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Tactics question

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uu
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Tactics question

Do i finally got my friend group play tactics. So they like it more then sentinels of the multuverse. I hear so much about people not liking tactics and im just wondering why?


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Powerhound_2000
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I think a decent part is people are expecting a coop game still which Tactics is not meant to be.   You can group up but you still have to face off against someone else.  


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TakeWalker
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I haven't played it yet, and I will if given the chance, but what turns me off is the lack of pure coop play and the whole, like, measuring hexes to determine your move stuff. I'm just not a minis person.

arenson9
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Tactics can suffer from being too simplistic for hard-core miniatures gamers and too complex for non miniatures gamers. In my mind, it's really trying to create a new market, but it didn't manage to do so.

 

The scenarios for Tactics had some serious problems.

 

Skirmishes can feel like they are very 'samey' -- everyone rushes in and gives their biggest hits right away, you see the same sort of play in every match. 

 

What really excited me about Tactics was tournament play and the meta-game of drafting.

 


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I think I agree with that assessment - one of the strange things to grasp about Tactics is that many characters start with the ability to just one-shot others. (I'm looking at you, Wraith and Bunker!) After all the rules about dodging and defense tokens, it can be disconcerting to realized that you just have to get in someone's face with a flak cannon.

uu
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I just think its fun watching my friends who haven't watched any tournaments what do ever, figure out some great combos. Also dice games are really funny to us because of the whole dice gods theory of bad rolls and good rolls.


Every artist was first an amateur.
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In the fewest words possible, it depends what kind of gamer you are most often if you like it.

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I find most people don't like the many vs one aspect and line of sight can be a little wonky until you get used to it. I think it's a great game though, can't wait to see the rework and prime wars.

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@neoadvent89 im with you on that one. Im exicted to get more charcters to fool around with. Also to see what kind of rework they will do


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Look at how well Spirit Island went over with the GtG fans.  It's a co-op with some good strategy elements that is highly thematic in a way that makes playing different spirits feel like a significantly different experience.

 

I mean replace spirit with hero and that describes SotM.  Tactics is a very different gaming experience, based on characters you probably don't care about if you don't like co-op games.

 

That's why shelf appeal was a big concern.  It needs a new crowd, a different crowd than GtG has.  It needs people who don't know the world or the game to buy it.

jffdougan
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I had my kids at a Hero Clix event this afternoon, after one of them got introduced at our library this weekend. The guy running it knew enough SotM to think the idea of Sentinel Clix would be pretty cool.

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neoadvent89 wrote:

I find most people don't like the many vs one aspect and line of sight can be a little wonky until you get used to it. I think it's a great game though, can't wait to see the rework and prime wars.

 

Hear hear

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neoadvent89 wrote:

I find most people don't like the many vs one aspect

For what its worth, this is not at all reflective of my experience bringing Tactics to new gaminging groups. It wasn't the format that was ever an issue with new folks, but rather the implimentation of it. In hindsight, the large majority of scenarios are frankly not very good. The Baron Blade 1st scenario is usually met fairly well, as well as one of the Omnitron ones (I forget if it was scenario 1 or 2). But the rest are full of problems and lack the intended game experience.

If the 1vMany experience was implimented in a better way with a more fun experience, I think you'd see the complaints about the format slowly go away as the crowd that does enjoy it grows in size.

neoadvent89 wrote:

line of sight can be a little wonky until you get used to it

Honestly this has been a slight issue from the very begining of playtesting. It's gone through minor changes over time to try and streamline it, but its always been a little odd to someone playing.

Personally I feel that a lot of the issue with LoS is mental and stems from conflicting representations of size/scale within the game. The city map in Tactics exemplifies this perfectly. Each hex on the city map represents a huge amount of space, both in terms of area and even height. Now contrast that with the size of your cardboard hex or mini sculp on the board and now try to parse out, just by taking a quick look at the board state, where you can and can not get LoS. There is a disconnect that happens here which causes that feeling of "wonkiness". It's hard to imagine where your character is in this imaginary comicbook scenario you are creating in relation to where everything else is, leading to less immersion and directly effecting LoS rules.

If you take the same LoS system but scale down the area that the map is supposed to represent (think same amount of Hex's per map, but each Hex representing a few feet instead of a few thousand feet), I suspect that the rules start to feel more "natural" and self-evident on where you can and can not get LoS, eliminating the disconnect. This is one of the things likely to be addressed in the Tactics rework.

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I don't know what it is about the line of sight system in Tactics that makes it wonky, but I agree that it does seem so. I've noticed:

1. Spiff's city models make it MUCH easier to understand and to use.

2. I really like the LoS rules in Imperial Assault. They are simple, very explicit, and lend themselves immediately to advanced tactical concepts like "sticky" cover. For those who don't know: it's a square grid, and you can see a square if you can connect any corner of your square to two different corners of another square with unbroken lines. I thought a little about whether this rule could adapt to a hex grid, but I don't think it quite can.

uu
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Its be could if while drwing line of sight if some of the modle is obscured they gain defence values for it. As if they were in cover


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uu
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So prime wars is being worked on which makes me really excited (i know its probably been having work done but its the first time in a bit ive seen it mentioned)


Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chaosmancer
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Yeah, with Oblivaeon and the RPG finally getting into their final stages I can't wait to see what Christopher and the team will do with Prime War and Tactics.

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Chaosmancer wrote:

Yeah, with Oblivaeon and the RPG finally getting into their final stages I can't wait to see what Christopher and the team will do with Prime War and Tactics.

naw baron blade will show up and make the gtg team work on something else in some evil scheme


My wife thinks Sentinels is ruining our marriage. I think she doesnt know what shes talking about because she wont sit down to play it