I've had an idea for a new unit kicking around in my head for quite some time now, so I thought I would post it, just to see what the reactions to it are. I've had no chance to test this, so the costs are very much guesstimates, and probably nowhere near balanced. Also, I know I misspelled 'Saboteur' in all the files 😐 .

Definately want to use the sycamore legion card for the latari upgrade expansion. The rest I would need to test to see what it really feels like.

Removing an icon is going to reduce most incoming ranged damage by half and make some shots miss entirely. Fire Rune does nothing unless it rolls a double hit. It is Protected “attacker threat.” Protected that scales against ranged attacks is really strong when you only roll 1-2 dice for ranged shots.

I’d be fine if it was Protected Stable, but a potentially Protected 3-4 is a LOT.

Also, the dial is kind of odd for a Latari unit. No shift at all?

Signal interceptor is BaronZ’s Lord of Subterfuge upgrade-ish. Except it’s easier to trigger and only affects your own dial. So it’s probably costed correctly and it’s a cool mechanic, but thematically that is a Daqan upgrade.

Silver mist: On a flank you go from threat 2 RRB (5.5) to threat 3 RRRB (11.25 average damage) for 4 points. You almost double your damage efficiency. Sure, it’s a flank only, but EOA means you can pretty reliably find a flank somewhere to charge. Without EoA I’d think it’s an awesome card since you have to earn it. EoA seriously screws future Latari design space.

Every card made that is generic or Latari only has to very carefully look at EoA. It breaks or nearly breaks most every cool mechanic Latari could add. Powerful but hard earned bonus from upgrade? EoA makes it easy to trigger.

Dont get me wrong, I like a lot of this but it’s a bit strong

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

Removing an icon is going to reduce most incoming ranged damage by half and make some shots miss entirely. Fire Rune does nothing unless it rolls a double hit. It is Protected “attacker threat.” Protected that scales against ranged attacks is really strong when you only roll 1-2 dice for ranged shots.

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Also, the dial is kind of odd for a Latari unit. No shift at all?

I wanted this to be a reasonably high-risk, high-return unit, something that your opponent had to make a deliberate decision about whether to chase you down or not, with, in most cases, the unit intended to head into the enemy backfield (the silver mist upgrade being the exception to that). To keep the risk up, I wanted to cut down on some of the tricks Latari frequently use to dance around opponents, including shift-march or march-shift options, but I also wanted to give them some new tricks, as well—hence the initiative-9 march-3.

However, there is usually a fairly effective counter to specialty units like this: archers. And almost every army comes with some of them. I thought about Protected-1 or -stable, but that really didn't seem like enough defense, especially given that these are relatively small units. I didn't want to go quite as far as Ambush Predator does, but wanted more than a basic Protected. I do see your point, though, and am open for alternative ideas. Do you think Protected ([range to attacker] -1) would be either too powerful or too complex?

Or in other words: When defending against [missile], this unit gains Protected X, where X is one less than the distance between the attacking unit and this one.

As for the shift, the lack of a shift was, as mentioned, partly wanting to change up the Latari maneuverability a bit; partly because each dial only has eight spaces (this is a longstanding gripe of mine); and mostly because, after a couple hours of playing around with grouping, editing, copying and pasting, and whatnot, getting the graphics working the way I wanted them to, and then trying to get all the actions and modifiers set to match my vision of the unit, I forgot that shift is not only used to dodge around your opponents, but it's also the way you disengage from them. I'll probably drop the green march-2 and put in a blue initiative-5 shift-1. Maybe initiative-6. The drop the green reform modifier as it's not needed any more.

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Signal interceptor is BaronZ’s Lord of Subterfuge upgrade-ish. Except it’s easier to trigger and only affects your own dial . So it’s probably costed correctly and it’s a cool mechanic, but thematically that is a Daqan upgrade.

I may not have described it properly. The way it's supposed to work is that at the start of command phase, you pick a unit that's in range. Your opponent programs that unit's actions in and shows them to you. Then you both set your dials for all the remaining units you have. It requires a bit more setup than Baron Z's ability—you have to be in the right spot and unengaged, he just has to have line of sight—but it doesn't exhaust the ability; you can keep using it until you're engaged or move out of the enemy deployment zone. And your opponent knows which unit you've looked at, and can theoretically adjust his other unit's actions based on how he anticipates you reacting to his choice.

As for thematics, I think it fits Latari as well as Daqan. It's something that, to date, has only showed up in the Daqan army, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee exclusivity. For instance, I thought that maneuverability was going to be the hallmark of the Latari, but then Waiqar got wraiths. But I looked though my notes on an earlier version of this unit, designed a year and a half ago, and the equivalent upgrade in my earlier version let you put a bane of your choice on a unit instead of reading its command tool. What are people's thoughts on doing that, instead? (The original version was called Misinformation Specialist. Which isn't a very Latari-ish name, but then again, the original version wasn't Latari. And it was infantry instead of cavalry. But I'm sure I can change the name to fit the unit, though.)

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Silver mist: On a flank you go from threat 2 RRB (5.5) to threat 3 RRRB (11.25 average damage) for 4 points. You almost double your damage efficiency. Sure, it’s a flank only, but EOA means you can pretty reliably find a flank somewhere to charge. Without EoA I’d think it’s an awesome card since you have to earn it. EoA seriously screws future Latari design space.

On the other hand, EoA does require that the Prince stays somewhat near the Saboteurs. Which, yes, isn't incredibly hard, but it does constrain you a bit, and telegraphs the possibility of what you can do.

On the other hand, I was never quite certain I wanted to put the 2x2 configuration into the mix. This is supposed to be a specialty unit, not hitting all that hard. Would the upgrade seem more balanced if the unit only came in 1x2 and 1x3 configurations? In most cases, that means only a 2-threat attack, unless you get Column Tactics. But that adds to the cost, comes without any reroll possibilities, and the unit's threat drops quickly as it takes damage.

I love the theme and idea- it’s always hard to get the right balance when you push the boundary of existing design, but I think you’re right on with Sycamore Legion and real close (if not right on) for Signal Interceptor. Order of the Silver Mist is a nice design/build option, but I’m thinking it might be better to make it a Training upgrade to limit any other shenanigans.

I agree with Church on EotA. After seeing Sensei Jukey plat EotA (post-nerf), every card I’m designing has to go through it for potential interaction. Like I said in our battle report, I felt like I was playing X-Wing watching Jukey boost and then Lay of the Land to get another one... Maybe some type of clarification that it can’t trigger other effects which trigger off of movement/shift...

What I'd do, is if range is greater than 2, and the shooter is rolling more than 1 die, the shooter chooses and discards 1 die. Edit: AFTER Re-rolls.

You won't avoid damage, but you'll soften those really big hits.

Order of the silver mist is just silly. The idea of a punchy version is good, but this isn't it.

I'm ok with the signal intercept; but lets add in line of sight to the choose an enemy.

With all that said, the base unit seems to really under perform for the cost. It looks like it has no use outside of the unique upgrades; which leads me to believe that the unique upgrades are too cheap and the base unit is too expensive. I think adding 3 points to all the unique upgrades, and dropping the base unit cost by 3 might be a good fix. It won't change the total cost of the upgraded unit hitting the table, but if somebody wanted to run a bare-bones unit, that comes in a bit cheaper.

I find this idea refreshing. Equipment/training slot would be nice to enable fire rune saboteurs, which is quite thematic and also makes it possible to use special action.

Version 2, stuff that's been changed:

The biggest change is removing the 2x2 configuration and revision of the Order of the Silver Mist. I wanted to nudge these a bit further away from being mainline troops, while still allowing the option of having them act as harassing troops.

Answering a couple comments: the price is a bit high on a straight-up combat potential, true, but that's to balance the potential 15 bonus points you can get by being alone in the enemy starting zone, a goal that most of the potential builds leads toward. As for the prices of the upgrades being off—quite possibly. I don't really have any chance to test these, so I can't get firsthand results. If anyone tries to test these, please give me feedback. (Though early on, I'l care more about overall feel of the unit more than point-balancing… if there are going to be any revisions to abilities or dials, that's going to throw any carefully calculated costs off.)

As for an equipment slot, I wanted to avoid letting them have Wind Rune, even though they would only be able to use it with the green dial. And Latari already have some pretty effective fire rune ability in the form of Deepwoods Archers.

And for further changes I'm considering, if I ever get enough play time in to actually see how they work: if the current protected ability is too much, nudge it down a bit. And possibly removing the march-4, if they're consistently managing to get into the enemy backfield.

I didn’t mention it earlier, but the objective token mechanics needs a limit on it or has to go. I’m not okay with the idea that an 18 point unit can possibly score 75 points for just not dying and getting to a deployment zone. Or that this can be spammed.

3 hours ago, Church14 said:

I didn’t mention it earlier, but the objective token mechanics needs a limit on it or has to go. I’m not okay with the idea that an 18 point unit can possibly score 75 points for just not dying and getting to a deployment zone. Or that this can be spammed.

It's got a once-per-game effect. Max 15 points.

So, I love the creativity. It’s definitely a specialist unit. With them not being unique, I’m wondering if they could be spammed to get a lot of points just running across the board. Also, with training, they can use Lay of the Land and with Prince F, they can get across the board in a hurry.

I like Order of the Silver Mist. 4 feels pretty close, maybe 5 or 6 with a tail wind based on Bull Pennon... A late turn charge followed by an early turn melee means a Morale-3 test from a 22 point unit. Ouch...

I’m wondering if the whole concept would be better represented as a Unique upgrade for a regular Ventala unit.

Finally, am I reading the dial correctly that with the Yellow 1-Shift, it can’t take a modifier?

On 7/4/2019 at 10:30 PM, sarumanthewhite said:

So, I love the creativity. It’s definitely a specialist unit. With them not being unique, I’m wondering if they could be spammed to get a lot of points just running across the board. Also, with training, they can use Lay of the Land and with Prince F, they can get across the board in a hurry.

I imagine that if that shows up as being a problem—and that's something that would definitely need testing—the unit could be made unique. I had even considered doing that already, but wasn't sure I wanted to go that far yet.

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Finally, am I reading the dial correctly that with the Yellow 1-Shift, it can’t take a modifier?

Technically, it can take one of the white modifiers, but unless you've got some way to increase the range of the unit's shift, then the negative modifiers on the turns make that a 0. This unit wants, at all costs, to avoid contacting an opposing unit's forward facing. Thematically, spies and saboteurs don't usually get much combat training—they're more into dodging in, doing their thing, and then getting out. Maybe quick attacks of opportunity. If they end up on the front ranks, they're mostly speed bumps.

On ‎7‎/‎6‎/‎2019 at 4:45 PM, Xelto said:

Thematically, spies and saboteurs don't usually get much combat training—they're more into dodging in, doing their thing, and then getting out. Maybe quick attacks of opportunity. If they end up on the front ranks, they're mostly speed bumps.

Maybe order of the silver mist should get a bonus to disengage rather than fight? It would better fit the theme of spies and saboteurs.