Yo!
I was wondering... has any of you played Confrontation or AT-43 by chance?
Rackham's AT-43
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Mr. Oragahn
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Rackham's AT-43
Last edited by Mr. Oragahn on Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Tabletop: Rackham
What's your opinion on the universes (style, units, fluff) and the rules (adaptability, complexity, depth)?
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Dabat
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Re: Tabletop: Rackham
It has been a couple of years since I have last played, so I may be a little rusty.
The fluff for Confrontation was fantastic. It was almost like they had a world first and the game was just an afterthought. Game play was fun, though a little tedious at times, there was a lot to keep track of, and the only way to do it was with counters on the table (I know that SFB has even more counters, but they provided you with a record sheet to keep track of everything on). I did enjoy it quite a bit though.
AT-43 was always kinda 'eh' to me. While it was a fun and not to complex game, I always got the feeling that they were trying to do another 40k. Other games like Legions of Steel and Renegade Legions got the dark and/or desperate fighting for your life feel better. The models were fantastic for their price, however.
The fluff for Confrontation was fantastic. It was almost like they had a world first and the game was just an afterthought. Game play was fun, though a little tedious at times, there was a lot to keep track of, and the only way to do it was with counters on the table (I know that SFB has even more counters, but they provided you with a record sheet to keep track of everything on). I did enjoy it quite a bit though.
AT-43 was always kinda 'eh' to me. While it was a fun and not to complex game, I always got the feeling that they were trying to do another 40k. Other games like Legions of Steel and Renegade Legions got the dark and/or desperate fighting for your life feel better. The models were fantastic for their price, however.
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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Tabletop: Rackham
I'm not much into this kind of hobby, yet I've found certain parts of it worth looking at. Since Rackham has definitely closed (they already had problems since 2007), some IPs were open to acquisition, and on several boards and blogs, I was reading people's opinions about what was salvageable and what should be let down.
I learned that Confrontation was acquired by a French video game studio, called Cyanide. I've played their stuff, and it's well done. It's a studio that specializes in decent budget solid games, and they're quite old now, so I wouldn't be afraid for Conf. Obviously they're going for a game of sorts. It's unknown if it's a wargame or RPG/adventure, or something else. Surely, considering the games they previously released, especially Blood Bowl and Loki, they should handle Conf rather well. Their fans will be quite happy.
As for AT-43, I found that one by dumb luck. There's surely some inspiration by 40K, since they're both about high tech troops of mixed abilities and logistics, but it's something you can hardly avoid when you're going to do something about armies I guess. There's always going to be someone to say it's doing 40K, just like if you were making a movie with more than fifty zombies and one would say oh he's doing a Romero, or if you made a movie with aliens invading Earth, and that would be War of the Worlds. The inclusion of Karl Kopinski and perhaps Adan Smith, perhaps, is another indicator.
I don't know much about AT-43's fluff except for the larger guidelines, and how the Therians were messing with many groups, are quite nasty, etc.
The race that hooked me was none of the two human factions (UNA or Red Blok, eventually Oni if you want to call them human), Cogs, or other less inspired ones, but the Karmans.
The Red Blok is some kind of russian troops, the UNA and whatever seem random, the Oni are an excuse to put zombies in sort of cyborg suits, somewhere at the cross between the Borg and the Strogg. Which actually doesn't make them much different from the sleeker, more insectile and Grievous-looking Therians. That said, some designs are quite odd enough to be interesting:
http://images.frpgames.com/products/product_47363.jpg
http://images.frpgames.com/products/product_43561.jpg
http://www.at-43addict.com/wp-content/u ... 02__01.jpg
The first one is an unit I've learned is called a Golgoth, this variant being the Succubus. It's an intriguing design, probably not very practical in reality, which comes with a Hekat variant.
On the second one, I believe that it's mainly the painted pattern that makes it look nice. It's actually a variant of one powerful unit. The lady thing in the third one is rather good, but nowhere mind blowing, and I'm not seeing the point of such exposed area in combat, but perhaps it's not meant to be used that way? That said, why the huge blades then? Perhaps there's a force field, dunno. Still, even in pink, it looks funny.
As for the Cogs, they are... what? Greys with feline legs?
But the Karmans, they're cool. I've looked into their background. Nothing truly mind blowing, but good enough to represent a point of relief from other universes such as 40K where everything is so grim dark it's silly. It's so silly that you don't even see what good there is to protect, to save. Plus the designs quite all suck, from troops to spaceships. Only IoM tanks look nice. All the rest I think is just sheer garbage, aside from the Orks which I suppose are quite funny to build because they slap anythin' they find and use it as long as it's made of metal and pointy or blunt.
Space Marines make me yawn, the Nids remind me of what an AVP fanboy once wrote, saying it would be cool to see xenos with guns in ALIEN, which was sickening me. At best, only a Carnifex with a good paint job can pass to me eyes. The Eldars aren't better, unless you dig the Elves no matter the sauce. The Tau... they're more your typical SF, boxier as well, and are supposed to cover the otaku side of 40K fans I guess. But I'm not sold on their design, save for their rifles. I actually do prefer the Therians to them, all things said.
Finally, there may be a little room for Chaos, since they have those spider demons with huge pincers, obviously inspired by Doom.
That's my opinion, I am not trying to bait you or anything Dabat. I'm simply not seeing what's so great about the design of 40K.
I admit it's not easy to pull off a great design for a SF civilization/faction, but 40K started early (with just marines vs orks) and it has not managed to improve.
For example, the Borg are really unique. Imagine, just for a moment, what their ground units would look like if they were to have vehicles. Voyager-era designs look nice. Clone/stormtroopers look cool. In Stargate, all designs are nice: Goa'uld, Asgard, Wraith, Ori... it's easy to imagine what they'd look like if you took some liberties by giving them a variety of ground units and other weapons, because there are core elements in their respective designs which stick out immediately. Even the Ori troops, you know, who are a rehash of the Jaffa, they still have the medieval gear, the Priors who are very specific and benefit from a sober design to be nice looking as miniatures, and you could imagine their units would share some aspects of their ships, either the small fighters or the motherships, with those glowing cores (although that would be very hard to render for miniatures). Same goes with Predators or the Strogg (especially from Quake Wars), who look awesome (plus their in-game abilities, if turned into tabletop rules, would be very cool. Halo's Covenant look nice, especially all the vehicles and ships.
And the Karmans. The models are quite gorgeous.
I've not played board games, but I know that the collection part of it is important, and there has to be a good feeling, some chemistry between the designs and the customer, and the Karmans really are something that sticks out.
Their crafts and both imposing and sleek, with a nice vintage style to them, and at times reminds me of cadillac or WWII airplanes or trains from the 60s, and all that enhanced with a good touch of hot rod. If you liked the podracers in Star Wars, you'll probably find something nice about the Karmans.
Some other suits are a bit on the naive side of things for some of them. That's not pejorative. It's meant to be understood as positive: helmets are not always complicated things like all SF universes make them be. The Karman suit's helmet basically is an upside down fishbowl, right from the 50s pulp SF.
Plus they look strong and brutal (although they're actually not in the fluff), and on the field, with the heavier suits, each one of them appears to be capable of becoming the equivalent of a tank on his own. I suppose that if I were to go for a comparison with 40K, they'd be like between the Terminators and Dreadnaughts.
I also suppose that the reaction to the Karman design is very binary, contrary to some other factions from AT-43, 40K or else. Either you like them, or you hate them.
http://www.google.com/images?q=at-43%20karmans
But what puzzled me the most was the opposition between certain groups. Basically, there's like the huge Games Workshop, and with the SF branch, 40K. Some were saying that hammies would never try other games. To each his own, don't know, but some of the arguments were that the rules of 40K were more complex, allowing for plenty of details and whatever, and other games had rules which were too simple. A criticism against 40K was about the initiative rolls or something like that, which could be hugely boring for the other player as he could see a large chunk of his army owned without having a chance to do anything.
I also took at look at Rackham's weapon range tape, and I thought it was very nice, one side with the centimeters, and the other with that simplified range system, which allows you decide rather quickly at which distance your target is.
I've been watching some videos, notably this one, and I was literally stunned by the fact that the guys were amazed by a rule that works on the principle that the further away your target is, the harder to hit.
I mean, what? What's so exceptional about that? Is that a goddamn revolution??
When reading the 40K fluff, I checked out the rules as well a little bit, and I've never seen something that looks so unintuitive. But that's a problem of the heaviness of RPG rules used in similar ways for any kind of other game type; in this case, tabletop games. I'm yet to get used to anything about the "saves" system I've seen (but I guess it's just as complicated in 43), or all the work you have to do when starting to use certain heavy weapons against rare types of armour, or finding the correct result in the table where you cross rolls with other values, which worked in a way that was completely reversed to the way I'd have actually done it when I started to make comparisons between the wound points of humans and those of orks. Looks to me like GW went from hardcore RPG rules to tabletop games without reassessing the needs for such games. And yet I've not played any tabletop games, for years I actually didn't even really understood how you could manage such a system, like how do you measure height and cover, or what goes if someone accidentally a leg of the table or hits a couple figures and nobody can remember where they exactly stood, in which direction and so on. Plus the plastic models can look nice, but they're not very heavy, and I've rarely seen something stuffing the base with cheap metal rings and glue them inside to make them heavier. It just all seem to inviting to accidental knocks and blowing in the case of the smaller units, and I suppose it gets worse with small scale statues, right?
Yet the game mechanics intrigue me so I'll be looking into some 40K and AT-43 stuff and see what goes on. I'm looking for something fluid though, perhaps fast paced.
I learned that Confrontation was acquired by a French video game studio, called Cyanide. I've played their stuff, and it's well done. It's a studio that specializes in decent budget solid games, and they're quite old now, so I wouldn't be afraid for Conf. Obviously they're going for a game of sorts. It's unknown if it's a wargame or RPG/adventure, or something else. Surely, considering the games they previously released, especially Blood Bowl and Loki, they should handle Conf rather well. Their fans will be quite happy.
As for AT-43, I found that one by dumb luck. There's surely some inspiration by 40K, since they're both about high tech troops of mixed abilities and logistics, but it's something you can hardly avoid when you're going to do something about armies I guess. There's always going to be someone to say it's doing 40K, just like if you were making a movie with more than fifty zombies and one would say oh he's doing a Romero, or if you made a movie with aliens invading Earth, and that would be War of the Worlds. The inclusion of Karl Kopinski and perhaps Adan Smith, perhaps, is another indicator.
I don't know much about AT-43's fluff except for the larger guidelines, and how the Therians were messing with many groups, are quite nasty, etc.
The race that hooked me was none of the two human factions (UNA or Red Blok, eventually Oni if you want to call them human), Cogs, or other less inspired ones, but the Karmans.
The Red Blok is some kind of russian troops, the UNA and whatever seem random, the Oni are an excuse to put zombies in sort of cyborg suits, somewhere at the cross between the Borg and the Strogg. Which actually doesn't make them much different from the sleeker, more insectile and Grievous-looking Therians. That said, some designs are quite odd enough to be interesting:
http://images.frpgames.com/products/product_47363.jpg
http://images.frpgames.com/products/product_43561.jpg
http://www.at-43addict.com/wp-content/u ... 02__01.jpg
The first one is an unit I've learned is called a Golgoth, this variant being the Succubus. It's an intriguing design, probably not very practical in reality, which comes with a Hekat variant.
On the second one, I believe that it's mainly the painted pattern that makes it look nice. It's actually a variant of one powerful unit. The lady thing in the third one is rather good, but nowhere mind blowing, and I'm not seeing the point of such exposed area in combat, but perhaps it's not meant to be used that way? That said, why the huge blades then? Perhaps there's a force field, dunno. Still, even in pink, it looks funny.
As for the Cogs, they are... what? Greys with feline legs?
But the Karmans, they're cool. I've looked into their background. Nothing truly mind blowing, but good enough to represent a point of relief from other universes such as 40K where everything is so grim dark it's silly. It's so silly that you don't even see what good there is to protect, to save. Plus the designs quite all suck, from troops to spaceships. Only IoM tanks look nice. All the rest I think is just sheer garbage, aside from the Orks which I suppose are quite funny to build because they slap anythin' they find and use it as long as it's made of metal and pointy or blunt.
Space Marines make me yawn, the Nids remind me of what an AVP fanboy once wrote, saying it would be cool to see xenos with guns in ALIEN, which was sickening me. At best, only a Carnifex with a good paint job can pass to me eyes. The Eldars aren't better, unless you dig the Elves no matter the sauce. The Tau... they're more your typical SF, boxier as well, and are supposed to cover the otaku side of 40K fans I guess. But I'm not sold on their design, save for their rifles. I actually do prefer the Therians to them, all things said.
Finally, there may be a little room for Chaos, since they have those spider demons with huge pincers, obviously inspired by Doom.
That's my opinion, I am not trying to bait you or anything Dabat. I'm simply not seeing what's so great about the design of 40K.
I admit it's not easy to pull off a great design for a SF civilization/faction, but 40K started early (with just marines vs orks) and it has not managed to improve.
For example, the Borg are really unique. Imagine, just for a moment, what their ground units would look like if they were to have vehicles. Voyager-era designs look nice. Clone/stormtroopers look cool. In Stargate, all designs are nice: Goa'uld, Asgard, Wraith, Ori... it's easy to imagine what they'd look like if you took some liberties by giving them a variety of ground units and other weapons, because there are core elements in their respective designs which stick out immediately. Even the Ori troops, you know, who are a rehash of the Jaffa, they still have the medieval gear, the Priors who are very specific and benefit from a sober design to be nice looking as miniatures, and you could imagine their units would share some aspects of their ships, either the small fighters or the motherships, with those glowing cores (although that would be very hard to render for miniatures). Same goes with Predators or the Strogg (especially from Quake Wars), who look awesome (plus their in-game abilities, if turned into tabletop rules, would be very cool. Halo's Covenant look nice, especially all the vehicles and ships.
And the Karmans. The models are quite gorgeous.
I've not played board games, but I know that the collection part of it is important, and there has to be a good feeling, some chemistry between the designs and the customer, and the Karmans really are something that sticks out.
Their crafts and both imposing and sleek, with a nice vintage style to them, and at times reminds me of cadillac or WWII airplanes or trains from the 60s, and all that enhanced with a good touch of hot rod. If you liked the podracers in Star Wars, you'll probably find something nice about the Karmans.
Some other suits are a bit on the naive side of things for some of them. That's not pejorative. It's meant to be understood as positive: helmets are not always complicated things like all SF universes make them be. The Karman suit's helmet basically is an upside down fishbowl, right from the 50s pulp SF.
Plus they look strong and brutal (although they're actually not in the fluff), and on the field, with the heavier suits, each one of them appears to be capable of becoming the equivalent of a tank on his own. I suppose that if I were to go for a comparison with 40K, they'd be like between the Terminators and Dreadnaughts.
I also suppose that the reaction to the Karman design is very binary, contrary to some other factions from AT-43, 40K or else. Either you like them, or you hate them.
http://www.google.com/images?q=at-43%20karmans
But what puzzled me the most was the opposition between certain groups. Basically, there's like the huge Games Workshop, and with the SF branch, 40K. Some were saying that hammies would never try other games. To each his own, don't know, but some of the arguments were that the rules of 40K were more complex, allowing for plenty of details and whatever, and other games had rules which were too simple. A criticism against 40K was about the initiative rolls or something like that, which could be hugely boring for the other player as he could see a large chunk of his army owned without having a chance to do anything.
I also took at look at Rackham's weapon range tape, and I thought it was very nice, one side with the centimeters, and the other with that simplified range system, which allows you decide rather quickly at which distance your target is.
I've been watching some videos, notably this one, and I was literally stunned by the fact that the guys were amazed by a rule that works on the principle that the further away your target is, the harder to hit.
I mean, what? What's so exceptional about that? Is that a goddamn revolution??
When reading the 40K fluff, I checked out the rules as well a little bit, and I've never seen something that looks so unintuitive. But that's a problem of the heaviness of RPG rules used in similar ways for any kind of other game type; in this case, tabletop games. I'm yet to get used to anything about the "saves" system I've seen (but I guess it's just as complicated in 43), or all the work you have to do when starting to use certain heavy weapons against rare types of armour, or finding the correct result in the table where you cross rolls with other values, which worked in a way that was completely reversed to the way I'd have actually done it when I started to make comparisons between the wound points of humans and those of orks. Looks to me like GW went from hardcore RPG rules to tabletop games without reassessing the needs for such games. And yet I've not played any tabletop games, for years I actually didn't even really understood how you could manage such a system, like how do you measure height and cover, or what goes if someone accidentally a leg of the table or hits a couple figures and nobody can remember where they exactly stood, in which direction and so on. Plus the plastic models can look nice, but they're not very heavy, and I've rarely seen something stuffing the base with cheap metal rings and glue them inside to make them heavier. It just all seem to inviting to accidental knocks and blowing in the case of the smaller units, and I suppose it gets worse with small scale statues, right?
Yet the game mechanics intrigue me so I'll be looking into some 40K and AT-43 stuff and see what goes on. I'm looking for something fluid though, perhaps fast paced.
-
Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Tabletop: Rackham
Found this website, which has a lot of fluff material and the rulebooks for UNA, RB and Therians. It's not too bad, although there are nonsense. There's a sane dose of Silly, especially with the cultural references from the two major forces from Ava. But it's not over the top like it happens to be in 40K, despite the use of mechas (we all know mechas suck, right?). It's a bit like 40K's and its numerous worlds which are copies of current cultures on Earth, or past ones. That said, the overall Therian arc works on the premise that humans just can't help but be aggressive and destroy their environment, and that is really something I find deeply annoying: the worst from tree-hugging leftists who embarrass me.
Also, Therians terraform worlds in that they "therianize" them. For some odd reason, despite being very old, very advanced, having control of advanced nanotechnology and an ability to tap powerful sources of energy, building dyson shells around stars and having a plan to turn the entire universe into "habitats" to save it from whatever, having successfully done so to the entire Milky Way by using mobile planets, they need subspecies of their own creation to "pollute" worlds before they can be ready for therianization... o_O
Above all, the Therians so seriously fucking sucked at fighting that they couldn't really defeat any species sufficiently "advanced" (very primitive in comparison).
Out of nowhere, they were kicked by Avans (Red Blok + U.N.A.), and for some other equally weird reason, they just don't seem intent on merely erasing Ava from the universe. It's just a single planet! Still, they don't want to be genociders, because I suppose they seem themselves above that, yet they don't seem to have a problem with imposing their view to the entire universe and not letting even one single planet enjoy its . Yet they go to war, and will not accept any disagreement with their grand plan.
When you're that made up of so much fail, the kind that defeats the worst from Signs' aliens, the Psychlos, nu WotW tripods and Strogg combined, trying to change the universe is looking into boiling the ocean. :)
You may also want to download the PDF books now.
Also, Therians terraform worlds in that they "therianize" them. For some odd reason, despite being very old, very advanced, having control of advanced nanotechnology and an ability to tap powerful sources of energy, building dyson shells around stars and having a plan to turn the entire universe into "habitats" to save it from whatever, having successfully done so to the entire Milky Way by using mobile planets, they need subspecies of their own creation to "pollute" worlds before they can be ready for therianization... o_O
Above all, the Therians so seriously fucking sucked at fighting that they couldn't really defeat any species sufficiently "advanced" (very primitive in comparison).
Out of nowhere, they were kicked by Avans (Red Blok + U.N.A.), and for some other equally weird reason, they just don't seem intent on merely erasing Ava from the universe. It's just a single planet! Still, they don't want to be genociders, because I suppose they seem themselves above that, yet they don't seem to have a problem with imposing their view to the entire universe and not letting even one single planet enjoy its . Yet they go to war, and will not accept any disagreement with their grand plan.
When you're that made up of so much fail, the kind that defeats the worst from Signs' aliens, the Psychlos, nu WotW tripods and Strogg combined, trying to change the universe is looking into boiling the ocean. :)
You may also want to download the PDF books now.