because I prefer the feel of dice counting up rather than scribbling clocks on paper. All gauges use d6, so there's no deciding whether this is a d4 challenge of a d8 challenge. I'll always do my bit to rid any game of Variable Target Numbers. 

Various events cause you to Tick these Gauges upwards. You suffer Consequences when a gauge reaches 4, and Critical Consequences when it reaches 6, mirroring the target numbers of the core dice mechanic.

For example, you have a Heat Gauge showing how much attention you've drawn to yourself during your operation. You might tick 1 Heat for leaving a loose end, 2 for drawing attention to yourself, or 3 for causing an actual commotion. When that gauge reaches 4 it means the location is now on alert. They know somebody is here, but they don't know exactly what your plan is. When the gauge hits 6 then it's Critical Consequence time. In this case they're onto you, they know your plan, and your options are either to go loud or just cut your losses and run.

You can empty out a Gauge by taking the appropriate action. So for our Heat example you could tie up a loose end, lay low for a while, or frame somebody else for the mess you made. 

CHARACTERS

I went into how characters work in both Blades and Mothership last time, but in summary I wanted something that combined:

• From Mothership
• Flavourful sci-fi skills
• Archetypal classes that interact with each other in interesting ways
• From Blades
• Characters with a clear purpose and rule-breaking Abilities
• Good competence in a speciality skill or two, plus some side-skills

So in place of Blades' Actions we have Skills. The distinction might seem petty, but I find that when you put a verb on the players' sheets they end up saying it a lot. "I try to Survey my environment". As written, the GM would then say "okay so how do you do that?" but I'd rather cut out the middle-man and keep the skills a little more abstract. 

You also get to inject a little bit of setting flavour in there. With a small list I can't quite do what Mothership did, but I think they do a decent job of filling the requires areas while putting you in the mood of Voidheist's space setting.

Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit but I think having Empathy and Authority as your two main social skills tells you something about the world. Same for having "Weaponry" rather than "Shooting". You can read into that and take something with you.

Most importantly, I wanted them to be broad enough that you could use them on any heist if you're smart about it. At one point Science was split into tighter fields like Biology and Chemistry, but they felt a little too much at risk of gathering dust on your character sheet. If you have three points in a Skill, I want you to be able to use it at least once.

STRESS

The name related directly to a mechanic in Blades, but the similarity really ends there. It's one of the two Gauges your character has for themselves, alongside Hurt, and covers any sort of mental strain.

It actually draws more from Mothership, as you can see from the Consequences that occur when your Stress Gauge starts to fill up.

4-5: Panic - Nearby allies that do not share your Origin or Occupation  take 1 Stress. This can cause chain-reactions.

6: Your Instinct takes over, this varies based on your Origin.

RECOVER Stress when you indulge in normality or excess. 

So at 4-5 you get a little taste of those lovely Mothership situations where the Scientist starts to realise the true horror of their situation, stressing everybody else out in the process. 

Then at 6 things get much more serious. Bringing us onto...

ORIGINS AND OCCUPATIONS

I absolutely love the four classes of Mothership. I can't give them enough praise. I like that the small number means it's relatively common to have two of the same type in a group, something that is much less common in other games. I like that they interact with each other in such interesting ways, and I like that they're so specific in their strengths and weaknesses.

So that was my challenge to myself. Can I create a broader selection of characters that still feel tight and integrated like Mothership's classes? Maybe. Let me talk through it.

Your Origin is where you come from, and handily gives you six major factions of the setting.

• Corporate characters were tied to a capitalist corporation on or near Earth.
• Colonial characters toughed it out in a more communal society out in deep space.
• Naval characters have a military background with all of the baggage you'd expect.
• Union characters were the mediators toothlessly trying to stop the others from killing each other.
• Androids are intelligent mechanical beings build for a purpose.
• GENOs are Genetically ENgineered Organisms of questionable legality and ethicality.

Note the lack of proper nouns (if you forgive GENO). I wanted to keep it super archetypal so that players would grasp the faction's general deal as quickly as possible.

Your Occupation is more straightforward, telling you what your general speciality is, such as Soldier, Engineer, or Pioneer. The combination of Origin and Occupation gives you some nifty gear that doubles up as your rule-breaking ability. For example, the Union Researcher gets a Precog Node (Tick Stress to Declare that your last action was just a simulation, rewinding back to before you declared it) and 

Chrono-Chip (perfect sense of time). 

But in the Stress section I said that things get worse when your Stress Gauge hits 6. This all depends on your Occupation, which lists an Instinct that triggers once the Stress Gauge is full. 

So if you're a Naval character your Instinct is:

HOSTILITY: All Danger Rolls other than attacks are Skill 0

Or if you're an Android:

OBSESSION: The GM puts a question in your head. Until resolved, rolls unrelated to finding the answer are Skill 0

There's no "your character freaks out and you lose control of them" here, but something in their mind is tugging you in a certain direction, and you'll find things much harder if you fight it. If you're the Naval Soldier, armed to the teeth, and you hit that Hostility instinct then it's going to be all the more tempting to just gun your way out of trouble, but the GM will never force you to do it. 

PRINTING

I mentioned how torn I was on the Blades in the Dark Flashback mechanic, where you can retroactively have your character do some preparation for the mission at the cost of some resources. 

My twist on there here is Printing. Your ship has a Gauge representing matter in their 3D Printer. Here you can basically make anything you need, at a cost, but anything you print is made as disposable, only being good for the current mission before you throw them back into the printer for recycling. 

As the printer is on your ship you can decide to run back there mid-mission to print when you need when you know more about the task at hand, as a sort of nod to the Flashback mechanic, but there's still a speed advantage to committing to all your printing ahead of the mission. 

SPACE

Despite some of the high-tech tricks that certain characters can pull, it's a pretty gritty take on Space out here. I like to get this across by focusing on how even our most basic needs aren't really satisfied out here.

LIGHT is usually unnatural. Give it a colour and characteristic. Fuzzy blue, flickering grey, pulsing red. 

ATMOSPHERE is maintained on most ships but it always has a taste and the quality is never quite right. 

GRAVITY is simulated only on larger vessels and isn’t entirely stable. 

TRAVEL and COMMS are slow unless the means are experimental.

FOOD AND DRINK is either cultivated in trays, sealed in pouches, or printed from code. Whatever the method it’s always off in a very specific way.

What's Next?

I want to actually run this a few more times, but I think it's in a generally playable form right now if you want to try it out. Let me know if you get it to the table!

Electric Bastionland Actual Play Stream

I'll finally be running a live actual play of Electric Bastionland this Sunday, 7th June, at 9pm British Summer Time.

Joining me as players are Sean McCoy and Alan Gerding of Tuesday Knight Games, the people behind Mothership and Two Rooms and a Boom!

It will all be broadcast live on Bastionland Broadcasting and uploaded to YouTube later in the week. In the mean time don't forget that I'll be doing the weekly Bastionland Deep Dive tonight at 9pm BST. This week we're touching on Deep Country and I'm mixing up two cocktails that were generated from the Cocktail Spark Table. Want to see me drink anchovy sauce? Tonight's the night.

VOIDHEIST - Inspiration

VOIDHEIST started life from my enjoyment of two quite different games.

Mothership is a sci-fi horror game by Sean McCoy.

Blades in the Dark is a fantasy heist game by John Harper.

I think both of these games have a lot to offer, so check them out if they sound at all like they'd appeal to you. They've both earned more praise and awards than I could ever hope to achieve, and there's truly no greater compliment from me than having your game hacked to bits to see if I can make it work for dumdums like myself.

So first I'll talk about each of the games in question with my opinionated game-design hat on, pointing out the bits I love and the bits that don't appeal to me. At the risk of repeating myself I'll stress that my goal with this process isn't to proclaim improvements that could be made to the original game, but instead to pinpoint the specific parts of the buffalo that appeal to my niche and consider how to extract them for my own uses.

In conclusion: This is not a review. These games are both great. I chew on them because I enjoy the taste.

With that disclaimer out of the way I hope you'll forgive a little hyperbole in my like/dislike of each element.

MOTHERSHIP

CELESTIALLY BODACIOUS

• The character archetypes tell you everything about the setting. You're always either a:
• Teamster - Working-class everyday space folk
• Marine - Barely contained trained killers
• Android - Unsettling artificial humans
• Scientist - Somebody that knows too much
• I love that any of the choices above bring their own flavour. They're broad, but don't feel generic in the way that a "Soldier" might, or even a "Specialist". 
• They combine in interesting ways. Two Scientists and a Marine conjures a different story to a lone Teamster surrounded by Androids.
• Equipment has a similar jolt of flavour injection, from the weapons down to the patches and trinkets.
• There's a focus on "only roll when it really matters" that I know Sean is going to expand on in the Warden's guide.
• Stress is given as much focus as physical harm, and there are some fun Panic effects when the Stress gets too much to handle. This all links back to the characters where certain combinations can chain-react off each other creating memorable "Game Over, Man!" moments. 

SPACE JUNK

• It has that WHFRP thing where a lot of your rolls are going have a less than 50% chance of success even for stuff you're meant to be quite good at. This fits the horror theme, and absolutely works when you lean into the "only roll when it matters" thing, but it still doesn't sit quite right with me. If I'm the Xeno-Botanist then it sucks when we finally find some moon-weeds and I tank my roll to know anything about them. 
• I found myself longing for a bit of distillation when it comes to mechanics. You've got Stats, Saves, and Skills that all act slightly differently. Then you've got different mechanical meanings for Resolve, Sanity, Fear, Stress, and Panic. They all work together, and I imagine most players don't have any trouble keeping them apart, but I'd like to tighten it up a bit.
• I love that the skills tell you about the setting, but I've got an aversion to this sort of large skill-tree. When you're dealing with Skills so narrowly defined that you've got Geology and Planetology as different things I'd like them to do a bit more than +10% here or +15% there. They could go in either direction of "more broad" or "more impactful" and I'd be happier.

BLADES IN THE DARK

SHARP AS A TACK

• The core system of "roll a pool of d6s based on your skill in that Action, take the highest. 1-3 is fail, 4-5 is partial success, and 6 is success" is great. It just feels solid to me. 
• In addition to that vague good feel it's great for Heist-type scenarios where you want the group to be progressing, but leaving lots of loose ends and mess in their wake.
• There are lots of nice little addons to this core mechanic that create interesting situations. The Devil's Bargain and Pushing Yourself come to mind. 
• Clocks are just a really useful way to build up tension in this sort of game. For anything vaguely heisty they're a no-brainer.
• Character classes really guide the players towards a certain style of play. I think even a brand new player would get into the role of a Cutter or a Slide more quickly than they might a Fighter or Thief in D&D. 
• Oh, they come with nice flavourful equipment too.
• Some of the class abilities are great for creating dramatic moments. I will now name the objectively best special ability for each class.
• Cutter - Not to be Trifled With (Spend a resource to either do something with almost superhuman strength or fight a gang as if you're a gang yourself. Great example of an Ability that feels impactful and rule-breaking)
• Hound - Sharpshooter (Sort of a shooty version of the above, spend a resource to do something awesome from a short list)
• Leech - Venomous (You get to be immune to one poison and now you can even secrete that poison yourself)
• Lurk - Reflexes (You always act first. Big impact in just a few, very easily understood words. Impactful doesn't have to mean complex.)
• Slide - Like Looking in a Mirror (You can always tell when somebody is lying to you. Love it. I've even got something very similar somewhere in Electric Bastionland. This class has a lot of cool Abilities, so this was a tough choice)
• Spider - Hmmm... see below.
• Whisper - Compel (Summon a ghost and have it do something. Great stuff.)
• There's a lot of fantastic advice for running the game. One of the best books I've read in that area. 
• I like the preparation phase before the job, getting your plan together and gathering information. I've got some positive feeling towards the flashback mechanic, but also some more mixed feelings (see below). 

DULL AS A SPUD

• Much like Mothership, I feel like there's just a lot going on here, mechanically. It's like looking at a timepiece full of intricate cogs and arms all ticking away in harmony, when most of the time just need to know that it's midday-ish. Again, looking at each piece as part of the whole I can see a lot of thought has gone into the design. 
• There's a big emphasis on "fiction-first", which I like, but I think if you truly embrace that philosophy when running the game then you might not need all of these mechanical supports in place. 
• There are eight Actions, and you're likely to have points in roughly half of them. I think they're pretty well defined buuuut...
• There's a focus on allowing the players to declare their action by name. "I want to run up and stab this guy so *checks character sheet* I'm using Skirmish".
• This in itself isn't bad, but when I've played I've always felt like I'm just bending the fiction to match my mechanical strengths. Again, this doesn't break the game but it kept pulling me out of the fiction.
• I'm really torn on the Flashback thing. It makes your characters look smart, and there's been a lot of hyperbole about how it ruins the central challenge of a heist (it doesn't), but I'm still not totally sold that it delivers more than it asks in return
• While I really liked some of the class abilities, some of them felt a bit passive to me. Quite a lot of "Get +1 when you do X". This might be there to allow for simple choices for new players, but I like special abilities that really break the rules and shake things up. I will now name the objectively worst special ability for each class as a contrast to the last list.
• Cutter - Mule (You can carry more stuff)
• Hound - Survivor (+1 Stress Box)
• Leech - Analyst (Advance projects more quickly during Downtime)
• Lurk - Ambush (+1d when springing a trap or attacking from hiding. I feel like in a game full of sneaky thieves you should get +1d for this sort of thing anyway, certainly not as part of some specific special ability)
• Slide - Trust in Me (+1d vs a target you have an intimate relationship with. I like the idea of this one a lot, but I feel like it could be a lot more impactful)
• Spider - Jailbird (Bit unfair here, as a lot of them are downtime-focused, which doesn't appeal much to me. Instead I chose this one as it only really triggers when you get Incarcerated, so feels like it would sit gathering dust on my sheet for most of the campaign. Don't really like anything available to this class, but I suspect it's jut not for me)
• Whisper - Iron Will (+1 to Resolve rolls)

VOIDHEIST

Could I take the bits I like from these two games and put them into one? Horror and heist?

Maybe not. The end result is a lot more like "BitD-style Heists in Space with some of Mothership's Flavour Tricks".

The next post will be a full rundown of the game. For now you can see the work-in-progress document.

GRIMLITE Playtest Report and Thoughts

Last night saw my first playtest of GRIMLITE. Ram kindly tested out a preliminary version while I was awaiting my minis, but now I'm fully equipped and ready to go.

First some changes I've made to the game.

Free Movement now lets you move any distance (!), with a single vault, climb, or sidestep permitted along the way. The caveat is that any Moves after your first each turn require a roll. If you fail the roll then your opponent can leave you stranded mid-move and you can't attempt to move again this turn. The aim here is to remove the focus on measuring inch by inch, while still creating situations where you leave yourself in a vulnerable position.

Hard Range Limits mean that short range weapons have a range of 6" as always, but long range weapons can now fire any distance over 6" but cannot fire at 6" or less at all. It takes a little getting used to, but I like that it makes a longrifle feel very different to a carbine, not outright better.

Modifiers have been tweaked slightly to help make Touch/Short/Long ranges all feel interesting. Touch weapons now get +1 when attacking an Exhausted or Downed opponent, meaning they can be outright more effective than ranged weapons as long as you pick your target. It also makes choosing who to activate first a tougher decision now. You can charge in with your leader to get a first strike, but they're leaving themselves open to counter charges for the rest of the Round. Recovery has also had its modifier tweaked to +1 for having an ally nearby, rather than allowing you to use the Ally's QL score. It's more consistent with the other actions, which all have a single +1 or -1 modifier, and it makes keeping your grunts together more appealing, which feels right.

Tactics are special powers you can use once per Round. I wanted to give each warband a sort of unifying thing that made them feel different to each other, evens if the individuals were very similar, and I love those Cosmic Encounter style game-breaking abilities. I'm not sure how I feel about these, and they're very much there in draft form, so don't be surprised if they vanish.

Weapon Mods are something I've gone back and forth on in the past. I've tried out the following methods for weapons in this game:

• List of pre-made weapons. 
• Broad weapon types with modifiers you can apply to raise their Attacks or Damage.
• Bespoke weapon creation where you just stat them up and then calculate their cost. 

Now I'm back on a variant of option 2. The issue with the previous modular system is that it was feeding into the idea of build mentality. There were outright better and more cost effective ways to use the combination of base weapon and modifier, so it felt like it was putting too much focus on building your warband well rather than playing well. I realise that builds are always going to be a part of a wargame, but it's not what I wanted the focus to be. Now I have very broad basic weapons you apply modifiers to, but the mods are a lot more specific in their use. There isn't one that just gives you more Damage or more Attacks, they're all situational to some extent. Best of all, they're completely optional, so if you want to keep your warband simple you can use them as little as you like and you're not really missing out on much effectiveness.

With the rules out of the way, let's talk miniatures.

I've really enjoyed assembling and painting these little guys. I used to find painting stressful, trying to make sure my squads looked uniform with each other, being over-faced by a wall of grey plastic, but working with warbands of 5-6 misfits takes a lot of the pressure off. There are some pieces I'm happy with, others I'm merely okay with, but that's fine.

Really I'm leaning into claiming that my style is characterful rather than amateurish. I'm never going to be good at painting details or being especially patient, so my current method is:

• Prime spray black.
• Rough Zenithal Highlighting where I drybrush the model in grey where the light would hit, then drybrush white at the tips where the light would be most focused. This gives a rough greyscale-shaded look as a starting point.
• Base coat the colours I want on there. As I'm going for a sort of Blanchitsu look I'm trying to limit the base coats to one colour. 
• Drybrush to highlight the base colour and pick out the metallic bits.
• Black wash pretty much everything. Been playing with other washes but I've found black works well for the look I'm chasing. Sometimes I'll use different washes on different parts of the model but generally the whole thing gets some form of wash. 
• Pick out a very restrained amount of details, usually things like lenses or eyes. This is usually the only place I allow a more vibrant colour.
• Restrained drybrush of everything with a very bright highlight. Focusing on the edges here. I've played with pure white, white/silver mix, white/blue mix. Whatever it is keep it bright and not too saturated with colour.
• If I hate it then MORE WASHES then another final drybrush highlight.

This technique is all very broad-strokes, so it works for me. I'm not saying I've nailed the John Blanche aesthetic but I think they have a certain charm. As a general goal I'm aiming for "this looks more like something out of an illustration than something out of a videogame"

Let's look at the cast for tonight's battles.

THE RUSTED ORDER

Disciples of decay and entropy, idolising the past and mourning the dead future.

Tactic: Arise - All of your units attempt a Free Recover.

Argastes - Rust Priest (3+)
Corroder(S1x5)
Pick (T1x3)
Assistant: Reroll one Fire or Fight die on your turn. Sacrifice them to ignore one Wound.

The order's miserable leader, always accompanied by his inhuman assistant.

The Bronze Knight (4+)
Ancient Sword (T3x1)
Shield: Reroll a single Resist die once per Turn.

Techno Hunter (Precise 4+)
Longrifle (L1x5)

The loyal lieutenants of the order, both dedicated to hastening the end of existence. 

2 Cyber-Guard (5+)
Voltguns (S3x1)

Not strictly members of the order, but these hired guns will join any cause where they're able to scavenge for rare bits of tech to add to their increasingly mechanical bodies.

THE SPLICE COVEN
AKA the Splice Boys

A cult of personality based around bolstering humanity with alien stock.

Tactic- Farsight: Undo anything that happened so far on this Turn and begin the Turn again.

Dyrak - Splice Prophet (3+)
AKA Sporty Splice
Blaster (S2x1)
Rending Staff (T3x1. If a 6 is rolled x2 Damage)

His alien brain has seen the future, and it mostly involves slicing people in half with his chainsaw-staff.

Warped Engineer (4+)
AKA Posh Splice
Grav Warper (L1x5. Instead of Shock, Move the target d6”)

Reaper Grunt (4+)
AKA Scary Splice
Storm Cannon (L3x1. x2 Attacks if you have not Moved this Turn)

Dyrak's most prized creations. Able to haul heavy weapons, grunt at each other, and mow down enemies of the cause.

3 Spliced Brethren (5+)
AKA Baby Splices
Shotguns (S2x1)

New recruits to the cult. Their helmets hide the fact that their bodies are going through some growing-pains after receiving their first splice. If they survive the battle they might not survive the next step of the splicing process.

BATTLE 1 - RUST HEIST

The Rusted Order seek to capture a cache of genetic information that the Splice Coven have hidden somewhere in their shanty town. The Coven player will secretly note which of the three crates contains the cache, and the Order must try and take it off the board before they take more than 50% casualties.

I was the Splice Coven and Sarah, my partner, was the Rusted Order. This is why my warband has humiliating nicknames and hers are treated with due respect.

Sarah has played RPGs and Boardgames but never a miniature game. This will be a good test of my supposedly simple rules. I left the Tactics out of these first couple of battles to just try out the core of the system.

The heavy gunners set up at the highest point on the board, guarding the (empty) grey box. 

A lone Spliceboy guards the (empty) green box in a more remote corner of the battlefield. 

Dyrak himself guards the blue box, which I've secretly chosen to contain the Cache. He keeps a lackey nearby for support.

Most of the Order set up in cover in a relatively central position.

The Bronze Knight and a lone Cyberguard deploy on the left flank, worryingly close to the blue box that contains the Cache. 

Things got off to a dramatic start. Dyrak leapt to the top of the steps and blasted down at the cyber-guard below, Downing them before they even had a chance to act. On the Shock Table he rolls "Vengeance: The next ally to activate acts as QL2+ against your attacker."

This is a perfect opportunity. The Order's Techno-Hunter scurries to a vantage point and lines up his Long-Rifle with an avenging shot against Dyrak.



A hit! Five damage is nasty, but is rolling at 3+ to resist. This will be fine. He resists four of the damage, taking him Down. Sucks, but at least he's not dead.

Now for the Shock Roll. The roll is a 1... a Killshot.

#RIP

Dyrak's alien brains are blasted across the roof as the sniper scurries back into cover, having successfully avenged his ally.

With their leader dead, the Splicers focus their big guns on the Hunter and his nearby allies. This was a revenge-motivated outburst, and both the Reaper and Engineer were both ineffective against the well-concealed hunter. The Order capitalised on the distraction.

A cyberguard sprinted up the stairs to check the blue box, discovering the Cache in the very first location they checked! He tries to flee back down the stairs but fails his Move roll, stranded at plain sight.

A splicer fires an ineffective shotgun blast at him. At this point I really wish I'd saved my big guns and remembered the objective.

Argastes himself manages to run up to the stranded cyber-guard. The question was asked:

"Can I just pass the objective to this guy?"

I mean it makes narrative sense. We allow it.

Argaste's coat prevented him making good use of the stairs, so we sent his Assistant up there to grab the Cache.

The table edge is in sight. Argastes attempts a final move...

Victory!

 Well, a Round 1 win for the Order. I can confirm that this scenario is bullshit but I only have myself to blame. Of course it's lucky to get the correct box on the first try, but when you have free-movement like this then it's really not ideal to have the entire board edge as the extraction zone. A specific exit point might have made for a more interesting post-grab chase.

But as that was so quick we can at least try a rematch, flipping the roles! I don't mess with the scenario for now.


BATTLE 2 - SPLICE UP YOUR LIFE
AKA SPLICE AGE 2 - MELTDOWN

This time the Splicer strategy is simple. Keep your eyes on the prize.

There are fewer photos from this battle because I am focused.

Reaper Grunt surveys the field from the shipping container as you can see above and releases a hail of bullets on the Cyber Guards that are on the other side of the battlefield, taking one down and killing the other. Things are looking good!

The order mostly spend their turns shuffling their defences around. Dyrak makes a run into the building holding the green box. Argastes is there... Dyrak should totally charge him and use his Ripper-Staff. No! I'm objective-focused this time, he moves to check the Green Box.

It contains the Cache! Do we have a psychic link or are we just very lucky at guessing where this thing is hidden?

He rolls to scramble back down the ladder but fails, leading him stranded at the top.

Argastes springs to life, levelling his Corroder at the Splice Prophet, hitting for 5 damage and...

#RIPAGAIN

You suck Dyrak. But then maybe I shouldn't leave you directly in the sights of the two most powerful guns in the enemy's arsenal. Still, the objective was out!

Argastes strides forward, placing his rusted boot on the objective. To get the Cache the Coven will have to go through him.

The Coven descend en-masse towards the objective. Now fully exposed, the Warped Engineer levels his Grav-Warper towards Argastes and tears his mechanical body to shreds. A Splicer grabs the Cache from amongst the rubble and gore and flees off the board in a somewhat Pyrrhic victory.

This felt much more like a real battle, even though it was still much too short.

Lessons Learned?

• Free Movement works well, but relies a lot on the common sense and sportsmanship of the players. This is something I want to encourage, but I'll work on some guidance for how to make it work. Terrain is also key to this, and it would be interesting to see how it feels on a less dense board. I really like the "roll for your second movement" as a sort of push-your-luck element and there were a few times it created tough choices. 
• Activation Order is much more interesting than I had considered. Choosing well between striking decisively with a powerful unit or holding them back for more reactive action felt incredibly important. I like this!
• Deadliness is strong here. Again, I can't judge too much based on one game, but I feel like most games have measures in place to prevent your leader getting one-shotted. I like that I got punished for putting my leader in dumb positions, but some of it was definitely down to unfortunate rolls.
• Shock only came up twice across the battles, but both cases were pivotal in creating a narrative moment (the Hunter headshotting Dyrak to avenge his fallen ally). I was worried it would feel like a tacked-on bit of clutter to the system, but I really enjoyed the way it felt.
• Scenario design really needs to be catered to the small board and free movement, so I've got a bit of work to do there. 

What's Next?

Now that I'm happy the core is at least playable I'm going to work on some scenarios and see if I can get the Tactics to a point I'm more happy with. 

And next time I'll write about RPGs, I promise. 

GRIMLITE

Following on from this week's confessional.

I mentioned some of the things that I enjoyed about miniature gaming in my youth, along with those that detracted from the experience.

This is all very similar to RPGs. I loved the potential of RPGs, but never found the system that quite matched up with what I wanted the game to be. So I had to make my own.

I actually tried out Kill Team a while ago with some friends, using their minis. I had fun, but that was probably in spite of the system. I loved the small focus but there were lots of fiddly rules interacting with each other, tokens all over the board, and things all felt a bit like taking turns to roll to miss.

I mentioned that the One Page Rules seemed really interesting to me, and if you're looking for a straight-up simplified version of the GW stuff they're fantastic.

But I wanted something a bit different. There were some things that I knew I wanted right away:

• Focus on the minis and the board, not your army list, cards, or tokens.
• Play on a small board with dense, multi-level terrain. 
• Less focus on a tight tournament balance, more high-impact narrative stuff to create dramatic moments in game. Embrace some wacky randomness if it creates fun moments. Play to see what happens as much as to find out who wins.
• Despite the above, keep the mechanics super simple. Banish the twin evils of Stacking and Tracking.
• Individual minis or maybe tiny squads of two or three. Kitbashing assumed and no giant grunt squads to test my painting stamina. 

It really all links back to this manifesto, it's actually proving useful here! Could I make a miniature wargame that followed these principles? Can I make good on the promise to "Break the barriers between your imagination and your game" in a slightly different medium?

Behold the link below in all its raw glory.

GRIMLITE
Barely Tested Edition

Note the above document is a very living thing, filled with unfinished sections, and you'll probably see me making changes to it on a regular basis.

But I can talk through some of the ideas behind the design. Remember that these ideas are very much unproven at the moment, but I want to at least talk them through.

Units
As mentioned, I want to minimise how often you needed to look down at your paperwork during the game, so each model gets a single Quality Score that they use for rolls and at most two Modifiers that let them reroll a specific type of roll. Your Sniper is 4+ and Precise, easy to remember. You roll 4+ to try and do basically anything, and you can reroll when you're Firing.

Weapons
I want weapons that could be summarised in a sort of code. Oh a Shotgun, that's 2x1. A Longrifle is 1x4. I originally had an equivalent of Armour Penetration but dropped it and didn't look back. A concession here is that your Drukhari Splinter Rifle might be mechanically identical to my Hot-shot Lasgun, but this isn't a game about forcing each weapon variant to be 5% different to the rest of its class. This is about what actually happens at the table.
Ranges are either Melee, 6" for most guns and 12" for Rifles and big guns. This feels short, but you should have a small board, lots of terrain, and some interesting movement options to make it work.

Damage
You're either Down (lie the model face down) or Dead. No tracking wounds, no special cases for characters, no ongoing modifiers for having a damaged leg. Instead, there's some drama to be found in the Shock and Trauma tables that you roll on when you get Downed or Recover respectively. Maybe you gun down your attacker as you fall to the ground, maybe you crawl to cover, maybe you die outright to a headshot! This is the stuff that I remember from a good game.

Turn Structure
Movement is all random. Heresy! You get three chances to move each turn, which rounds out the randomness a bit, but you can replace your second move with Firing and your third move with Fighting. This means you can pop out of cover with a move, Fire, and then duck back into cover as long as you roll well enough. Maybe you'll get stuck out in the open. Maybe you'll make that miraculous charge to cut down the enemy gunner. It also means you can duck out of melee, shoot your attacker, and then flee around the corner, so the alternating activation system drives some really interesting decisions about the right time to engage an enemy and when to bide your time.

Tactics
So I've said that I'm not aiming to have minor unit differentiation just so that I can say every unit is mechanically unique, but I do want your Warband to feel special. I'd rather do this through big, bold effects rather than a +1 here and -1 there. Tactics let your Warband do something unique and rule-breaking once per Round. Shift your models around through the shadows, infect all nearby enemies with contagion, temporarily turn your grunt with a blade into a melee monster. These are miles from balanced right now, and while total balance isn't a goal I don't want there to be one clearly superior option. I'd rather they were incomparables, things that do something weird and not easy to compare to other incomparables. I'm still torn on this idea, as technically it's something you need to track buuut...

On Tracking and Stacking
I mentioned these twin evils previously. To clarify, I feel like they're responsible for a lot of the times I've felt wrenched out of the fiction of a game and plunged into the jagged rules-pile. I find that a much less fun place to be, so that's why I've got the "No Stacking, No Tracking" rule.
You get Rerolls to various things based on Unit Mods, but never more than one Reroll per roll.
Actual +1s and -1s are deliberately limited. There is exactly one case where you get +1 to a roll and one where you get -1, and they both affect different rolls.

• Firing is -1 vs cover.
• Fighting is +1 vs an enemy without a melee weapon.

There's nothing to track on each unit besides:

• Are the Up or Down? (literally stood up or laid down)
• Have they activated this turn? (I wish I could think of a smart way to track this, but for now I just put a little token next to their mini. This pains me, but it's useful to be able to see at a glance whether an enemy has acted yet)

Then for your entire Warband you need to know whether or not you've used your Tactic. I'd put a little token next to it when you've used it, just like when you've used up a unit's Turn.

Scenarios
I want to create some interesting scenarios here. "Grab the Objective" is all well and good, but if I'm embracing the drama then I feel like I could get a bit wacky with these.

Advancement
I always liked the little events that would happen between battles in Necromunda campaigns, or between dungeon crawls in Warhammer Quest. I have a little nod to this in the Casualty and Survivor tables that all models roll on at the end of the game. Maybe you learned from your near-death experience, maybe you got captured by your enemies, or maybe you stumbled on a deal on a powerful new weapon.

Warbands
All four sample warbands are now represented in my collection primed and ready for a clumsy paintjob.


RUSTED ORDER



Argastes - Rust Priest (3+)
Blaster (M/6" 1x4), Blade (2x1)
Assistant: Reroll one die on your turn. Sacrifice them to ignore one Wound.

Brass Knight (4+)
Talon (1x4)
Shield: Reroll a single Resist die once per Turn.

Techno Hunter (Precise 4+)
Longrifle (12" 1x4)

2 Cyber-Guard (5+)
Stormgun (6" 3x1)



SPLICE COVEN



Dyrak - Splice Prophet (3+)
Pistol (6" 1x2), Scythe (2x4)

Reaper Schloster (4+)
Machinegun (12" 5x1)

Engineer Weirs (4+)
Disruptor (6' 3x2)

3 Spliced Brethren (5+)
Shotgun (6' 2x1)



HELL'S HOUNDS



Solias - Man-Poacher (Precise, Evasive 3+)
Rifle (12" 1x2)
Tracer: When you hit a target with Fire you can have an Ally within 3” Free Fire on them too.

Carnage Demon (4+)
Cannon (12" 2x4)

Hanz Skorpion (Nimble 4+)
Stormgun  (6" 3x1)

2 Relic Hunters (5+)
Rifle (12" 1x2), Blade (2x1)



LEASH BREAKERS



Flavia Helstrom - Liberator (Nimble 3+)
Piercer (6" 1x3), Blade (2x1)
Wingpack: You can Move through air as long as you land on a solid surface.

Beaky Prowler (Nimble 4+)
Breacher (6" 1x5)

Augmented Gladiator (4+)
Stormgun (6" 3x1) Blade (2x1)

2 Verminhead Zealots (5+)
Talon (1x5)

Knowing my painting skills I fear this is the best they're ever going to look!

Next time I'll talk about the results of initial playtesting and see if I feel brave enough for a painting update.