SPQR, Mortal Gods, thoughts, help, and lack of reviews?

[limburger 21672xp 0]

You’d think that knowing that there are dozens of releases every year that spell checking and such would be #1 on the list of things to do because you only get one chance to for a first impression …

@osbad while there is a certain level of fuzzy-ness (sp?) in rules is acceptable there is something to be said for having rules that just work without having to use a house rule.

@jahatch28 grognard or not … there is something to be said for having the correct names for things.
Calling something a ‘testudo formation’ when it isn’t doesn’t make for a good impression.
I do understand that non-grognards / casual historical players like me can live with those mistakes, but when you’re looking at this as a potential gateway to more authentic/simulation rule systems that is very bad.

oh … and I do know that #squirrel / #needMoreShiny all too well. If the SPQR marketing had been  a touch better I’d have ordered a copy myself, because a skirmish level dark-ages/ancients/mythic setting is missing on my ever-growing-stack-of-rules/systems.

[torros 23808xp 2]

If it had just been SPQR with the spell checking and contradictory  rules then maybe it could be seen as an oversight but to suddenly  have to rewrite the combat rules and to also  have it happen with their previous game Cruel Seas as well comes across as laziness and not caring about their customers

[mkultra99Participant 814xp 2]

Bought both.. played both.. after 4 games sold off SPQR. Still happily playing Mortal Gods.

The value of the Mortal Gods box set is very good. Everything 2 people need to play in one box. Any questions we had about the rules we’ve been able to answer by just re-reading through the rulebook. So far there is nothing that we feel needs immediate house ruling. It scales up and down really well. The Omen cards add some friction and the unexpected. The unit and hero cards make army building and keeping track of stats and abilities easy. Real slick package. Its re-invigorated ancients gaming in my group.

Currently limited to classical greeks, but with Persians and Thracians in the works (cards for both are avalable on the website). And a “Mythic” add on due later in teh year I believe (Jason and the Argonauts and what have you).

SPQR suffers from a lot of things… mostly, it just had absolutely no playtesting. Its a shame too, as I think theres a decent game in there somewhere. But as is, with the amount of houserules and “interpretations” you have to come up with you may as well write your own. Really wanted to like it and gave it the benefit of the doubt, but then played it just enough to see that’s it’s a complete dumpster fire.

My group is also anxiously awaiting Clash of Spears. But, Mortal Gods will get us through.. it’s a great little game.

 

[seldonParticipant 691xp 2]

Thanks for the positive attitude towards CLASH, we are getting closer to release… hope not to disappoint and we will be able to find a spot in the wargaming community…

When we started the project nobody was looking at this scale for ancients and suddenly many of these options appeared 🙂 … and there was no way we could go faster as we had a strict playtesting schedule to observe ( self impose obviously 🙂  )…

Hopefully all these new games are pushing people to play ancients…

[elessar2590 18207xp 0]

Lack of playtesting and editting is my groups biggest issue with Warlord Games.

Just look at Cruel Seas of the Western Desert Book and see the glaring errors that just sailed on by to a full release product.

It feels like Warlord Games are operating like a Video Game Company throwing rushed content out to people and fixing it with the equivalent of a “Day One Patch”.

“Could they have been better playtested?  Of course – name me a ruleset that couldn’t!  Could they have been better proofread?  Yes to this too, and this is a more serious lapse on Warlord’s part – getting a set of rules read through by an experienced proofreader should be a de minimis call on any publisher’s part, but frankly for me, life’s too short.  Does it have mistakes?  Sure.  But how much you care depends on how much of a rules lawyer you are and how much perfection you like in your rules.  And also, how much of a Mr Angry you are when it comes to a hobby one is supposed to be enjoying and having fun with!”

I’m going to have to disagree.

Imagine if you read a Novel that sucked but the Author then bought out an “Errata” in 6 months and basically used his paying customers as one giant Beta Test without telling them.

If you’re going to sell something the absolute minimum to to at least be honest.

“Yeah we didn’t play test this more than 5 times and it will be getting an Errata in Two weeks so don’t buy the Hard Copy since it will just go out of date”

There’s a difference between listening to your community then making reasonable changes to rules and using your customers as an unknowing pool of Beta Testers and making their Rulebooks totally useless in less than a month after they purchased them.

[limburger 21672xp 0]

@seldon everyone eventually goes the historical route.
Many start with WW 2 … what’s next depends on whatever movie/tv-series got their attention next.
All I need is a good hook and a system that sells the period without requiring a degree in ancient history.

Definitely looking forward to seeing the let’s plays, unboxings and reviews for any system.

Of course the advantage/disadvantage with historical systems is that you can always switch to a new system once you’ve got a decently sized collection.

//

Skimming through the SPQR FAQ (damn that’s a lot of letters) doesn’t give me the impression of a ‘bad’ game, but more of one that needed more clearly stated rules for people unfamilliar with the (intent of the) system.

A fair few smell like rules lawyers trying to min/max their units within a tournament like setting as opposed to just having fun in a casual game of romans vs gauls.

I never would have assumed that models not in base-to-base contact could fight in melee to be honest.
Are there skirmish rule systems that do that ?
Could this be one of those things that newbies wouldn’t notice whereas those familliar with multiple systems might make mistakes with ?

However if a competing product manages to have less fuzziness and less confusion … yeah, I can see why one would pick that one.
Or if that fuzzyness makes you dislike the era … that’d suck too.

I would add that as a newbie you’d probably be better off picking a system that people are already playing within your area.
Unless you want to start the fire and introduce new people to the hobby. That’s never an easy task.

[seldonParticipant 691xp 0]

I don’t think that the “every model fights” was an assumption, it is on page 12 of the spqr book explicitly…

In CLASH every model fights when you are attacking, and the responding unit can match those attacks if it has enough models , still has actions available to execute and is willing to gain the corresponding fatigue… for us this produces no issues and works quite well but the mechanics acompanying the system have been extensively tested. We were lucky to have teams in US , UK, Germany, Poland, Australia, Argentina and Spain sign up as playtesters so lots of different thpe of players looking to push the limits of the rules.

I didn’t follow in detail the issues in SPQR that lead to Warlords changing the rules to, “only models in b2b fight”…

[Author]

Posts