u/Brotten

After playing a good part of the SC series (Soul Blade and Soul Calibur II - IV) in my youth, with your typical "I know some of the moves but have no actual plan" level, I recently got to play SCII again and got my arse handed to me by the CPU. This rekindled a certain fire in me. I saw people here talking about strategy and balance, saying stuff like "don't play Tira as a poker", and I'd really like to reach the level where I'm making tactical and strategic decisions instead of doing whatever I move I happen to remember at the moment.

So I installed emulators and threw my physical discs of SCIII and IV into my PC. I'll be only doing offline PvP with some friends who're willing to put some effort in. Mostly SCIV, probably, due to graphics.

If you got any beginner tips, please share your wisdom. I also whittled down the roster to a few characters whose styles I enjoy and who I could see as my main. But I'm obviously looking at them with the eyes of a beginner who doesn't understand anything beyond "Kilik keeps people away and Amy pirouettes around a lot". If you got some info on how they play once you're better, or got any recommendations or warnings, let me know.

My shortlist is: Kilik, Voldo, Yoshimitsu, Siegfried, Tira, Song Mina, Cassandra, Raphael, Ivy, Shura(Cervantes clone from SCIV), Xianghua

I've been looking at the OPR STL store and while the Mummified Undead and Saurians look perfectly good and normal, looking at the Vampiric Undead models reminds me of chibi characters from SNES games, or vampire hobbits. What's up with that?

There's this normal adult skeleton, which is representative of the range

But these Vampire skeletons look almost like from a different game

And then there's this tiny fella

I've been learning the game of Chiriboga. I enjoyed the tutorial and had no problem winning games as a runner, so I switched to corporation. I played like 10 games as the corporation in a row now and didn't win one. And the majority of the games it feels like I just can't. In the first two rounds the runner can basically access all your cards freely, because the chances of drawing enough strong ICE while also drawing enough credits to rez it is basically 0. If you have 2 agendas on hand, you can basically kiss your game goodbye, because he will draw one, draw one from R&D and sit there turn 2 with 5 of 6 required agenda points. Even if I manage to set stuff up, it seems the runner can effortlessly run through 4-5 ICE without problems from mid-game onward and I don't see any path from stopping him getting to my stuff because all the ICE is already there and I have no other tools.

Now, losing on turn 2 just because the runner draws 3 cards you cannot defend could be filed under "this is a card game, abysmal luck happens", but I have this experience like 1/3 of the time. 1/3 of the time I have a thick stack of ICE and the runner just burns through it. What is this game? Is it me? Is it the deck? Is this how the game is?

edit: Won my first game directly after writing this post. At least Fortuna has humour.

Hello, weary traveler. You have searched the web for tutorials and forums posts to figure out why you would choose one or the other of various rank and file wargames? They're all about pushing blocks, what really makes them unique? I've been through that journey too, and here is the summary of which motivator might make you go for each game.

Kings of War

You want IGOUGO and just the base game, no frills. Just units with not too many special rules, which are treated as blocks and not as collections of individual models. You want the rules for terrain to be not too detailed (see The Old World). And you want units to stay at full strength until all models are dead. You might also play this because you want a attack rolls to be "one person rolls attack, the other rolls saves".

Age of Fantasy Regiments

You want alternating activations and otherwise a similarly basic game as Kings of War, but units get weaker and smaller as models die. You want the game to be miniature agnostic (OPR miniatures exist).

Warhammer The Old World

You want IGOUGO and units to get smaller and weaker as models die. You want units to have many special rules and terrain to have somewhat detailed effects, e.g. being higher up on a hill gives rangers a better bonus. You want the attacks to be 3 rolls, to hit/to wound/armour, and units to have separate stats for all of these. You want the game to be managed by Games Workshop (Consider seeking help.) or just the largest possible playerbase.

The 9th Age

You want The Old World, but with at least the goal of balance and/or a game not made by Games Workshop. You want the game to be miniature agnostic (there's no 9th Age miniatures).

Oathmark

You want alternating activations but you don't want to roll buckets of dice (max. 5 in Oathmark, up to 30 in other games). You want combat to be a single, simultaneous dice roll by each player, with the details being affected by modifiers. Or you don't want point based list building. In Oathmark you build a "kingdom" by picking regions from a list. The make-up of your kingdom decides what you can take in your army. This allows for mixed-faction armies. You want the game to be miniature agnostic. (Oathmark miniatures do exist.) You want that before each activation a die roll decides whether the unit can be fully used or can only do one action, which is not charging into melee.

A Song of Ice and Fire

You want alternating activations, where effects from outside the battlefield can influence the game. You want to play with a deck of cards which gives special effects to units and a small side board where players can put non-combat units to unlock special effects, while blocking the other player from using that same effect. You want combat rolls to be one attack roll + one saves roll.

Conquest: Last Argument of Kings

You want alternating activations, which are decided by each player before each round (i.e. you need to predict what your opponent will do when). You want a reinforcement mechanism where some units only enter the battlefield later but dice decide the details. You want bigger miniatures, which means each unit has less space for moving left and right. You want combat to be attack roll vs saves roll.

Money:

• Free Rules: The 9th Age, Conquest, ASOIAF
• OPR: Core rules are free, additional rules on Patreon
• Kings of War: Rules are free if you sign up with Mantic website, otherwise paid
• Paid rules: Warhammer and Oathmark

I have been an avid player of Kill Team '21 but when we started with Kill Team '24, the atrocious state of balance (e.g. the Legionaries' Slaanesh melee skill) quickly turned my group off to the point that we stopped playing Kill Team altogether.

Now 2 years later I really miss the game and asked my group to play again, but when I look at reports about Kill Team '24, I see a lot of complaints that the balance is completely broken. We only have teams from last edition, would this affect us? Specifically

• Is the "balance is fucked" thing only contained to "the last teams to be released are always overpowered" or is this a general issue?
• Half of our teams are declassified, do they still get (useful) balance patches or do they drop by the wayside?
• Are Gellerpox even a playable team this edition? It seems CYRAC was grieving for them last time I checked.

We're trying to figure out if we might be better off sticking to 2nd edition, despite its kinks.