[Alien Hunter X] Planned Classes

So, after having a sit down and fleshing things out a bit more, I've ended up with a large selection of classes. Ultimately, not every team will end up with access to every class (And honestly, i'm considering making a chunk of them 'Choose one or the Other') and I suspect many teams will end up with multiples of the same classes on Missions...

"The Soldier"

A trained military agent, skilled with most weapons and trained in modern warfare tactics. They specialise in improving their own equipment to get the most out of it every mission. They like to keep things by the books - Minimising loss of life and ensuring the safety of civilians.

"The Insurgent"

A human freedom fighter, someone who has lost because of the Invasion and refuses to go quietly into the night. Due to their lack of military training and often their lack of effective small arms, Insurgents have learned how to best ambush the aliens. They're dangerous mavericks who often cause a lot of collateral, especially when alien troop composition calls for something with a little more 'Bang' to take down...

"The Field Researcher"

As much as the Organisation would like to keep their eggheads safely behind walls away from where valuable intelligence can be shot, chewed or mangled, sometimes a researcher needs to head into the field to test new equipment or to gather valuable data that would never survive the journey back to the lab. Field Researchers are less hardy than actual soldiers, but should they manage to make a discovery and get it back to the lab in one piece, the Organisation will benefit greatly.

"The Scientist"

The Scientist isn't exactly fit for combat. However, the Scientist is a genius civilian agent, one who doesn't take leaps of logic so much as boards the express logic flight to its final destination. Whilst wholly unsuited in a firefight, the Scientist excels at gathering information on the Invaders that can be put to good use by inventing dangerous new toys...

"The Technician"

The Technician is a technically minded military agent, one who has been trained to do his often mission critical non combat role under enemy fire. Capable of on-site equipment repairs as well as advanced entrenchment techniques, the Technician is a skilled engineer.

"The Mechanic"

The Mechanic probably misses the days spent in his garage, fixing his (human designed and constructed) personal vehicle. A specialist in vehicles of many kinds, the mechanic knows how to get the most out of a car or a truck, wether that be driving down Invaders on the city streets or rigging that bizzare alien motorbike to drive into the side of a building and detonate.

"The Field Medic"

The Field Medic's skills fall somewhere between soldier and doctor, an agent that has been trained to avoid enemy fire in order to patch up his fallen squadmates. More so than just being a walking first aid kit however, the Field Medic is also a capable combatant and is more than able to provide an area of safety for his injured team-mates.

"The Paramedic"

A civilian Paramedic might not seem like the ideal candidate to have on your squad, but sometimes you don't really get much choice. The Paramedic is fast, able to quickly identify injuries and problems on the field as well as bolt across open ground in order to get behind that cover that his friend just went down behind as bolts of sun-hot plasma fly past him.

"The Armed Civilians"

Armed Civilians are less of a single, solitary civilian fighter and more of a mob of angry people who have been given guns by the Organisation in order to help protect themselves against the Invaders. Whilst they might not have skill on their side, they have numbers by the shoveful, often having more members than the squad they are fighting beside. Theres allways one Civilian who leads the group, but its his friends that make it.

"The Infiltrator"

The Infiltrator is an expert at tactical espionage action, able to take down Invaders with CQC in almost absolute silence as well as sneaking into areas others would be spotted heading into in order to gain valuable intel, steal resources and data or just to kill a specific individual. All in all, theyre "Pretty Good"

And of course, where would X-com be without its Psionic Troopers, hulking Cybernauts and Gene-Spliced Agents of destruction?

I'll talk a little about those guys next update...

Alien Hunter X: The Soldier (Finalised Sheet)

Yeah, that's right. I'm still alive.

My previous post **Coughsixmonthago** had a preview of the Soldier sheet!

After getting back into wanting to get this done, I finished off the sheet to a level that's ready to be play tested.

The Soldier Playbook

Tonight, i'm going to see about grabbing a bunch of people for some IRC gaming to playtest the current pile of nonsense I have in front of me.

I also tidied up some of the other stuff I've done, which you can find at the following links...

Mission Selection

Basic Moves

I... I think that without any long term plans for the moment that's all a player needs for the game, since it is a cribbing of the Powered by the Apocalypse system.

Now I just need to work out some sample invaders and I basically have all I need to...

Joust! (Second Draft)



So in continuation...

 

We decided to try splitting the equipment cards and the attack/defence cards into two separate decks.

 

This ultimately necessitated us to pick up at least 3 joust cards at the start and depending on how many you had picked up previously you might have to pick up less. It felt a lot more like you were planning out your tactics - have more cards for the list to modify your tactics and a higher chance of picking up things like Irresistible Force OR pick up more equipment cards for the improved chance of being able to find a great piece of equipment for your knights.

 

 

Well, we had to re-hash the equipment system a little and how the joust actually worked. Later on in the day when Fantum helped me play testing (Robert is the chap in the pictures however!) It was pointed out to me that the Jousters should cycle as the game was too long and it ended up feeling like the second and third knights were already fully equipped by the time they hit the lists.

 

So we ended up deciding that each knight would joust one after the other and that at the beginning of a joust you could place two equipment cards and then you could place another one as part of your action on the lists.

I also managed to take a sharpie to some of the cards when playing with Fantum also, so when we played it the second time around we actually had a reasonable number of Double Attack cards. I also created some Double Defence cards which seemed like they were needed.

With all the cards on the table now we really, really needed to have cards with different backs and maybe some colour on them to make it much more noticeable what cards are which. Robert also pointed out we might benefit from having some sort of 'Play Mat' so that you can see where stuff is supposed to go.

And looking back at the pictures... yeah, god damn that takes up a lot of table space.

 

 

We also decided that maybe it would be an idea to have some tokens to make it easier to make a note of how much attack and defence someone has. Also, the Block/Strike system needs a rehash - maybe some sort of  'targeting card' that both players put down markers on.

 

So right at the moment, we're at a 'rebuild the play test deck' place which is slowing down the testing!

Joust! (First Draft)

So for a while I've  had a board game bouncing around in my head. I'm not really sure what caused me to come up with it - I think that I must have been looking through my papercraft miniature collection and  wandered across a knight or two.

So yes, a game built up in my head - a bit of a bidding game where two knights charged towards each other in an attempt to knock each other off of their horses.

I'm really struggling to describe it more then that at the moment - But one thing I DO have is some pictures of the stuff I've come up with so far on my first playtest with the guys:

 

The basic set-up of the game.

 

 

This was the very first draft of the game - where all the cards that could be put into your hand were in one deck. We were using one knight each just so I could explain the basic idea of the game.

Down the centre of the game table is 'The List' - the big bit of fence where two jousters lunge at each other wildly from horseback. Each joust is in three parts represented by the three face down cards on the list. On the first flip both players turn over the card closest to them which will have 'Attack', 'Defence' 'Attack x2', 'Immovable Object' or 'Irresistable Force'. These increase the attack and defence of the jousting knight. They can then take an action (equip a non jousting knight, replace an unflipped card from the list with one from the hand, discard a card from the hand and draw a new card or change your Block  and Strike targets (more on those later...)

 

 

 

Also in this first deck was a number of equipment cards which replaced the knights basic starting equipment: Helmets, Lances (Heavy and Light), Steeds and Armour.

We noticed that hands got bogged down with crap  really fucking fast and using equipment cards  as attack and defence cards was too complicated.

Just to the right of The List are the 'Block and Strike' cards. Essentially this was a bit of a way to get  around some of your opponant's equipment  and protect your own - at the beginning of each joust each player  choses  an area to strike on their opponent  and block  on  their own knight... If a knight strikes a location  and there was no corresponding block,  the piece of equipment is destroyed before calculating 'The Clash' (more later!)



And then finally the third card will be flipped and The Clash is calculated. Unlike many traditional RPG combats where initiative is a thing, everything happens to both knights regardless of what happens. All of a knight's Attack Score (from their equipment or from cards on the list) are added up and compared to the opponant's Defence Score. Scoring happens as follows:

Attack is less than half of the opponant's Defence: Miss (0 Points)

Attack is more then half of the opponant's Defence but less then equal: Hit (1 Point)

Attack is equal or more then the opponant's defence but less than double: Broken Lance (3 Points)

Attack is double or greater than an opponant's defence: Unhorsed (5 points)

 

 

And... well, that's the basic premise of the game. We noticed several glaring problems straight away:

 

1) My original plan was to use equipment cards instead of attack and defence cards on the list if you didn't have enough. This got complicated as hell and was discarded with the second draft.

2) The game requires a lot of table space. Knight cards being surrounded by equipment cards took up half the available play area.

3) Non-deck cards like the Blocks, Strikes and Knights had the same  backs as everything else did. While this is essentially just  a 'could have been better prepared but eh, it was a first  draft mock up...' whine it did make  us  get frustrated more  than once.

4) I hadn't printed enough Attack x2 cards. Which essentially meant that both players often got identical scores each round and there wasn't enough variation in points per turn.

 

From  this, the game  evolved a little more. But more on that  another time!