Shoot 'em up! Testing Squads
It's been a while since we let you know what we have been up to with regards to Shoot 'em up! We have written and re-written several drafts of the rules, although we felt like we had made a lot of progress we were still stuck on the best way to utilise squads. So we came up with 3 different ways to play and had high hopes for one way in particular that had taken up hours of time to figure out. It turned out not to work, it was too complicated and did not fit in with the rest of the game. This was really frustrating because it had taken so long to develop but this is the sort of the thing that you have to accept when developing a rule set.
Simple is best in Shoot 'em up! and so the best way of using squads (or so we felt) was the simplest, gives players the most freedom and still has options for utilising different tactics.
Where next? A few more test games, more rules tweeks and alot more character creations and weapon stats. Our biggest enemy is our lack of spare time but we have a new found determination to get this thing finished and the rules put online for you all to enjoy.
In these test games we were using the Gears of War characters again because they were the most complete group but we do have other creations and more in the pipeline, we want this game to be wide ranging and open for customisation. We have some pictures of our session using models from our collection to represent our creations.
The Scout sergeant was Baird and the Space Marine Sergeant was Marcus, The Goblins represented Tickers, the Cultists were Drones, the Chaos Space Marines were Grenadiers and the Chosen Chaos Space Marine was a Grenadier Elite. We altered a lot of stat lines after this game to really give a better representation of Gears on the tabletop and to strike a fairer balance.
Another feature we tested was re-spawn points, in this case Marcus came back surrounded by Tickers and Drones.
Marcus was caught out by a Ticker so he attempted to kick the Ticker away but ended up blowing himself up!
We hope this has kindled your interest in Shoot 'em up! and gave you a bit more insight into the process that we are going through and how the game will pan out.
Anyway i've just watched a Sly Stallone movie and might make him my next creation, until next time, happy wargaming.
