I know this is very nerdy talk for some, but I really appreciate the thoughtful feedback from people that care and would like more thoughtful feedback in hopes of evolving a solution (upon which I have been working).
First point: imagine explaining what is great about the idea of Heroscape to someone that might be really interested if they see its full potential as a motivational point for getting IN to it AFTER they try it. To elaborate on a problem related to this challenge and that identified before, but to put more concisely and differently in order to get relevent feedback, let me rephrase the problem with the factions/generals...
If you were teaching me this game as a noobie and I asked why I can't have a unit that I think is coolest looking be part of a faction with a symbol I like the most, and your answer is "You can paint your own custom version of the unit, use software to create a custom unit card, print it, and hope it is accepted on a competitive level as fair relevant to all the other point values and rules on every other card"... I would be annoyed... and still am.
Tying factions to personality traits seems like something that would appeal to kids obsessed with psychology and drama. That is fine with me, and kind of cool in a way, but it is far less appealing to people that get psych'd about ideology, politics, history, and lore. To be frank, it was a missed opportunity to take a shortcut and have the jumping point for the unit traits design be based upon names of individual Valkyrie characters. When they failed to follow-through with commitment to or elaboration upon their own fictional characters, they opened a crack in the design of all their units. To take the game competitively, which some wanted to do in a way that aligned with the theme and appeal of the game, they needed to accept the deficient lore with no amount of enthusiasm. Choice at a tournament for unit selection was manipulated [unintentionally, I think] away from faction selection based on appeal of the faction's ideology. If the best players at a tournament had mostly Vydar armies, it wasn't interesting that "tricky" personality types were somehow better than noble, lawful evil, chaotic evil, or nature-based personality types. Being a better strategist or tactician for such a competition was disconnected from something that WarHammer got much better... providing a framework for a working competitive system that made identifying all the fill-in-the-blank opportunities for "army-building" very easy for people that wanted to identify with lore. Another way of thinking about it is that they insinuate that players are in the role of Valkyrie generals, yet the units we summon profess their loyalty to another Valkyrie general (one of their fictional characters). I, as a Valkyrie general with my own name would like to summon an elite group of paladins, knights, and warriors from across medieval Europe in order to have a competitive, merciless battle against someone that enthusiastically plays Orcs. While it is easy to arrange with the Heroscape system, the competitiveness of it would drive to unthematic selection of units to actually be competitive. A broader range of theme (all of Europe) would help increase my options, but imagine the same problem with other enthusiasts (e.g. Roman Empire nerds that would have to go all-in on customs to incorporate cards and new point costs for Praetorian guards, pilum, signifiers, and cornicens). The NEED for customs (which is a major perk for this game) is challenged by NEEDING to modify rules to accommodate good customs. And this is the problem I want to fix. To command and control units as groups is one of the essences of battle that tacticians want to master. The role of musicians, leaders, standard bearers, and heroes is very important, but more because of the orchestration of those real core abilities in mastering maneuver, rather than necessarily based upon personality and knowing how to exploit the official game rules that were of the best production value for the price (which includes time/effort if one must do himself). While that is all very wordy, I would like for you to consider my prior sentence carefully... being a tactician in the role of a Valkyrie that can incorporate ideology into a competitive system that facilitates miniature customization and realistic considerations for ~summoning the best warriors and heroes from all time and realms~ is pretty cool. Without pouring our hope into the right business getting the rights and producing something we all need to pre-agree to support or else it gets cancelled again.... Without pouring our time into waiting for that to happen... Without pouring a day's salary for those of us that even have expendable income.... we ought to have a system of our own that is easy to get others into and without having to spend a fortune.
[Naethersgaard is the answer.]
Anyways, the biggest problem with HeroScape that should be easy to solve (to make our own system that supports easier customization), is to standardize a new format for cards with less wordy abilities for units. We need new keywords, new command & control tools, and a pattern that even an impatient noob to the game might get excited about when he realizes he can make a custom on a sheet of paper or index card for each type of miniature he brings to the table/battle. It should be something that can be scaled up or down and still work well. Visible hit zones, facing, personality types, and so much more needs to be scrapped from a basic working system. Costs need to be based on currencies standard throughout all time, since warriors from all time might be summoned. One of the most important concepts to capture in economy is the concept of SUBMISSION TO TERMS. A challenge to contest necessitates merciless chaos and violence if covenant of some sort is not made. Each agreement that must be made in order to incorporate a custom's use has the K0$t of 1 Koph point... marked with any cool symbol that resembles the letter K, probably in a circle at the top right with other basic costs... K being the ancient Hebrew/Phoenician symbol that signified the palm, hand of submission, or offering. PaleoHebrew/Phoenician being one of the oldest any reasonable person interested in scripts could be expected to translate since it is the basis for Greek and Latin, which most of us use, and the most of the rest in the world would use Cyrrilic (also based ultimately on PaleoHebrew/Phoenician). Not interested in expanding for inclusiveness for what would be the firekeg if customs were based on Arabic or "Modern Hebrew" (adopted from the Babylonian/Dragon Kingdom) scripts. Going Paleo goes about as far back as we can imagine accurately in conjunction with the most trustworthy historic documents that we can collectively and culturally trust, which includes religious, which has always been our culture, even when our ancestors were pagan, which almost all were at some point. The symbols in Paleo are pretty cool too, compared to the Chaldean block letters, as they resemble runes. So now no matter the lore of your own elves and dwarves, they and other humans all have runes upon which we can all agree without studying futharks and limiting ourselves to a smaller region and demographic in history than which we hope to include.
I brought a core version of this game over to play with a new player last weekend. It was testing of patience, rather than conducive to building excitement, to read all the unit abilities after we already spent time putting together a basic battlefield that looked good. We decided to go with the dumb version on the back while also limiting ourselves to only melee units to avoid explaining extra rules. Some people aren't interested in complicated rules on their first try of the game, for if they don't like the rules, they may not be interested in owning OR playing. But the appeal of the game should be equivalent or surpass the equivalent of the appeal of the miniatures. The more equal, the more they are in harmony. We ended up having one of the best little skirmishes I've had in a long time with HeroScape, and felt like it was close to fair, with only a few things to patch. I can detail more later but would appreciate feedback from those that share any part of my vision (Wizards!).
First point: imagine explaining what is great about the idea of Heroscape to someone that might be really interested if they see its full potential as a motivational point for getting IN to it AFTER they try it. To elaborate on a problem related to this challenge and that identified before, but to put more concisely and differently in order to get relevent feedback, let me rephrase the problem with the factions/generals...
If you were teaching me this game as a noobie and I asked why I can't have a unit that I think is coolest looking be part of a faction with a symbol I like the most, and your answer is "You can paint your own custom version of the unit, use software to create a custom unit card, print it, and hope it is accepted on a competitive level as fair relevant to all the other point values and rules on every other card"... I would be annoyed... and still am.
Tying factions to personality traits seems like something that would appeal to kids obsessed with psychology and drama. That is fine with me, and kind of cool in a way, but it is far less appealing to people that get psych'd about ideology, politics, history, and lore. To be frank, it was a missed opportunity to take a shortcut and have the jumping point for the unit traits design be based upon names of individual Valkyrie characters. When they failed to follow-through with commitment to or elaboration upon their own fictional characters, they opened a crack in the design of all their units. To take the game competitively, which some wanted to do in a way that aligned with the theme and appeal of the game, they needed to accept the deficient lore with no amount of enthusiasm. Choice at a tournament for unit selection was manipulated [unintentionally, I think] away from faction selection based on appeal of the faction's ideology. If the best players at a tournament had mostly Vydar armies, it wasn't interesting that "tricky" personality types were somehow better than noble, lawful evil, chaotic evil, or nature-based personality types. Being a better strategist or tactician for such a competition was disconnected from something that WarHammer got much better... providing a framework for a working competitive system that made identifying all the fill-in-the-blank opportunities for "army-building" very easy for people that wanted to identify with lore. Another way of thinking about it is that they insinuate that players are in the role of Valkyrie generals, yet the units we summon profess their loyalty to another Valkyrie general (one of their fictional characters). I, as a Valkyrie general with my own name would like to summon an elite group of paladins, knights, and warriors from across medieval Europe in order to have a competitive, merciless battle against someone that enthusiastically plays Orcs. While it is easy to arrange with the Heroscape system, the competitiveness of it would drive to unthematic selection of units to actually be competitive. A broader range of theme (all of Europe) would help increase my options, but imagine the same problem with other enthusiasts (e.g. Roman Empire nerds that would have to go all-in on customs to incorporate cards and new point costs for Praetorian guards, pilum, signifiers, and cornicens). The NEED for customs (which is a major perk for this game) is challenged by NEEDING to modify rules to accommodate good customs. And this is the problem I want to fix. To command and control units as groups is one of the essences of battle that tacticians want to master. The role of musicians, leaders, standard bearers, and heroes is very important, but more because of the orchestration of those real core abilities in mastering maneuver, rather than necessarily based upon personality and knowing how to exploit the official game rules that were of the best production value for the price (which includes time/effort if one must do himself). While that is all very wordy, I would like for you to consider my prior sentence carefully... being a tactician in the role of a Valkyrie that can incorporate ideology into a competitive system that facilitates miniature customization and realistic considerations for ~summoning the best warriors and heroes from all time and realms~ is pretty cool. Without pouring our hope into the right business getting the rights and producing something we all need to pre-agree to support or else it gets cancelled again.... Without pouring our time into waiting for that to happen... Without pouring a day's salary for those of us that even have expendable income.... we ought to have a system of our own that is easy to get others into and without having to spend a fortune.
[Naethersgaard is the answer.]
Anyways, the biggest problem with HeroScape that should be easy to solve (to make our own system that supports easier customization), is to standardize a new format for cards with less wordy abilities for units. We need new keywords, new command & control tools, and a pattern that even an impatient noob to the game might get excited about when he realizes he can make a custom on a sheet of paper or index card for each type of miniature he brings to the table/battle. It should be something that can be scaled up or down and still work well. Visible hit zones, facing, personality types, and so much more needs to be scrapped from a basic working system. Costs need to be based on currencies standard throughout all time, since warriors from all time might be summoned. One of the most important concepts to capture in economy is the concept of SUBMISSION TO TERMS. A challenge to contest necessitates merciless chaos and violence if covenant of some sort is not made. Each agreement that must be made in order to incorporate a custom's use has the K0$t of 1 Koph point... marked with any cool symbol that resembles the letter K, probably in a circle at the top right with other basic costs... K being the ancient Hebrew/Phoenician symbol that signified the palm, hand of submission, or offering. PaleoHebrew/Phoenician being one of the oldest any reasonable person interested in scripts could be expected to translate since it is the basis for Greek and Latin, which most of us use, and the most of the rest in the world would use Cyrrilic (also based ultimately on PaleoHebrew/Phoenician). Not interested in expanding for inclusiveness for what would be the firekeg if customs were based on Arabic or "Modern Hebrew" (adopted from the Babylonian/Dragon Kingdom) scripts. Going Paleo goes about as far back as we can imagine accurately in conjunction with the most trustworthy historic documents that we can collectively and culturally trust, which includes religious, which has always been our culture, even when our ancestors were pagan, which almost all were at some point. The symbols in Paleo are pretty cool too, compared to the Chaldean block letters, as they resemble runes. So now no matter the lore of your own elves and dwarves, they and other humans all have runes upon which we can all agree without studying futharks and limiting ourselves to a smaller region and demographic in history than which we hope to include.
I brought a core version of this game over to play with a new player last weekend. It was testing of patience, rather than conducive to building excitement, to read all the unit abilities after we already spent time putting together a basic battlefield that looked good. We decided to go with the dumb version on the back while also limiting ourselves to only melee units to avoid explaining extra rules. Some people aren't interested in complicated rules on their first try of the game, for if they don't like the rules, they may not be interested in owning OR playing. But the appeal of the game should be equivalent or surpass the equivalent of the appeal of the miniatures. The more equal, the more they are in harmony. We ended up having one of the best little skirmishes I've had in a long time with HeroScape, and felt like it was close to fair, with only a few things to patch. I can detail more later but would appreciate feedback from those that share any part of my vision (Wizards!).