AoA Terrain Discussion

[chief]

Originally Posted by chas

The first thing that strikes me is that there are two basic ways to use Wellspring Water:

1. Put it all together to make a central Wellspring people can fight over.

2. Spread the WW hexes out all over the map, so people can heal their wounded Hero figures and then get them back to the front lines.

My scenario will probably mix these two: perhaps three together in the center, with the rest scattered about. Keep in mind that this game like most of ours in the NYCG4 will be on a large casual multiplayer map for 4-5 people.

This has been my experience so far as well. What's interesting though is that the middle of the 7 hexer is somewhat useless. I have messed around with wrapping 6 of them around a single hex too.

When spread across the map, you have to consider double-base heroes as well.

[chas]

*AOA Spotlight On: Wellspring Water*

I've now hosted our first (Four Player) game with proxy Wellspring Water, using the new Official Renegade Rules for it. It was on my large map "The Hidden Wellspring." This was Freebuilt; no plans--for a text description, see my signature thread on the game "AOA Tag Team Match," (Post #1957); the thread has the scenario rules as well and will soon have photoswhich will soon include photos and further comments by the players, etc. as usual. I used the two configurations of Wellspring Water (WW)as noted in my previous post just two back from this one. This map also featured the other two new Renegade terrain types: Walls (with my own rules for Illusory Walls for now) and Jungle Trees and Bushes.

Well, you have to read the fine print. While I expected it would have much more impact than it did, WW only activates at the start of a round, with rolls made for occupants then. Given that you need a 13 or higher on the D20 to get a single wound removed, and a 1-2 result gives you two wounds, it was hardly even attempted, though I had 7 WW hexes scattered all over the map, with 3 of them in a central pool in the middle, where there was a lot of fighting, and the other four in to the center just a bit from the four map corners. I made up 7 since this is the number supplied with the new Battle Box, and I always try to keep to the new framework to be published, as I did for Haslab as well.

In fact, my Agent Carr, with one wound on him, made the only WW Healing Roll in two entire games! This was on a large map with four players. Taking a wound uphill on the "front lines" where different players were clasing in combat, I had him fall back and go to one of the single WW hexes in one of the rivers near my Start Zone, which also had the cover of one Jungle Bush on each side of the WW hex. Making the roll, I became the very "historical" first person in the New York City Gang of Four to heal in Wellspring Water. I then threw the now full strength Carr into battle against my neighbor's Tagawa Samurai Archers, and butchered them left and right, until Kaemon Awa showed up suddenly and took me down.

The person upthread who wanted WW to have a small effect on the game has nothing to worry about! In fact, I may juice it up a bit for future custom scenarios. Keep in mind that we play large multiplayer "adventure" games, rather than tournament style.

For the larger story of these two games played with WW and in fact all three new Renegade terrain types for the first time, again, see my signature thread below. You can also see my rules there for Illusory Walls, (as they were titled in the old Haslab offering), which we will continue using until the Renegade ones are published, hopefully in Wave 2, and the scenario rules, and so forth.

Kelda has always been one of my favorite characters. But her ability to heal has always been problematic, since putting order markers on her sacrifices using them for stronger attackers in the battle one is fighting. The low negative result on the WW D20 healing roll is in the spirit of her power. Although you don't need to use an Order Marker, you can only do it in WW once per round, and you have to be in a WW hex.

Another aspect of using WW is how secluded it is; that is whether or not you surround it with blocking terrain to limit access to it. You can see that the new Renegade Battle Box features all the new Palm Tree and Jungle Bush (under new AOA names and sculpts but the same affect) as well as Wellspring Water, so draw your own intentions about what can be done with the two terrain types together, which I experimented with in my game. Since Palm Trees can be a pain to physically reach over when put on the perimeter of a battlefield, especially on one of our large maps (a good three times larger than a typical tournament map) I therefore used bushes in the two outer rivers and decorative Palm Trees around the Central Pool.

In this game, which lasted ten rounds as most of our games do, no one even bothered to enter the central pool. This may be because I had the three central WW hexes surrounded by one one hex wide ring of normal water--I used non sparkly water to help accentuate the difference, since my WW Hex is Sparkly Water with a paper gold star on it.

Actually I had expected more water powered characters to appear in this scenario, ones who could cut through water to use the WW, but none did. I had been considering the Microcorps Agents for one of my two armies myself, who have a different water related ability, but they didn't make the cut. There were a few flyers, but they didn't go for the WW either. Which leads me to wonder if there are any particular figures that would be best on using the Wellspring Water, whether Classic, VC, Supers, or whatever. Hmmm...