I'm wrapping this into my previous Battle report because I don't have an actual write up from last night, but I was able to get in not one, but two games of Mayhem against (get this...) an actual opponent! No plan survives an encounter with the enemy intact, and I had to see how my good friend Aron felt about this game.
He was playing miniatures games back when I thought Battletech was the End-All-Be-All of wargaming. He has played nearly every 6mm sci-fi game in existence and is one of the guys I am working on my own ruleset with. He plays Napoleonics and could recite Warmaster rules to you in his sleep. In short, he was the perfect sounding board.
Our first game was with the same forces I did my playtest with. I had some hot rolls, and after smoking him, he took the time to design a Chaos army ("When you lose, break out the Chaos", he said). The next game was an amazing back-and-forth affair, with some epic battles in it, and in the end his dice turned SMOKING hot (I lost 4 units to him rolling 1's in the last turn!) and he pulled out the victory.
Game 1 set up:
Here are some of his/our thoughts, in no particular order:
Intent of Movement: Movement is in a Straight Line. Does this mean, "proceed forward directly, with no deviation to left or right", or can units move "in a straight line, to any point within their forward arc, as long as they end with the same facing as they started with (prior to the free spin on their axis)"?
Wheeling: His first comment was how unwieldy it was to move large columns of units. The Wheel is a maneuver that is in most fantasy/Napoleonics ruleset, and after game 1, we introduced it. Measuring from the outside corner of the Wheel, and pivoting on the inside corner, we still moved at the default rate, but suddenly, movement felt right. Even if this isnt put into the official rules, which we really urge you to consider, this is something we will houserule.
Layout and Font of the Rulebook: I didnt mention it before, but when my friend grew frustrated with the Calligraphy font in the book, I had to agree. It does make finding the appropriate rules headers a challenge.
We also felt there was a lot of page turning to find applicable rules (Cavalry (p. 13) has Drive Back (p.9). Combined with some rules being in the text ("Fight On" and "Rally" are inside the "Disordered" section on p. 6, not in the list of Commands on p.5, and should really have their own header to stand them apart...but Musicians aren't referred to until p.14). I know it might be a bit of a challenge to group the appropriate rules altogether, but it does need a bit of cleaning up. At the very least, put an alphabetical glossary at the back.
I know the QRS has a lot of info, but it is missing a fair amount as well, and it jumps around a lot. Things I have hand-written on my QRS:
Melee Weapon Counters: I added IMPACT = SC vs Infantry, etc
Equipment: I added, under Heavy Armor, that it is negated also by Heavy Crossbows and Rifles
Melee Modifiers: I added that Attacking from Above gives +1 dice
Beat Back: I wrote that it was applicable to Behemoths and some Infantry
Drive Back: I wrote that it was applicable to Ranged, Cavalry/Chariots
Ranged Attacks: I added that vs Monstrous Creatures, +1 die to hit
Rally: A few times, especially in the second game when we had lots and lots of Heavy Armor units on the board, we had combats get a unit up to 2 Disordered units, but not enough CPs to finish the job. On the next turn, the opponent would spend his 2 or 3 CPs (depending on if he had a Musician or not) and wipe all that work out. We feel that Rallying should be limited to clearing 1 Disordered Token per Turn per Unit. OR make the cost really, really steep, and make Rally only remove up to 1 Token per action, so clearing 2 would require Overdrive...and thus cost more CP:
Clearing 2 tokens with no Musician: 3 CP
Clearing 2 tokens with 1 Musician: 2 CP
Proposed:
Clearing 2 tokens with no Musician: 2 Actions, costing (1+1) + (2+1) = 5 CP
Clearing 2 tokens with 1 Musician: 2 Actions, costing (1) + (2) = 3 CP
Heroes in a Unit: Do you get the Hero's full profile? We were wondering about a Knight with Heavy Army who joins a unit of Swordsmen. Do we need to track hits on the unit and the hero separately? Doesnt seem like it, since if the unit get killed, so does he...but if he takes 2 wounds, the unit itself should perish? We were a tad confused, I admit.
Cost of Traits and Combat/Movement: I think I mentioned this in my original write up. Again I felt, and my buddy wholeheartedly agreed, that a greater cost needs to be assessed for buying a unit's stats up. The second battle, when he created a new army, he had nothing less than CQd8, and with the Counters we were using in the game, made a big difference, but these units only cost 1 more than my d10's. Some linear scale is needed, where going from a d10 to a d8 is 2 or 3 points, and to a d6 from a d8 is more like 5 points...this might result in a higher-pointed game, but it will reflect the relative value of one unit when compared to another much better.
Also: The more Traits/Designators a unit has, we feel it should cost a bit more as well. Overdrive is a mechanic that increases the CP cost for more actions done by a unit...implementing this during unit creation might make sense a bit too. And we know you're coming out with Disadvantages in the next supplement, right?
(besides the existing Counters...which I still love)
Beasts: Beasts cannot get other Designators. This means Giant Eagles cannot be made currently, as that would require a Flying Beast. Sure, we could make them Flying Cavalry, but they arent...until we put a rider on top of them. I'm just sayin'...
Ranged Attacks: The same problem came up in our next two games that I experienced in my Demo: ranged combat is just too short. I had to wait until his Giant was almost on top of my Crossbowmen before I could even hope to hit him (and that was with the extra die for attacking a Monstrous Creature). It was also odd that I could
Auto-hit out to my Default of the Range Die (d12), but at
9" I had little chance of hitting at all. Since most attacks only ever get 1 die...[I had one melee that got 8 dice for one unit!!]
Aron liked my proposal to add the Default range + the Range die roll for range. We also both agreed that Auto Hits don't belong in Ranged combat (because the Hit roll is not opposed like it is in Melee). Something should require the firing unit to still throw his Ranged Dice as normal, even for a 2" distance, and a 1 always misses? As ranged units are so expensive, I will be taking less of them for sure.
[As a side note, our next game may include some of these Ranged suggestions I gave above, and I may actually go ranged-heavy to see how it works...maybe]
Elite: The rules say you must have "2 other units" of the same type...I take this to mean you must have bought 3 of that unit type for 1 to be upgraded. There was a debate on this
Can you either put this in the FAQ, or just slot in something like, "for a total of 3 or more of the same unit type" in the line?
General Comment: I didnt want this to be lost in the mix, as it is being typed into a wall of text, but my friend's summary was simple: "This is not a game of maneuver. Doing so merely puts you out of command and costs a lot of CP's with the short movement distances."
This comes from a Warmaster player...but honestly, Warmaster seems to be exactly the main competition to Mayhem. Consider a Cavalry unit in Warmaster that moves 30cm per action (roughly 12"), versus a Default of 5" on a d10 move. How many times did we roll Danger rolls last night with a d10 unit and get a 1 or 2, or less than the Default? LOTS. We were really trying to use the Default as a result...which really slows things down. This is why Warmaster plays on a 6'x4' board, and I had zero issues playing 150 Crowns on a 3'x3' board.
In the opening turns of our first game, my opponent lunged his Orc Wolf riders out to the flank. He has a Hero with them, but burning 6 CP for 3 clunky advances that allowed no turning, he eventually broke the 2 units apart so they could independently maneuver. It was a valiant attempt at seeing how the game worked, but it left him with a few units that couldnt get back into the fray easily because of the CP required for them to move back in on me. Thus, his attempt at a rapid flank was shot dead before he developed it.
If this is the intent of the game design, fine. However, we now know/feel that this is a straight ahead bash than a sweeping game of outmaneuver, and will probably build around that concept (ie no more of those fast archer-type cavalry for now).
Breaking up an Advancing block of 3 Units: As we moved our infantry blocks of 3 units forward, both of us at one point want to break a unit away and have it wander off on its own. This required the unit to rotate on its axis prior to walking away...which wasn't technically legal. The rotating made it overlap with its neighboring unit, technically...but we did it anyway because we saw no reason for the end result to not work. What do you think?
Action: "Set": I came up with this one on my own, but a 1CP action a unit could take might be "Set", which, if during the next turn an enemy units engages it in melee from the front, whether by actual melee or by Impacts, this unit receives +1 dice as if initiating the melee, and allows weapon counters to work (spears vs cavalry, axes vs infantry, etc). If you know a charge is coming, get those bristly points out and deter the enemy!
Impacts: This one was a big stumbling block to my opponent, who kept saying things like, "Damn, I didnt leave enough CP for melee. I keep forgetting that Combat isnt a Phase..."
Let me show you a pic:
The bottom 3 Infantry units have been hit by a cavalry unit to their left flank (who lived against those spears!), but to their front is a unit of Chaos Heavy Infantry, who where CQd8, Axes, Frenzy, Heavy Armor...NASTY units. They sat there for a few turns, because even before I was charged in the flank, neither of us wanted to be the one that spent the 1CP to Advance the group, then 6 more CP to start a fight with each unit (2 per unit). We wanted to be the one receiving the charge, then only spend 1 per unit to fight back. Honestly, this is a design flaw. Imagine this scene in Braveheart:
Now someone screams, "HALT! STOP! Don't crash into them, let them hit us first!!!!!" and the whole charge stops? Heh...I'm being silly here, but we feel the solution is simple:
Infantry should get Impact vs other Infantry, even if it isnt a Soft Counter. It really is weird charging a unit in and not being able to fight...especially if you're short that extra little bit of CP.
I mentioned a combat above, where one unit had 8 dice versus another. It didnt really happen, because the unit in question were Beasts without Impact, and couldnt afford the Overdrive to initiate the melee. Here is the situation:
Here is a unit of my Heavy Cavalry (red and white). They have a unit of enemy Cavalry to their front, and have been hit in the right flank by some Chaos Hounds. The unit of Hounds off to the right rolled its Danger roll to come in from the back and made it...
Combat (1) + Initiating (1) + Rear Flank (2) + Supporting units (2) + Disorder Tokens on target (2) = 8 dice, with a Hard Counter (Pack Hunter vs Cavalry) = 8d4 vs 1d10. We concluded that
maybe, POSSIBLY, this was why not all units get Impact? However, even if non-Cavalry units didnt get the Impact Soft Counter, this Impact would have still been 8d8 vs 1d10. I think a player could have the OPTION of not Impacting, if he was sending in a lesser unit to support an impending charge by a larger, better unit, but this was another major source of head scratching by my Warmaster-vet opponent.
Initiative Range: One thing we also felt that could be implemented is the concept of Initiative Range, where a unit may act if bad guys are close to them. It should have something to do with the Leadership die type of the army, and maybe it could be that if a unit has an enemy unit within the Default of their Command Die, they can do something. It hearkens back to my comments about not having enough CP for the army...and this would be one way, along with some other options we talked about, to get more out of your army.
Another could be that Heroes and Banners add +1 CP to the die roll, either in addition to or in place of adding dice to the CP Pool, allowing an army to get more than it could on just the standard die roll alone. I had the idea when I rolled two 10's with my 4d10 Leadership roll and felt like I deserved an extra CP for the bonus
OK, enough of this.
Let me conclude by saying,
REGARDLESS of all the above, this was one of the most REWARDING evenings of Miniatures I have had in a LONG TIME. I was happier all evening than a pig in poop. I won the first battle, had a good thing going in the second before his dice turned on me and I got rolled, and I loved it. Maybe I loved the feeling that we were still playtesting? I was taking notes all night like mad...but anyway, I had a blast. Looking forward to more discussion with you!
For this reason, it's sometimes a good idea to anchor your flanks with Disciplined units. 
Besides being in credits as an editor in a few different rulesets, I have also tried my hand at rules writing. I give major props to people who do this, as it is harder than it looks, and I also really get excited when someone makes a ruleset that I LIKE, because I can get quite picky! It is these rulesets that I harp on the most...because I want to see them be so much more polished and better!
Now, back to our new rule!