I woke up this morning with some news from acrosst the pond. Steamforged Games released a new errata for Guild Ball. Guild Ball players knew this would be coming, we just did not know when. I believe now is a perfect time with just under 3 weeks before the next big event at AdeptiCon.
“As you can see, Thresher has gone through a number of changes. This model was simple and direct to use and could do a large amount of damage. While being a singularly powerful model is part of Thresher’s design intent, he was just a little too good at it. As a result, Thresher’s Playbook has been lengthened and changed; his momentous 4 DMG result is now on column 7, and the combined 2 DMG and knockdown result on his fourth column has been removed. However, his momentous KD result on column 3 has gained a single Dodge.
His damage with this new Playbook is still high (as befits a Reaper captain!) but he has a harder time taking out enemies from full health, particularly other Captains, without some prior set up.
To move onto the changes to his other abilities, Scything March has changed. Scything March used to grant a [1”] Dodge when Thresher inflicted the knock-down condition on an enemy model, but we felt we could represent that better by putting a single Dodge on the existing knock-down result on his third Playbook column.
Scything March is now how Thresher gains access to his [3”] melee zone. Specifically, requiring Thresher to remove a harvest-marker from the Pitch in order to gain a [3”] melee range for one activation. In addition, we’ve removed Extended Reach, since it’s no longer needed. Having a [3”] melee zone is incredibly versatile and powerful, but also a core part of Thresher’s design. This is why we have made Thresher have to ‘pay’ for his [3”] melee zone rather than remove his [3”] melee zone completely. Additionally, Thresher needing to spend harvest-markers to gain access to his most powerful abilities certainly fits with the first key design point of the Farmer’s Guild.
The final thing to note is that for Don’t Fear The…, Crow Scarer, and now Scything March, Thresher needs to be within [2”] of a harvest-marker to use these abilities, rather than [4”]. This is a small but effective way to make the Farmer’s power combinations a little bit harder to set up and easier for the opponent to prevent. This will often mean that harvest-markers need to be placed closer to the opposing team than before which will allow the opponent more chances to remove them by sprinting or charging over the harvest-markers before they can be spent.”
“Millstone is in a lot of ways the ‘classic’ Planter, with low TAC, high Influence, and a host of supportive abilities. This was always her core design, to be a backline, encouraging model who could help push her team to do what they needed to do. However, the last few months have shown that Millstone is not particularly easy to take out, even if she does take conditions for other friendly models, which means she has no real weaknesses that opponents can exploit.
Reducing Millstone’s ARM to [1] is a very easy way to reduce her survivability and make her that bit more vulnerable to enemy Attacks. In this vein, reducing the range of her Take One For The Team aura to [4”] means she has to be closer to the action in order to make use of it, further increasing her vulnerability. Farmer coaches can still make use of this fantastic ability, but a common theme you’ll have noticed in this errata is that it’s going to be slightly harder for them to get the most out of it.
The final change to Millstone is that we reduced her INF attribute to [2/3]. Bringing [3] Influence while also providing the team with a free harvest-marker was too much. All of these changes combined mean she’s still a strong support piece worthy of coaches’ consideration in their line-up.”
“Tater was intended from the start to be a ‘burst’ damage dealer with reliable [2] DMG on his Playbook, but apart from that needing to Charge in order to trigger his Sweeping Charge rule to achieve his maximum damage potential. This aspect was amplified by his Fork Off! ability, which effectively allowed him gain Counter Charge if he was within [4”] of a harvest-marker.
We like Tater’s ability to cause damage when he activates, but Fork Off! (Counter Charge) is a powerful addition to this and can tip the scales when weighing up how much damage a model is capable of. As a result, the first change we made was to change Sweeping Charge to only take effect during Tater’s activation, meaning that Tater will not trigger Sweeping Charge when using Fork Off! (outside of a couple of rare corner cases).
The second change we made was Fork Off! now requires a harvest-marker within [2”] instead of [4”] and requires Tater to remove the harvest-marker to make the Counter Charge. Previously, this ability was very easy to trigger, [4”] is a reasonably big distance, especially when a typical Farmers team can have two or three harvest-markers floating around without too much effort. Reducing the range to [2”] forces the Farmer coach to play more carefully and position more precisely. Just as with Thresher, making Tater have to spend a harvest-marker to use this ability is in keeping with the Farmer’s key design points as well as a way to slightly reduce his overall power.”
Personally I have not played against the ‘Thresher’ Farmers pre-errata, but from what I am reading, these new changes are good. People usually like a fighting chance when playing a table top game and I heard ‘Thresher’ was just a bit too strong.
0 comments:
Post a Comment