So my star wars clone army list is done, probably...need to get a couple of things checked around exclusivity and standard units. I've been trying to work around/work out this rule....

First questions
Can I define a standard unit that must be fielded as a Hero, by forcing a Hero the minimum unit size becomes 1 hence I could create a standard unit of:
Jedi Envoy
0-2 Jedi Knights (Must be Hero's)
0-2 Jedi Padawan (Must be Hero's)

Figure since you can have 1 having 0 must also be a legal choice since then it breaks no rules as it doesn't exist. If this is not legal can you point at the why not smile

Second Question
Can I specify a Vehicle unit that mix's frames? It's exclusive anyways for being vehicle can I mix other vehicles in:

Light Cavalry Support Unit
2-6 BARC Speeders
2-4 AT-PT's

If this is valid would this mean this unit is only assigned 1 initiative card ie if I fielded 2 of each would they all move on the same initiative card?

Can you specify "1" vehicle in a standard unit or must it be a minimum of 2?

Third Question
This ones a bit hairier. If the above is correct doesn't this make Commanders much more powerful as they could negate this initiative card penalty you might have by letting you lob an extra initiative card back into the initiative deck. I know at the moment Commanders for points spent seem a little redundant (especially if you already have fluidity). I'm assuming this would mean you'd probably pay and want both a primary and secondary commander.

Fourth Question
Assuming two is valid wouldn't you need to be careful to make up some vehicular/troop units which mix and match an odd assortment of units for different PV sized battles, sort of like:

Light Scout group (1000pv)
2-6 BARC Speeders
2-4 AT-PT's
1 Jedi Commander Hero

Attack Group (2000pv)
4-9 Clone ARC trooper
2-8 BARC Speeders
2-6 AT-PT's
2 Republic Troop Transports
1 Jedi Commander Hero

Assault Attack Group (4000pv)
4-9 Clone ARC trooper
4-9 Clone ARC trooper
2-10 BARC Speeders
2-8 AT-PT's
2-4 Republic Troop Transports
2 TX-130 Tanks
2 AT-AP
1 Jedi Commander Hero


So allowing you to field a wide variety of vehicles (size 3 infantry) for bigger sized battles, although your losing tactical advantage due to lose of initiative cards.

The clone army has a low adhoc unit limit of 25% but can field 50% vehicles, it can be hard to field 50% vehicles when the vehicles are all exclusive and the only way I can see around it is to bundle them into different standard unit groups. Especially when you get upto higher PV battles, so i'm hoping I've bent the rules right  wink  .

Thanks for any thoughts and answers

27

(15 replies, posted in Defiance)

Still a little hard for me to say if they are fully overpowered but I do know you'd be a mug to not take the max amount of IF AOE weapons in fielded army, they provide a definite above avg hitting power for points spent and on SI no matter the advantages taken are brutal.

This again might be the point as it does provide PI with a distinct tactical and point advantage over SI. However I've always run under the impression an army of lower tech militia guys would stand an even chance of defeating a higher tech all robotic race type army due to the pointing system used. I'm starting to see this as less and less the case which is maybe the way it's meant to be.   

Adding aug can help but then I'm left also adding more points per unit fielded until in the end I start to question is my SI +2 infantry with a pile of Aug's really as effective as PI 0 AR unit with no aug and yet the point costs equilise to the same (or so close the 20-30 points less per unit is lost in an overall army)? Admittedly I'd have to do full on statistical analysis to work this out but on the face of it I'd have to think not. Raw armour power especially @ 0 is very effective and provides a visible tactical advantage.

Maybe it's not a problem with IF maybe the pointing system is overall is to tight ie not enough difference between SI/PI and vehicle stuff such that when you look at 1000 point field 50-60 point advantage is really lost due to the in ability to field anything in that 50-60 points.

Are APC's immune to AOE? I thought if they were caught in the blast radius the opponent would still roll a roll at -5 penalty, requiring an APC to have -3 AR to really totally avoid the potential for cluster fire just lucking it to death due to volume of d10's rolled. If this isn't the case and all vehicles get to ignore AOE, APC's will become mandatory for me.

Don't get me wrong I still like the rules especially moral/initative, It would just be nice to get some feedback from the designer on what the thinking was. I hate tinkering with rule sets as you can then unbalance something else causing even bigger problems.

I did have a quick game against Carb were the IF rules really fell apart, basically the only reason my troops didn't die 6 times over was that we played at 15mm movement so they were effectively very very spaced out. However if it'd been at normal movement I'd lost both units by the 2nd turn and 1 vehicle for his lose of zero of his units(My guys were all hiding inside medium terrain). This against the clone army who don't even exploit the IF rule, but just have a little IF as flavor.

28

(15 replies, posted in Defiance)

The more I read them, The more I think the AOE and IF rules are to powerful.

Using the stock rules the POI can normally be nailed to with <1inch of were you want on your 2nd shot, as you've just measured out the location of your first shot. This becomes worse if you have 2 units IF'ing and it becomes worse again if you have say 2 mob units of 20 infantry IF'ing as a fire cluster on a base 4" template....

Using your rule above Sam should help, however my poor themed SI army with terrain mastery is in no way ever going to be competitive with a stock spread army of SI/PI. I have to hop from Terrain piece to terrain piece and then get blasted by IF fire which gets to ignore Terrain Mastery and Cover... 

I have no clue why blast templates aren't affected by terrain or slightly nullified by it, next time we play (Assuming I can get someone to) I'm  going to try affecting blast radius of AOE in terrain by the same modifier as movement light 3/4, med 1/2, and heavy 1/4. To represent bits of Shrapnel etc getting blocked by the terrain (Smoke/Radiological/Poison gas types will be unaffected by this rule).

Guess I could just be cheap and use the above tactic myself but then the game will degenerate into an IF fest and he/she who draws initiative first with one of their IF units wins...not exactly my idea of fun... :cry:

29

(15 replies, posted in Defiance)

Just to add to the discussion. There appears to be a loophole (assuming I'm interpretation correctly)if you will with Indirect fire vs direct fire AOE weapons.

Situation assume a vehicle equipped with IF AOE weapon has LOS to a unit more than 15" away of SI in medium terrain, Assuming the vehicle doesn't need to move

Firing as LOS AOE weapon:
To hit roll modified: -3 Terrain, Stationary +2

Firing as IF Weapon
To hit roll: select coordinate or as above , Stationary +2

Why wouldn't the player in control of the vehicle always IF, they basically get to ignoring the fact the SI is hunkered in medium terrain, the advantage becomes even better if the opposing army has terrain mastery or is in heavy terrain.

I do note on the scatter chart that it says " ..will therefor land at the highest point above it's determined POI", does that mean it's assumed at the top of the tree tops which could be taken as landing at level 1 or  even half level 1 6-12inchs above and hence would never do any damage to troops in forest for example?

??

30

(1 replies, posted in Defiance)

It'll probably turn out I'm using an ancient copy of the rules to reference...

Why are SI infantry of size 1-2 so restricted? size 3 SI infantry have a far greater range. For example

On table  2.1 I can have an M5AR2+, M5AR3+ and an M5AR4+
however on table 2.3 for SI I can go from M5AR0+ through to M5AR2+ admittedly then I pay for the extra DC

Is this to represent some form of extra toughness as well as the extra DC point? or just a way of splitting up PI and SI of Size 2?

No biggy just something I noticed as I really wanted size2 SI @ M5AR1+ infantry frame

31

(6 replies, posted in Defiance)

Hmm let me see what I can remember, no ADR was used this game:

Turn One:
Most of the initiative cards favoured the UNE force, they moved up a little but seemed to be a bit intimidated by the tank and the battle tombs, The UNE APC did move up towards the park. One of the Anime mecha scored a lucky hit on a skyhawk and took it out with out it ever moving. The clone/Star marines infantry stayed behind cover. I'm pretty sure the tank stayed covered as well.  The battle tombs moved down the right side of the board to pressure the UNE infantry on that side.

Turn Two:
Initiative favored the star marines, So the battle tombs motored down the right hand side and proceeded to turn about 8 infantry into little piles of charcoal. The Tank backed up and fired on the APC scoring some hits but nothing significant. The troopers milled around and tryed to get LOS on a few of the UNE infantry. The UNE APC moved forward a little more into the park area, The 2 UNE anime mecha fird on the tank and got lucky and stripped of all it's weapons but doing no other damage. The infantry returned fire on the battle tombs and ran for cover.

Turn Three
Initiative favoured the UNE, more hits on the tank from the anime mecha removing the last of it weapons and dropping it's movement by 1/4. The battle tombs wiped out a few more infantry and fired on the APC scoring a hit or two. The star marine infantry and the UNE infantry traded a few pot shots. The Star amrine tank started a charge maneouver across the board as it was effectively weaponless. The anime mech easily dodged the ram. APC unloaded the elite UNE infantry it had been hauling.

Turn Four
Initiative favoured UNE, One of the battle tombs was dropped by the UNE elite infantry in a volley of standard fire. The Other battle tomb wiped out a couple more infantry. I think it also scored a couple of hits on the APC knocking it out.
The Star amrine tank took a few more hits and was pretty much rendered immobile it did manage to run down one Infantry man.

Turn Five
Initiative favoured UNE, Tank was destroyed by the anime mecha, the last battletomb was destroyed in another volley of fire from standard infantry (something like 5 shots needing 9+ and 4 of the rolls came up 9+). Some of the Star marines infantry tried to move up to support the battle tomb before it was destroyed but as it was then destroyed they got cut down by another UNE infantry squad.

The game went on for about another 4 turns but it was really all over by turn 5 and the UNE just mopped up the remaining Star marine Infantry smile.

Am I pretty close Sam?

I didn't watch the space thug vs une game to closely but they were completely wiped out by then end of turn 4 and it was pretty obvious by the end of turn 2 that they were out matched.

32

(6 replies, posted in Defiance)

yes smile and Lego Minifigs are about 1:45 scale from memory, so they are a little large but I put up with the size penalty so I can use them for wargaming. The vechiles are the biggest problem as they are quiet large, but I tend to place them on a diet and thin them down a little.

Buildings are old worldworksgames mayhem city buildings.

33

(6 replies, posted in Defiance)

While we await smokingwrekage to provide some detail how about a couple of pictures:

<IMG src="http://sirrob01.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/defiance-mj12-game1.jpg?w=300&h=187">http://sirrob01.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/defiance-mj12-game1.jpg?w=300&amp;h=187</IMG>
<IMG src="http://sirrob01.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/defiance-mj12-game2.jpg?w=300&h=187">http://sirrob01.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/defiance-mj12-game2.jpg?w=300&amp;h=187</IMG>

Clone troopers used star marines list this time as I lost the original list, writing it up in word this time....

edit: bonus just found an early version of the list tucked away

34

(13 replies, posted in Defiance)

How the Clone Army went - the good and the bad sad

Game One: Clone Army vs Orc Army (My Wife). (A Win)
(both sides overspent on weapons so it balanced out roughly)(No ADR was played)

The clone army moved in on the Orcs using their fast moving speeder bikes and AT-PT's, effectivly cleaning up the green hoards runts and Grunts in very short order a few well placed shots from a unit of clone troopers cleaned up the rest. one speeder bike and several AT-PT's did bite the dust from some extremely well placed sharp shooting from the Orcs (even thought they weren't using anti-vec weapons.

this left 3 rather determined Killer Kans to clean up the remains of the clone army, having very few heavy assets on the board their was some concern from the clone commander that he would be able to take the Killer kans down fortunatly severl of the  clone troopers were armed with PLX-1 anti vechile rockets and the troopers were able to wipe out the killer kans at fairly long range without losing a trooper.


Game Two: Clone Army vs Sams Nasty Troopers??
(ADR was on)

~Roughly turn one~
An early almost fatal tactical error early on saw Sam's nasty APC take out two AT-PT's without a shot being fired from either one (I was gambling on being able to use fludity but my luck was holding...). A brillant stroke from Sam non the less. The supporting clone troopers though got some good solid hits on the APC using the PLX-1 Anti-vechile rockets although not enough to take it out, they did cause it some major damage. Two speeder Bikes and the remaining two AT-PT's meanwhile moved up the left flank to try and pin several units of infantry up in the deployment zone, the remaining unit of clone troopers fired on a light recon infantry unit but they were solid in their stance and remained active even through heavy casualties. The Jedi meanwhile proceeded to run up the right flank to try and engage the enemy units in HTH while being pinned by the speeders. Sam's unit of troopers managed to drop 1 of the speeders with a nasty one shot rocket barrage.

~Roughly turn 2~
The clone army stuck the field having made a very determined ADR roll. The Jedi continued to sprint up the right flank but due to covering fire by Sam's troopers was unable to make the most of his speed to get into a position to engage them in HTH. The Remaining clone troopers armed with the anti-vechile rockets again hit Sam's APC but missed the two AT-PT's diverted and used there anti-vechile rockets to finally knocking it out but couldn't destroying it or damage the troopers inside. The 2nd speederbike got taken down by the remains of the light recon unit after it missed it's shot badly. The Jedi moved up the right flank again but couldn't engage due to buildings and cover fire arcs. The APC then unloaded the contents an elite unit of nasties. A unit of clone troopers attempted to cover fire against them but didn't manage to hit any.   

It was at about this point I knew things were going badly...

~Roughly turn 3~   
The clone army having passed ADR again with no penalty were a little slow of the mark in turn 3. One of Sam's elite troopers moved across with a flame thrower and proceeded to use it against the Jedi...he called on the force but for some reason it failed him in his time of need and he turned into a glowing pile of ash 

Okay my bad I rolled a 1 a 3+ would have saved his butt

. This was quiet a large phsycological blow for the remains of the army. Sam's last remaining man in his recon unit proceeded to open fire on a AT-PT and took it out, the remains of clone trooper unit one attempted to engage the elite Trooper unit from the APC killing two of them but died to a man in the returning volley of fire. The remained of Sam's units proceeded to charge down the road towards the remains of the clone trooper unit 2. One AT-PT remained in relative safety behind a building

~Roughly turn 4~
the clone army passing ADR again

-2 penalty this time

. The remaining AT-PT stepped out and attempted to fire on the elite unit but his targeting was a little off and he missed the returning volley of fire proceeded to melt the craft into a molten puddle of goo. The last 6 clone troopers tried to make a mad dash through some open terrain to engage the elite unit again

Really wanted them dead...

Sam was covering with one of his other units and at extreme range some nice shooting was carried out and every clone trooper to a man was cut down and killed.

I wasn't entirely happy with either game;
What went well:
~ The fast moving speeder bikes caused some major havoc and concern in both games even though they were very fragile.
~ The AT-PT's were neither good or bad but they did suffer from some very bad luck in both games being taken out with rolls of 10 when only 1-2 shots used against them. Overall though i think their okay.
~ The regular clone troopers were okay but seemed a little costly for their fragility, Gyro-stabilizers rock and fluidity is extremely handy assuming you get a card come out soon enough.
~ they stuck to the field to the last clone which was a plus.

Badly:
~ Jedi got toasted for 217 points to do nothing kinda sucked he needs more speed and Sam suggested a cdw smoke to help conceal, I'll need to re-tool him.
~ It's really tough taking out heavily armored vechiles with troopers and AT-PT's I basically had to use the firepower from my whole army to destroy Sam's one APC and then still had 4 units of troops to face.
~ Dice are not my friend smile

Sam feel free to throw anything in if you remember it differently, Hopefully we'll be able to get hold of some pictures to post.

35

(13 replies, posted in Defiance)

Fail tree wont be making an appearance...but fail APC will be smile...

36

(13 replies, posted in Defiance)

I've also thrown in my Orc army or as complete as it is...more complete than last time but still no paint.

37

(3 replies, posted in Defiance)

soldiers and slow moving equipment seem to move about right (actually soldiers move very quick) It was more the fast moving items I was worried about.

But I just went back and re-read the stats more closely when I convert them out they don't make their top speeds in SWSAGA either. The scales are slightly different 1"=1.5m and 1"=2m for defiance so I'll just do a straight square conversion taking into account the square to meter size difference (which on avg means dropping 1 square of movement for each piece of equipment).

Thanks for the help though made me double check the source books as I started to wonder how they coped with vehicles zipping around at 500km/h+

38

(3 replies, posted in Defiance)

Defiance speed seems to be a little odd when you calulate it out (a man moves 4inchs (@ 2m an inch in 5secs) which equates to 5.75..kph)possibly the speeds have been lowered similar to weapon ranges so we're not all running from one side of the battlefield to the other in 1 turn big_smile ?

The max move of 14S for ground equates to roughly 20kph, 40kph and 60kph not to bad, but considering some sci-fi vechiles can exceed 100kph even over rough terrain seems a little slow?

Is their some sort of rule of thumb or logrithmic progression to use when converting a vechile who has known top speed of X to defiance inch movement eg:

<IMG src="http://sirrob01.madpage.com/images/example.PNG">http://sirrob01.madpage.com/images/example.PNG</IMG>

I'm probably just over thinking this and maybe it's just a go with your gut thing but any help or guidance people can provide much appreciated smile.

39

(5 replies, posted in Defiance)

Thanks for the offer tnjrp and nice ideas on the jedi commanders.

Smokingwreckage have to see how they go trying to convert the armies following starwars reference material so I'm not doing much tweaking and trying to make a semi-true Clone & droid army starwars convert which means I suspect they'll get stomped by just about anything but each other. Then again maybe not.

Below is a short list of troops/vehicles, no stats yet but simply narrowing down the piles of troop/vehicle and weapon choices has been a headache. Still with the below I'm exceeding 35 potential frames I'll narrow it more as I stat them up. For the below little pile of Troops and vehicles there are 26 unique weapons (I wont post those way to many smile) it appears the Clone army doesn't believe in standardization (other than their amour):

Troopers
Clone Scout
Clone Trooper
Clone ARC Trooper
Clone Jet Trooper
Clone Blaze Trooper
Jedi general?

Vechiles
Light
BARC Speeder
&
Swamp Speeder (Infantry Support Platform)
APC
Republic Troop Transport
AFV
TX 130 Tank
Anime Mecha
AT-PT (Light walker)
Mecha
AT-AP

Posting this to keep myself motivated as I have to go sort through the SW SAGA books and convert the stats to defiance now...

40

(5 replies, posted in Defiance)

Jedi would fit in with a clone army, but they tended to be generals and If I do put them in they wont be the roving unstoppable juggernauts they tend to be shown as in the movies, sure good in certain situations against certain enemies but can still be killed.

on a side note - It'd be very interesting to see the average life span of a roving Jedi knight during the clone wars as not all of them were as super powered as Ben and Anakin (I tend to view those two as the top .1% of Jedi). I have a suspicion from the resources I've read that a lot of Jedi have died because of wrong place wrong time syndrome.

I've started gathering the names and the RPG stats on weapons that I need to convert as well as deciding what troop types to include in each army, It seems to be fairly straight forward although there are a few gaps in equipment that I'll fill with creative license smile.

If I get the army lists done and smokingwreckage doesn't smash them into embarrassing itty bitty bits next time we play I'll post the army lists up in future:).

41

(5 replies, posted in Defiance)

Just before I disappear into the realms of building up a new army and searching all over the net for references on blaster rates of fire, vechile movement speeds etc... Has anyone made up a Starwars Army list I'm specifically after a Clone Army list and a Trade Federation droid Army list...But any conversions anyone has done would be useful.
smile

42

(5 replies, posted in Defiance)

Few picy's to go with Sams post, these were taken by Mark, The first was an actual battle, the other two pretty sure were mock ups wink.

<IMG src="http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming1_a.jpg">http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming1_a.jpg</IMG>
link to full picy - http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming1_a.jpg
The above was from one of the actual games, the DND mini's are proxy'd in as cyberdogs and you can see the runts of to the side, there facing of against Sam's elite warrior units (blue).


<IMG src="http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming2_a.jpg">http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming2_a.jpg</IMG>
link to full picy - http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming2_a.jpg
Shot of some of Sam's Robo Warriors they did get used a lot during the course of the weekend.


<IMG src="http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming3_a.jpg">http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming3_a.jpg</IMG>
link to full picy - http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/sirrob01/Wargamming/gaming3_a.jpg
Marine (in a dress) slinking through the light woods.

43

(13 replies, posted in Defiance)

How  many Folding tables do we need to bring up with us?  0,2,4,5,6  :?:

cya

44

(13 replies, posted in Defiance)

No pressure to finish my army now...back to cutting and gluing...

45

(7 replies, posted in Defiance)

Hello and Quick question
Are the effectors for HTH limited the same as they are for Weapons, I'm guessing yes as

Page 74 under HTH:
                       "game effects are exactly the same as for ranged weapons."

but just want to confirm my interpretation of this is correct.

thanks for the help.