Nerfing Range?

[Knox]

Hey all,
I'm thinking about playtesting a rule in which figures cannot use a ranged attack if they move more than half their movement. For a lot of 'Scape figures, I think this is pretty realistic - loading and aiming time would've meant that the minutemen, for example, wouldn't be firing unless they were stationary.

I love heroscape but the range-dominance means a lot fewer of my figures get used - and most of the fun of heroscape is the variety! Would anyone be interested in helping me playtest a rule like this, to help melee units get closer before range is able to mow them down?

[Ulysses]

I think there's a format called Fog of War where range powers that require line of sight are divided by two and rounded down, so Stingers would have 2 range for example. Also the types of maps you play will have a huge impact on the power of ranged figures. Good tournament maps try to mitigate the power of range typically.

[Knox]

That's a fair point on the tournament maps. I play a lot of gigantic "whole collection, gigantic map" games bc that's what I grew up doing with my brothers, so this might be a better solution for someone like me than the average. I'm not a huge fan of the fog of war concept because range units tend to have really poor defense. So turning them entirely non-range (as fog of war seems to do) would nerf them too much imo

[wriggz]

There are lots of versions of nerfing range. My faviots are partial cover rules that give +1 def if any part of the figure is obscured by something shorter than the figure and +2 if it is obscured by something as tall or taller.

The other is to not give hight advantage to figures attacking from range with height advantage.

[Knox]

Ooh those work. i don't think I'd want to get rid of height entirely - but probably limit it to the +1 bonus and not allow extreme height. But I love the cover rules

[TheAverageFan]

I don't know if there's any one specific fix to Range in Heroscape. The fix you suggest for example still hugely benefits Ranged figures being used defensively (which is where they're strongest if you ask me). Minutemen aren't powerful because they can move and then shoot. In fact it'd make trying to take down a ranged pod with return fire even more costly. You method does hamper annoying kiting units however.

I think a lot of it comes down to specific units (Krav, Q9, Minutemen) simply being very strong. To avoid this I just don't play them frequently in home games. Plenty of ranged units such as Roman and Aubrien Archers, Omicron Snipers, Tagawa Archers etc. are perfectly reasonable and don't really require nerfing.

~TAF