...But they both cost the same. The Laser Cannon's greater range is just too much of an advantage.

Maybe make the Magma Cannon fire twice? Or have an even higher Deadly or Critical value?

This makes a certain amount of sense for aromro-piercing missiles and the like (the shot goes right through whatever protection is afforded by the cover) but it doesn't make sense for weapons like machine guns.

Potential alternatives:

• Ignore cover Life bonuses automatically for weapons with a sufficiently high D value
• Write a separate rule for "ignores cover Life bonuses" "Armor-Piercing, maybe?" Like maybe it has this effect and deals bonus damage against Hardened units?
• Nothing; it's not needed and cover should be protective in all circumstances

Needs to be widened a tad.

Done in that cool 90s line-art style.

The longer you stay on an objective, the more points you get for it (e.g. more time to grab loot from a cache) but all your points disappear if your scoring units are destroyed, retreat, or become non-scoring. A scoring unit could remove the points at any time by leaving the objective.

Instead of true line of sight minus protrusions for determining if models block other models, consider a more abstract size model with small/medium/large sizes. Terrain could have height too.

Their ranged weapon is a fairly strong Assault weapon, meaning it can be fired in melee. Do they really need a secondary dedicated melee weapon at all?

It might be more friendly if instead each section was one or two double-sided cards, which would be hopefully printed on thin cardboard. So for example there would be:

• A card with the basic game mechanics and sequence of play
• A card with the missions
• A card with the unit rules
• A card with the weapon rules
• A card with the actions
• A card with the terrain rules
• A card with the advanced rules

And so on. The idea behind this would be make it easier to find any given rule during play by providing a harder separation for the different elements of the game rules.

Version number in particular, to ease making new releases.

The earliest version of this system had explicit reactions at the moment when the unit was targeted by a Shoot, Fight, or Cast action:

• Defend: the unit gains a Life and Will bonus.
• Withdraw: the unit makes a free Move action directly away from the shooting as long as this doesn't take it any closer to any visible enemy models.
• Counter-attack: The unit gets to make a free Shoot or Fight (if applicable) action against the enemy unit before its original action happens, but with a penalty to the counter-attacking unit's Move, Shoot, and Fight values.

Certain weapons prevented or forced certain reactions; for example Overwhelming weapons did not permit a Counter-Attack traction, while Terrifying weapons forced a Withdraw reaction, like today's Forced Move Actions.

I scrapped it because of various problems with this system:

• Reactions were free and never involved any negative consequences, so there was never a reason to not make a reaction. This slowed down gameplay by constantly interrupting the normal sequence of actions
• It was possible for a strong unit to make a counter-attack reaction that wiped out or severely damaged a weak unit, lessening the utility of weak units
• Doing a fight Counter-Attack against a Fight action was common to avoid letting the enemy unit gain any ground. If you knew your unit was going to be wiped out anyway, you may as well counter-charge to avoid losing any board control and potentially also trigger any abilities that activate when charging
• The Counter-Attack reaction had unlimited range which didn't make a lot of sense
• Vehicles/monsters could make reactions

However over time I've brought back some of these concepts in different form:

• The Forced Move Action mechanic is essentially a non-voluntary Withdraw reaction
• The ability to take a suppression marker when fired upon is the old Defend reaction but with a negative consequence to balance it out
• The ability to take a suppression marker and pass a will roll when charged and then make a free shoot action is the old Counter-Attack reaction, but with negative consequence to balance it out

So all that's missing is:

• The ability to voluntarily take a Forced Move Action, perhaps requiring a passed Will roll
• Explicitly mentioning these things in a dedicated section of the rules rather than hiding them in other rules
• Allow short-ranged firefights by re-introducing counter-attacks for shooting under, say, 20" (after passing a will roll). The loser takes a suppression marker

Something to consider.

Right now their faster base movement makes the more mobile in terrain than infantry are, which is the opposite of how it should be.

When a unit is destroyed, it can either "go down fighting" and make a free Shoot, Fight, or Cast action and then be completely destroyed. Or alternatively it can forego this and simply gain another suppression marker.

The Magma Gun has a fairly significant change to destroy a vehicle with a single shot, which gives it a much higher cost-to-damage ratio than other special weapons. It should therefore either cost extra to compensate for this, or not be as good as it currently is.

If passed, it gets its full two actions during its next activation. If failed, it gains an additional suppression marker! Or maybe even has to make a withdraw reaction.

A unit being shot at could voluntarily take a temporary suppression marker to gain the benefits of the Defend action against the firepower being directed at them (and subsequent fire, obviously). It loses that suppression marker automatically at the end of the round.

Maybe to much bookkeeping for this though?

Line of sight for vehicle weapons is traced from the barrel, which makes their position and facing relevant. However the rules thus far are silent on the matter. Options:

1. We can specify in the rules how every weapon should be mounted (turret, sponson, hull) and in what direction it faces. However this feels like it may become too fiddly, and will discourage creativity and flexibility in modeling.
2. We can say that the way the vehicle is modeled determines the characteristics of its weapons. But this encourages modeling for advantage.
3. We abstract vehicle line of sight and say it's drawn from any part of the vehicle, but this allows nonsensical situations where a tank draws line of sight from its rear fuel tank to fire a forward-facing weapon and stresses the player's suspension of disbelief.
4. Do halfway thing and say that all vehicle weapons can only fire in the front no matter how they are modeled, using the same definition of "front" as the one used for the Vulnerable rule (i.e. draw a line across the middle and anything in the front is "front")

Right the unit only has the default/fallback ones.

The intention was to limit its effects by requiring at least on model to be in base contact, and have a maximum range on the aura, but I don't think it works. It's still possible for multiple units to fit within the aura. Perhaps instead it should only apply to one unit and you should have to choose which one

This ensures that each model rolls a minimum of one die per action, some sometimes more. Each squad will probably be rolling between 5 and 20 dice per action on the extreme upper end. If you combine actions together (e.g. rolling for two consecutive shoot actions) then it'll be 10-40 dice. That's a lot.

Buckets of dice are less fun with D10s compared to D6s due to the larger number of numbers and the increased size and price of the dice.

A potential way around this is to make rolls based on the number of models in the unit. Say, two guardsmen = 1 roll.

However this breaks the immersion of sprinkling in special weapons. I suppose you could give each of those special weapons their own roll. Or, anti-infantry special weapons could augment the general rolls, while anti-tank ones would grant an additional roll.

Several Orc units can have a large number of Suppressive or Terrifying weapons:

• Dreadwalker: up to 4 Terrifying weapons
• Blasta-Copters: up to 5 Suppressive weapons
• Raiders: up to 10 Suppressive weapons
• Bikers: up to 15 Suppressive weapons

Because the penalty of the Suppressive and Terrifying rules increases by 1 with each additional firing weapon in the unit, large numbers of them can inflict an auto-fail on the target unit's Will roll. Raiders and Bikers are capable of this.

This seems like kind of a problem. Perhaps we could cap the penalty at 5 or something.

For example the attackers need to place a mine on a location marked by a numbered counter, but the defenders don't know which counter they've chosen. The attackers could feint by dividing their forces among multiple counters, knowing the the defender would need to react to all of them due to not knowing which one was the real one.

This way units that want to score on an objective have to spend an action to do so.

It requires a minimum of 3 and sometimes 5, but some army compositions may have very few, which makes the mission impossible for them to win.

Right now we seem to have a 6" move value as standard, with an average rifle having a range of 20". Thus in three actions, the model can attack a rifle-wielder in melee combat. This may be a bit too fast. Consider going down to 5" as a base Move value.

Level 0: nothing
Level 1: as with current concealment
Level 2: as with current cover
Level 3: like level 2 but life bonus improves

The idea is that various effects would improve your cover level. For example taking a defend action increases it by 1, and taking a Go To Ground reaction would increase it by 1.

In real war, explosive weapons are the ones that generally do the heavy lifting of quickly killing large numbers of enemy troops. Accordingly, they should perhaps be made a bit more deadly, and more expensive to compensate.

In its current form, they can just bull rush the evacuation point without doing any fighting. Perhaps the point should be in or close to the defender's deployment zone.

This will reduce the churn associated with making a release.

Troops and Elites right now are almost identical:

• They're generally infantry
• They can score objectives
• They can act at the same time (compared to fast and heavy units)

We have another kind of unit that generally consists of single model or a small model count unit, whose primary goal is to offer non-leadership support to other units. These units are currently jumbled in the Elites and Command categories but often don't really fit that well in either one. Let's consider combining Troops and Elites into one type and creating a new "Support" type

60 base is too much; he's not nearly as good as a Big Boss which costs the same amount.

40 base is too low given their mobility, toughness compared to infantry, and the deadliness of their weapons.

$TITLE

In various armies, commanders should be highly mobile so that their leadership abilities can be quickly deployed to the part of the battle where they are needed most. Slower armies should not have this.

Needs to be re-worded, and also potentially allow death-or-glory attacks.

For example each size is trying to communicate with nearby forces to bring in reinforcements and also block the enemy from doing the same thing

Pros: more tactically interesting choices: deal more direct damage or offer support for other models or units?

Cons: extra rules, extra complication

This specialized support unit should be able to destroy pieces of terrain and have bonuses when destroying or securing objectives.

Either roll a die to try to do it in one turn, or else automatically get it in two turns

But now with #36 we have non-leadership single characters who need the same protection from being targeted and gunned down at long range.

Right now there is no provision for unit upgrades. This needs to be added, but in a way that does not make army selection too fiddly and complicated and does not slow down the game too much.

For example, bikes.

Not only by lower numbers and more quality per model, but being faster to act and react too

We already have a de facto flanking bonus for melee because of the retreat corridor is blocked, the retreating unit is destroyed. But we have no such equivalent rule for when unit is under fire from opposite directions.

Right the unit only has the default/fallback ones.