Santiago said:

There's balance. Then there's ridiculous to the point of them not even being accurate to the fluff. Heck, the ones in Disciples of the Dark Gods have Hulking AND Unnatural Str and Toughness. Plus 30 wounds.

And unnaturals? We don't even know if they get them. Remember, Hulking gives the bonus too.

At first I was worried Ogryn would be too hard to balance with other PCs if they were portrayed right, and despite that I would rather have had Hulking Brutes with the right stats and deal with it than I would see them this pathetic.

But gimping them this far is simply ridiculous. Even normal human gene augmented sorts can be stronger than that.

Let's just hope this is an Ogryn that rolled very poorly on their Str and the range is 40-60 for starters, at least. Or they were extra gimped for the sample adventure. Admittedly, I still argue they're poor PC options to begin with due to being dumber than most orks. And even with the sort of stats they should have, (even as this one is portrayed) they completely rule out ever bothering with stealth options and pretty much make expected assaults your only option, which only further makes things tough in an already military RPG - harder to do anything different.

For the Demo they cut down on the rules. In the book you will see they have the Hulking Trait, Unnatural Toughness and Strength 2 and 5 more wounds than the rest.
You might say this is too little, but imho Space Marines should be more dangerous than Ogryn. As I said, they are just devolved humans who happen to be very strong.So if the Ogryn are not strong enought we should give the Astartes an Unnatural Strength and Toughness 6 or even 8.

So the setting is going to be "the Spinward Front"? 'Spinward' is the outer edge of the galaxy, right? So, I'm guessing this will continue the tradition of adjacent settings- maybe the Spinward Front is just 'South' of the Calixis Sector?

One thing worth remembering is that the characters in Broken Chains (last year's Black Crusade demo) weren't strictly by-the-book characters - the Chosen's heavy weapon doesn't exist outside of that adventure, and the Heretek's capabilities and armament weren't from the rulebook either. The rules and characters both are designed for quick-start demo games rather than being an in-depth preview of the rulebook.

In short, don't be so quick to assume that everything you see in the demo is an accurate representation of what you'll see in the published rulebook.

Santiago said:

Um… that's really not that impressive - and is exactly what we see already. Unless Hulking has changed and now offers the equivalent of a rank of Unnatural S and T on top of them having a level of such.

Ignoring astartes for a moment, that's still only -as- tough as a normal Ork. And only barely stronger. In the BL novels they are physically stronger than a Power Armored Astartes. And Hulking doesn't give a Str and T bonus, so just one level of the Unnaturals doesn't allow that, they're actually weaker. Now with some stupid justification of this being a young, not fully grown Ogryn at Chargen, sure. Now if UN S and T at level 2 or higher is part of their advance schema (especially right away), then fine. But as it stands? These aren't Ogryns, these are barely modified humans. BOgryns are otherwise so big that they're on par sizewize with Ork Warbosses, and as strong or stronger (again, I only mean physically! I am NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT EVER saying 'better' - my use of "Stronger" in these posts is ALWAYS referring to physical strength alone) as all but the biggest orks.

And I do agree that Astartes should be -better-. My argument has and always will be I don't think the Ogryn as we've seen so far is -strong- (as in physically, not caps!) enough comparitively, these are things that routinely do out strength Astartes in Black Library novels. Just because Ogryns are stronger doesn't make them more dangerous than an Astartes, the Astartes has brains, and skill. The Ogryn's got the fact it's a 10 foot tall hulk of muscle and fat and little else.

Heck, the fact Power Armor allows Astartes to ignore the "Hulking" penalties alone is a huge advantage.

As I said earlier, the stats in the freebie are compressed, it is not the full rulebook. Also the ogryn in the story is a starting ogryn.
They als need to make it a viable player character. So lets wait what the book tells us.

Ran this for 3 friends of mine. Had the Weapons Specialist, Heavy Gunner and the Tech-Priest. Game went pretty smooth and everybody had a good time. They managed to get out with 2 left on the timer even.

What's the weapon specialist armed with?

BYE

Pistol shotgun… the size of a massive rifle (according to the picture) and with an ammunition capacity of 8. Ok,. it is called a "hand-held Combat Shotgun" but it is apparently "pistol" class.

The heavy weapon specialist had a flamer (statted up as Blast (3), I presume for simplicities sake)… and Target Selection. Err… useful… not.

As far as the Ogryns: It was probably done for game balance, but it does make you wonder if the scale if stats is actually judged differently from the other lines (Deathwatch's scale is a bit overblown compared to the previous ones already). Not surprising that they nerfed them for game balance. Same thing happened to Sisters of Battle to try and "balance" the fact that they got Power Armour at 1st Rank (the idea of full Sister Militant at Rank 1 still hurts me).

A flamer? That's surprising.

BYE

@borithan

What does Target Selection do in this game?

Cifer said:

In the Demo, it allows you to fire into melee without penalty.

I was surprised with the flamer and pistol shotgun when I got this booklet in my hand. Though, the pistol shotgun would be rather useful in close quarters combat and it gives the combat specialist an effective means of fighting the orcs. Of course, the heavy flamer is likely to be more effective then the heavy bolter with the BC rules for automatic weaponry in effect.

Mind you, they toned down the Orcs as used in Deathwatch for example as well, not Unnatural Toughness (4) but (2) which makes them more manageable. I also noted that the combat knives got upgraded to d10 instead of d5 which makes melee combat with the Orks workable.

Now that the demo game has been played: Was there any new core mechanic introduced, like DW's hordes?

No Horde rules in the Demo. The standard rules seems to differ quite a lot from DH (not sure if the same thing is true for BC). For one thing they changed how Scatter works. A change I find preferable to trhe old DH rules.

Sister Callidia said:

At Rank 1, Guardsmen will have their hands full trying to survive individual orks- Horde Rules at this stage would most likely result in a Total Party Kill. I'm curious if Horde Rules will show in the Rulebook, though (for when the PCs upgrade to Stormtrooper carapace- or better- armour).

Sister Callidia said:

I haven't played the demo yet, but from some second hand reports the rules seem to be the same as BC.

Sister Callidia said:

May I ask what they are?

Adeptus-B said:

Scatter since Black Crusade gives +3 damage at Point Blank (maybe Short?) and -3 Damage at Long (maybe Extreme Range?), rather than the additional multiple hits. Simpler to resolve, but maybe makes them too good against armoured foes while reducing their effectiveness against light/unarmoured dudes (though obviously only at Point Blank).

borithan said:

Except that a scatter weapon such as a shotgun SHOULD do more damage at point blank, even to an armoured opponent, as it is the kinetic impact of more buckshot hitting before it disperses over range, and not penetration that is represented with the +3 bonus. The inverse is true of the long range -3 penalty, as the spread of the buckshot means very few buckshot bits will hit a target at longer ranges. Scatter tends to only exist on weapons with lower penetration values, so things like long-las will still have the advantage over a combat shotgun when it comes to dealing with armoured opponents.

Somehow the idea of using horde rules sounds of for me for an IG rpg. You needed a mechanism for Deahwatch to represent Space marines mowing down dozens of opponents but IG it is about soldiering on a a on 1 base. If I try to imagine what happens to some poor guard who is getting shot by even a small side horde, I would imagine them to go through fp's by the dozens as well.

Sister Callidia said:

In Black crusade they use the horde rules a little differently from the Deathwatch ruleset, so the settings mix of chaos marines and human heretics can both get involved int he figthing. I haven't heard a lot of complaints (some but not a lot) over on that forum about the mix, so I assume that it works well enough for them to copy it somewhat into this setting. Who knows if they will use it all however until we get the actual rulebook.

Sister Callidia said:

The main reason why Deathwatch needs Horde Rules is because Space Marines as statted are flat-out immune to most standard weapons due to Power Armour + Unnatural Toughness. The ascethetically pleasing 'mowing down dozens of opponents' effect is purely secondary. So, Hordes wouldn't be needed at low levels, but- if my DH campaign is any indication- high-end armour and some Toughness advances can lead to 'mortal' PCs being absurdly difficult to harm, which has led to me resorting to using Hordes a few times to create a reasonable challenge for my Acolytes. I'm not sure if/when that threshold will be crossed in OW … It's true that the BC rules for Zealous Hatred allow 'grunts' to damage well-armoured PCs, but that will typically only be for 1 point, 1 hit in 10- not exactly a serious challenge.

-----------

With regard to the Black Crusade 'varient' on Horde Rules (namely, using Hordes only against the Chaos Space Marines in the group and individual opponents against Mortals in the same combat)- does it look like there will be a two-tiered level of resilience in a OW party that would necessitate this tactic? If so, I'll share this: In the early days of the BC Forum , when only the official playtesters had played the game, I asked how you scaled encounters to challenge CSMs without auto-killing the Mortals in the party. The playtesters said that you just use Hordes only against CSMs. When I asked what happens when a Horde has line-of-sight blocked to the CSMs but has a perfect shot at a Mortal PC, or if a Mortal ends up too close to a Horde fighting a CSM and also gets attacked (since Hordes can attack everything in 'close proximity'), I was told by multiple playtesters that those things never happened and if they do it's because I'm a bad GM. It took me a while to understand that response, but eventually it hit me: I play most combats with miniatures, so line-of-sight and other specifics are plainly visible to everyone, but the playtesters only use narative-based combat; therefore line-of-sight and 'close proximity' are whatever the GM says they are, thus allowing Hordes to always only fight CSMs. So, that's something to keep in mind: mixed power level PCs who necessitate splitting opponents into Hordes and individuals don't work very well if you plan on using miniatures…

But in OW you dont have space marines. Sure the Ogryn is tough but he is not as tough as a CSM so as far as I can see, there is no need to include Horde rules in OW. Sure you can tell narratively how the bolter mows down a row of enemies but in the end, you don't need fancy rules for that. Because if you start there you would need rules for grand scale warfare and we already have those, it is called WH40k

By the way, Scatter in the demo was: +3 damage in PB range. -3 damage at ranges longer than 15m (not Long range, as mentioned earlier).

After running the demo twice, I found that the Ratling sniper PC was a bit overpowered compared to the other PCs. He's got a good BS skill, and the sniper rifle is Accurate.

Half action to aim is +20 (for accurate weapons), standard attack is another +10. +10 for short range. That's +40 to hit, meaning he had about a 87 to hit, with no penalty to shooting into melee. Add in accurate gives +1d10 for every 2 degrees of success (to a max of +2d10). Thus, all it takes is a 67 or less to get 2d10 damage, and 47 or less for 3d10 damage. The sniper was essentially single-shotting (or pretty close to it) every Ork he ran into. Keep in mind the Boyz were pretty "weak" having TB of 8 but only 12 wounds (2 armor gets negated easily). So it only takes 20 damage to kill one.