12 Posts
Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress» Forums » Variants
Subject: The Blackstone Fortress ' Dark Run' 
| Your Tags: | Add tags |
| Popular Tags: | [View All] |
-
Blackstone Fortress ‘Dark Run' rules.
There's been some discussion on ways to make the game more difficult, and these 'Dark Run' rules are an attempt to do so without requiring the purchase of any more models.
Would appreciate any thoughts on what people think.
Hostile Rules
-Ur-Ghuls fully reinforce on a roll of 5 or less
-Negavolt Cultists add 3 to their Voltaghiest saving throw for each other Negavolt Cultist in the same hex or adjacent, not 2.
-Rogue Psykers base psychic shield is 17+, and when empowered their save is 11+
-Beastmen have Four Wounds.
-All Chaos Space Marines, including Obsidius Mallex, roll the six sided defence die as an armour save.
Discovery Deck Rules
-Remove the four 'secret agenda' cards from the discovery deck at the beginning of the game.
-Add one 'secret agenda' card at random to the discovery deck on each expedition after the first. Do not Look at which secret agenda was added.
Legacy Card Rules
-Remove the Countdown Cards from the Legacy deck
-Rogue Psykers, Chaos Space Marines, or Obsidius Mallex - If these are added to the encounter deck, remove two random Traitor Guard encounter cards that DO NOT show a twist.
-Heightened threat Level - Add two to all Spindle Drone encounters as normal, and there may only be ONE Spindle drone hostile group per encounter. If you draw additional Spindle Drone encounter groups, draw again until you draw new hostiles. Threat level is increased by one as normal.
-Debris Storm - Increase the cost of all non 'one use' Resources by TWO, but resources that are discarded after use remain the same price.
-No Escape Route - The explorers must resolve one more encounter on a roll of 1 to 5. After completing that encounter, they must role AGAIN to see if they escape or do another encounter. This keeps repeating.
-Spindle Nano-Virus - The facilities and Ship Support are unusable on a roll of 1 to 5.
Encounters
-After the first stronghold has been completed, when drawing encounter cards for a combat, if for hostile group 2 you draw the same enemy type as hostile group 1, discard that encounter card and redraw till you draw an encounter card of a different hostile type.
-For the Hidden Vault, at the beginning of the quest all four hostiles groups must be different hostile groups, and no encounter may be a twist; redraw encounter cards from the deck until these criteria are met.
Any thoughts on these rules? Any other ideas? Any problems that jump out?
Ty
- [+] Dice rolls
-
These are really good. I have finished the game solo and thought about adding the following rule for my next run (I have mentioned this before in another post). If an explorer is incapacitated then another exp. must go to the same hex as the wounded one. Then they will move together for the rest of the game with limited movement points. This represents the healthy guy supporting the wounded guy.
I am also unhappy with how the spacemarines are represented. If you read the books you will learn that there is virtually no comparison between spacemarines and normal men and that a SM can be worth up to 100 normal soldiers. This is not represented in the game at all. A lot could be done here...
Chris
- [+] Dice rolls
-
Pretty good rules and nothing stands out as being an issue.
How are you timing the full campaign without the Legacy deck being full? Maybe a note on if you just write down the expedition number or if the campaign is shorter by the number of removed cards.
I have thought about starting a new campaign with all the Legacy cards active right from the start and the heroes having to gear themselves up slowly against tougher odds.
I still think the Discovery deck is sort of a waste of time and would probably just use the resource deck and clues with agendas shuffled the next time. A lot of the problem stems from the ship decks having better gear than the Fortress does. It seems the explorers would be better off flying to Fhloston Paradise and just gambling with each other for gear. It's especially funny that they have to buy their own best gear from their own ships, including stuff that is shown on their models to begin with....
I also thought of dumping the ship abilities and facility use entirely for a campaign. IE, no shopping, no digging through the deck to find agendas and clues, no resurrecting dead heroes.
I completely agree that the Space Marines are way too weak in the game as is and even a d6 defense might be too low.
-
- Last edited Thu Feb 7, 2019 10:57 am (Total Number of Edits: 1)
- Posted Thu Feb 7, 2019 10:54 am
- [+] Dice rolls
-
Without out the countdown cards you have to finish all four strongholds in 8 runs, then the hidden vault after that.
I really like the way the discovery and resource decks work, though i agree it breaks the theme for the explorers to have to buy from their own ship. If I was redoing the game from scratch, i'd have legacy discovery cards that included the 4 hidden agendas, but also things like 'Big Find' for 5 archeotech, or 'Big Clue' for a double clue card.
But then the cost of the higher items in the ships needs to go up by about 2 I think (the one shot ones are fine).
The main issue the game has is that once you get geared up it becomes a bit too easy, so making harder overall from the get go doesn't address that as much. Also in some ways making the ships un reliable as opposed to banning them adds more excitement, as players play differently if there is no option of getting them.
- [+] Dice rolls
- The only time that I used my ship ability was the occasional (Clarion call?) the thing that gave the explorers a free gambit before combat started.
- [+] Dice rolls
-
I found the game pretty easy right from the get go. I've talked about it before on here, but apparently I play far more tactically than most others do.
I also very rarely used any ship abilities, often just using them near the very end just because they were still there.
I seldom used much of the one shot tech, especially near the end of the campaign because I couldn't be bothered to keep looking through the stacks of cards characters had. The Contracts from the Kroot ship were cool early on, but it sucked to have to rebuy them over and over when they came up randomly and you never knew if that bad guy would show up in the next expedition enough to make it worth while.
- [+] Dice rolls
-
They can actually b incredibly useful; the eldar one is great, the Longhauler destiny one is fantastic, and Draik's one where you get re rolls is surprisingly good as well.
The only ones that I don't use that much is the Traveller and Grek's ship.
- [+] Dice rolls
-
Thomas Elder wrote:"I found the game pretty easy right from the get go. I've talked about it before on here, but apparently I play far more tactically than most others do."You like to say this to me and it gets pretty tiresome. I can guarantee that I am playing correctly. I re-read the rules multiple times to make sure of this because it was the first thing I figured when I found the game really easy. The only mistake I made early on was that I didn't allow Inspiration to be spent on defense dice rolls, which actually makes the game harder, not easier.
Tactics cant out do dice rolling and RNG. The game is not reliably easy. If it is you are playing wrong.
Not to mention I've combed through the rules very closely to help answer questions on this forum dozens of times.
There are also tons of items that allow you to overcome dice luck, which affects the enemies to a greater extent than it does the explorers. Plus the explorers have a saving throw for almost all damage, in addition to any gear they get that makes this even stronger with re-rolls.
The key to this game is using cover to negate most Grievous hits, using Overwatch to cover portals, getting the called elevator to your teams back before you explore tokens, and not wasting time searching when on a Stronghold run.
Sound tactics and a good plan will always mitigate the worst of dice luck. Playing willy-nilly will put you at the dice's mercy. So maybe it's you that are reliably playing it wrong?
-
- Last edited Fri Feb 8, 2019 7:46 am (Total Number of Edits: 2)
- Posted Fri Feb 8, 2019 7:41 am
- [+] Dice rolls
-
misomiso82 wrote:They can actually b incredibly useful; the eldar one is great, the Longhauler destiny one is fantastic, and Draik's one where you get re rolls is surprisingly good as well.The can certainly be useful.
The only ones that I don't use that much is the Traveller and Grek's ship.
I just said that the are not required to play and often go unused.
- [+] Dice rolls
-
For Secret Agenda cards, i would suggest to make them [discard to Inspire], on Precipice, before next Expedition.
For Resource cards: [use card] - once per turn; [exhaust card] - once per combat.
-
- Last edited Thu Feb 21, 2019 6:57 pm (Total Number of Edits: 4)
- Posted Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:54 am
- [+] Dice rolls
-
We used some of your rules in our game. I especially liked the rule that Obsidius and his Chaos Space Marines got a defence roll. The first space marine in the death maze survived 4 critical hits in a row, and then his armour was torn down and they just defended a few more random hits.
We also enjoyed playing with unique type enemies for all numbers so we don't get "empty" spawns.
Thank you for this!
- [+] Dice rolls
-
Ah LG just saw your reply!
No worries ty for trying them out!
- [+] Dice rolls