Welcome to Gull's own Battleground Blog!

This is my personal space about YMG's Battleground: Fantasy and Historical Warfare miniatureless miniatures game. If you love miniatures wargames, but are put off by the expense in time and money of collecting and painting all those figures, this is the game for you! If you are unfamiliar with Battleground simply click on the tutorial link below and watch a quick sample combat. Next, click on the forum link and meet some really great folks who will be responsive and answer all your questions. If you are already familiar with BG:FW&HW this site is an adjunct to the forums where I put up my own brand of replays and and stuff that just wouldn't fit in the forum (but I'll post links!).

Friday, May 13, 2011

Monsters and Mercenaries Subfaction: Summoner Army Redux

I have playtested the Summoner faction a bit, and here is the latest and better organized, version.

Monsters and Mercenaries Subfaction: Summoner Army

Faction Ability - Demonic Embrace
Spend a Command Action and mark a spoils box to give a unit the Fearsome keyword. Spend another Command action and mark the second box to give the unit the Terror keyword. Erase one box to give unit (+1)-/- this combat. This replaces the M&M spoils ability.

New Unit that replaces Healer Mages: Demonic Summoner - Elite - 350 points
Summoner has same stats but no healing ability
Spell: The Enemy Within - Range 14" LOS Target must be unengaged
Target unit must take a courage test: Failure results in unit making a basic melee attack against itself.
Demonic Summoner has Summoning keyword.

Summoning: Once per turn, if a unit is on Hold, it may mark the requisite number of damage boxes and summon one unit, this does not cause a rout check. Checking last box eliminates summoning unit. Any type of unit that may be summoned may not be pruchased normally when building an army. When they enter play they must be placed within 2.5" of the summoning unit. The summoned unit may only be given the Close standing order, they may not be direct controlled, or have cards played on them unless the summoning unit is in good order (not routing and not engaged) but may have cards played on it as per normal. If it is engaged with a unit it is eliminated if the unit is eliminated.

If the required amount of damage boxes on the summoner are marked off the following demons may be summoned:

2: Half-Orc Spearmen
3: Earth Elemental (Sta-Puft marshmallow man)
6: Red Dragon
7: Ancient Red Dragon

Monday, May 9, 2011

Monsters and Mercenaries Subfaction: Demonic Summoners

Here is a Demons Subfaction that I came up with while kicking around some ideas about making an actual Demons Faction. It is basically a way to test the Summoning rules I came up with. Summoning units, while really cool sounding, has some inherent difficulties considering how to balance an army when units can just appear. I will not go so far as to say I've solved the problem, but I will say that I've come up with a possible solution and a way to playtest it by using the subfaction template. Obviously, were this to get the full go ahead and be given its own artwork and unique units it would be way cool, but before I suggest taking that step, I thought I'd come up with a viable proxy deck.

Start with the Monsters and Mercenaries deck. This subfaction uses all the factions specific cards.

The Faction Ability is called: Demonic Embrace - Spend a command action to mark one Demonic Embrace (Spoils) box to give the unit the Fearsome keyword. Spend a second Command Action to give the unit the Terror keyword. Erase one or two boxes to give the unit (+1)-/- per box. Only units that have Demonic Embrace boxes may recieve this ability.

To create a summoner card we will use the Healer Mage, and Healer Mages no longer exist for this faction, but a summoner costs 300 points and you may have a maximum of three. The stats remain the same, but we discard the healing ability and replace it with Summoner powers (explained below). The Demonic Summoner has one attack spell in addition to its summoning abilities.
The Enemy Within: Range 14" Indirect Fire
Target enemy unit makes a courage test, if it fails it immediately makes a full melee attack on itself. No cards may be played on this attack. This attack may not cause a courage check.

How to summon a Demon:
During the M&C phase a Summoner unit with the Hold Standing Order may mark off one of its green boxes and summon a lesser demon which appears adjacent to the summoner. Two Summoners that are adjacent to each other may each mark off a green box to summon a Greater Demon that appears adjacent to one of them. Three Summoners that are adjacent to each other may each mark off a green box to summon a Major Demon that appears adjacent to one of them.

Summoned Demons must be given the Close Standing Order and Command Actions may not be spent on them for any reason, nor may cards be played on them. The Demons will then move each turn as one of the summoner's units. It will FR any unit including units belonging to the Summoners faction! When a unit is destroyed the demon is removed from the board.

Any unit up to 150 points in value may be summoned as a lesser demon.
Any unit up to 350 points may be summoned as a Greater Demon.
Any unit up to 550 points may be summoned as a Major Demon.

When you summon a demon write SD on the card to note that it is a Summoned Demon.

You may summon as many Lesser and Greater Demons as you have available in your deck. The top limit is how many green boxes you have. Only one Major Demon may be summoned per game.
Units destroyed by demons count for victory purposes, as do demons the opponent destroys (but not those that destroy a unit and are eliminated).

When placing a demon make sure not to place it so that it FR's the summoners!

Demons retain none of their faction abilities, but retain all other abilities and keywords.

If you own other decks you may use any of those units as demons (Death Knights make really nasty Major Demons).

Yes, you may make elementalists Demons.

Note that the Ancient Red Dragon may not be a demon because it costs over 550 points...Come on, what'd you expect?

Havoc points may not be spent on Demons.

The Hill Giant always has range 21" as if two command actions had been spent.

Flying units will Fly to achieve their objectives, obviously landing to Final Rush.