Ciekaw jestem wyglądu tego booka, bo coś tam ostatnio udało się pograć i jeszcze jakiś master musze w karierze zaliczyć

Moderatorzy: Albo_Albo, Asassello
Hello my fellow Princes and Queens,
First of all, please join me in officially welcoming @PapaG who is joining us in the HbE ACS team! That will bring some new fresh blood and ideas into the team and also allow us to have more ears and eyes to listen at your comments and suggestions.
Welcome onboard @PapaG!!
:party:
Now, regarding the 2.0 updates, today we also want to talk you about one of the big redesigns we have gone through this phase: Grey Watchers.
From the community feedback shared months ago it was clear that the unit was in a very poor status. Basically, we had to either boost its antiarmour damage significantly in order to compete in peacekeepers with Sloops and SGRs, or we had to redesign them to allow them into Elder Service instead. The team decided to do the later, as we felt this would allow us for better unit differentiation and roles.
There were several criteria that were established so they could move out of Peacekeepers such as not being able to keep the entire package of poison, remain skirmishers and scouts within Elder Service. Something had to go.
We therefore looked for inspiration in the new background concepts for this unit; and there we found a golden mine. In the new background Grey Watchers are a kind of spies and special forces of the Highborn elves, with strong inclinations for sabotage operations.
So we started our work with that.
•First, being spies as a concept hints towards having access to special deployment such as ambush or scout.
•But at the same time our army is not supposed to excel at that, and thus moving the unit to elder service would make this worse.
•We worked on finding a solution and a compromise was found: the unit would not have scout by default, and a 0-1 scout upgrade would be available.
We explored whether wizard conclave would be a fitting option, but it was deemed not appropriate to consider this option for this unit in the kind of update we were doing (may come back to it at full redesign either for this or other units)
Then we went into exploring the sabotage operations concept, and you can’t imagine the crazy ideas that were mentioned in the brainstorming activity: from grenades, to concepts of demolition and building bridges, traps, minefields, fortification of defenses, “shadow” cloaks, etc.
Out of all this concepts, there was one that finally resonated strongly within the team: Smoke arrows. The concept of the smoke arrows was so that it was impeding movement and vision of the enemy unit, which didn’t need to be wounded for the effect to trigger. And thus several ideas where proposed around “-1 to hit (ranged)”,”-1 to hit (combat)”, “Treat open terrain as Dangerous terrain test (1), and rest as DT(2)”, “-2 advance rate”, etc.
An initial proposal included the ranged penalty to hit and the Dangerous Terrain test feature. During the initial review, two actions where asked from us:
•The Dangerous terrain test portion was not deemed appropriate, as the damage spike could be high and the design should be centered in high-utility low-damage, and we were asked for suitable alternatives
•From an immersion point of view we needed to be able to justify why a unit would be affected by it after moving (the effect lasts 1 turn)
Thus we got back to do some reworks and we quickly found a very fitting alternate approach with “-1 to hit (combat and ranged)”, which more strongly adheres to the "protective" traits of the army around HbE having means to mitigate enemy damage.About the second mandate (immersion), the team decided to move away from the concept of the “smoke” as a vision-impeding screen and instead move towards the release and inhalation of a substance that affects enemies senses. And thus the Chloroform fumes where born (remember names are WIP).
So, without further ado, those are that changes to the unit:
Grey Watchers:
•Offensive and Defensive skill 4
•Lose Scout as default and instead becomes 0-1 optional upgrade
•Lose Bitter arrows and instead gains Chloroform fumes(*)
•Gain Accurate
•Unit becomes 0-2 per army
(*) Chloroform Fumes - Melee and ShootingThis Attack Attribute can only be used with Longbow and Paired Weapons.When a unit is hit by attacks with Chloroform Fumes, it must take a Resilience Test for each hit, using the Resilience that the largest fraction of models in the unit has (use the higher value in case of a tie). If one or more Resilience Tests are failed, all models in the unit are affected by the Chloroform Fumes until the start of the Active Player's next Player Turn. A model that is affected by (one or more) Chloroform Fumes suffers a -1 to-hit modifier (both for Shooting Attacks and Close Combat Attacks).
A Queen's companion may purchase Chloroform fumes + Scout but, in such case, may only deploy in units of GW (being the special forces boss!) to avoid situations where she could trigger the whole -1 to hit effect on his own from within another unit. So, in the paragraphs above we have explained the design process from a Background Point of View (PoV). But, obviously, there is also a game-design intention that goes hand in hand with it. So, what did the task team intend to do with Grey Watchers throughout all this process?
•As mentioned initially, we wanted to move them out of Peacekeepers (PK) so they could have a different role (PK is antiarmour and we already have 2 units for that)
•Moving them to elder service introduced a new competition: Archers and Queen’s Guard. We wanted to design GW in a way that it didn’t overlap with those two units
As a result of that, we decided that we would turn GW into a unit that provides utility while QG remain the higher-damage unit. And when choosing about utility we had a clear objective in mind: further strengthen the concept of Highborn elves as the defensive elves, not in playstyle but in the ability to prevent damage. Based on this guidelines, the concept of the “-1 to hit” was born.The unit’s main purpose becomes, then, to trigger the protective effect rather than causing damage. And it is for that reason that the unit gained Accurate (more hits = more chance to trigger effect) but instead remained as S3 arrows (despite being a non-core unit)We believe this can offer great tactical uses and synergies within the army:
•You can field a GW unit with paired weapons and use them close to your lines to countercharge and trigger the -1 effect in combat.
•Or you can field them cheaper without paired weapons and use them in range to give a penalty to hit to those bow-orks who are just about to decimate at range your unit of Swordmasters
•Or you can shoot at an organ gun/canon and give a little extra chance for your Griffons /Young Dragons / Dragons to survive.
The playtesting team have started using them in some lists and the feedback coming from the team is very possitive, in regards of being a fun-to play unit as well as providing some much needed synergies.
What do you think of the Grey Watchers redesign? We're very interested in knowing what you think
Raise thy Arrows!
Podobają mi się bardzo ale wszystko i tak się rozbije jak zwykle w ich przypadku na punktach, bo zawsze byli całkiem okej ale punkty nigdy im nie pozwoliły zagraćSea Guard
Minimum size increased to 15 and maximum size decreased to 30
Gain Defensive Skill 5
Reworked Steady Aim
New Aid Shooting rule
Steady Aim
The model can shoot from third rank (is not limited to only the first and second rank) andit does not suffer to-hit penalties for Stand andShoot Charge Reactions
Aid Shooting (WIP Name)
When an enemy unit declares a charge against a friendly unit with Martial Discipline and the distance betweenthe charger and its intended target is greater than the charger's Advance Rate (using the lowest value amongthe charging models if there is more than one), before declaring any Charge Reaction, a single friendly unitwithin 12" of the charged unit may immediately perform a Shoot Charge Reaction as if the enemy had declareda Charge against them in their current position (apply all the normal rules for the Shoot Charge Reaction). Onlymodels in the unit with Aid Shooting may shoot