Thread: The Book of Madripoor Mercenaries
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Old May 7th, 2019, 07:10 PM
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Re: The Book of Madripoor Mercenaries - Public Playtesting
I gave you 3 different suggestions on way to reel them in a bit, I'm sure others can come up with more ideas. Right now they are just a really good ranged 3 figure bonding squad with no downsides. This is how I would rank my suggestions:

1. Limit the bonding by clear-sight and distance.

Leaving your bonding hero in the start zone or hiding behind a wall while they can move 3 and attack with a different 3 is really good. It means you can move fresh guys up from the back while the front line keep shooting, all while never putting the lynch pin at any risk and bonding that hero with another hero. You can also rush and engage anyone trying to reach your hero to lock them up, while attacking with someone else that isn't engaged and possibly on high ground. A clear sight and range limit on the bonding will force your hero to move out with them, where they can be attacked to try and destroy the OM hub that makes everything go.

2. Change Cut and Run so it is more of a negative.

Right now, as long as you leave 1 hero figure back in the SZ for end game clean-up, the Madripoor Mercs never have to roll for Cut and Run. What was suppose to be a negative power to help keep their cost down had 0 impact on my games, since their is no reason not to push the common squads out to their death first before the last hero in your army. Changing this could take many forms, maybe roll for any Merc not within X spaces of a hero, maybe roll for every Merc at the end of every round, maybe get rid of the roll all together and just have 1 automatically run off at the end of every round. If the goal was to have this power keep the points down, it needs to have a more active impact.

3. Make the partial bonding either/or and not both.

As noted earlier, moving with any 3, then attacking with a different 3, is a big improvement over normal squad play that can lead to many tactical advantages. I don't have anything against leaving it here, which is why this suggestion comes in last, but if you don't like the other options then it is another place that could be tweaked. Having the hero they are bonding with either move or attack each turn changes things quite a bit. Drafting them with a ranged double attack hero to bond with like Domino/Marrow/Deadpool will still be good as you can move them up into position while attacking with the hero and move the hero up while attacking with them. It just won't be as good as it was when you could move 3 and attack with a different 3 all on the same turn.

I would personally consider trying some combo of both 1 & 2, to see if an improved negative power can do most of the work. Maybe just a clear sight restriction but at unlimited range for the bonding, then some tweak to Cut and Run to make it have an impact while your heroes are still in play.
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