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Hinterlands: Skirmish Campaigns in the Mortal Realms


bottle

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On 23/03/2017 at 2:21 PM, Mazgruk said:

Ok, so it seems that I've put myself in a position where I'll have to translate Hinterland to french. Just my luck :-P

I'll share it when I have a little more done.

You don't have to ;) and you know that you won't be alone anyway. 

 

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In my club, in italy, nobody want to play Aos but...

I show them hiterland and some boys want to start a narrative campaign in hammeral..they like your rules so much.THx

We have the rules in italian....

 

This is my 250 point destruction

20170329_212408.jpg

Edited by Orruk'sPizza
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On 3/30/2017 at 4:10 PM, Orruk'sPizza said:

In my club, in italy, nobody want to play Aos but...

I show them hiterland and some boys want to start a narrative campaign in hammeral..they like your rules so much.THx

We have the rules in italian....

 

This is my 250 point destruction

20170329_212408.jpg

This is amazing to hear! I hope every catches the AoS bug through Hinterlands. Its a great excuse to start real small and have loads of fun!

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Looks like we're going to be playing some of this in the next few weeks at Oxford Gaming Club (mondays in Summertown). Anyone who wants to come down is more than welcome, we've got a growing group of AoS gamers and a dedicated Whatsapp chat - DM me at @JontyGoesGaming if you want to be added!

I'm thinking that, at least to start with, we'll play on 4x4 boards- but has anyone tried both 4x4 and 6x4 and have any tips at all?

My main thought is being able to cram the scenery in a bit closer to give it that proper skirmish feel! 

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I discovered Hinterlands a few weeks ago through a friend and boy am I a fan! In fact, we're going to start a store campaign in May! So for what it's worth, I just wanted to say thanks to the mad genius(ses) who came up with all of this. 

I do however, come across some issues from time to time when I'm playing a game, and I would love to help out with further developing and playtesting if that's anywhere possible. This is the first time posting on this forum for me, and I'm not much of a Forum guy to begin with, so I haven't the foggiest yet where to post if there IS a dedicated feedback spot. (Will have a look for it though, in case it excists).

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15 hours ago, Tulkas said:

I discovered Hinterlands a few weeks ago through a friend and boy am I a fan! In fact, we're going to start a store campaign in May! So for what it's worth, I just wanted to say thanks to the mad genius(ses) who came up with all of this. 

I do however, come across some issues from time to time when I'm playing a game, and I would love to help out with further developing and playtesting if that's anywhere possible. This is the first time posting on this forum for me, and I'm not much of a Forum guy to begin with, so I haven't the foggiest yet where to post if there IS a dedicated feedback spot. (Will have a look for it though, in case it excists).

Welcome to the forum, and here is definitely the right place to leave feedback. It's me who made the rules, but all the changes for version 2 we informed by the amazing feedback the community gave, and I've already received lots of feedback on version 2 which is informing the changes for the next update (which I am thinking of releasing over the summer). 

So let me know what you find and hopefully your group will have lots of fun along the way!

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Are there any plans for Hinterlands events in the UK? I'd love to get involved in a 2 day narrative campaign or something similar. My local scene seems to be mainly 2000pts matched play. :-(

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17 hours ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

Are there any plans for Hinterlands events in the UK? I'd love to get involved in a 2 day narrative campaign or something similar. My local scene seems to be mainly 2000pts matched play. :-(

There will be a Hinterlands cameo hopefully at RAW17 (at least a game, amidst all the narrative mayhem!) and there might be Friday Night Hinterlands at BLACKOUT. So if you can make it to either of those events it should be fun! :)

Edited by bottle
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2 hours ago, bottle said:

There will be a Hinterlands cameo hopefully at RAW17 (at least a game, amidst all the narrative mayhem!) and there might be Friday Night Hinterlands at BLACKOUT. So if you can make it to either of those events it should be fun! :)

Ah, cool. I'm in Cardiff so was already quite keen to go to Blackout. Hopefully the tickets don't sell out too fast.

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Played my first few games today in a campaign. Really enjoying it so far. Only managed to play Ancient artefact and Breakthrough but enjoyed them immensely. 

Hoping to play through the campaign a bit further and then will add my thoughts and some feedback. 

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22 hours ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

Are there any plans for Hinterlands events in the UK? I'd love to get involved in a 2 day narrative campaign or something similar. My local scene seems to be mainly 2000pts matched play. :-(

I'll float the idea with some of the other staff at dark sphere and we can arrange something....

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Here is my Tzeentch warband. Lead by Aeos'aelios, the Summoner and Azoth the black, lord of chaos. I've had a lot of success with this warband. It has a good combination of spells, shooting and melee. It has change through several games, but the core is pretty much the same. The chaos warrior has died and has been replaced with a Tzaangor along with a few other additions.

DSCF2874 (2).JPG

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1 hour ago, urion said:

Here is my Tzeentch warband. Lead by Aeos'aelios, the Summoner and Azoth the black, lord of chaos. I've had a lot of success with this warband. It has a good combination of spells, shooting and melee. It has change through several games, but the core is pretty much the same. The chaos warrior has died and has been replaced with a Tzaangor along with a few other additions.

DSCF2874 (2).JPG

What a fantastic looking Warband! Glad to hear they have met success too! 

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2 hours ago, Mohojoe said:

Played my first few games today in a campaign. Really enjoying it so far. Only managed to play Ancient artefact and Breakthrough but enjoyed them immensely. 

Hoping to play through the campaign a bit further and then will add my thoughts and some feedback. 

Glad to hear you are having fun! (And thanks for the tweet today), I look forward to seeing your feedback. Players have been sending through lots of feedback recently that is all really useful (and will hopefully guide the changes for version 3 in the future) :) 

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My gaming group is hosting Hinterlands nights that run on the off-weeks from our regular escalation/Path to Glory league. We've made a few of our own modifications to help guide some of the list building, which is part of the beauty of AoS and Hinterlands in that we can change rules as we need to and the games still work. 

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17 hours ago, Goodapollo4 said:

My gaming group is hosting Hinterlands nights that run on the off-weeks from our regular escalation/Path to Glory league. We've made a few of our own modifications to help guide some of the list building, which is part of the beauty of AoS and Hinterlands in that we can change rules as we need to and the games still work. 

Sounds great! If you're happy to share you could post your modifications here. You're 100% right that the rules were made to be as easy to modify and tailor as possible :D 

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5 hours ago, bottle said:

Sounds great! If you're happy to share you could post your modifications here. You're 100% right that the rules were made to be as easy to modify and tailor as possible :D 

Sure!

So we had an event recently where we tested out Hinterlands with 10-12 people, and we have made some modifications that we are hoping will help cut down on some of the, lets say competitive elements of our meta.

1) No Heroes: Crazy I know right? We have decided for this upcoming league to have warbands composed of only units without the hero keyword. This helps cut down on crazy abilities, and from a narrative aspect we thought it would work to have your warband become heroes as the story progresses. We do have a mechanic where you can hire heroes for a game, but they cost gold and are not permanent members of your warband. 

2) Knockdown: Borrowing I think from old Mordheim rules, we have a knockdown function where when your wounds are reduced to 0 you are incapacitated, and can do things like crawl at half movement, or have to spend a turn standing up. This again is in response to things like arcane bolt or abilities that just remove models from the game.

3) Reduced ranged attacks: We are only allowing 1/4 of the models in your army to have ranged attacks. Again, helping to mitigate the feels-bad-sies that happens when you face a ranged list.

I think that is about it, we wont be testing this format for another week and a half or so, but once we do I will make sure to post an update on what worked/didn't work :)

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Some good potential mods here, care to expand on:

-1. is the hiring of Heroes only for a single battle? Why don't they (primarily in a narrative sense) stick around afterwards??  Why not forgo them entirely??

-2. So reducing them to 0 Wounds means they're just kinda hobbled, or stunned until they get back up? Why not incapacitated/potentially bleeding out for the rest of the battle unless otherwise healed??

-3. Someone could cheat this a bit by taking a Kurnoth Hunter w/ greatbow & a cheap trio of Eternal Guard--hence I think it's smart to limit by both model count & gold cost/"budget."  I'm also a big fan of bottle's provisional suggestion that each starting Wound beyond the 1st is 10 xp they've already gained, so you can't power-level "filth" like Kurnoths & Khorgoraths.

 

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On the topic of the no heroes idea; there's definitely some merit to it. The main issue I've noticed in the local playgroup stems from heroes. In this specific case, it's the Stormcast Eternal Knight-Heraldor. I think a designated "leader" slot for warbands that lowers the cost for the warscroll in that slot by 100 (80?), while still maintaining the half wounds system, could be an interesting idea. Ban heroes outside of this slot, and you'll still have that one really cool hero model to play with, but severely limit the amount of "cheese". Any idea what the cheapest heroes in the game are? First thing that comes to mind is the Cairn Wraith at 80 points. By not making the leader slot 100% free you prevent people from taking the strongest, most expensive model they can get. The main issue I can find with this idea is the limitation for Death. To make some of their units worthwhile (e.g. Grave guard) you need to have the ability to reanimate them, which requires you to have a wizard currently. Maybe make it possible to take the ability on non-wizards, giving them the ability to "cast" just this spell, and not granting unbind opportunities?

The other issue they're running into is the relative sturdiness of certain models that isn't reflected in their costs. There's an empire and a beastmen player, who both have immense trouble dealing with the (relatively) good save and multiple wounds on even the basic (cheap) liberators. Comparing things like Empire Greatswords to Liberators on a point-by-point basis. While you'd be right to say you can take models from the entire Grand Alliance, and so there's nothing stopping the Empire player from also using these models, it has to be factored in that very likely they don't WANT to do that.

 

Edited by Barteh
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I played my first couple of games with this last night and I really wanted to like it, maybe it's our local scene, but I got absolutely smashed off the table very quickly.

Opposing player had a lord celestant; lord relictor and 3 liberators

I had a vampire lord, spirit hosts and 5 skeletons.

The mortal wound output of the celestant took off my characters turn one. The skeleton warriors did precisely nothing.

Now, I completely get that this is a narrative game and I'm in it as much for the story as everything else, but the story of these games was just my complete lack of participation!

Anyone any good ideas for death warbands that will survive beyond turn one? We have no shooting and no mortal wound output beyond arcane bolt, but I can't work out a way to get more than one wizard in without it becoming very low model count?

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Thanks for the discussion everyone :) really insightful!

Yeah the Lord Celestant is proving to be the new filth. I have had some PMs about his strength too. It seems to me the most problematic things that crop up in Hinterlands are always to do with Mortal Wounds and I think the next rules update is going to need to tackle that. From Heraldors to Celestants to Pink Horrors it always seems to be about a Warband having an unseemly amount of Mortal Wounds that just obliterates the other Warband.

This is the rule I am leaning towards, it is a second Rule of Three:

Only 3 Mortal Wounds per turn inflicted by the player can bypass the enemy's Save Characteristic. The player may choose which Mortal Wounds do so, all other Mortal Wounds inflicted by the player can have saves made against them and count as having rend '-'.

Thoughts behind the rule: It's another "Rule of Three" and so feels familiar to the player. It curtails heavy use of Mortal Wounds but has no effect on a Warband running a single Wizard and no other access to Mortal Wounds. Possible downsides are 1. It is an extra rule and deviation from the standard rules. 2. It makes armour stronger.

Reading the above, while I wouldn't want to ban heroes as I made Hinterlands especially to fit them in! Maybe the amount you can take should be restricted further. If we limited Heroes to 1 for every 3 models total it would stop some of the more broken starting builds (looking at you, Stormcast!)

While I am here, I might as well mention the last rules tweak I had planned and that was to change the starting experience. All non-heroes will start with experience based on their wounds, so a 1 wound model will start at level 1 and a 2 wound model at level 2, etc.

So those are the changes in the works. What are people's thoughts and comments on them?

I also wanted to ask if you would rather the rules patch came out sooner, or later. I have got much more exciting content for Version 3 in the works, but it won't be ready till the summer. I had planned to release the rules tweaks with version 3 as I am conscious that people won't want to constantly redownload the book - if, however the most active players would appreciate these amendments, I can release a version 2.2 much sooner.

Looking forward to hearing from you all.

Edit: Thinking about the Mortal Wound rule more. What about just a flat out restriction to 3 Mortal Wounds a turn and no further can be generated? It's super simple and no-nonsense. I've been playtesting the above version, but this might be a lot more straightforward.

 

 

 

Edited by bottle
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2 hours ago, bottle said:

This is the rule I am leaning towards, it is a second Rule of Three:

Only 3 Mortal Wounds per turn inflicted by the player can bypass the enemy's Save Characteristic. The player may choose which Mortal Wounds do so, all other Mortal Wounds inflicted by the player can have saves made against them and count as having rend '-'.

I strongly believe that this is actually not enough (!). 3 mortal wounds per turn in the starting games will still remove (almost) every single hero in the game, no question asked. There are some exceptions, the one that springs to mind is what seems like the ultimate filth to me, the Ogroid Thaumaturge. 4 wounds, regenerating one per turn, instantly killing whatever he's charging (d3 mortal wounds), being a wizard.. and he's only 160 points normally, so 80 gold. Slightly more than most more balanced heroes.

 

2 hours ago, bottle said:

Reading the above, while I wouldn't want to ban heroes as I made Hinterlands especially to fit them in! Maybe the amount you can take should be restricted further. If we limited Heroes to 1 for every 3 models total it would stop some of the more broken starting builds (looking at you, Stormcast!)

While I am here, I might as well mention the last rules tweak I had planned and that was to change the starting experience. All non-heroes will start with experience based on their wounds, so a 1 wound model will start at level 1 and a 2 wound model at level 2, etc.

I'd like to actually hear from some more people about this one. Is the exp penalty really that significant? Should wounds on non-hero characters be reduced somehow? Picking up something like a gore-grunta currently gives you a character that'll be way stronger than some of the heroes, having 5 wounds and all. That doesn't seem right to me, but I'm not sure if there's an easy decision like halving the wounds of all models with more wounds than 3? At that point, their cost would have to be reduced to make up for it. 

2 hours ago, bottle said:

I also wanted to ask if you would rather the rules patch came out sooner, or later. 

Personally I believe that releasing frequent updates, especially on a electronic platform, is the way to go.

 

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What effect would removing mortal wounds altogether have on hinterlands? 

I appreciate I've only played with low level warbands with not a lot of experience, but does stuff end up with the uber saves that mortal wounds were designed to prevent?

if mortal wounds were replaced with wounds at rend 1, would that solve the issue?

Having played shadow war last night I also think there is something to be said for the knocking down with chance to recover idea, but appreciate it adds a layer of complexity that was never in the original rule set

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