Being offboard is no disadvantage at all in turns one and two. There are no objectives checked then, so in those turns it is only an advantage. Everything else has to be weighed against that. They essentially have two turns where phasing out makes not the blindest bit of difference.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Sure there's a disadvantage for being off board in turns one and two: such formations can do *nothing* to the enemy.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

...except come on through a portal and kill the enemy.

Compare like for like - a formation that is broken that can't phase out either rallies in place in the end phase or fails to rally and can be shot to death easily. A Necron broken formation phases out, so avoids the second problem entirely. If it fails to rally it is safe offboard, and if it rallies it can reenter play either by teleporting or portals and is still safe until it does it. Until recently it also got to remove all BMs, for no discernable reason.

Phasing out remains an advantage, and only allowing regrouping offboard makes it still more of an advantage.

That's only one of my three concerns, the fluff and simplicity/clarity concerns are just as important. The desire not to make a major change at the last minute trumps them all however.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

This is wrong.  The rule modification that made the regeneration comparable to void shields changed the list in some way and we have no idea how.  In addition (and we've gone over this three times but apparently a fourth is needed) the rules never intended for regenerating off board, but the RAW did not state it explicitly enough.  There were quite a few players, yourself amongst them, that read it RAW instead of by intent and the end result was two camps of Necron players playing them two different ways.

So from the perspective of how the army was supposed to play, it has "always" been played as the #2 option.



And whose call is it?  Yours?  The NetERC?  Corey?  In retrospect perhaps #2 should be the default choice since
1) it matches the Army Champ's last input, for what that is worth
2) it matches the intent of previous rule better
3) it -by your own description- matches the fluff better than #3.

#1 could certainly change that percentage your referred to (50% onboard, 25% offboard) to a heavier number off board. So there you go...  #2 will be the default choice.

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If this debate continues I may have to, but that has implications on the printing of Siege and the community as a whole.  Here is a boring peak behind the veil that a lot of people don't seem to appreciate:

Anticipating the volume of books desired by the community is difficult since only one fan supplement has been done so far.  I ran a poll at that time and -based on a lot of guess work- I extrapolated what I thought would be the total sales for the books.  Now I have to do that with Siege, but this new book has lower poll numbers so I can only assume there will be less interest.  That changes though when you include the availability of Raiders 2.0 as a large number of people indicated they would want both books shipped simultaneously.  Then you add the fact that the printing company I am working with upped their minimum print run requirements.  Bottom line, I need Raiders 2.0 to sell more copies of Siege so I can have more flexibility in how many books of each I can order.

If I order too many books I end up carrying too much volume that could sit on my shelves for months or even years.  If I order too few I end up having to make another order (with a high minimum) that could once again saddle me with a large amount of product and nobody to buy it.  

This doesn't even take into account the time it takes to ship the books together compared to separately, the extra expense of envelopes, the time, the extra cost to the community members in shipping (remember almost half the shipments went to the UK alone).

Digest that block of information and you can appreciate why I might have a greater sense of urgency to get it right the first time.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

i didn't realize all of that. i assumed any supplement w/ IG in it would sell far better then armies that you have to scratch build. couldn't you work out something w/ the army champs of the armies in siege to flip some of the bill?
anyway, back on track. zombo. i still think your missing the point. if a formation is off board.... it had to get there somehow. either it walked out another portal or it just never came on, which would not effect the whole regenerating off board problem. more then likely it was shot to pieces then failed to move on board (since you have to take an activation the would move it on board) and therefor chose to take a hold action off board. the only advantage the necron player has is that they can bring units back without having them shot up again as would a normal army. but it's still off board, no holding objectives, etc. i think there are just as many bad as ther are good for being off board.

Which is a HUGE advantage. Broken formations being completely safe from being shot to pieces is a big advantage. Formations being safe from shooting offboard, drawing out all activations then coming safely onto the board once it's safe is a huge advantage.



Which means absolutely nothing for the first two turns of the game, and by the time the third turn rolls around it should be so much in favour of the necrons that it doesn't matter any more since most of the enemy are dead due to the advantage the necrons have had in the first two turns.



I completely disagree, the advantages are there every turn, the disadvantages only on turn 3 and/or 4.


Being offboard is much like being a skimmer behind a huge building. Noone can shoot you, but you can leap out and kill the enemy when you want to.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

That's not what happened. The previous rules were EXPLICIT that formations could marshall onto the board and bring back models even though they had no BMs. This wasn't some dodgy interpretation of the rules, it was crystal clear. This is the line in question from Raiders:

Formations that are not on the board cannot return stands to play, but may take a Marshal action to
enter the board and restore units when they regroup (this includes formations with no blast markers).

I never used this rule to "regenerate offboard", just to marshall onto the board even though I'd lost all BMs when rallying after phase-out. I never regenerated units offboard, the rules clearly didn't allow that. I don't think anyone actually regenerated units offboard before, did they?



Rethinking it, yes, you're correct. #2 is definitely closest to the previous rules, and would get closest to the 40k levels of on/offboard regen.



Certainly not mine. It's Corey's, or if his continual absence is ever formally noticed then whoever the netERC appoints as champion.



I agree with your reasoning and your conclusion.



Agreed. It's a major change that invalidates a lot of playtests. Frankly I'm unsure entirely why this was ever changed in the first place. Because of the "BM = good" effect of the old rules?

If it's such a problem I'd recommend going back to the old necron rule. It wasn't broken, even if it was clunky.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

it was clunky and i think we do need a change
i still think your missing the point though. sorry to beat a dead horse but all you scenarios are assuming you are bringing units back and coming onto the board on turn 3 to crush the enemy. you could very well be shot up in turn 2, miss the activation on turn 3, take hold action and regenerate all units.... only to loose the game because you are off board. this is where i believe the pro/cons for being off board equal out.

I understand the point, but I find the advantage from the first turn or two is usually enough to swing the game in the necron's favour before the disadvantages kick in.

Hell, if you're worried about not getting onto the board you can marshall through a portal on a 1+ even with BMs.




For the purposes of printing Raiders we at least understand the ramifications of the old necron rule. I'd go to print with the old rule, assuming corey agrees, and then develop the list seperately. I'd much rather the printed version of the list had a well-tested, unbroken rule, (even if it is clunky and has weird reactions with BMs) rather than an untested rule that could potentially be very broken.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

but this is not a problem for turn 1 because your formation is fresh. so advantage on turn 2 yes, but disadvatage for turns 3 and 4.

Hence my point. Most necron games I've played have been swung heavily in my favour by the start of the third turn, by which point the disadvantages no longer matter since I'm winning heavily anyway.

But allow me once again to point out that since the change to disallow single monoliths my win record has dropped down to pretty much average. That was definitely the key change in the list, just about everything else was secondary.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

You'll have to take me at my word - Corey's original intent was so that marshaling could not be done off board.  We went back-n-forth and his reasoning for not wanting the rules to explicitly state it wasn't allowed was because marshaling required BM's to be removed.  The logic was if there were no BM's, there was no marshaling.  He fought tooth and nail to not cater to people who couldn't undertand his reasoning and I finally acquiesced.  I have old emails if you really need to read them.



It was not only clunky but 'rewarded' the Necron player for carrying BM's.  The new system is so streamlined compared to the old one I am not sure I want to go back.  

Unfortunately we're not dealing with an ideal circumstance.  I think going with #2 is going to be our best option.  If you are playing a game, check the old version vs. this new #2 version and check numerically how it affects your game.  With the limited games we've had, MNB and I did this and figured out that it was virtually identical.  But once again we're dealing with half a dozen games... not a lot.

As for Corey, I believe he has gone the way of Greg Lane.  Even if he surfaces, will it matter?  If nothing has been done for nine months then I can only guess nothing will get done for another nine months and I'm not that patient.  I'll consult with the NetERC but to be honest I think a group consensus is our best approach right now.

--

MNB, sharing costs might be a way to go, but that can get sticky in a hurry.  I'd rather take that as a last option.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Sorry to jump in late but I've got lost.

Exactly what is Option #2?

I may have a chance to do some vassal gaming and Necrons may be the way to go as I hope to have a real army ready late this year, early next.

Sure...



This is pretty close to what it would read like in the rules.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

I'm going to try and get in a couple more Necron vassal games this week and next, so I'll try out option 2. I have a feeling it will affect Necrons a fair bit, as to get lots of units back you have to have the fm onboard where it can get shot at AND most likely do very little the turn that it marshalls. It'll be interesting to see.

I also presume that the unit returned in the end phase is irrespective of rallying?

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