Back in the Saddle!

Over the Horizon is basically done, just as soon as I can persuade Wargame Vault's artificial intelligence to accept my manuscript (there's a thing with the bleed margin that I just can't seem to sort out, but I'm working on it).

That means it's all hands to Zero Dark and I'd love to hear if any of my patrons have made it to the tabletop with the game, yet, even just to try out the mechanics.  I want to try to record an example of play for you all, but I do need to manage your expectations: it's going to be clear - in that I'll try really hard to explain how things work and what I'm doing at every step - but it's also going to be a bit shit, because it'll just be me with my smartphone camera trying not to fall over the immense amount of crap I have lying around in the studio.

Meanwhile, you should have an updated beta version by the end of the week.

I'll try to note all the things that have changed since you last downloaded a copy, but I've been really bad at keeping track of these things up to now, because I've never had to explain to someone what's changed before.  After this version, I'll be using "track changes" so any future amendments can be clearly identified for all your benefit.

The main thing that's changed is the Red Force actions table.  I felt like the Red Force tended to be too passive at times and not aggressive enough to really threaten the heroes.  This has changed and the Attack action, in particular, is a bit more assertive.

Red Force EWOps are also rather more dangerous - as I felt they needed to be, given the relatively rare occurrence of them coming onto the table - as they no longer need line of sight to a targeted character to be able to attack them.

One thing I'm wondering about is synthetic bogeys, and I'd welcome your thoughts.

At the moment, initial  bogeys are all biological.  Subsequent  bogey deployments are either biological (if deployed from a black card) or synthetic (if deployed from a red card).  But this puts an onus on players to have suitable minis for synthetic  bogeys available.  My pondering is how fair it is to expect players to have basically two Red Forces: one biological and one synthetic just to cover all the possible deployment bases?

Obviously, for solo and coop games, you can just decide not to deploy a synthetic if you don't want to, but they really do add something fun to a game when an EWOp hero dominates one (especially if it's the mech) as well as other differences in effect that arise from having synthetic  bogeys .

For PvP games, you only need to provide half a Red Force each but, let's be honest, in most PvP games the Red Force will be supplied by whichever player is most enthused with the game.  And if you have a mixed Red Force, it's going to be a weird blend of two players' collections and paintjobs etc.

I've got several possible "solutions" in my head, but what are your thoughts?  Are you excited by taking on synthetic bogeys?  Or does the idea of keeping track of biological and synthetic bogeys just frustrate you?