As lockdown is returned until Easter (hopefully for the last time) it’s a good time for an intensive afternoon of solitaire playtesting of the GRAVETIDES core rules using the models from our Undead Fleet Kickstater and warships of the new Nadvidian Frozen Necrorealm fleet that we have discarded in the process of learning 3D printing.
Playing the game with a good number of actual models with their respective experimental special rules even if the obvious limitation of solitaire play and of a small and round table to play on has been a totally different experience than trying the game with counters representing generic warship with no strange weapons or other bizarre characteristics.
These plays have highlighted the necessity to simplify damage allocation and to remake (again!) the Ship Card to allow faster recording and tracking of damage and status preserving some aspects of the GRAVETIDES rules we deemed important like the allocation of attacks on different sides of the target and some other ‘finesses’.
In the end we are now working on a new version of the GRAVETIDES core rules that will introduce some differences such as:
- damage rules will be simplified keeping the allocation of hits on different ship sides where it really counts
- Ship Cards will be redesigned and simplified with damage tracking and vessel status recorded using counter instead of rubber and pencil to speed up the game and enabling players to check each vessel conditions with a glance
- clarifications and tuning of the movement rules, mainly for warship propelled by magic
- range and distances measuring clarifications
- admirals and sorcerers ranking will be simplified with the ability to have higher quality officers to be treated as a perks to be bought during fleet composition
These changes some other ones will be reflected into ships experimental rules starting with the ones of the Kavenid ad Nadividian war fleets which were used for playtesting.
Last but not least we have also received some suggestions and clarifications requests that we will try to incorporate in the GRAVETIDES core rules.
Further playtesting will hopefully be done and reported soon.
Thanks for watching and stay tuned!