Sunday, March 11, 2012

More info on Killzone Evolution


Not to be confused with Special Operations Killzone; Killzone Evolution is a completely different animal of a skirmish game. It will diverge even more from the basic 40k rules than S.O. KZ did; it will add much more modern mechanics that will still utilize many of the basic stats/rules of 40k.

I am currently testing out a non-phased, alternating activation turn system. Each model will have a set number of actions that they can perform when “activated.” The initial results have really been fantastic, creating a really cinematic feel to the games while adding real tactics to the game play.  

The reintroduction of “to hit” modifiers has been well liked all around from initial playtests.

Instead of dumping cover saves completely we added a to hit modifier to shooting and added a cover save mechanic where you get +1 to your armor save roll against weapons that have an AP that ignores your armor save; with the maximum cover save of 4+, so the best cover save a power armored model gets is 4+. This was done for game balance, it keeps those cheap units benefiting from the smart use of cover and keeps them from being better than they should be for their points (as the current cover save rules do, IMHO), without making power armored troops god like. (who knows if this will survive, but we are giving it a go!)

We have also added in a reaction mechanic to being assaulted/charged where your models may shoot or flee for the attackers if they pass an initiative test.

We are also testing out a few ways to make moral more important to the game.

We would like to add a suppression system to make the game more dynamic.

There will also be two ways to build and play forces, the first is the traditional S.O. Killzone way; with individual model units for lists of 250 points or less. The second will be squad based unit combat with forces over 250 points to a maximum of 850 (or 1000, I have not nailed this down yet) points. In the squad based games there will be limited access to HQ’s, vehicles and tanks.

That's it for the information burst, until next time!

-Jim

3 comments:

  1. I'll be interested to see how those save rules work out - I like the idea you're working with the current system rather than immediately going back to fully modifiable or on to a completely new. That said, the use of to hit modifiers, if they do stay, would support more general modifier use, for saves most obviously. Reactions, more use of morale and suppression are all excellent ideas even for the larger game, and KZ:E may be just the place to prove they can be done simply. Alternation is certainly something that seems right for the system, and I'm happy to hear it's working without any trouble - I'm happy to hear you're going ahead with the system in general.

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  2. Thanks for the comments and feedback!

    The modifiers are are quite an interesting beast to bring back. I definitely don't wanna tackle rewriting all the weapons to create proper save mods. I have toyed with bringing back the strength based save mods like WFB still uses.

    I think alternating activations are in for sure!

    -Jim

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  3. Sounds great Jim, I'd love to give this a go. One word on the Suppression comment though, Suppression often has the opposite effect to making the game more dynamic, so that's very much worth keeping an eye on :-)

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